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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Life of George Borrow, by Herbert Jenkins
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Life of George Borrow
+       Compiled from Unpublished Official Documents, his Works,
+       Correspondence, etc.
+
+
+Author: Herbert Jenkins
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2014  [eBook #3481]
+[This file was first posted on May 11, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1912 John Murray edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+    [Picture: George Borrow from the picture in the possession of John
+                                 Murray]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE LIFE OF
+                              GEORGE BORROW
+
+
+                        COMPILED FROM UNPUBLISHED
+                         OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS, HIS
+                       WORKS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.
+
+                            BY HERBERT JENKINS
+
+                 WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE, AND
+                        TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                    JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
+                                   1912
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    TO
+                         JOHN MURRARY THE FOURTH
+
+              IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF THE KEEN INTEREST
+                HE HAS SHOWN IN THE WRITING OF THE LIFE OF
+              A MAN WHOM HE WELL REMEMBERS AND MUCH ADMIRES
+                         THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
+                              BY THE AUTHOR
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+DURING the whole of Borrow’s manhood there was probably only one period
+when he was unquestionably happy in his work and content with his
+surroundings.  He may almost be said to have concentrated into the seven
+years (1833–1840) that he was employed by the British and Foreign Bible
+Society in Russia, Portugal and Spain, a lifetime’s energy and resource.
+From an unknown hack-writer, who hawked about unsaleable translations of
+Welsh and Danish bards, a travelling tinker and a vagabond Ulysses, he
+became a person of considerable importance.  His name was acclaimed with
+praise and enthusiasm at Bible meetings from one end of the country to
+the other.  He developed an astonishing aptitude for affairs, a tireless
+energy, and a diplomatic resourcefulness that aroused silent wonder in
+those who had hitherto regarded him as a failure.  His illegal
+imprisonment in Madrid nearly brought about a diplomatic rupture between
+Great Britain and Spain, and later his missionary work in the Peninsula
+was referred to by Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons as an instance
+of what could be achieved by courage and determination in the face of
+great difficulties.
+
+Those seven rich and productive years realised to the full the strange
+talents and unsuspected abilities of George Borrow’s unique character.
+He himself referred to the period spent in Spain as the “five happiest
+years” of his life.  When, however, his life came to be written by Dr
+Knapp, than whom no biographer has approved himself more loyal or
+enthusiastic, it was found that the records of that period were not
+accessible.  The letters that he had addressed to the Bible Society had
+been mislaid.  These came to light shortly after the publication of Dr
+Knapp’s work, and type-written copies were placed at my disposal by the
+General Committee long before they were given to the public in volume
+form.
+
+A systematic search at the Public Record Office has revealed a wealth of
+unpublished documents, including a lengthy letter from Borrow relating to
+his imprisonment at Seville in 1839.  From other sources much valuable
+information and many interesting anecdotes have been obtained, and
+through the courtesy of their possessor a number of unpublished Borrow
+letters are either printed in their entirety or are quoted from in this
+volume.
+
+My thanks are due in particular to the Committee of British and Foreign
+Bible Society for placing at my disposal the copies of the Borrow
+Letters, and also for permission to reproduce the interesting silhouette
+of the Rev. Andrew Brandram, and to the Rev. T. H. Darlow, M.A. (Literary
+Superintendent), whose uniform kindness and desire to assist me I find it
+impossible adequately to acknowledge.  My thanks are also due to the Rt.
+Hon. Sir Edward Grey, M.P., for permission to examine the despatches from
+the British Embassy at Madrid at the Record Office, and the Registers of
+Passports at the Foreign Office, and to Mr F. H. Bowring (son of Sir John
+Bowring), Mr Wilfrid J. Bowring (who has placed at my disposal a number
+of letters from Borrow to his grandfather), Mr R. W. Brant, Mr Ernest H.
+Caddie, Mr William Canton, Mr S. D. Charles, an ardent Borrovian from
+whom I have received much kindness and many valuable suggestions, Mr A.
+I. Dasent, the editors of _The Athenæum_ and _The Bookman_, Mr Thomas
+Hake, Mr D. B. Hill of Mattishall, Norfolk, Mr James Hooper, Mr W. F. T.
+Jarrold (for permission to reproduce the hitherto unpublished portrait of
+Borrow painted by his brother), Dr F. G. Kenyon, C.B., Mr F. A. Mumby, Mr
+George Porter of Denbigh (for interesting particulars about Borrow’s
+first visit to Wales), Mr Theodore Rossi, Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, Mr
+Thomas Vade-Walpole, who have all responded to my appeal for help with
+great willingness.
+
+To one friend, who elects to be nameless, I am deeply grateful for many
+valuable suggestions and much help; but above all for the keen interest
+he has taken in a work which he first encouraged me to write.  To her who
+gave so plentifully of her leisure in transcribing documents at the
+Record Office and in research work at the British Museum and elsewhere, I
+am indebted beyond all possibility of acknowledgment.  To no one more
+than to Mr John Murray are my acknowledgments due for his unfailing
+kindness, patience and assistance.  It is no exaggeration to state that
+but for his aid and encouragement this book could not have been written.
+
+                                                          HERBERT JENKINS.
+
+_January_, 1912.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I:
+1678–MAY 1816
+
+
+ON 28th July 1783 was held the annual fair at Menheniot, and for miles
+round the country folk flocked into the little Cornish village to join in
+the festivities.  Among the throng was a strong contingent of young men
+from Liskeard, a town three miles distant, between whom and the youth of
+Menheniot an ancient feud existed.  In days when the bruisers of England
+were national heroes, and a fight was a fitting incident of a day’s
+revelry, the very presence of their rivals was a sufficient challenge to
+the chivalry of Menheniot, and a contest became inevitable.  Some
+unrecorded incident was accepted by both parties as a sufficient cause
+for battle, and the two factions were soon fighting furiously midst
+collapsing stalls and tumbled merchandise.  Women shrieked and fainted,
+men shouted and struck out grimly, whilst the stall-holders, in a frenzy
+of grief and despair, wrung their hands helplessly as they saw their
+goods being trampled to ruin beneath the feet of the contestants.
+
+Slowly the men of Liskeard were borne back by their more numerous
+opponents.  They wavered, and just as defeat seemed inevitable, there
+arrived upon the scene a young man who, on seeing his townsmen in danger
+of being beaten, placed himself at their head and charged down upon the
+enemy, forcing them back by the impetuosity of his attack.
+
+The new arrival was a man of fine physique, above the medium height and a
+magnificent fighter, who, later in life, was to achieve something of
+which a Mendoza or a Belcher might have been proud.  He fought strongly
+and silently, inspiring his fellow townsmen by his example.  The new
+leader had entirely turned the tide of battle, but just as the defeat of
+the men of Menheniot seemed certain, a diversion was created by the
+arrival of the local constables.  Now that their own villagers were on
+the verge of disaster, there was no longer any reason why they should
+remain in the background.  They made a determined effort to arrest the
+leader of the Liskeard contingent, and were promptly knocked down by him.
+
+At that moment Mr Edmund Hambley, a much-respected maltster and the
+headborough of Liskeard, was attracted to the spot.  Seeing in the person
+of the outrageous leader of the battle one of his own apprentices, he
+stepped forward and threatened him with arrest.  Goaded to desperation by
+the scornful attitude of the young man, the master-maltster laid hands
+upon him, and instantly shared the fate of the constables.  With great
+courage and determination the headborough rose to his feet and again
+attempted to enforce his authority, but with no better result.  When he
+picked himself up for a second time, it was to pass from the scene of his
+humiliation and, incidentally, out of the life of the young man who had
+defied his authority.
+
+The young apprentice was Thomas Borrow (born December 1758), eighth and
+posthumous child of John Borrow and of Mary his wife, of Trethinnick (the
+House on the Hill), in the neighbouring parish of St Cleer, two and a
+half miles north of Liskeard.  At the age of fifteen, Thomas had begun to
+work upon his father’s farm.  At nineteen he was apprenticed to Edmund
+Hambley, maltster, of Liskeard, who five years later, in his official
+capacity as Constable of the Hundred of Liskeard, was to be publicly
+defied and twice knocked down by his insubordinate apprentice.
+
+A trifling affair in itself, this village fracas was to have a lasting
+effect upon the career of Thomas Borrow.  He was given to understand by
+his kinsmen that he need not look to them for sympathy or assistance in
+his wrongdoing.  The Borrows of Trethinnick could trace back further than
+the parish registers record (1678).  They were godly and law-abiding
+people, who had stood for the king and lost blood and harvests in his
+cause.  If a son of the house disgrace himself, the responsibility must
+be his, not theirs.  In the opinion of his family, Thomas Borrow had, by
+his vigorous conduct towards the headborough, who was also his master,
+placed himself outside the radius of their sympathy.  At this period
+Trethinnick, a farm of some fifty acres in extent, was in the hands of
+Henry, Thomas’ eldest brother, who since his mother’s death, ten years
+before, had assumed the responsibility of launching his youngest brother
+upon the world.
+
+Fearful of the result of his assault on the headborough, Thomas Borrow
+left St Cleer with great suddenness, and for five months disappeared
+entirely.  On 29th December he presented himself as a recruit before
+Captain Morshead, {3} in command of a detachment of the Coldstream
+Guards, at that time stationed in the duchy.
+
+Thomas Borrow was no stranger to military training.  For five years he
+had been in the Yeomanry Militia, which involved a short annual training.
+In the regimental records he is credited with five years “former
+service.”  He remained for eight years with the Coldstream Guards, most
+of the time being passed in London barracks.  He had no money with which
+to purchase a commission, and his rise was slow and deliberate.  At the
+end of nine months he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and five
+years later he became a sergeant.  In 1792 he was transferred as
+Sergeant-Major to the First, or West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, whose
+headquarters were at East Dereham in Norfolk.
+
+It was just previous to this transfer that Sergeant Borrow had his famous
+encounter in Hyde Park with Big Ben Bryan, the champion of England; he
+“whose skin was brown and dusky as that of a toad.”  It was a combat in
+which “even Wellington or Napoleon would have been heartily glad to cry
+for quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and even the Blacksmith Tartar
+would, perhaps, have shrunk from the opponent with whom, after having had
+a dispute with him,” Sergeant Borrow “engaged in single combat for one
+hour, at the end of which time the champions shook hands and retired,
+each having experienced quite enough of the other’s prowess.” {4a}
+
+At East Dereham Thomas Borrow met Ann {4b} Perfrement, {4c} a strikingly
+handsome girl of twenty, whose dark eyes first flashed upon him from over
+the footlights.  It was, and still is, the custom for small touring
+companies to engage their supernumeraries in the towns in which they were
+playing.  The pretty daughter of Farmer Perfrement, whose farm lay about
+one and a half miles out of East Dereham, was one of those who took
+occasion to earn a few shillings for pin-money.  The Perfrements were of
+Huguenot stock.  On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, their
+ancestors had fled from their native town of Caen and taken refuge in
+East Anglia, there to enjoy the liberty of conscience denied them in
+their beloved Normandy.  Thomas Borrow made the acquaintance of the young
+probationer, and promptly settled any aspirations that she may have had
+towards the stage by marrying her.  The wedding took place on 11th
+February 1793 at East Dereham church, best known as the resting-place of
+the poet Cowper, Ann being twenty-one and Thomas thirty-four years of
+age.
+
+For the next seven years Thomas and Ann Borrow moved about with the West
+Norfolk Militia, which now marched off into Essex, a few months later
+doubling back again into Norfolk.  Then it dived into Kent and for a time
+hovered about the Cinque Ports, Thomas Borrow in the meantime being
+promoted to the rank of quarter-master (27th May 1795).  It was not until
+he had completed fourteen years of service that he received a commission.
+On 27th February 1798 he became Adjutant in the same regiment, a
+promotion that carried with it a captain’s rank.
+
+Whilst at Sandgate Mrs Borrow became acquainted with John Murray, the son
+of the founder of the publishing house from which, forty-four years
+later, were to be published the books of her second son, then unborn.
+The widow of John Murray the First had married in 1795 Lieutenant Henry
+Paget of the West Norfolk Militia.  Years later (27th March 1843) George
+Borrow wrote to John Murray, Junr., third of the line:
+
+    “I am at present in Norwich with my mother, who has been ill, but is
+    now, thank God, recovering fast.  She begs leave to send her kind
+    remembrances to Mr Murray.  She knew him at Sandgate in Kent
+    _forty-six_ years ago, when he came to see his mother, Mrs P[aget].
+    She was also acquainted with his sister, Miss Jane Murray, {5} who
+    used to ride on horseback with her on the Downs.  She says Captain
+    [_sic_] Paget once cooked a dinner for Mrs P. and herself; and sat
+    down to table with his cook’s apron on.  Is not this funny?  Does it
+    not ‘beat the Union,’ as the Yankees say?”
+
+The first child of the marriage was born in 1800, it is not known exactly
+when or where.  This was John, “the brother some three years older than
+myself,” whose beauty in infancy was so great “that people, especially
+those of the poorer classes, would follow the nurse who carried him about
+in order to look at and bless his lovely face,” {6a} with its rosy cheeks
+and smiling, blue-eyed innocence.  On one occasion even, an attempt was
+made to snatch him from the arms of his nurse as she was about to enter a
+coach.  The parents became a prey to anxiety; for the child seems to have
+possessed many endearing qualities as well as good looks.  He was quick
+and clever, and when the time came for instruction, “he mastered his
+letters in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of
+people on the doors of houses and over the shop windows.” {6b}  His
+cleverness increased as he grew up, and later he seems to have become, in
+the mind of Captain Borrow at least, a standard by which to measure the
+shortcomings of his younger son George, whom he never was able to
+understand.
+
+For the next three years, 1800–3, the regiment continued to hover about
+the home counties.  The Peace of Amiens released many of the untried
+warriors, who had enlisted “until the peace,” their adjutant having to
+find new recruits to fill up the gaps.  War broke out again the following
+year (18th May 1803), and the Great Terror assumed a phase so critical as
+to subdue almost entirely all thought of party strife.  On 5th July Ann
+Borrow gave birth to a second son, in the house of her father.  At the
+time Captain Borrow was hunting for recruits in other parts of Norfolk,
+in order to send them to Colchester, where the regiment was stationed.
+In due course the child was christened George Henry {7a} at the church of
+East Dereham, and, within a few weeks of his birth, he received his first
+experience of the vicissitudes of a soldier’s life, by accompanying his
+father, mother, and brother to Colchester to rejoin the regiment.  The
+whole infancy of George Borrow was spent in the same trailing
+restlessness.  Napoleon was alive and at large, and the West Norfolks
+seemed doomed eternally to march and countermarch in the threatened area,
+Sussex, Kent, Essex.
+
+No efforts appear to have been made to steal the younger brother,
+although “people were in the habit of standing still to look at me, ay,
+more than at my brother.” {7b}  Unlike John in about everything that one
+child could be unlike another, George was a gloomy, introspective
+creature who considerably puzzled his parents.  He compares himself to “a
+deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines, cypresses and yews,” {7c}
+beside which he once paused to contemplate “a beautiful stream . . .
+sparkling in the sunshine, and . . . tumbling merrily into cascades,”
+{7d} which he likened to his brother.
+
+Slow of comprehension, almost dull-witted, shy of society, sometimes
+bursting into tears when spoken to, George became “a lover of nooks and
+retired corners,” {7e} where he would sit for hours at a time a prey to
+“a peculiar heaviness . . . and at times . . . a strange sensation of
+fear, which occasionally amounted to horror,” {7f} for which there was no
+apparent cause.  In time he grew to be as much disliked as his brother
+was admired.  On one occasion an old Jew pedlar, attracted by the latent
+intelligence in the smouldering eyes of the silent child, who ignored his
+questions and continued tracing in the dust with his fingers curious
+lines, pronounced him “a prophet’s child.”  This carried to the mother’s
+heart a quiet comfort; and reawakened in her hope for the future of her
+second son.
+
+  [Picture: The birthplace of George Borrow, East Dereham.  Photo. H. T.
+                           Cave, East Dereham]
+
+The early childhood of George Borrow was spent in stirring times.
+Without, there was the menace of Napoleon’s invasion; within, every
+effort was being made to meet and repel it.  Dumouriez was preparing his
+great scheme of defence; Captain Thomas Borrow was doing his utmost to
+collect and drill men to help in carrying it into effect.  Sometimes the
+family were in lodgings; but more frequently in barracks, for reasons of
+economy.  Once, at least, they lived under canvas.
+
+The strange and puzzling child continued to impress his parents in a
+manner well-calculated to alarm them.  One day, with a cry of delight, he
+seized a viper that, “like a line of golden light,” was moving across the
+lane in which he was playing.  Whilst making no effort to harm the child,
+who held and regarded it with awe and admiration, the reptile showed its
+displeasure towards John, his brother, by hissing and raising its head as
+if to strike.  This happened when George was between two and three years
+of age.  At about the same period he ate largely of some poisonous
+berries, which resulted in “strong convulsions,” lasting for several
+hours.  He seems to have been a source of constant anxiety to his
+parents, who were utterly unable to understand the strange and gloomy
+child who had been vouchsafed to them by the inscrutable decree of
+providence.
+
+In the middle of the year 1809 the regiment returned from Essex to
+Norfolk, marching first to Norwich and thence to other towns in the
+county.  Captain Borrow and his family took up their quarters once more
+at Dereham.  George was now six years old, acutely observant of the
+things that interested him, but reluctant to proceed with studies which,
+in his eyes, seemed to have nothing to recommend them.  Books possessed
+no attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and could even read
+imperfectly.  The acquirement of book-learning he found a dull and
+dolorous business, to which he was driven only by the threats or
+entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern lest he should become
+an “arrant dunce.”
+
+The intelligence that the old Jew pedlar had discovered still lay
+dormant, as if unwilling to manifest itself.  The boy loved best “to look
+upon the heavens, and to bask in the rays of the sun, or to sit beneath
+hedgerows and listen to the chirping of the birds, indulging the while in
+musing and meditation.” {9a}  Meanwhile John was earning golden opinions
+for the astonishing progress he continued to make at school,
+unconsciously throwing into bolder relief the apparent dullness of his
+younger brother.  George, however, was as active mentally as the elder.
+The one was studying men, the other books.  George was absorbing
+impressions of the things around him: of the quaint old Norfolk town, its
+“clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place,
+with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable
+thatch”; of that exquisite old gentlewoman Lady Fenn, {9b} as she passed
+to and from her mansion upon some errand of bounty or of mercy, “leaning
+on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a
+respectful distance behind.” {9c}  On Sundays, from the black
+leather-covered seat in the church-pew, he would contemplate with
+large-eyed wonder the rector and James Philo his clerk, “as they read
+their respective portions of the venerable liturgy,” sometimes being
+lulled to sleep by the monotonous drone of their voices.
+
+On fine Sundays there was the evening walk “with my mother and brother—a
+quiet, sober walk, during which I would not break into a run, even to
+chase a butterfly, or yet more a honey-bee, being fully convinced of the
+dread importance of the day which God had hallowed.  And how glad I was
+when I had got over the Sabbath day without having done anything to
+profane it.  And how soundly I slept on the Sabbath night after the toil
+of being very good throughout the day.” {10a}
+
+During these early years there was being photographed upon the brain of
+George Borrow a series of impressions which, to the end of his life,
+remained as vivid as at the moment they were absorbed.  What appeared to
+those around him as dull-witted stupidity was, in reality, mental
+surfeit.  His mind was occupied with other things than books, things that
+it eagerly took cognisance of, strove to understand and was never to
+forget. {10b}  Hitherto he had taken “no pleasure in books . . . and bade
+fair to be as arrant a dunce as ever brought the blush of shame into the
+cheeks of anxious and affectionate parents.” {10c}  His mind was not
+ready for them.  When the time came there was no question of dullness: he
+proved an eager and earnest student.
+
+One day an intimate friend of Mrs Borrow’s, who was also godmother to
+John, brought with her a present of a book for each of the two boys, a
+history of England for the elder and for the younger _Robinson Crusoe_.
+Instantly George became absorbed.
+
+“The true chord had now been touched . . . Weeks succeeded weeks, months
+followed months, and the wondrous volume was my only study and principal
+source of amusement.  For hours together I would sit poring over a page
+till I had become acquainted with the import of every line.  My progress,
+slow enough at first, became by degrees more rapid, till at last, under a
+‘shoulder of mutton sail,’ I found myself cantering before a steady
+breeze over an ocean of enchantment, so well pleased with my voyage that
+I cared not how long it might be ere it reached its termination.  And it
+was in this manner that I first took to the paths of knowledge.” {11a}
+
+In the spring of 1810 the regiment was ordered to Norman Cross, in
+Huntingdonshire, situated at the junction of the Peterborough and Great
+North Roads.  At this spot the Government had caused to be erected in
+1796 an extensive prison, covering forty acres of ground, in which to
+confine some of the prisoners made during the Napoleonic wars.  There
+were sixteen large buildings roofed with red tiles.  Each group of four
+was surrounded by a palisade, whilst another palisade “lofty and of
+prodigious strength” surrounded the whole.  At the time when the West
+Norfolk Militia arrived there were some six thousand prisoners, who, with
+their guards, constituted a considerable-sized township.  From time to
+time fresh batches of captives arrived amid a storm of cheers and cries
+of “Vive L’Empereur!”  These were the only incidents in the day’s
+monotony, save when some prisoner strove to evade the hospitality of King
+George, and was shot for his ingratitude.
+
+Captain Borrow rejoined his regiment at Norman Cross, leaving his
+family to follow a few days later.  At the time the country round
+Peterborough was under water owing to the recent heavy rains, and at one
+portion of the journey the whole party had to embark in a species of
+punt, which was towed by horses “up to the knees in water, and, on coming
+to blind pools and ‘greedy depths,’ were not unfrequently swimming.”
+{11b}  But they were all old campaigners and accepted such adventures as
+incidents of a soldier’s life.
+
+At Norman Cross George made the acquaintance of an old snake-catcher and
+herbalist, a circumstance which, insignificant in itself, was to exercise
+a considerable influence over his whole life.  Frequently this curious
+pair were to be seen tramping the countryside together; a tall, quaint
+figure with fur cap and gaiters carrying a leathern bag of wriggling
+venom, and an eager child with eyes that now burned with interest and
+intelligence—and the talk of the two was the lore of the viper.  When the
+snake-catcher passed out of the life of his young disciple, he left
+behind him as a present a tame and fangless viper, which George often
+carried with him on his walks.  It was this well-meaning and inoffensive
+viper that turned aside the wrath of Gypsy Smith, {12a} and awakened in
+his heart a superstitious awe and veneration for the child, the
+_Sap-engro_, who might be a goblin, but who certainly would make a most
+admirable “clergyman and God Almighty,” who read from a book that
+contained the kind of prayers particularly to his taste—perhaps the
+greatest encomium ever bestowed upon the immortal _Robinson Crusoe_.
+Thus it came about that George Borrow was proclaimed brother to the
+gypsy’s son Ambrose, {12b} who as Jasper Petulengro figures so largely in
+_Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, and is credited with that exquisitely
+phrased pagan glorification of mere existence:
+
+    “Life is sweet, brother . . . There’s night and day, brother, both
+    sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s
+    likewise the wind on the heath.  Life is very sweet, brother; who
+    would wish to die?” {13a}
+
+The Borrows were nomads, permitted by God and the king to tarry not over
+long in any one place.  In the following July (1811) the West Norfolks
+proceeded to Colchester _via_ Norfolk, after fifteen months of prison
+duty and straw-plait destroying. {13b}  Captain Borrow betook himself to
+East Dereham again to seek for likely recruits.  In the meantime George
+made his first acquaintance with that universal specific for success in
+life, for correctness of conduct, for soundness of principles—Lilly’s
+Latin Grammar, which to learn by heart was to acquire a virtue that
+defied evil.  The good old pedagogue who advocated Lilly’s Latin Grammar
+as a remedy for all ills, would have traced George Borrow’s eventual
+success in life entirely to the fact that within three years of the date
+that the solemn exhortation was pronounced the boy had learned Lilly by
+heart, although without in the least degree comprehending him.
+
+Early in 1812 the regiment turned its head north, and by slow degrees,
+with occasional counter marchings, continued to progress towards
+Edinburgh, which was reached thirteen months later (6th April 1813).
+“With drums beating, colours flying, and a long train of baggage-waggons
+behind,” {13c} the West Norfolk Militia wound its way up the hill to the
+Castle, the adjutant’s family in a chaise forming part of the procession.
+There in barracks the regiment might rest itself after long and weary
+marches, and the two young sons of the adjutant be permitted to continue
+their studies at the High School, without the probability that the morrow
+would see them on the road to somewhere else.
+
+Whilst at Edinburgh George met with his first experience of racial
+feeling, which, under uncongenial conditions, develops into race-hatred.
+He discovered that one English boy, when faced by a throng of young Scots
+patriots, had best be silent as to the virtues of his own race.  He
+joined in and enjoyed the fights between the “Auld and the New Toon,” and
+incidentally acquired a Scots accent that somewhat alarmed his loyal
+father, who had named him after the Hanoverian Georges.  Proving himself
+a good fighter, he earned the praise of his Scots acquaintances, and a
+general invitation to assist them in their “bickers” with “thae New Toon
+blackguards.”
+
+He loved to climb and clamber over the rocks, peeping into “all manner of
+strange crypts, crannies, and recesses, where owls nestled and the weasel
+brought forth her young.”  He would go out on all-day excursions,
+enjoying the thrills of clambering up to what appeared to be inaccessible
+ledges, until eventually he became an expert cragsman.  One day he came
+upon David Haggart {14} sitting on the extreme verge of a precipice,
+“thinking of Willie Wallace.”
+
+For fifteen months the regiment remained at Edinburgh.  In the spring of
+1814 the waning star of Napoleon had, to all appearances, set, and he was
+on his way to his miniature kingdom, the Isle of Elba (28th April).
+Europe commenced to disband its huge armies, Great Britain among the
+rest.  On 21st June the West Norfolks received orders to proceed to
+Norwich by ship _via_ Leith and Great Yarmouth.  The Government, relieved
+of all apprehension of an invasion, had time to think of the personal
+comfort of the country’s defenders.  With marked consideration, the
+orders provided that those who wished might march instead of embarking on
+the sea.  Accordingly Captain Borrow and his family chose the land route.
+Arrived at Norwich, the regiment was formally disbanded amid great
+festivity.  The officers, at the Maid’s Head, the queen of East Anglian
+inns, and the men in the spacious market-place, drank to the king’s
+health and peace.  The regiment was formally mustered out on 19th July.
+
+The Borrows took up their quarters at the Crown and Angel in St Stephen’s
+Street, a thoroughfare that connects the main roads from Ipswich and
+Newmarket with the city.  George, now eleven years old, had an
+opportunity of continuing his education at the Norwich Grammar School,
+whilst his brother proceeded to study drawing and painting with a “little
+dark man with brown coat . . . and top-boots, whose name will one day be
+considered the chief ornament of the old town,” {15a} and whose works are
+to “rank among the proudest pictures of England,”—the Norwich painter,
+“Old Crome.” {15b}
+
+Whilst the two boys were thus occupied, Louis XVIII. was endeavouring to
+reorder his kingdom, and on a little island in the Mediterranean,
+Napoleon was preparing a bombshell that was to shatter the peace of
+Europe and send Captain Borrow hurrying hither and thither in search of
+the men who, a few months before, had left the colours, convinced that a
+generation of peace was before them.
+
+On 1st March Napoleon was at Cannes; eighteen days later Louis XVIII.
+fled from Paris.  Everywhere there were feverish preparations for war.
+John Borrow threw aside pencil and brush and was gazetted ensign in his
+father’s regiment (29th May).  Europe united against the unexpected and
+astonishing danger.  By the time Captain Borrow had finished his task,
+however, the crisis was past, Waterloo had been won and Napoleon was on
+his way to St Helena.
+
+By a happy inspiration it was decided to send the West Norfolks to
+Ireland, where “disturbances were apprehended” and private stills
+flourished.  On 31st August the regiment, some eight hundred strong,
+sailed in two vessels from Harwich for Cork, the passage occupying eight
+days.  The ship that carried the Borrows was old and crazy, constantly
+missing stays and shipping seas, until it seemed that only by a miracle
+she escaped “from being dashed upon the foreland.”
+
+After a few days’ rest at Cork, the “city of contradictions,” where
+wealth and filth jostled one another in the public highways and
+“boisterous shouts of laughter were heard on every side,” the regiment
+marched off in two divisions for Clonmel in Tipperary.  Walking beside
+his father, who was in command of the second division, and holding on to
+his stirrup-leather, George found a new country opening out before him.
+On one occasion, as they were passing through a village of low huts,
+“that seemed to be inhabited solely by women and children,” he went up to
+an old beldam who sat spinning at the door of one of the hovels and asked
+for some water.  She “appeared to consider for a moment, then tottering
+into her hut, presently reappeared with a small pipkin of milk, which she
+offered . . . with a trembling hand.”  When the lad tendered payment she
+declined the money, and patted his face, murmuring some unintelligible
+words.  Obviously there was nothing in the boy’s nature now that appeared
+strange to simple-minded folk.  Probably the intercourse with other boys
+at Edinburgh and Norwich had been beneficial in its effect.  Keenly
+interested in everything around him, George fell to speculating as to
+whether he could learn Irish and speak to the people in their own tongue.
+
+At Clonmel the Borrows lodged with an Orangeman, who had run out of his
+house as the Adjutant rode by at the head of his men, and proceeded to
+welcome him with flowery volubility.  On the advice of his host Captain
+Borrow sent George to a Protestant school, where he met the Irish boy
+Murtagh, who figures so largely in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_.
+Murtagh settled any doubts that Borrow may have had as to his ability to
+acquire Erse, by teaching it to him in exchange for a pack of cards.
+
+On 23rd December 1815 Ensign John Thomas Borrow was promoted to the rank
+of lieutenant, he being then in his sixteenth year.  In the following
+January, after only a few months’ stay, the West Norfolks were moved on
+to Templemore.  It was here that George learned to ride, and that without
+a saddle, and had awakened in him that “passion for the equine race” that
+never left him. {17}
+
+The nine months spent in Ireland left an indelible mark upon Borrow’s
+imagination.  In later life he repeatedly referred to his knowledge of
+the country, its people, and their language.  In overcoming the
+difficulties of Erse, he had opened up for himself a larger prospect than
+was to be enjoyed by a traveller whose first word of greeting or enquiry
+is uttered in a hated tongue.
+
+On 11th May 1816 the West Norfolk Militia was back again at Norwich.
+Peace was now finally restored to Europe, and every nation was far too
+impoverished, both as regards men and money, to nourish any schemes of
+aggression.  Napoleon was safe at St Helena, under the eye of that
+instinctive gaoler, Sir Hudson Lowe.  The army had completed its work and
+was being disbanded with all possible speed.  The turn of the West
+Norfolk Militia came on 17th June, when they were formally mustered out
+for the second time within two years.  Three years later their Adjutant
+was retired upon full-pay—eight shillings a day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II:
+MAY 1816–MARCH 1824
+
+
+FOR the first time since his marriage, Captain Borrow found himself at
+liberty to settle down and educate his sons.  He had spent much of his
+life in Norfolk, and he decided to remain there and make Norwich his
+home.  It was a quiet and beautiful old-world city: healthy, picturesque,
+ancient, and, above all, possessed of a Grammar School, where George
+could try and gather together the stray threads of education that he had
+acquired at various times and in various dialects.  It was an ideal city
+for a warrior to take his rest in; but probably what counted most with
+Captain Borrow was the Grammar School—more than the Norman Cathedral, the
+grim old Castle that stands guardian-like upon its mound, the fact of its
+being a garrison town, or even the traditions that surrounded the place.
+He had two sons who must be appropriately sent out into the world, and
+Norwich offered facilities for educating both.  He accordingly took a
+small house in Willow Lane, to which access was obtained by a covered
+passage then called King’s, but now Borrow’s Court.
+
+During the most nomadic portion of his life, when, with discouraging
+rapidity, he was moving from place to place, Captain Borrow never for one
+moment seems to have forgotten his obligations as a father.  Whenever he
+had been quartered in a town for a few months, he had sought out a school
+to which to send John and George, notably at Huddersfield and Sheffield.
+Had he known it, these precautions were unnecessary; for he had two sons
+who were of what may be called the self-educating type: John, by virtue
+of the quickness of his parts; George, on account of the strangeness of
+his interests and his thirst for a knowledge of men and the tongues in
+which they communicate to each other their ideas.  It would be impossible
+for an unconventional linguist, such as George Borrow was by instinct, to
+remain uneducated, and it was equally impossible to educate him.
+
+Quite unaware of the trend of his younger son’s genius, Captain Borrow
+obtained for him a free-scholarship at the Grammar School, then under the
+headmastership of the Rev. Edward Valpy, B.D., whose principal claims to
+fame are his severity, his having flogged the conqueror of the “Flaming
+Tinman,” and his destruction of the School Records of Admission, which
+dated back to the Sixteenth Century.  Among Borrow’s contemporaries at
+the Grammar School were “Rajah” Brooke of Sarawak (for whose achievements
+he in after life expressed a profound admiration), Sir Archdale Wilson of
+Delhi, Colonel Charles Stoddart, Dr James Martineau, and Thomas Borrow
+Burcham, the London Magistrate.
+
+Borrow was now thirteen, and, it would appear, as determined as ever to
+evade as much as possible academic learning.  He was “far from an
+industrious boy, fond of idling, and discovered no symptoms by his
+progress either in Latin or Greek of that philology, so prominent a
+feature of his last work (_Lavengro_).” {20}  Borrow was an idler merely
+because his work was uncongenial to him.  “Mere idleness is the most
+disagreeable state of existence, and both mind and body are continually
+making efforts to escape from it,” he wrote in later years concerning
+this period.  He wanted an object in life, an occupation that would prove
+not wholly uncongenial.  That he should dislike the routine of school
+life was not unnatural; for he had lived quite free from those
+conventional restraints to which other boys of his age had always been
+accustomed.  Occupation of some sort he must have, if only to keep at a
+distance that insistent melancholy that seems to have been for ever
+hovering about him, and the tempter whispered “Languages.” {21a}  One day
+chance led him to a bookstall whereon lay a polyglot dictionary, “which
+pretended to be an easy guide to the acquirement of French, Italian, Low
+Dutch, and English.”  He took the two first, and when he had gleaned from
+the old volume all it had to teach him, he longed for a master.  Him he
+found in the person of an old French _émigré_ priest, {21b} a study in
+snuff-colour and drab with a frill of dubious whiteness, who attended to
+the accents of a number of boarding-school young ladies.  The progress of
+his pupil so much pleased the old priest that “after six months’ tuition,
+the master would sometimes, on his occasional absences to teach in the
+country, request his so forward pupil to attend for him his home
+scholars.” {21c}  It was M. D’Eterville who uttered the second recorded
+prophecy concerning George Borrow: “Vous serez un jour un grand
+philologue, mon cher,” he remarked, and heard that his pupil nourished
+aspirations towards other things than mere philology.
+
+In the study of French, Spanish, and Italian, Borrow spent many hours
+that other boys would have devoted to pleasure; yet he was by no means a
+student only.  He found time to fish and to shoot, using a condemned,
+honey-combed musket that bore the date of 1746.  His fishing was done in
+the river Yare, which flowed through the estate of John Joseph Gurney,
+the Quaker-banker of Earlham Hall, two miles out of Norwich.  It was here
+that he was reproached by the voice, “clear and sonorous as a bell,” of
+the banker himself; not for trespassing, but “for pulling all those fish
+out of the water, and leaving them to gasp in the sun.”
+
+At Harford Bridge, some two miles along the Ipswich Road, lived “the
+terrible Thurtell,” a patron and companion of “the bruisers of England,”
+who taught Borrow to box, and who ultimately ended his own inglorious
+career by being hanged (9th January 1824) for the murder of Mr Weare, and
+incidentally figuring in De Quincey’s “On Murder Considered As One of the
+Fine Arts.”  It was through “the king of flash-men” that Borrow saw his
+first prize-fight at Eaton, near Norwich.
+
+The passion for horses that came suddenly to Borrow with his first ride
+upon the cob in Ireland had continued to grow.  He had an opportunity of
+gratifying it at the Norwich Horse Fair, held each Easter under the
+shadow of the Castle, and famous throughout the country. {22}  It was
+here, in 1818, that Borrow encountered again Ambrose Petulengro, an event
+that was to exercise a considerable influence upon his life.  Mr
+Petulengro had become the head of his tribe, his father and mother having
+been transported for passing bad money.  He was now a man, with a wife, a
+child, and also a mother-in-law, who took a violent dislike to the tall,
+fair-haired _gorgio_.  Borrow’s life was much broadened by his
+intercourse with Mr Petulengro.  He was often at the gypsy encampment on
+Mousehold, a heath just outside Norwich, where, under the tuition of his
+host, he learned the Romany tongue with such rapidity as to astonish his
+instructor and earn for him among the gypsies the name of “Lav-engro,”
+word-fellow or word-master.  He also boxed with the godlike Tawno Chikno,
+who in turn pronounced him worthy to bear the name “Cooro-mengro,”
+fist-fellow or fist-master.  He frequently accompanied Mr Petulengro to
+neighbouring fairs and markets, riding one of the gypsy’s horses.  At
+other times the two would roam over the gorse-covered Mousehold,
+discoursing largely about things Romany.
+
+The departure of Mr Petulengro and his retinue from Norwich threw Borrow
+back once more upon his linguistic studies, his fishing, his shooting,
+and his smouldering discontent at the constraints of school life.  It was
+probably an endeavour on Borrow’s part to make himself more like his
+gypsy friends that prompted him to stain his face with walnut juice,
+drawing from the Rev. Edward Valpy the question: “Borrow, are you
+suffering from jaundice, or is it only dirt?”  The gypsies were not the
+only vagabonds of Borrow’s acquaintance at this period.  There were the
+Italian peripatetic vendors of weather-glasses, who had their
+headquarters at Norwich.  In after years he met again more than one of
+these merchants.  They were always glad to see him and revive old
+memories of the Norwich days.
+
+About this time he saved a boy from drowning in the Yare. {23}  It may be
+this act with which he generously credits his brother John when he says—
+
+    “I have known him dash from a steep bank into a stream in his full
+    dress, and pull out a man who was drowning; yet there were twenty
+    others bathing in the water, who might have saved him by putting out
+    a hand, without inconvenience to themselves, which, however, they did
+    not do, but stared with stupid surprise at the drowning one’s
+    struggles.” {24}
+
+From the first Borrow had shown a strong distaste for the humdrum routine
+of school life.  In a thousand ways he was different from his fellows.
+He had been accustomed to meet strange and, to him, deeply interesting
+people.  Now he was bidden adopt a course of life against which his whole
+nature rebelled.  It was impossible.  He missed the atmosphere of
+vagabondage that had inspired and stimulated his early boyhood.
+
+The crisis came at last.  There was only one way to avoid the awkward and
+distasteful destiny that was being forced upon him.  He entered into a
+conspiracy with three school-fellows, all younger than himself, to make a
+dash for a life that should offer wider opportunities to their
+adventurous natures.  The plan was to tramp to Great Yarmouth and there
+excavate on the seashore caves for their habitation.  From these
+headquarters they would make foraging expeditions, and live on what they
+could extract from the surrounding country, either by force or by the
+terror that they inspired.  One morning the four started on their
+twenty-mile trudge to the sea; but, when only a few miles out, one of
+their number became fearful and turned back.
+
+Encouraged by their leader, the others continued on their way.  The
+father of the other two boys appears to have got wind of the project and
+posted after them in a chaise.  He came up with them at Acle, about
+eleven miles from Norwich.  When they were first seen, Borrow was
+striving to hearten his fellow buccaneers, who were tired and dispirited
+after their long walk.  The three were unceremoniously bundled into the
+chaise and returned to their homes and, subsequently, to the wrath of the
+Rev. Edward Valpy. {25a}
+
+The names of the three confederates were John Dalrymple (whose heart
+failed him) and Theodosius and Francis Purland, sons of a Norwich
+chemist.  The Purlands are credited with robbing “the paternal till,”
+while Dalrymple confined himself to the less compromising duty of
+“gathering horse-pistols and potatoes.”  If the boys robbed their
+father’s till, why did they beg?  In the ballad entitled _The Wandering
+Children and the Benevolent Gentleman_, Borrow depicts the “eldest child”
+as begging for charity for these hungry children, who have had “no
+breakfast, save the haws.”  This does not seem to suggest that the boys
+were in the possession of money.  Again, it was the father of one of
+their schoolfellows who was responsible for their capture, according to
+Dr Knapp, by asking them to dinner whilst he despatched a messenger to
+the Rev. Edward Valpy.  The story of Borrow’s being “horsed” on Dr
+Martineau’s back is apocryphal.  Martineau himself denied it. {25b}
+
+There is no record of how Captain Borrow received the news of his younger
+son’s breach of discipline.  It probably reminded him that the boy was
+now fifteen and it was time to think about his future.  The old soldier
+was puzzled.  Not only had his second son shown a great partiality for
+acquiring Continental tongues, but he had learned Irish, and Captain
+Borrow seemed to think that by learning the language of Papists and
+rebels, his son had sullied the family honour.  To his father’s way of
+thinking, this accomplishment seemed to bar him from most things that
+were at one and the same time honourable and desirable.
+
+The boy’s own inclinations pointed to the army; but Captain Borrow had
+apparently seen too much of the army in war time, and the slowness of
+promotion, to think of it as offering a career suitable to his son, now
+that there was every prospect of a prolonged peace.  He thought of the
+church as an alternative; but here again that fatal facility the boy had
+shown in learning Erse seemed to stand out as a barrier.  “I have
+observed the poor lad attentively and really I do not see what to make of
+him,” Captain Borrow is said to have remarked.  What could be expected of
+a lad who would forsake Greek for Irish, or Latin for the barbarous
+tongue of homeless vagabonds?  Certainly not a good churchman.  At length
+it became obvious to the distressed parents that there was only one
+choice left them—the law.
+
+About this period Borrow fell ill of some nameless and unclassified
+disease, which defied the wisdom of physicians, who shook their heads
+gravely by his bedside.  An old woman, however, cured him by a decoction
+prepared from a bitter root.  The convalescence was slow and laborious;
+for the boy’s nerves were shattered, and that deep, haunting melancholy,
+which he first called the “Fear” and afterwards the “Horrors,” descended
+upon him.
+
+On the 30th of March 1819 Borrow was articled for five years to Simpson &
+Rackham, solicitors, of Tuck’s Court, St Giles, Norwich. {26}  He
+consequently left home to take up his abode at the house of the senior
+partner in the Upper Close. {27a}  Mr William Simpson was a man of
+considerable importance in the city; for besides being Treasurer of the
+County, he was Chamberlain and Town Clerk, whilst his wife was famed for
+her hospitality, in particular her expensive dinners.
+
+With that unerring instinct of contrariety that never seemed to forsake
+him, Borrow proceeded to learn, not law but Welsh.  When the eyes of
+authority were on him he transcribed Blackstone, but when they were
+turned away he read and translated the poems of Ab Gwilym.  He performed
+his tasks “as well as could be expected in one who was occupied by so
+many and busy thoughts of his own.”
+
+At the end of Tuck’s Court was a house at which was employed a Welsh
+groom, a queer fellow who soon attracted the notice of Simpson &
+Rackham’s clerks, young gentlemen who were bent on “mis-spending the time
+which was not legally their own.” {27b}  They would make audible remarks
+about the unfortunate and inoffensive Welsh groom, calling out after him
+“Taffy”—in short, rendering the poor fellow’s life a misery with their
+jibes, until at last, almost distracted, he had come to the determination
+either to give his master notice or to hang himself, that he might get
+away from that “nest of parcupines.”  Borrow saw in the predicament of
+the Welsh groom the hand of providence.  He made a compact with him, that
+in exchange for lessons in Welsh, he, Borrow, should persuade his fellow
+clerks to cease their annoyance.
+
+From that time, each Sunday afternoon, the Welsh groom would go to
+Captain Borrow’s house to instruct his son in Welsh pronunciation; for in
+book Welsh Borrow was stronger than his preceptor.  Borrow had learned
+the language of the bards “chiefly by going through Owen Pugh’s version
+of ‘Paradise Lost’ twice” with the original by his side.  After which
+“there was very little in Welsh poetry that I could not make out with a
+little pondering.” {28a}  This had occupied some three years.  The
+studies with the groom lasted for about twelve months, until he left
+Norwich with his family. {28b}
+
+Captain Borrow’s thoughts were frequently occupied with the future of his
+younger son, a problem that had by no means been determined by signing
+the articles that bound him to Simpson & Rackham.  The boy was frank and
+honest and did not scruple to give expression to ideas of his own, and it
+was these ideas that alarmed his father.  Once at the house of Mr
+Simpson, and before the assembled guests, he told an archdeacon, worth
+£7000 a year, that the classics were much overvalued, and compared Ab
+Gwilym with Ovid, to the detriment of the Roman.  To Captain Borrow the
+possession of ideas upon any subject by one so young was in itself a
+thing to be deplored; but to venture an opinion contrary to that commonly
+held by men of weight and substance was an unforgivable act of
+insubordination.
+
+The boy had been sent to Tuck’s Court to learn law, and instead he
+persisted in acquiring languages, and such languages!  Welsh, Danish,
+Arabic, Armenian, Saxon; for these were the tongues with which he
+occupied himself.  None but a perfect mother such as Mrs Borrow could
+have found excuses for a son who pursued such studies, and her husband
+pointed out to her, it is “in the nature of women invariably to take the
+part of the second born.”
+
+In one of those curiously self-revelatory passages with which his
+writings abound, Borrow tells how he continued to act as door-keeper long
+after it had ceased to be part of his duty.  As a student of men and a
+collector of strange characters, it was in keeping with his genius to do
+so, although he himself was unable to explain why he took pleasure in the
+task.  No one was admitted to the presence of the senior partner who did
+not first pass the searching scrutiny of his articled clerk.  Those who
+pleased him were admitted to Mr Simpson’s private room; to those who did
+not he proved himself an almost insuperable obstacle.  Unfortunately
+Borrow’s standards were those of the physiognomist rather than the
+lawyer; he inverted the whole fabric of professional desirability by
+admitting the goats and refusing the sheep.  He turned away a knight, or
+a baronet, and admitted a poet, until at last the distressed old
+gentleman in black, with the philanthropical head, his master, was forced
+to expostulate and adjure his clerk to judge, not by faces but by
+clothes, which in reality make the man.  Borrow bowed to the ruling of
+“the prince of English solicitors,” revised his standards and continued
+to act as keeper of the door.
+
+Mr Simpson seems to have earned Borrow’s thorough regard, no small
+achievement considering in how much he differed from his illustrious
+articled-clerk in everything, not excepting humour, of which the
+delightful, old-world gentleman seems to have had a generous share.  He
+was doubtless puzzled to classify the strange being by whose
+instrumentality a stream of undesirable people was admitted to his
+presence, whilst distinguished clients were sternly and rigorously turned
+away.  He probably smiled at the story of the old yeoman and his wife
+who, in return for some civility shown to them by Borrow, presented him
+with an old volume of Danish ballads, which inspired him to learn the
+language, aided by a Danish Bible. {30a}  He was not only “the first
+solicitor in East Anglia,” but “the prince of all English solicitors—for
+he was a gentleman!” {30b}  In another place Borrow refers to him as “my
+old master . . . who would have died sooner than broken his word.  God
+bless him!” {30c}  And yet again as “my ancient master, the gentleman
+solicitor of East Anglia.” {30d}
+
+Borrow was always handsome in everything he did.  If he hated a man he
+hated him, his kith and kin and all who bore his name.  His friendship
+was similarly sweeping, and his regard for William Simpson prompted him
+to write subsequently of the law as “a profession which abounds with
+honourable men, and in which I believe there are fewer scamps than in any
+other.  The most honourable men I have ever known have been lawyers; they
+were men whose word was their bond, and who would have preferred ruin to
+breaking it.” {31a}
+
+Fortunately for Borrow there was at the Norwich Guildhall a valuable
+library consisting of a large number of ancient folios written in many
+languages.  “Amidst the dust and cobwebs of the Corporation Library” he
+studied earnestly and, with a fine disregard for a librarian’s feelings,
+annotated some of the volumes, his marginalia existing to this day.  One
+of his favourite works was the _Danica Literatura Antiquissima_ of Olaus
+Wormius, 1636, which inspired him with the idea of adopting the name
+Olaus, his subsequent contributions to _The New Magazine_ being signed
+George Olaus Borrow.
+
+Whilst Borrow was striving to learn languages and avoid the law, {31b}
+the question of his brother’s career was seriously occupying the mind of
+their father.  Borrow loved and admired his brother.  There is sincerity
+in all he writes concerning John, and there is something of nobility
+about the way in which he tells of his father’s preference for him.
+“Who,” he asks, “cannot excuse the honest pride of the old man—the stout
+old man?” {31c}
+
+The Peace had closed to John Borrow the army as a profession, and he had
+devoted himself assiduously to his art.  Under Crome the elder he had
+made considerable progress, and had exhibited a number of pictures at the
+yearly exhibitions of the Norwich Society of Artists.  He continued to
+study with Crome until the artist’s death (22nd April 1821), when a new
+master had to be sought.  With his father’s blessing and £150 he
+proceeded to London, where he remained for more than a year studying with
+B. R. Haydon. {32a}  Later he went to Paris to copy Old Masters.
+
+About this time Borrow had an opportunity of seeing many of “the bruisers
+of England.”  In his veins flowed the blood of the man who had met Big
+Ben Bryan and survived the encounter undefeated.  “Let no one sneer at
+the bruisers of England,” Borrow wrote—“What were the gladiators of Rome,
+or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its palmiest days, compared to
+England’s bruisers?” {32b} he asks.  On 17th July 1820 Edward Painter of
+Norwich was to meet Thomas Oliver of London for a purse of a hundred
+guineas.  On the Saturday previous (the 15th) the Norwich hotels began to
+fill with bruisers and their patrons, and men went their ways anxiously
+polite to the stranger, lest he turn out to be some champion whom it were
+dangerous to affront.  Thomas Cribb, the champion of England, had come to
+see the fight, “Teucer Belcher, savage Shelton, . . . the terrible
+Randall, . . . Bulldog Hudson, . . . fearless Scroggins, . . . Black
+Richmond, . . . Tom of Bedford,” and a host of lesser lights of the
+“Fancy.”
+
+On the Monday, upwards of 20,000 men swept out of the old city towards
+North Walsham, less than twenty miles distant, among them George Borrow,
+striding along among the varied stream of men and vehicles (some 2000 in
+number) to see the great fight, which was to end in the victory of the
+local man and a terrible storm, as if heaven were thundering its anger
+against a brutal spectacle.  The sportsmen were left to find their way to
+shelter, Borrow and Mr Petulengro, whom he had encountered just after the
+fight, with them, talking of dukkeripens (fortunes).
+
+Some time during the year 1820, a Jew named Levy (the Mousha of
+_Lavengro_), Borrow’s instructor in Hebrew, introduced him to William
+Taylor, {33a} one of the most extraordinary men that Norwich ever
+produced.  In the long-limbed young lawyer’s clerk, whose hair was
+rapidly becoming grey, Taylor showed great interest, and, as an act of
+friendship, undertook to teach him German.  He was gratified by the young
+man’s astonishing progress, and much interested in his remarkable
+personality.  As a result Borrow became a frequent visitor at 21 King
+Street, Norwich, where Taylor lived and many strange men assembled.
+
+It is doubtful if William Taylor ever found another pupil so apt, or a
+disciple so enthusiastic among all the “harum-scarum young men” {33b}
+that he was so fond of taking up and introducing “into the best society
+the place afforded.” {33c}  He was much impressed by Borrow’s
+extraordinary memory and power of concentration.  Speaking one day of the
+different degrees of intelligence in men he said:—“I cannot give you a
+better example to explain my meaning than my two pupils (there was
+another named Cooke, who was said to be ‘a genius in his way’); what I
+tell Borrow once he ever remembers; whilst to the fellow Cooke I have to
+repeat the same thing twenty times, often without effect; and it is not
+from want of memory either, but he will never be a linguist.” {33d}
+
+To a correspondent Taylor wrote:—
+
+    “A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller’s _Wilhelm Tell_,
+    with the view of translating it for the press.  His name is George
+    Henry Borrow, and he has learnt German with extraordinary rapidity;
+    indeed, he has the gift of tongues, and, though not yet eighteen,
+    understands twelve languages—English, Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek,
+    Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; he
+    would like to get into the Office for Foreign Affairs, but does not
+    know how.” {34a}
+
+This was in 1821; two years later Borrow is said to have “translated with
+fidelity and elegance from twenty different languages.” {34b}  In spite
+of his later achievements in learning languages, it seems scarcely
+credible that he acquired eight separate languages in two years, although
+it must be remembered that with him the learning of a language was to be
+able to read it after a rather laborious fashion.  Taylor, however, uses
+the words “facility and elegance.”
+
+                   [Picture: William Taylor of Norwich]
+
+In the autobiographical notes that Borrow supplied to Mr John Longe in
+1862 there appears the following passage:—
+
+    “At the expiration of his clerkship he knew little of the law, but he
+    was well versed in languages, being not only a good Greek and Latin
+    scholar, but acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic
+    and Gothic dialects, and likewise with the peculiar language of the
+    English Romany Chals or gypsies.”
+
+At William Taylor’s table Borrow met “the most intellectual and talented
+men of Norwich, as also those of note who visited the city.” {34c}
+Taylor was much interested in young men, into whose minds he did not
+hesitate to instil his own ideas, ideas that not only earned for him the
+name of “Godless Billy,” but outraged his respectable fellow-citizens as
+much as did his intemperate habits.  “His face was terribly bloated from
+drink, and he had a look as if his intellect was almost as much decayed
+as his body,” wrote a contemporary. {35a}  “Matters grew worse in his old
+age,” says Harriet Martineau, “when his habits of intemperance kept him
+out of the sight of ladies, and he got round him a set of ignorant and
+conceited young men, who thought they could set the whole world right by
+their destructive propensities.  One of his chief favourites was George
+Borrow.” {35b}  Borrow has given the following convincing picture of
+Taylor:
+
+    “Methought I was in a small, comfortable room wainscotted with oak; I
+    was seated on one side of a fireplace, close by a table on which were
+    wine and fruit; on the other side of the fire sat a man in a plain
+    suit of brown, with the hair combed back from the somewhat high
+    forehead; he had a pipe in his mouth, which for some time he smoked
+    gravely and placidly, without saying a word; at length, after drawing
+    at the pipe for some time rather vigorously, he removed it from his
+    mouth, and emitting an accumulated cloud of smoke, he exclaimed in a
+    slow and measured tone: ‘As I was telling you just now, my good chap,
+    I have always been an enemy of humbug.’” {35c}
+
+William Taylor appears to have flattered “the harum-scarum young men”
+with whom he surrounded himself by talking to them as if they were his
+intellectual equals.  He encouraged them to form their own opinions, in
+itself a thing scarcely likely to make him popular with either parents or
+guardians, least of all with discipline-loving Captain Borrow, who
+declined even to return the salute of his son’s friend on the public
+highway.
+
+Borrow now began to look to the future and speculate as to what his
+present life would lead to.  His cogitations seem to have ended, almost
+invariably, in a gloomy mist of pessimism and despair—in other words, an
+attack of the “Horrors.”  If Mr Petulengro were encamped upon Mousehold,
+the antidote lay near to hand in his friend’s pagan optimism; if, on the
+other hand, the tents of Egypt were pitched on other soil, there was no
+remedy, unless perhaps a prize-fight supplied the necessary stimulus to
+divert his thoughts from their melancholy trend.
+
+ [Picture: George Borrow (1821).  From a hitherto unpublished painting by
+       John Borrow, now in the posession of W. F. T. Jarrold, Esq.]
+
+Borrow met at the house of his tutor and friend, in July 1821, Dr Bowring
+{36a} (afterwards Sir John) at a dinner given in his honour.  Bowring had
+recently published _Specimen of Russian Poets_, in recognition of which
+the Czar (Alexander I.) had presented him with a diamond ring.  He had a
+considerable reputation as a linguist, which naturally attracted Borrow
+to him.  Dr Bowring was told of Borrow’s accomplishments, and during the
+evening took a seat beside him.  Borrow confessed to being “a little
+frightened at first” of the distinguished man, whom he described as
+having “a thin weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity
+of vision, and a large pair of spectacles.”  It would be dangerous to
+accept entirely the account that Borrow gives of the meeting, {36b}
+because when that was written he had come to hate and despise the man
+whom he had begun by regarding with such awe.  Bowring appears to have
+ventilated his views with some freedom, and to have had a rather serious
+passage of arms with another guest whom he had rudely contradicted.  It
+is very probable that Borrow’s dislike of Bowring prompted him to
+exaggerate his account of what happened at Taylor’s house that evening.
+
+Whilst Borrow was industriously occupied in collecting vagabonds and
+imbibing the dangerous beliefs of William Taylor, there sat in an
+easy-chair in the small front-parlour of the little house in Willow Lane,
+in a faded regimental coat, a prematurely old man, whose frame still
+showed signs of the magnificent physique of his vigorous manhood.
+“Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in meditation, and sometimes in reading
+the Scriptures,” with his dog beside him, Captain Thomas Borrow, now
+sixty-five, was preparing for the end that he felt to be approaching.  He
+frequently meditated upon what was to become of his younger son George,
+who held his father in such awe as to feel ill at ease when alone with
+him.
+
+One day the inevitable interrogation took place.  “What do you propose to
+do?” and the equally inevitable reply followed, “I really do not know
+what I shall do.”  In the course of a somewhat lengthy cross-examination,
+Captain Borrow discovered that his son knew the Armenian tongue, for
+which he very cunningly strove to enlist his father’s interest by telling
+him that in Armenia was Mount Ararat, whereon the ark rested.  Captain
+Borrow also discovered that his son could not only shoe a horse, but also
+make the shoes; but, what was most important, he found that George had
+learned “very little” law.  When asked if he thought he could support
+himself by Armenian or his “other acquirements,” the younger man was not
+very hopeful, and horrified the old soldier by suggesting that if all
+else failed there was always suicide.
+
+The dying man was thus left to yearn for the return of his elder son, in
+whom all his hopes lay centred.  John appears to have been by no means
+dutiful to his parents in the matter of letters.  For six months he left
+them unacquainted even with his address in Paris, where he was still
+copying Old Masters in the Louvre.
+
+After their talk the father and younger son seem to have come to a better
+understanding.  George would frequently read aloud from the Bible, whilst
+Captain Borrow would tell about his early life.  His son “had no idea
+that he knew and had seen so much; my respect for him increased, and I
+looked upon him almost with admiration.  His anecdotes were in general
+highly curious; some of them related to people in the highest stations,
+and to men whose names are closely connected with some of the brightest
+glories of our native land.” {38}
+
+At last John arrived, apparently a little disillusioned with the world;
+but the coming of his favourite son produced no change for the better in
+Captain Borrow’s health.  He was content and happy that God had granted
+his wish.  There remained nothing now to do but “to bless my little
+family and go.”  George learned “that it is possible to feel deeply and
+yet make no outward sign.”
+
+The end came on the morning of 28th February 1824.  It was by a strange
+chance that the old man should die in the arms of his younger son, who
+had run down on hearing his mother’s anguished screams.  Borrow has given
+a dramatic account of his father’s last moments:—
+
+    “At the dead hour of night, it might be about two, I was awakened
+    from sleep by a cry which sounded from the room immediately below
+    that in which I slept.  I knew the cry, it was the cry of my mother,
+    and I also knew its import; yet I made no effort to rise, for I was
+    for the moment paralysed.  Again the cry sounded, yet still I lay
+    motionless—the stupidity of horror was upon me.  A third time, and it
+    was then that, by a violent effort bursting the spell which appeared
+    to bind me, I sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs.  My mother
+    was running wildly about the room; she had awoke and found my father
+    senseless in the bed by her side.  I essayed to raise him, and after
+    a few efforts supported him in the bed in a sitting posture.  My
+    brother now rushed in, and snatching a light that was burning, he
+    held it to my father’s face.  ‘The surgeon, the surgeon!’ he cried;
+    then dropping the light, he ran out of the room followed by my
+    mother; I remained alone, supporting the senseless form of my father;
+    the light had been extinguished by the fall, and an almost total
+    darkness reigned in the room.  The form pressed heavily against my
+    bosom—at last methought it moved.  Yes, I was right, there was a
+    heaving of the breast, and then a gasping.  Were those words which I
+    heard?  Yes, they were words, low and indistinct at first, and then
+    audible.  The mind of the dying man was reverting to former scenes.
+    I heard him mention names which I had often heard him mention before.
+    It was an awful moment; I felt stupified, but I still contrived to
+    support my dying father.  There was a pause, again my father spoke: I
+    heard him speak of Minden, and of Meredith, the old Minden sergeant,
+    and then he uttered another name, which at one period of his life was
+    much on his lips, the name of—but this is a solemn moment!  There was
+    a deep gasp: I shook, and thought all was over; but I was mistaken—my
+    father moved and revived for a moment; he supported himself in bed
+    without my assistance.  I make no doubt that for a moment he was
+    perfectly sensible, and it was then that, clasping his hands, he
+    uttered another name clearly, distinctly—it was the name of Christ.
+    With that name upon his lips, the brave old soldier sank back upon my
+    bosom, and, with his hands still clasped, yielded up his soul.” {39}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+APRIL 1824–MAY 1825
+
+
+ON 2nd April 1824, George Borrow was cast upon the world of London by the
+death of his father, “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.” {40a}
+
+It had become necessary for him to earn his own livelihood.  Captain
+Borrow’s pension had ceased with his death, and the old soldier’s savings
+of a lifetime were barely sufficient to produce an income of a hundred
+pounds a year for his widow.  The provision made in the will for his
+younger son during his minority would operate only for about four months,
+as he would be of age in the following July. {40b}  The clerkship with
+Simpson & Rackham would expire at the end of March.  Borrow had outlined
+his ambitions in a letter written on 20th January 1824, when he was ill
+and wretched, to Roger Kerrison, then in London: “If ever my health mends
+[this has reference to a very unpleasant complaint he had contracted],
+and possibly it may by the time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live
+in London, write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get myself
+prosecuted,” for he was tired of the “dull and gloomy town.”  It was
+therefore with a feeling of relief that, on the evening of 1st April, he
+took his seat on the top of the London coach, his hopes centred in a
+small green box that he carried with him.  It contained his
+stock-in-trade as an author: his beloved manuscripts, “closely written
+over in a singular hand.”
+
+Among the bundles of papers were:
+
+  (i.)  The Ancient Songs of Denmark, heroic and romantic, translated by
+  himself, with notes philological, critical and historical.
+
+  (ii.)  The Songs of Ab Gwilym, the Welsh Bard, also translated by
+  himself, with notes critical, philological and historical. {41}
+
+  (iii.)  A romance in the German style.
+
+In addition to his manuscripts, Borrow had some twenty or thirty pounds,
+his testimonials, and a letter from William Taylor to Sir Richard
+Phillips, the publisher, to whose _New Magazine_ he had already
+contributed a number of translations of poems.  He had also printed in
+_The Monthly Magazine_ and _The New Monthly Magazine_ translations of
+verse from the German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish and Spanish, and an essay
+on Danish ballad writing.
+
+On the morning of 2nd April there arrived at 16 Milman Street, Bedford
+Row, London, W.C.,
+
+   “A lad who twenty tongues can talk,
+   And sixty miles a day can walk;
+   Drink at a draught a pint of rum,
+   And then be neither sick nor dumb;
+   Can tune a song and make a verse,
+   And deeds of Northern kings rehearse;
+   Who never will forsake his friend
+   While he his bony fist can bend;
+   And, though averse to broil and strife,
+   Will fight a Dutchman with a knife;
+   O that is just the lad for me,
+   And such is honest six-foot-three.” {42a}
+
+It was through the Kerrisons that Borrow went to 16 Milman Street, where
+Roger was lodging.  His apartments seem to have been dismal enough,
+consisting of “a small room, up two pair of stairs, in which I was to
+sit, and another, still smaller, above it, in which I was to sleep.”
+After the first feeling of loneliness had passed, dispelled largely by a
+bright fire and breakfast, he sallied forth, the contents of the green
+box under his arm, to present his letter of introduction to Sir Richard
+Phillips, {42b} in whom centred his hopes of employment.
+
+ [Picture: Sir Richard Phillips.  From the painting by James Saxon in the
+                        National Portrait Gallery]
+
+On arriving at the publisher’s house in Tavistock Square, he was
+immediately shown into Sir Richard’s study, where he found “a tall, stout
+man, about sixty, dressed in a loose morning gown,” and with him his
+confidential clerk Bartlett (the Taggart of _Lavengro_).  Sir Richard was
+at first enthusiastic and cordial, but when he learned from William
+Taylor’s letter that Borrow had come up to earn his livelihood by
+authorship, his manner underwent a marked change.  The bluff, hearty
+expression gave place to “a sinister glance,” and Borrow found that
+within that loose morning gown there was a second Sir Richard.
+
+He learned two things—first, that Sir Richard Phillips had retired from
+publishing and had reserved only _The Monthly Magazine_; {43} secondly,
+that literature was a drug upon the market.  With airy
+self-assertiveness, the ex-publisher dismissed the contents of the green
+box that Borrow had brought with him, which had already aroused
+considerable suspicion in the mind of the maid who had admitted him to
+the publisher’s presence.
+
+When he had thoroughly dashed the young author’s hopes of employment, Sir
+Richard informed him of a new publication he had in preparation, _The
+Universal Review_ [_The Oxford Review_ of _Lavengro_], which was to
+support the son of the house and the wife he had married.  With a promise
+that he should become a contributor to the new review, an earnest
+exhortation to write a story in the style of _The Dairyman’s Daughter_,
+and an invitation to dinner for the following Sunday, the first interview
+between George Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips ended, and Borrow left the
+great man’s presence to begin his exploration of London, first leaving
+his manuscripts at Milman Street.  During the rest of the day he walked
+“scarcely less than thirty miles about the big city.”  It was late when
+he returned to his lodgings, thoroughly tired, but with a copy of _The
+Dairyman’s Daughter_, for “a well-written tale in the style” of which Sir
+Richard Phillips “could afford as much as ten pounds.”  The day had been
+one of the most eventful in Borrow’s life.
+
+On the following Sunday Borrow dined at Tavistock Square, and met Lady
+Phillips, young Phillips and his bride.  He learned that Sir Richard was
+a vegetarian of twenty years’ standing and a total abstainer, although
+meat and wine were not banished from his table.  When publisher and
+potential author were left alone, the son having soon followed the ladies
+into the drawing-room, Borrow heard of Sir Richard’s amiable intentions
+towards him.  He was to compile six volumes of the lives and trials of
+criminals [the _Newgate Lives and Trials_ of _Lavengro_], each to contain
+not less than a thousand pages. {44a}  For this work he was to receive
+the munificent sum of fifty pounds, which was to cover all expenses
+incurred in the purchase of books, papers and manuscripts necessary to
+the compilation of the work.  This was only one of the employments that
+the fertile brain of the publisher had schemed for him.  He was also to
+make himself useful in connection with the forthcoming _Universal
+Review_.  “Generally useful, sir—doing whatever is required of you”; for
+it was not Sir Richard’s custom to allow young writers to select their
+own subjects.
+
+With impressive manner and ponderous diction, Sir Richard Phillips
+unfolded his philanthropic designs regarding the young writer to whom his
+words meant a career.  He did not end with the appointment of Borrow as
+general utility writer upon _The Universal Review_; but proceeded to
+astonish him with the announcement that to him, George Borrow,
+understanding German in a manner that aroused the “strong admiration” of
+William Taylor, was to be entrusted the translating into that tongue of
+Sir Richard Phillips’ book of Philosophy. {44b}  If translations of
+Goethe into English were a drug, Sir Richard Phillips’ _Proximate Causes_
+was to prove that neither he nor his book would be a drug in Germany.
+For this work the remuneration was to be determined by the success of the
+translation, an arrangement sufficiently vague to ensure eventual
+disagreement.
+
+When Sir Richard had finished his account of what were his intentions
+towards his guest, he gave him to understand that the interview was at an
+end, at the same time intimating how seldom it was that he dealt so
+generously with a young writer.  Borrow then rose from the table and
+passed out of the house, leaving his host to muse, as was his custom on
+Sunday afternoons, “on the magnificence of nature and the moral dignity
+of man.”
+
+For the next few weeks Borrow was occupied in searching in out-of-the-way
+corners for criminal biography.  If he flagged, a visit from his
+philosopher-publisher spurred him on to fresh effort.  He received a copy
+of _Proximate Causes_, with an injunction that he should review it in
+_The Universal Review_, as well as translate it into German.  He was
+taken to and introduced to the working editor {45a} of the new
+publication, which was only ostensibly under the control of young
+Phillips.
+
+In the provision that he should purchase at his own expense all the
+necessary materials for _Celebrated Trials_, Borrow found a serious tax
+upon his resources; but a harder thing to bear with patience and
+good-humour were the frequent visits he received from Sir Richard
+himself, who showed the keenest possible interest in the progress of the
+compilation.  He had already caused a preliminary announcement to be made
+{45b} to the effect that:
+
+    “A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is
+    printing, in five volumes. {46a}  It will include all famous cases,
+    from that of Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of
+    John Thurtell: and those connected with foreign as well as English
+    jurisprudence.  Mr Borrow, the editor, has availed himself of all the
+    resources of the English, German, French, and Italian languages; and
+    his work, including from 150 to 200 {46b} of the most interesting
+    cases on record, will appear in October next.” {46c}
+
+Sir Richard’s visits to Milman Street were always accompanied by numerous
+suggestions as to criminals whose claims to be included in this literary
+chamber of horrors were in his, Sir Richard’s, opinion unquestionable.
+The English character of the compilation was soon sacrificed in order to
+admit notable malefactors of other nationalities, and the drain upon the
+editor’s small capital became greater than ever.
+
+The leisure that he allowed himself, Borrow spent in exploring the city,
+or in the company of Francis Arden (Ardrey in _Lavengro_), whom he had
+met by chance in the coffee-room of a hotel.  The two appear to have been
+excellent friends, perhaps because of the dissimilarity of their natures.
+“He was an Irishman,” Borrow explains, “I an Englishman; he fiery,
+enthusiastic and opened-hearted; I neither fiery, enthusiastic, nor
+open-hearted; he fond of pleasure and dissipation, I of study and
+reflection.” {46d}
+
+They went to the play together, to dog-fights, gaming-houses, in short
+saw the sights of London.  The arrival of Francis Arden at 16 Milman
+Street was a signal for books and manuscripts to be thrown aside in
+favour either of some expedition or an hour or two’s conversation.
+Borrow, however, soon tired of the pleasures of London, and devoted
+himself almost entirely to work.  Although he saw less of Francis Arden
+in consequence, they continued to be excellent friends.
+
+After being some four weeks in London, Borrow received a surprise visit
+(29th April) from his brother, whom he found waiting for him one morning
+when he came down to breakfast.  John told him of his mother’s anxiety at
+receiving only one letter from him since his departure, of her fits of
+crying, of the grief of Captain Borrow’s dog at the loss of his master.
+He also explained the reason for his being in London.  He had been
+invited to paint the portrait of Robert Hawkes, an ex-mayor of Norwich,
+for a fee of a hundred guineas.  Lacking confidence in his own ability,
+he had declined the honour and suggested that Benjamin Haydon should be
+approached.  At the request of a deputation of his fellow citizens, which
+had waited upon him, he had undertaken to enter into negotiations with
+Haydon.  He even undertook to come up to London at his own expense, that
+he might see his old master and complete the bargain.  Borrow
+subsequently accompanied his brother when calling upon Haydon, and was
+enabled to give a thumbnail-sketch of the painter of the Heroic at work
+that has been pronounced to be photographic in its faithfulness.
+
+John returned to Norwich about a fortnight later accompanied by Haydon,
+who was to become the guest of his sitter, {47} and George was left to
+the compilation of _Celebrated Trials_.  Sir Richard Phillips appears to
+have been a man as prolific of suggestion as he was destitute of tact.
+He regarded his authors as the instruments of his own genius.  Their
+business it was to carry out his ideas in a manner entirely congenial to
+his colossal conceit.  His latest author he exposed “to incredible
+mortification and ceaseless trouble from this same rage for
+interference.”
+
+The result of all this was an attack of the “Horrors.”  Towards the end
+of May, Roger Kerrison received from Borrow a note saying that he
+believed himself to be dying, and imploring him to “come to me
+immediately.”  The direct outcome of this note was, not the death of
+Borrow, but the departure from Milman Street of Roger Kerrison, lest he
+should become involved in a tragedy connected with Borrow’s oft-repeated
+threat of suicide.  Kerrison became “very uneasy and uncomfortable on his
+account, so that I have found it utterly impossible to live any longer in
+the same lodgings with him.” {48a}  Looked at dispassionately it seems
+nothing short of an act of cowardice on Kerrison’s part to leave alone a
+man such as Borrow, who might at any moment be assailed by one of those
+periods of gloom from which suicide seemed the only outlet.  On the other
+hand, from an anecdote told by C. G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”), there
+seems to be some excuse for Kerrison’s wish to live alone.  “I knew at
+that time [about 1870],” he writes, {48b} “a Mr Kerrison, who had been as
+a young man, probably in the Twenties, on intimate terms with Borrow.  He
+told me that one night Borrow acted very wildly, whooping and
+vociferating so as to cause the police to follow him, and after a long
+run led them to the edge of the Thames, ‘and there they thought they had
+him.’  But he plunged boldly into the water and swam in his clothes to
+the opposite shore, and so escaped.”
+
+A serious misfortune now befell Borrow in the premature death of _The
+Universal Review_, which expired with the sixth number (March
+1824—January 1825).  It is not known what was the rate of pay to young
+and impecunious reviewers {49a} certainly not large, if it may be judged
+by the amount agreed upon for _Celebrated Trials_.  Still, its end meant
+that Borrow was now dependent upon what he received for his compilation,
+and what he merited by his translation into German of _Proximate Causes_.
+
+There appears to have been some difficulty about payment for Borrow’s
+contributions to the now defunct review, which considerably widened the
+breach that the _Trials_ had created.  Sir Richard became more exacting
+and more than ever critical. {49b}  The end could not be far off.  Borrow
+had come to London determined to be an author, and by no juggling with
+facts could his present drudgery be considered as authorship.
+Occasionally his mind reverted to the manuscripts in the green box, his
+faith in which continued undiminished.  He made further efforts to get
+his translations published, but everywhere the answer was the same, in
+effect, “A drug, sir, a drug!”
+
+At last he determined to approach John Murray (the Second), “Glorious
+John, who lived at the western end of the town”; but he called many times
+without being successful in seeing him.  Another seventeen years were to
+elapse before he was to meet and be published by John Murray.
+
+Yet another dispute arose between Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips.
+Neither appeared to have realised the supreme folly of entrusting to a
+young Englishman the translation into German of an English work.  A novel
+would have presented almost insurmountable difficulties; but a work of
+philosophy!  The whole project was absurd.  The diction of philosophy in
+all languages is individual, just as it is in other branches of science,
+and a very thorough knowledge of, and deep reading in both languages are
+necessary to qualify a man to translate from a foreign tongue into his
+own.  To expect an inexperienced youth to reverse the order seems to
+suggest that Sir Richard Phillips must have been a publisher whose
+enthusiasm was greater than his judgment.
+
+One day when calling at Tavistock Square, Borrow found Sir Richard in a
+fury of rage.  He had submitted the first chapter of the translation of
+_Proximate Causes_ to some Germans, who found it utterly unintelligible.
+This was only to be expected, as Borrow confesses that, when he found
+himself unable to comprehend what was the meaning of the English text, he
+had translated it _literally into German_!
+
+The result of the interview was that Borrow, after what appears to be a
+tactless, not to say impertinent, rejoinder, {50a} relapsed into silence
+and finally left the house, ordered back to his compilation by Sir
+Richard, as soon as he became sufficiently calm to appear coherent, and
+Borrow walked away musing on the “difference in clever men.”
+
+The discovery of the inadequacy of the German translation apparently
+urged Borrow to hasten on with _Celebrated Trials_.  _The Universal
+Review_ was dead, the German version of _Proximate Causes_ {50b} had
+passed out of his hands.  It was desirable, therefore, that the remaining
+undertaking should be completed as soon as possible, that the two might
+part.  The last of the manuscript was delivered, the proofs passed for
+press, and on 19th March the work appeared, the six volumes, running to
+between three and four thousand pages, containing accounts of some four
+hundred trials, including that of Borrow’s old friend Thurtell for the
+murder of Mr Weare.
+
+Borrow’s name did not appear.  He was “the editor,” and as such was
+referred to in the preface contributed by Sir Richard himself.  Among
+other things he tells of how, in some cases, “the Editor has compressed
+into a score of pages the substance of an entire volume.”  Sir Richard
+was a philosopher as well as a preface-writing publisher, and it was only
+natural that he should speculate as to the effect upon his editor’s mind
+of months spent in reading and editing such records of vice.  “It may be
+expected,” he writes, “that the Editor should convey to his readers the
+intellectual impressions which the execution of his task has produced on
+his mind.  He confesses that they are mournful.”  Sir Richard was either
+a master of irony, or a man of singular obtuseness.
+
+One effect of this delving into criminal records had been to raise in
+Borrow’s mind strange doubts about virtue and crime.  When a boy, he had
+written an essay in which he strove to prove that crime and virtue were
+mere terms, and that we were the creatures of necessity or circumstance.
+These broodings in turn reawakened the theory that everything is a lie,
+and that nothing really exists except in our imaginations.  The world was
+“a maze of doubt.”  These indications of an overtaxed brain increased,
+and eventually forced Borrow to leave London.  His work was thoroughly
+uncongenial.  He disliked reviewing; he had failed in his endeavours to
+render _Proximate Causes_ into intelligible German; and it had taken him
+some time to overcome his dislike of the sordid stories of crime and
+criminals that he had to read and edit.  He became gloomy and depressed,
+and prone to compare the real conditions of authorship with those that
+his imagination had conjured up.
+
+The most important result of his labours in connection with _Celebrated
+Trials_ was that upon his literary style.  There is a tremendous
+significance in the following passage.  It tells of the transition of the
+actual vagabond into the literary vagabond, with power to express in
+words what proved so congenial to Borrow’s vagabond temperament:
+
+    “Of all my occupations at this period I am free to confess I liked
+    that of compiling the Newgate Lives and Trials [Celebrated Trials]
+    the best; that is, after I had surmounted a kind of prejudice which I
+    originally entertained.  The trials were entertaining enough; but the
+    lives—how full were they of wild and racy adventures, and in what
+    racy, genuine language were they told.  What struck me most with
+    respect to these lives was the art which the writers, whoever they
+    were, possessed of telling a plain story.  It is no easy thing to
+    tell a story plainly and distinctly by mouth; but to tell one on
+    paper is difficult indeed, so many snares lie in the way.  People are
+    afraid to put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish
+    their narratives, as they think, by philosophic speculations and
+    reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are anxious to
+    shine can never tell a plain story.  ‘So I went with them to a music
+    booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk
+    their flash language, which I did not understand,’ {52a} says, or is
+    made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years
+    before the time of which I am speaking.  I have always looked upon
+    this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so
+    concise and yet so clear.” {52b}
+
+By the time the work was published and Borrow had been paid his fee, all
+relations between editor and publisher had ceased, and there was “a poor
+author, or rather philologist, upon the streets of London, possessed of
+many tongues,” which he found “of no use in the world.” {52c}  A month
+after the appearance of _Celebrated Trials_ (18th April), and a little
+more than a year after his arrival in London, Borrow published a
+translation of Klinger’s _Faustus_. {53a}  He himself gives no
+particulars as to whether it was commissioned or no.  It may even have
+been “the Romance in the German style” from the Green Box.  It is known
+that he received payment for it by a bill at five or six months, {53b}
+but there is no mention of the amount.  It would appear that the
+translation had long been projected, for in _The Monthly Magazine_, July
+1824, there appeared, in conjunction with the announcement of _Celebrated
+Trials_, the following paragraph: “The editor of the preceding has ready
+for the press, a Life of Faustus, his Death and Descent into Hell, which
+will also appear the next winter.”
+
+_Faustus_ did not meet with a very cordial reception.  _The Literary
+Gazette_ (16th July 1825) characterised it as “another work to which no
+respectable publisher ought to have allowed his name to be put.  The
+political allusion and metaphysics, which may have made it popular among
+a low class in Germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and
+coarse descriptions for British palates.  We have occasionally
+publications for the fireside,—these are only fit for the fire.”
+
+Borrow had apparently been in some doubt about certain passages, for in a
+note headed “The Translator to the Public,” he defends the work as moral
+in its general teaching:
+
+    “The publication of the present volume may at first sight appear to
+    require some brief explanation from the Translator, inasmuch as the
+    character of the incidents may justify such an expectation on the
+    part of the reader.  It is, therefore, necessary to state that,
+    although scenes of vice and crime are here exhibited, it is merely in
+    the hope that they may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and
+    unwary from the shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked.  The
+    work, when considered as a whole, is strictly moral.”
+
+It must be confessed that Faustus does not err on the side of restraint.
+Many of its scenes might appear “lewd . . . and coarse” to anyone who for
+a moment allowed his mind to wander from the morality of “its general
+teaching.”  The attacks upon the lax morals of the priesthood must have
+proved particularly congenial to the translator.
+
+The more Borrow read his translations of Ab Gwilym, the more convinced he
+became of their merit and the profit they would bring to him who
+published them.  The booksellers, however, with singular unanimity,
+declined the risk of introducing to the English public either Welsh or
+Danish ballads; and their translator became so shabby in consequence,
+that he refrained from calling upon his friend Arden, for whom he had
+always cherished a very real friendship.  He began to lose heart.  His
+energy left him and with it went hope.  He was forced to review his
+situation.  Authorship had obviously failed, and he found himself with no
+reasonable prospect of employment.
+
+There is no episode in Borrow’s life that has so exercised the minds of
+commentators and critics as his account of the book he terms in
+_Lavengro_, _The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell_, _the Great
+Traveller_.  Some dismiss the whole story as apocryphal; others see in it
+a grain of truth distorted into something of vital importance; whilst
+there are a number of earnest Borrovians that accept the whole story as
+it is written.  Dr Knapp has said that Joseph Sell “was not a book at
+all, and the author of it never said that it was.”  This was obviously an
+error, for the bookseller is credited with saying, “I think I shall
+venture on sending your book to the press,” {55a} referring to it as a
+“book” four times in nine lines.  Again, in another place, Borrow
+describes how he rescued himself “from peculiarly miserable circumstances
+by writing a book, an original book, within a week, even as Johnson is
+said to have written his _Rasselas_ and Beckford his _Vathek_.” {55b}
+This removes all question of the _Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell_
+being included in a collection of short stories.  The title would not be
+the same, the date is most probably wrongly given, as in the case of
+Marshland Shales; but the general accuracy of the account as written
+seems to be highly probable.  Many efforts have been made to trace the
+story; but so far unsuccessfully.  It must be remembered that Borrow
+loved to stretch the long arm of coincidence; but he loved more than
+anything else a dramatic situation.  He was always on the look out for
+effective “curtains.”
+
+In favour of the story having been actually written, is the knowledge
+that Borrow invented little or nothing.  Collateral evidence has shown
+how little he deviated from actual happenings, although he did not
+hesitate to revise dates or colour events.  The strongest evidence,
+however, lies in the atmosphere of truth that pervades Chapters LV.–LVII.
+of _Lavengro_.  They are convincing.  At one time or another during his
+career, it would appear that Borrow wrote against time from grim
+necessity; otherwise he must have been a master of invention, which
+everything that is known about him clearly shows that he was not.
+
+_Joseph Sell_ has disappeared, a most careful search of the Registers at
+Stationers’ Hall can show no trace of that work, or any book that seems
+to suggest it, and the contemporary literary papers render no assistance.
+
+According to Borrow’s own account, one morning on getting up he found
+that he had only half a crown in the world.  It was this circumstance,
+coupled with the timely notice that he saw affixed to a bookseller’s
+window to the effect that “A Novel or Tale is much wanted,” that
+determined him to endeavour to emulate Dr Johnson and William Beckford.
+He had tired of “the Great City,” and his thoughts turned instinctively
+to the woods and the fields, where he could be free to meditate and muse
+in solitude.
+
+When he returned to Milman Street after seeing the bookseller’s
+advertisement, he found that his resources had been still further reduced
+to eighteen-pence.  He was too proud to write home for assistance, he had
+broken with Sir Richard Phillips, and he had no reasonable expectation of
+obtaining employment of any description; for his accomplishments found no
+place in the catalogue of everyday wants.  He was a proper man with his
+hands, and knew some score or more languages.  No matter how he regarded
+the situation, the facts were obvious.  Between him and actual starvation
+there was the inconsiderable sum of eighteen-pence and the bookseller’s
+advertisement.  The gravity of the situation banished the cloud of
+despondency that threatened to settle upon him, and also the doubts that
+presented themselves as to whether he possessed the requisite ability to
+produce what the bookseller required.  The all-important question was,
+could he exist sufficiently long on eighteen-pence to complete a story?
+Sir Richard Phillips had told him to live on bread and water.  He now did
+so.
+
+For a week he wrote ceaselessly at the _Life and Adventures of Joseph
+Sell_, _the Great Traveller_.  He wrote with the feverish energy of a man
+who sees the shadow of actual starvation cast across his manuscript.
+When the tale was finished there remained the work of revision, and after
+that, worst of all, fears lest the bookseller were already suited.
+
+Fortune, however, was kind to him, and he was successful in extracting
+for his story the sum of twenty pounds.  Borrow had not mixed among
+gypsies for nothing.  He, a starving and unknown author, succeeded in
+extracting from a bookseller twenty pounds for a story, twice the amount
+offered by Sir Richard Phillips for a novel on the lines of _The
+Dairyman’s Daughter_.  It was an achievement.
+
+The first argument against the story, as related by Borrow, is that he
+was not without resources at the time.  Why should he be so impoverished
+a few weeks after receiving payment for _Celebrated Trials_? {57}  Above
+all, why did he not realise upon Simpkin & Marshall’s bill for _Faustus_?
+He would have experienced no difficulty in discounting a bill accepted by
+such a firm.  It seems hardly conceivable that he should preserve this
+piece of paper when he had only eighteen-pence in the world.  Everything
+seems to point to the fact that in May 1825 Borrow was not in want of
+money, and if he were not, why did he almost kill himself by writing the
+_Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell_?  Again, at that period he had met
+with no adventures such as might be included in the life of a “Great
+Traveller,” and Borrow was not an inventive writer.  Later he possessed
+plenty of material; for there can be no question that he roamed about the
+world for a considerable portion of those seven mysterious years of his
+life that came to be known as the “Veiled Period.”  His accuracy as to
+actual occurrences has been so emphasised that this particular argument
+holds considerable significance.
+
+The strongest evidence against _Joseph Sell_ having been written in 1825,
+however, lies in the fact that Greenwich Fair was held on 23rd May, and
+not 12th May, as given by Dr Knapp.  By his error Dr Knapp makes Borrow
+leave London a day before the Fair took place that he describes.  Borrow
+must have left London on the day following Greenwich Fair (24th May).  If
+he left later, then those things which tend to confirm his story of the
+life in the Dingle do not fit in, as will be seen.  He certainly could
+not have left before Greenwich Fair was held.
+
+In one of his brother John’s letters, written at the end of 1829, there
+is a significant passage, “Let me know how you sold your manuscript.”
+{58}  What manuscript is it that is referred to?  There is no record of
+George having sold a manuscript in the autumn of 1829.  The passage can
+scarcely have reference to some article or translation; it seems to
+suggest something of importance, an event in George’s life that his
+brother is anxious to know more about.  If this be _Joseph Sell_, then it
+explains where Borrow got the money from to go up to London at the end of
+1829, when he entered into relations with Dr Bowring.  It is merely a
+theory, it must be confessed; but there is certain evidence that seems to
+support it.  In the first place, Borrow was a chronicler before all else.
+He possessed an amazing memory and a great gift for turning his
+experiences into literary material.  If he coloured facts, he appears to
+have done so unconsciously, to judge from those portions of _The Bible in
+Spain_ that were covered by letters to the Bible Society.  Not only are
+the facts the same, but, with very slight changes, the words in which he
+relates them.  He never hesitated to change a date if it served his
+purpose, much as an artist will change the position of a tree in a
+landscape to suit the exigencies of composition.  His five volumes of
+autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they were
+actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius on record for
+attracting to himself strange adventures.  He met the sailor son of the
+old Apple-Woman returning from his enforced exile; Murtagh tells him of
+how the postilion frightened the Pope at Rome by his denunciation, a
+story Borrow had already heard from the postilion himself; the Hungarian
+at Horncastle narrates how an Armenian once silenced a Moldavian, the
+same Moldavian whom Borrow had encountered in London; the postilion meets
+the man in black again.  There are scores of such coincidences, which
+must be accepted as dramatic embellishments.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+MAY–SEPTEMBER 1825
+
+
+FOURTEEN months in London had shown Borrow how hard was the road of
+authorship.  He confessed that he was not “formed by nature to be a
+pallid indoor student.”  “The peculiar atmosphere of the big city” did
+not agree with him, and this fact, together with the anxiety and hard
+work of the past twelve months, caused him to flag, and his first thought
+was how to recover his health.  He was disillusioned as to the busy
+world, and the opportunities it offered to a young man fired with
+ambition to make a stir in it.  He determined to leave London, which he
+did towards the end of May, {60} first despatching his trunk “containing
+a few clothes and books to the old town [Norwich].”  He struck out in a
+south-westerly direction, musing on his achievements as an author, and
+finding that in having preserved his independence and health, he had
+“abundant cause to be grateful.”
+
+Throughout his life Borrow was hypnotised by independence.  Like many
+other proud natures, he carried his theory of independence to such an
+extreme as to become a slave to it and render himself unsociable,
+sometimes churlish.  It was this virtue carried to excess that drove
+Borrow from London.  He must tell men what was in his mind, and his one
+patron, Sir Richard Phillips, he had mortally offended in this manner.
+
+Finding that he was unequal to much fatigue, after a few hours’ walking
+he hailed a passing coach, which took him as far as Amesbury in
+Wiltshire.  From here he walked to Stonehenge and on to Salisbury,
+“inspecting the curiosities of the place,” and endeavouring by sleep and
+good food to make up the wastage of the last few months.  The weather was
+fine and his health and spirits rapidly improved as he tramped on, his
+“daily journeys varying from twenty to twenty-five miles.”  He
+encountered the mysterious stranger who “touched” against the evil eye.
+F. H. Groome asserts, on the authority of W. B. Donne, that this was in
+reality William Beckford.  Borrow must have met him at some other time
+and place, as he had already left Fonthill in 1825.  It is, however,
+interesting to recall that Borrow himself “touched” against the evil eye.
+Mr Watts-Dunton has said:
+
+    “There was nothing that Borrow strove against with more energy than
+    the curious impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr Johnson,
+    to touch the objects along his path in order to save himself from the
+    evil chance.  He never conquered the superstition.  In walking
+    through Richmond Park he would step out of his way constantly to
+    touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he was with seemed to
+    observe it.” {61a}
+
+The chance meeting with Jack Slingsby (in fear of his life from the
+Flaming Tinman, and bound by oath not to continue on the same beat) gave
+Borrow the idea of buying out Slingsby, beat, plant, pony and all.  “A
+tinker is his own master, a scholar is not,” {61b} he remarks, and then
+proceeds to draw tears and moans from the dispirited Slingsby and his
+family by a description of the joys of tinkering, “the happiest life
+under heaven . . . pitching your tent under the pleasant hedge-row,
+listening to the song of the feathered tribes, collecting all the leaky
+kettles in the neighbourhood, soldering and joining, earning your honest
+bread by the wholesome sweat of your brow.” {62a}
+
+By the expenditure of five pounds ten shillings, plus the cost of a
+smock-frock and some provisions, George Borrow, linguist, editor and
+translator, became a travelling tinker.  With his dauntless little pony,
+Ambrol, he set out, a tinkering Ulysses, indifferent to what direction he
+took, allowing the pony to go whither he felt inclined.  At first he
+experienced some apprehension at passing the night with only a tent or
+the stars as a roof.  Rain fell to mar the opening day of the adventure,
+but the pony, with unerring instinct, led his new master to one of
+Slingsby’s usual camping grounds.
+
+In the morning Borrow fell to examining what it was beyond the pony and
+cart that his five pounds ten shillings had purchased.  He found a tent,
+a straw mattress and a blanket, “quite clean and nearly new.”  There were
+also a frying-pan, a kettle, a teapot (broken in three pieces) and some
+cups and saucers.  The stock-in-trade “consisted of various tools, an
+iron ladle, a chafing-pan, and small bellows, sundry pans and kettles,
+the latter being of tin, with the exception of one which was of copper,
+all in a state of considerable dilapidation.”  The pans and kettles were
+to be sold after being mended, for which purpose there was “a block of
+tin, sheet-tin, and solder.”  But most precious of all his possessions
+was “a small anvil and bellows of the kind which are used in forges, and
+two hammers such as smiths use, one great, and the other small.” {62b}
+Borrow had learned the blacksmith’s art when in Ireland, and the anvil,
+bellows and smith’s hammers were to prove extremely useful.
+
+A few days after pitching his tent, Borrow received from his old enemy
+Mrs Herne, Mr Petulengro’s mother-in-law, a poisoned cake, which came
+very near to ending his career.  He then encountered the Welsh preacher
+(“the worthiest creature I ever knew”) and his wife, who were largely
+instrumental in saving him from Mrs Herne’s poison.  Having remained with
+his new friends for nine days, he accompanied them as far as the Welsh
+border, where he confessed himself the translator of Ab Gwilym, giving as
+an excuse for not accompanying them further that it was “neither fit nor
+proper that I cross into Wales at this time, and in this manner.  When I
+go into Wales, I should wish to go in a new suit of superfine black, with
+hat and beaver, mounted on a powerful steed, black and glossy, like that
+which bore Greduv to the fight of Catraeth.  I should wish, moreover,” he
+continued, “to see the Welshmen assembled on the border ready to welcome
+me with pipe and fiddle, and much whooping and shouting, and to attend me
+to Wrexham, or even as far as Machynllaith, where I should wish to be
+invited to a dinner at which all the bards should be present, and to be
+seated at the right hand of the president, who, when the cloth was
+removed, should arise, and amidst cries of silence, exclaim—‘Brethren and
+Welshmen, allow me to propose the health of my most respectable friend
+the translator of the odes of the great Ab Gwilym, the pride and glory of
+Wales.’” {63a}
+
+He returned with Mr Petulengro, who directed him to Mumber Lane (Mumper’s
+Dingle), near Willenhall, in Staffordshire, “the little dingle by the
+side of the great north road.”  Here Borrow encamped and shod little
+Ambrol, who kicked him over as a reminder of his clumsiness.
+
+He had refused an invitation from Mr Petulengro to become a Romany _chal_
+and take a Romany bride, the granddaughter of his would-be murderess, who
+“occasionally talked of” him.  He yearned for solitude and the country’s
+quiet.  He told Mr Petulengro that he desired only some peaceful spot
+where he might hold uninterrupted communion with his own thoughts, and
+practise, if so inclined, either tinkering or the blacksmith’s art, and
+he had been directed to Mumper’s Dingle, which was to become the setting
+of the most romantic episode in his life.
+
+In the dingle Borrow experienced one of his worst attacks of the
+“Horrors”—the “Screaming Horrors.”  He raged like a madman, a prey to
+some indefinable, intangible fear; clinging to his “little horse as if
+for safety and protection.” {64a}  He had not recovered from the
+prostrating effects of that night of tragedy when he was called upon to
+fight Anselo Herne, “the Flaming Tinman,” who somehow or other seemed to
+be part of the bargain he had made with Jack Slingsby, and encounter the
+queen of road-girls, Isopel Berners.  The description of the fight has
+been proclaimed the finest in our language, and by some the finest in the
+world’s literature.
+
+Isopel Berners is one of the great heroines of English Literature.  As
+drawn by Borrow, with her strong arm, lion-like courage and tender
+tearfulness, she is unique.  However true or false the account of her
+relations with Borrow may be, she is drawn by him as a living woman.  He
+was incapable of conceiving her from his imagination.  It may go
+unquestioned that he actually met an Isopel Berners, {64b} but whether or
+no his parting from her was as heart-rendingly tragic as he has depicted
+it, is open to very grave question.
+
+                 [Picture: Mumber Lane (Mumper’s Dingle)]
+
+With this queen of the roads he seems to have been less reticent and more
+himself than with any other of his vagabond acquaintance, not excepting
+even Mr Petulengro.  To the handsome, tall girl with “the flaxen hair,
+which hung down over her shoulders unconfined,” and the “determined but
+open expression,” he showed a more amiable side of his character; yet he
+seems to have treated her with no little cruelty.  He told her about
+himself, how he “had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had
+dealings with ferocious publishers,” bringing tears to her eyes, and when
+she grew too curious, he administered an antidote in the form of a few
+Armenian numerals.  If his _Autobiography_ is to be credited, Isopel
+loved him, and he was aware of it; but the knowledge did not hinder him
+from torturing the poor girl by insisting that she should decline the
+verb “to love” in Armenian.
+
+Borrow’s attitude towards Isopel was curiously complex; he seemed to find
+pleasure in playing upon her emotions.  At times he appeared as
+deliberately brutal to her, as to the gypsy girl Ursula when he talked
+with her beneath the hedge.  He forced from Isopel a passionate rebuke
+that he sought only to vex and irritate “a poor ignorant girl . . . who
+can scarcely read or write.”  He asked her to marry him, but not until he
+had convinced her that he was mad.  How much she had become part of his
+life in the dingle he did not seem to realise until after she had left
+him.  Isopel Berners was a woman whose character was almost masculine in
+its strength; but she was prepared to subdue her spirit to his, wished to
+do so even.  With her strength, however, there was wisdom, and she left
+Borrow and the dingle, sending him a letter of farewell that was
+certainly not the composition of “a poor girl” who could “scarcely read
+or write.”  The story itself is in all probability true; but the letter
+rings false.  Isopel may have sent Borrow a letter of farewell, but not
+the one that appears in _The Romany Rye_.
+
+Among Borrow’s papers Dr Knapp discovered a fragment of manuscript in
+which Mr Petulengro is shown deliberating upon the expediency of
+emulating King Pharaoh in the number of his wives.  Mrs Petulengro
+desires “a little pleasant company,” and urges her husband to take a
+second spouse.  He proceeds:—
+
+    “Now I am thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the
+    kind of person both for my wife and myself.  My wife wants something
+    _gorgiko_, something genteel.  Now Bess is of blood gorgious; if you
+    doubt it, look at her face, all full of _pawno ratter_, white blood,
+    brother; and as for gentility, nobody can make exceptions to Bess’s
+    gentility, seeing she was born in the workhouse of Melford the
+    Short.”
+
+Mr Petulengro sees in Bess another advantage.  If “the Flaming Tinman”
+{66a} were to descend upon them, as he once did, with the offer to fight
+the best of them for nothing, and Tawno Chikno were absent, who was to
+fight him?  Mr Petulengro could not do so for less than five pounds; but
+with Bess as a second wife the problem would be solved.  She would fight
+“the Flaming Tinman.”
+
+This proves nothing, one way or the other, and can scarcely be said to
+“dispel any allusions,” as Dr Knapp suggests, or confirm the story of
+Isopel.  Why did Borrow omit it from Lavengro?  Not from caprice surely.
+It has been stated that those who know the gypsies can vouch for the fact
+that no such suggestion could have been made by a gypsy woman.
+
+It would appear that Isopel Berners existed, but the account of her given
+by Borrow in Lavengro and The Romany Rye is in all probability coloured,
+just as her stature was heightened by him.  If she were taller than he,
+she must have appeared a giantess.  Borrow was an impressionist, and he
+has probably succeeded far better in giving a faithful picture of Isopel
+Berners than if he had been photographically accurate in his
+measurements.
+
+According to Borrow’s own account, he left Willenhall mounted upon a fine
+horse, purchased with money lent to him by Mr Petulengro, a small valise
+strapped to the saddle, and “some desire to meet with one of those
+adventures which upon the roads of England are generally as plentiful as
+blackberries.”  From this point, however, _The Romany Rye_ becomes
+dangerous as autobiography. {66b}
+
+For one thing, it was unlike Borrow to remain in debt, and it is
+incredible that he should have ridden away upon a horse purchased with
+another man’s money, without any set purpose in his mind.  Therefore the
+story of his employment at the Swan Inn, Stafford, where he found his
+postilion friend, and the subsequent adventures must be reluctantly
+sacrificed.  They do not ring true, nor do they fit in with the rest of
+the story.  That he experienced such adventures is highly probable; but
+it is equally probable that he took some liberty with the dates.
+
+Up to the point where he purchases the horse, Borrow’s story is
+convincing; but from there onwards it seems to go to pieces, that is as
+autobiography.  The arrival of Ardry (Arden) at the inn, {67a} _passing
+through Stafford on his way to Warwick_ to be present at a dog and lion
+fight that had already taken place (26th July), is in itself enough to
+shake our confidence in the whole episode of the inn.  In _The Gypsies of
+Spain_ Mr Petulengro is made to say:
+
+    “I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen years ago, when you made
+    horseshoes in the little dingle by the side of the great north road,
+    I lent you fifty cottors [guineas] to purchase the wonderful trotting
+    cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days
+    after you sold for two hundred.  Well, brother, if you had wanted the
+    two hundred instead of the fifty, I could have lent them to you, and
+    would have done so, for I knew you would not be long pazorrhus
+    [indebted] to me.” {67b}
+
+It seems more in accordance with Borrow’s character to repay the loan
+within three days than to continue in Mr Petulengro’s debt for weeks, at
+one time making no actual effort to realise upon the horse.  The question
+as to whether Borrow received a hundred and fifty (as he himself states)
+or two hundred pounds is immaterial.  It is quite likely that he sold the
+horse before he left the dingle, and that the adventures he narrates may
+be true in all else save the continued possession of his steed, that is,
+with the exception of the Francis Ardry episode, the encounter with the
+man in black, and the arrival at Horncastle during the fair.  If Borrow
+left London on 24th May, and he could not have left earlier, as has been
+shown, he must have visited the Fair (Tamworth) with Mr Petulengro on
+26th July, and set out from Willenhall about 2nd August.
+
+It has been pointed out by that distinguished scholar and
+gentleman-gypsy, Mr John Sampson, {68} that as the Horse Fair at
+Horncastle was held 12th–21st August, if Borrow took the horse there it
+could not have been in the manner described in _The Romany Rye_, where he
+is shown as spending some considerable time at the inn, if we may judge
+by the handsome cheque (£10) offered to him by the landlord as a bonus on
+account of his services.  Then there was the accident and the consequent
+lying-up at the house of the man who knew Chinese, but could not tell
+what o’clock it was.  To confirm Borrow’s itinerary all this must have
+been crowded into less than three weeks, fully a third of which Borrow
+spent in recovering from his fall.  This would mean that for less than a
+fortnight’s work, the innkeeper offered him ten pounds as a gratuity, in
+addition to the bargain he had made, which included the horse’s keep.
+
+Mr Sampson has supported his itinerary with several very important pieces
+of evidence.  Borrow states in _Lavengro_ that “a young moon gave a
+feeble light” as he mounted the coach that was to take him to Amesbury.
+The moon was in its first quarter on 24th May.  There actually was a
+great thunderstorm in the Willenhall district about the time that Borrow
+describes (18th July).  It is Mr Sampson also who has identified the fair
+to which Borrow went with the gypsies as that held at Tamworth on 26th
+July.
+
+Whatever else Borrow may have been doing immediately after leaving the
+dingle, he appears to have been much occupied in speculating as to the
+future.  Was he not “sadly misspending his time?”  He was forced to the
+conclusion that he had done nothing else throughout his life but misspend
+his time.  He was ambitious.  He chafed at his narrow life.  “Oh! what a
+vast deal may be done with intellect, courage, riches, accompanied by the
+desire of doing something great and good!” {69a} he exclaims, and his
+thoughts turned instinctively to the career of his old school-fellow,
+Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. {69b}  He was now, by his own confession, “a
+moody man, bearing on my face, as I well knew, the marks of my strivings
+and my strugglings, of what I had learnt and unlearnt.” {69c}  He
+recognised the possibilities that lay in every man, only awaiting the
+hour when they should be called forth.  He believed implicitly in the
+power of the will. {69d}  He possessed ambition and a fine workable
+theory of how success was to be obtained; but he lacked initiative.  He
+expected fortune to wait for him on the high-road, just as he knew
+adventures awaited him.  He would not go “across the country,” to use a
+phrase of the time common to postilions.  He was too independent, perhaps
+too sensitive of being patronised, to seek employment.  That he cared
+“for nothing in this world but old words and strange stories,” was an
+error into which his friend Mr Petulengro might well fall.  The
+mightiness of the man’s pride could be covered only by a cloak of assumed
+indifference.  He must be independent of the world, not only in material
+things, but in those intangible qualities of the spirit.  It was this
+that lost him Isopel Berners, whose love he awakened by a strong right
+arm and quenched with an Armenian noun.  Again, his independence stood in
+the way of his happiness.  A man is a king, he seemed to think, and the
+attribute of kings is their splendid isolation, their godlike solitude.
+If his Ego were lonely and crying out for sympathy, Borrow thought it a
+moment for solitude, in which to discipline his insurgent spirit.  The
+“Horrors” were the result of this self-repression.  When they became
+unbearable, his spirit broke down, the yearning for sympathy and
+affection overmastered him, and he stumbled to his little horse in the
+desolate dingle, and found comfort in the faithful creature’s whinny of
+sympathy and its affectionate licking of his hand.  The strong man clung
+to his dumb brute friend as a protection against the unknown horror—the
+screaming horror that had gripped him.
+
+One quality Borrow possessed in common with many other men of strange and
+taciturn personality.  He could always make friends when he chose.
+Ostlers, scholars, farmers, gypsies; it mattered not one jot to him what,
+or who they were.  He could earn their respect and obtain their
+good-will, if he wished to do so.  He demanded of men that they should
+have done things, or be capable of doing things.  They must know
+everything there was to be known about some one thing; and the ostler,
+than whom none could groom a horse better, was worthy of being ranked
+with the best man in the land.  He demanded of every man that he should
+justify his existence, and was logical in his attitude, save in the
+insignificant particular that he applied the same rule to himself only in
+theory.
+
+He was shrewd and a good judge of character, provided it were Protestant
+character, and could hold his own with a Jew or a Gypsy.  He was fully
+justified in his boast of being able to take “precious good care of”
+himself, and “drive a precious hard bargain”; yet these qualities were
+not to find a market until he was thirty years of age.
+
+Sometime during the autumn (1825) Borrow returned to Norwich, where he
+busied himself with literary affairs, among other things writing to the
+publishers of _Faustus_ about the bill that was shortly to fall due.  The
+fact of the book having been destroyed at both the Norwich libraries,
+gave him the idea that he might make some profit by selling copies of the
+suppressed volume.  Hence his offer to Simpkin & Marshall to take copies
+in lieu of money.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+SEPTEMBER 1825–DECEMBER 1832
+
+
+FROM the autumn of 1825 until the winter of 1832, when he obtained an
+introduction to the British & Foreign Bible Society, only fragmentary
+details of Borrow’s life exist.  He decided to keep sacred to himself the
+“Veiled Period,” as it came to be called.  In all probability it was a
+time of great hardship and mortification, and he wished it to be thought
+that the whole period was devoted to “a grand philological expedition,”
+or expeditions.  There is no doubt that some portion of the mysterious
+epoch was so spent, but not all.  Many of the adventures ascribed to
+characters in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ were, most probably,
+Borrow’s own experiences during that period of mystery and misfortune.
+Time after time he was implored to “lift up a corner of the curtain”; but
+he remained obdurate, and the seven years are in his life what the New
+Orleans days were in that of Walt Whitman.
+
+Soon after his return to Norwich, Borrow seems to have turned his
+attention to the manuscripts in the green box.  In the days of happy
+augury, before he had quarrelled with Sir Richard Phillips, there had
+appeared in _The Monthly Magazine_ the two following paragraphs:—
+
+    “We have heard and seen much of the legends and popular superstitions
+    of the North, but, in truth, all the exhibitions of these subjects
+    which have hitherto appeared in England have been translations from
+    the German.  Mr Olaus Borrow, who is familiar with the Northern
+    Languages, proposes, however, to present these curious reliques of
+    romantic antiquity directly from the Danish and Swedish, and two
+    elegant volumes of them now printing will appear in September.  They
+    are highly interesting in themselves, but more so as the basis of
+    most of the popular superstitions of England, when they were
+    introduced during the incursions and dominion of the Danes and
+    Norwegians.”  (1st September 1824.)
+
+    “We have to acknowledge the favour of a beautiful collection of
+    Danish songs and ballads, of which a specimen will be seen among the
+    poetical articles of the present month.  One, or more, of these very
+    interesting translations will appear in each succeeding number.”
+    (1st December 1824.)
+
+It seems to have been Borrow’s plan to run his ballads serially through
+_The Monthly Magazine_ and then to publish them in book-form.  His
+initial contribution to _The Monthly Magazine_ had appeared in October
+1823.  The first of the articles, entitled “Danish Traditions and
+Superstitions,” appeared August 1824, and continued, with the omission of
+one or two months, until December 1825, there being in all nine articles;
+but there was only one instalment of “Danish Songs and Ballads.” {73}
+
+Borrow was determined that these ballads, at least, should be published,
+and he set to work to prepare them for the press.  Allan Cunningham, with
+whom Borrow was acquainted, contributed, at his request, a metrical
+dedication.  The volume appeared on 10th May, in an edition of five
+hundred copies at ten shillings and sixpence each.  It appears that some
+two hundred copies were subscribed for, thus ensuring the cost of
+production.  The balance, or a large proportion of it, was consigned to
+John Taylor, the London publisher, who printed a new title-page and sold
+them at seven shillings each, probably the trade price for a half-guinea
+book.
+
+Cunningham wrote to Borrow advising him to send out freely copies for
+review, and with each a note saying that it was the translator’s ultimate
+intention to publish an English version of the whole _Kiæmpe Viser_ with
+notes; also to “scatter a few judiciously among literary men.”  It is
+doubtful if this sage counsel were acted upon; for there is no record of
+any review or announcement of the work.  This in itself was not
+altogether a misfortune; for Borrow did not prove himself an inspired
+translator of verse.  Apart from the two hundred copies sold to
+subscribers, the book was still-born.
+
+After the publication of _Romantic Ballads_, Borrow appears to have
+returned to London, not to his old lodging at Milman Street, possibly on
+account of the associations, but to 26 Bryanston Street, Portman Square,
+from which address he wrote to Benjamin Haydon the following note:—{74}
+
+    DEAR SIR,—
+
+    I should feel extremely obliged if you would allow me to sit to you
+    as soon as possible.  I am going to the South of France in little
+    better than a fortnight, and I would sooner lose a thousand pounds
+    than not have the honour of appearing in the picture.
+
+                               Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                            GEORGE BORROW.
+
+In his account of how he first became acquainted with Haydon, Borrow
+shows himself as anything but desirous of appearing in a picture.  When
+John tells of the artist’s wish to include him as one of the characters
+in a painting upon which he is engaged, Borrow replies: “I have no wish
+to appear on canvas.”  It is probable that in some way or other Haydon
+offended his sitter, who, regretting his acquiescence, antedated the
+episode and depicted himself as refusing the invitation.  Such a liberty
+with fact and date would be quite in accordance with Borrow’s
+autobiographical methods.
+
+Borrow wrote in _Lavengro_, “I have been a wanderer the greater part of
+my life; indeed I remember only two periods, and these by no means
+lengthy, when I was, strictly speaking, stationary.” {75a}  One of the
+“two periods” was obviously the eight years spent at Norwich, 1816–24,
+the other is probably the years spent at Oulton.  Thus the “Veiled
+Period” may be assumed to have been one of wandering.  The seven years
+are gloomy and mysterious, but not utterly dark.  There is a hint here, a
+suggestion there—a letter or a paragraph, that gives in a vague way some
+idea of what Borrow was doing, and where.  It seems comparatively safe to
+assume that after the publication of _Romantic Ballads_ he plunged into a
+life of roving and vagabondage, which, in all probability, was brought to
+an abrupt termination by either the loss or the exhaustion of his money.
+Anything beyond this is pure conjecture. {75b}
+
+After he became associated with the British & Foreign Bible Society, his
+movements are easily accounted for; but all we have to guide us as to
+what countries he had seen before 1833 is an occasional hint.  He
+casually admits having been in Italy, {75c} at Bayonne, {75d} Paris,
+{75e} Madrid, {75f} the south of France. {75g}  “I have visited most of
+the principal capitals of the world,” he writes in 1843; and again in the
+same year, “I have heard the ballad of Alonzo Guzman chanted in Danish,
+by a hind in the wilds of Jutland.” {76a}  “I have lived in different
+parts of the world, much amongst the Hebrew race, and I am well
+acquainted with their words and phraseology,” {76b} he writes; and on
+another occasion: “I have seen gypsies of various lands, Russian,
+Hungarian, and Turkish; and I have also seen the legitimate children of
+most countries of the world.” {76c}  An even more significant admission
+is that made when Colonel Elers Napier, whom Borrow met in Seville in
+1839, enquired where he had obtained his knowledge of Moultanee.  “Some
+years ago, in Moultan,” was the reply; then, as if regretting that he had
+confessed so much, showed by his manner that he intended to divulge
+nothing more. {76d}
+
+“Once, during my own wanderings in Italy,” Borrow writes, “I rested at
+nightfall by the side of a kiln, the air being piercingly cold; it was
+about four leagues from Genoa.” {76e}  Again, “Once in the south of
+France, when I was weary, hungry, and penniless, I observed one of these
+last patterans {76f} [a cross marked in the dust], and following the
+direction pointed out, arrived at the resting-place of ‘certain
+Bohemians,’ by whom I was received with kindness and hospitality, on the
+faith of no other word of recommendation than patteran.” {76g}  In a
+letter of introduction to the Rev. E. Whitely, of Oporto, the Rev. Andrew
+Brandram, of the Bible Society, wrote in 1835: “With Portugal he [Borrow]
+is already acquainted, and speaks the language.”  This statement is
+significant, for only during the “Veiled Period” could Borrow have
+visited Portugal.
+
+It may be argued that Borrow was merely posing as a great traveller, but
+the foregoing remarks are too casual, too much in the nature of asides,
+to be the utterances of a poseur.  A man seeking to impress himself upon
+the world as a great traveller would probably have been a little more
+definite.
+
+The only really reliable information as to Borrow’s movements after his
+arrival in London is contained in the note to Haydon.  In all probability
+he went to Paris, where possibly he met Vidocq, the master-rogue turned
+detective. {77a}  It has been suggested by Dr Knapp that he went to
+Paris, and thence on foot to Bayonne and Madrid, after which he tramped
+to Pamplona, where he gets into trouble, is imprisoned, and is released
+on condition that he leave the country; he proceeds towards Marseilles
+and Genoa, where he takes ship and is landed safely in London.  The data,
+however, upon which this itinerary is constructed are too frail to be
+convincing.  There is every probability that he roamed about the
+Continent and met with adventures—he was a man to whom adventures
+gravitated quite naturally—but the fact of his saying that he had been
+imprisoned on three occasions, and there being only two instances on
+record at the time, cannot in itself be considered as conclusive evidence
+of his having been arrested at Pamplona. {77b}
+
+In the spring of 1827 Borrow was unquestionably at Norwich, for he saw
+the famous trotting stallion Marshland Shales on the Castle Hill (12th
+April), and did for that grand horse “what I would neither do for earl or
+baron, doffed my hat.” {78}  Borrow apparently remained with his mother
+for some months, to judge from certain entries (29th September to 19th
+November) in his hand that appear in her account books.
+
+In December 1829 he was back again in London at 77 Great Russell Street,
+W.C.  He was as usual eager to obtain some sort of work.  He wrote to
+“the Committee of the Honourable and Praiseworthy Association, known by
+the name of the Highland Society . . . a body animate with patriotism,
+which, guided by philosophy, produces the noblest results, and many of
+whose members stand amongst the very eminent in the various departments
+of knowledge.”
+
+The project itself was that of translating into English “the best and
+most approved poetry of the Ancient and Modern Scoto-Gaelic Bards, with
+such notes on the usages and superstitions therein alluded to, as will
+enable the English reader to form a clear and correct idea of the
+originals.”  In the course of a rather ornate letter, Borrow offers
+himself as the translator and compiler of such a work as he suggests,
+avowing his willingness to accept whatsoever remuneration might be
+thought adequate compensation for his expenditure of time.  Furthermore,
+he undertakes to complete the work within a period of two years.
+
+On 7th December he wrote to Dr Bowring, recently returned from Denmark:—
+
+    “Lest I should intrude upon you when you are busy, I write to enquire
+    when you will be unoccupied.  I wish to show you my translation of
+    The Death of Balder, Ewald’s most celebrated production, which, if
+    you approve of, you will perhaps render me some assistance in
+    bringing forth, for I don’t know many publishers.  I think this will
+    be a proper time to introduce it to the British public, as your
+    account of Danish literature will doubtless cause a sensation.” {79}
+
+On 29th December he wrote again:—
+
+    “When I had last the pleasure of being at yours, you mentioned that
+    we might at some future period unite our strength in composing a kind
+    of Danish Anthology.  Suppose we bring forward at once the first
+    volume of the Danish Anthology, which should contain the heroic
+    supernatural songs of the _K_[_iæmpe_] _V_[_iser_].”
+
+It was suggested that there should be four volumes in all, and the first,
+with an introduction that Borrow expressed himself as not ashamed of, was
+ready and “might appear instanter, with no further trouble to yourself
+than writing, if you should think fit, a page or two of introductory
+matter.”  Dr Bowring replied by return of post that he thought that no
+more than two volumes could be ventured on, and Borrow acquiesced,
+writing: “The sooner the work is advertised the better, _for I am
+terribly afraid of being forestalled in the Kiæmpe Viser by some of those
+Scotch blackguards_, who affect to translate from all languages, of which
+they are fully as ignorant as Lockhart is of Spanish.”
+
+Borrow was full of enthusiasm for the project, and repeated that the
+first volume was ready, adding: “If we unite our strength in the second,
+I think we can produce something worthy of fame, for we shall have plenty
+of matter to employ talent upon.”  A later letter, which was written from
+7 Museum Street (8th January), told how he had “been obliged to decamp
+from Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution having been sent
+into the house, and I thought myself happy in escaping with my things.”
+
+He drew up a prospectus, endeavouring “to assume a Danish style,” which
+he submitted to his collaborator, begging him to “alter . . . whatever
+false logic has crept into it, find a remedy for its incoherencies, and
+render it fit for its intended purpose.  I have had for the two last days
+a rising headache which has almost prevented me doing anything.”
+
+It would appear that Dr Bowring did not altogether approve of the “Danish
+style,” for on 14th January Borrow wrote, “I approve of the prospectus in
+every respect; it is business-like, and there is nothing flashy in it.  I
+do not wish to suggest one alteration . . .  When you see the foreign
+Editor,” he continues, “I should feel much obliged if you would speak to
+him about my reviewing Tegner, and enquire whether a _good_ article on
+Welsh poetry would be received.  I have the advantage of not being a
+Welshman.  I would speak the truth, and would give translations of some
+of the best Welsh poetry; and I really believe that my translations would
+not be the worst that have been made from the Welsh tongue.”
+
+The prospectus, which appeared in several publications ran as follows:—
+
+    “Dr Bowring and Mr George Borrow are about to publish, dedicated to
+    the King of Denmark, by His Majesy’s permission, THE SONGS OF
+    SCANDINAVIA, in 2 vols. 8vo, containing a Selection of the most
+    interesting of the Historical and Romantic Ballads of North-Western
+    Europe, with Specimens of the Danish and Norwegian Poets down to the
+    present day.
+
+    Price to Subscribers, £1, 1s.—to Non-Subscribers £1, 5s.
+
+    The First Volume will be devoted to Ancient Popular Poetry; the
+    Second will give the choicest productions of the Modern School,
+    beginning with Tullin.” {81}
+
+_The Songs of Scandinavia_ now became to Borrow what the _Celebrated
+Trials_ had been four years previously, a source of constant toil.  On
+one occasion he writes to Dr Bowring telling him that he has just
+translated an ode “as I breakfasted.”  What Borrow lived on at this
+period it is impossible to say.  It may be assumed that Mrs Borrow did
+not keep him, for, apart from the slender proportions of the income of
+the mother, the unconquerable independence of the son must be considered;
+and Borrow loved his mother too tenderly to allow her to deprive herself
+of luxuries even to keep him.  He borrowed money from her at various
+times; but he subsequently faithfully repaid her.  Even John was puzzled.
+“You never tell me what you are doing,” he writes to his brother at the
+end of 1832; “you can’t be living on nothing.”
+
+Borrow appears to have kept Dr Bowring well occupied with suggestions as
+to how that good-natured man might assist him.  Although he is to see him
+on the morrow, he writes on the evening of 21st May regarding another
+idea that has just struck him:
+
+    “As at present no doubt seems to be entertained of Prince Leopold’s
+    accepting the sovereignty of Greece, would you have any objection to
+    write to him concerning me?  I should be very happy to go to Greece
+    in his service.  I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic capacity,
+    and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such situations have been
+    long since filled up; I wish to go in a military one, for which I am
+    qualified by birth and early habits.  You might inform the Prince
+    that I have been for years on the Commander-in-Chiefs list for a
+    commission, but that I have not had sufficient interest to procure an
+    appointment.  One of my reasons for wishing to reside in Greece is,
+    that the mines of Eastern literature would be accessible to me.  I
+    should soon become an adept in Turkish, and would weave and transmit
+    to you such an anthology as would gladden your very heart.  As for
+    the _Songs of Scandinavia_, all the ballads would be ready before
+    departure, and as I should have books, I would in a few months send
+    you translations of the modern Lyric Poetry.  I hope this letter will
+    not displease you.  I do not write it from _flightiness_, but from
+    thoughtfulness.  I am uneasy to find myself at four and twenty
+    drifting on the sea of the world, and likely to continue so.”
+
+On 22nd May Dr Bowring introduced Borrow to Dr Grundtvig, the Danish
+poet, who required some transcriptions done.  On 7th June, Borrow wrote
+to Dr Bowring:
+
+    “I have looked over Mr Gruntvig’s (_sic_) manuscript.  It is a very
+    long affair, and the language is Norman Saxon.  £40 would not be an
+    extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told him at the
+    Museum.  However, as I am doing nothing particular at present, and as
+    I might learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for £20.
+    He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then, if you please, you
+    may recommend me.  The character closely resembles the ancient Irish,
+    so I think you can answer for my competency.”
+
+At this time there were a hundred schemes seething through Borrow’s eager
+brain.  Hearing that “an order has been issued for the making a
+transcript of the celebrated Anglo-Saxon Codex of Exeter, for the use of
+the British Museum,” he applied to some unknown correspondent for his
+interest and help to obtain the appointment as transcriber.  The work,
+however, was carried out by a Museum official.
+
+Another project appears to have been to obtain a post at the British
+Museum.  On 9th March 1830 he had written to Dr Bowring:
+
+    “I have thought over the Museum matter, which we were talking about
+    last night, and it appears to me that it would be the very thing for
+    me, provided that it could be accomplished.  I should feel obliged if
+    you would deliberate upon the best mode of proceeding, so that when I
+    see you again I may have the benefit of your advice.”
+
+In reply Dr Bowring commended the scheme, and promised to assist “by
+every sort of counsel and exertion.  But it would injure you,” he
+proceeds, “if I were to take the initiative.  [The Gibraltar house of
+Bowring & Murdock had recently failed.]  Quietly make yourself master of
+that department of the Museum.  We must then think of how best to get at
+the Council.  If by any management they can be induced to ask my opinion,
+I will give you a character which shall take you to the top of Hecla
+itself.  You have claims, strong ones, and I should rejoice to see you
+_niched_ in the British Museum.”
+
+Again failure!  Disappointment seemed to be dogging Borrow’s footsteps at
+this period.  For years past he had been seeking some sort of occupation,
+into which he could throw all that energy and determination of character
+that he possessed.  He was earnest and able, and he knew that he only
+required an opportunity of showing to the world what manner of man he
+was.  He seemed doomed to meet everywhere with discouragement; for no one
+wanted him, just as no one wanted his translations of the glorious Ab
+Gwilym.  He appeared before the world as a failure, which probably
+troubled him very little; but there was another aspect of the case that
+was in his eyes, “the most heartbreaking of everything, the strange, the
+disadvantageous light in which I am aware that I must frequently have
+appeared to those whom I most love and honour.” {83}
+
+On 14th September he wrote to Dr Bowring:
+
+    “I am going to Norwich for some short time, as I am very unwell and
+    hope that cold bathing in October and November may prove of service
+    to me.  My complaints are, I believe, the offspring of ennui and
+    unsettled prospects.  I have thoughts of attempting to get into the
+    French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve under Clausel
+    in the next Bedouin campaign.  I shall leave London next Sunday and
+    will call some evening to take my leave; I cannot come in the
+    morning, as early rising kills me.”
+
+A year later he writes again to Dr Bowring, who once more has been
+exerting himself on his friend’s behalf:
+
+                                                    “WILLOW LANE, NORWICH,
+                                                  11_th_ _September_ 1831.
+
+    MY DEAR SIR,—
+
+    I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd
+    inst., and though you have not been successful in your application to
+    the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full well that you did
+    your utmost, and am only sorry that at my instigation you attempted
+    an impossibility.
+
+    The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion
+    of the great Cyrus who gives this advice to his captains.  ‘Take no
+    heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as
+    ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but
+    those of merit.’  The Belgians will only have such recruits as are
+    born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in which the
+    native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign in the
+    last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for their
+    determination?  It is rather singular, however, that resolved as they
+    are to be served only by themselves they should have sent for 5000
+    Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have
+    generally been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, but
+    who, if they had fair play given them, would long ere this time have
+    replanted the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the
+    Belgians what they deserve to be, hewers of wood and drawers of
+    water.
+
+    And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of
+    your letter; you ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in
+    the British service, because in that case you would speak to the
+    Secretary at War about me.  I must inform you therefore that my name
+    has been for several years upon the list for the purchase of a
+    commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to procure
+    an appointment.  If I can do nothing better I shall be very glad to
+    purchase; but I will pause two or three months before I call upon you
+    to fulfil your kind promise.  It is believed that the Militia will be
+    embodied in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and
+    provided I can obtain a commission in one of them, and they are kept
+    in service, it would be better than spending £500 about one in the
+    line.  I am acquainted with the Colonels of the two Norfolk
+    regiments, and I daresay that neither of them would have any
+    objection to receive me.  If they are not embodied I will most
+    certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that
+    being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages,
+    I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern Colonies.
+    I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I
+    could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity; there
+    is much talk at present about translating European books into the two
+    great languages, the Arabic and Persian; now I believe that with my
+    enthusiasm for these tongues I could, if resident in the East, become
+    in a year or two better acquainted with them than any European has
+    been yet, and more capable of executing such a task.  Bear this in
+    mind, and if before you hear from me again you should have any
+    opportunity to recommend me as a proper person to fill any civil
+    situation in those countries or to attend any expedition thither, I
+    pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever give
+    you reason to repent it.
+
+    I remain,
+
+                                 My Dear Sir,
+                   Your most obliged and obedient Servant,
+
+                                                            GEORGE BORROW.
+
+    _P.S._—Present my best remembrances to Mrs B. and to Edgar, and tell
+    them that they will both be starved.  There is now a report in the
+    street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within twenty miles of
+    this place.  I have lately been wandering about Norfolk, and I am
+    sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state
+    of excitement; I have repeatedly heard men and women in the
+    harvest-field swear that not a grain of the corn they were cutting
+    should be eaten, and that they would as lieve be hanged as live.  I
+    am afraid all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.”
+
+It was pride that prompted Borrow to ask Dr Bowring to stay his hand for
+the moment about a commission.  There was no reasonable possibility of
+his being able to raise £500.  Even if his mother had possessed it, which
+she did not, he would not have drained her resources of so large an
+amount.  His subsequent attitude towards the Belgians was characteristic
+of him.  To his acutely sensitive perceptions, failure to obtain an
+appointment he sought was a rebuff, and his whole nature rose up against
+what, at the moment, appeared to be an intolerable slight.
+
+Nothing came of the project of collaboration between Bowring and Borrow
+beyond an article on Danish and Norwegian literature that appeared in
+_The Foreign Quarterly Review_ (June 1830), in which Borrow supplied
+translations of the sixteen poems illustrating Bowring’s text.  In all
+probability the response to the prospectus was deemed inadequate, and
+Bowring did not wish to face a certain financial loss.
+
+From Borrow’s own letters there is no question that Dr Bowring was acting
+towards him in a most friendly manner, and really endeavouring to assist
+him to obtain some sort of employment.  It may be, as has been said, and
+as seems extremely probable, that Bowring used his “facility in acquiring
+and translating tongues deliberately as a ladder to an administrative
+post abroad,” {86a} but if Borrow “put a wrong construction upon his
+sympathy” and was led into “a veritable _cul-de-sac_ of literature,”
+{86b} it was no fault of Bowring’s.
+
+Borrow’s relations with Dr Bowring continued to be most cordial for many
+years, as his letters show.  “Pray excuse me for troubling you with these
+lines,” he writes years later; “I write to you, as usual, for assistance
+in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none which it may be in
+your power to afford, more especially when by so doing you will perhaps
+be promoting the happiness of our fellow-creatures.”  This is very
+significant as indicating the nature of the relations between the two
+men.
+
+Borrow was to experience yet another disappointment.  A Welsh bookseller,
+living in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, commissioned him to translate
+into English Elis Wyn’s _The Sleeping Bard_, a book printed originally in
+1703.  The bookseller foresaw for the volume a large sale, not only in
+England but in Wales; but “on the eve of committing it to the press,
+however, the Cambrian-Briton felt his small heart give way within him.
+‘Were I to print it,’ said he, ‘I should be ruined; the terrible
+descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the
+English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted
+by Sir James Scarlett . . . Myn Diawl!  I had no idea, till I had read
+him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.’” {87a}
+
+With this Borrow had to be content and retire from the presence of the
+little bookseller, who told him he was “much obliged . . . for the
+trouble you have given yourself on my account,” {87b} and his bundle of
+manuscript, containing nearly three thousand lines, the work probably of
+some months, was to be put aside for thirty years before eventually
+appearing in a limited edition.
+
+It cannot be determined with exactness when Borrow relinquished the
+unequal struggle against adverse circumstances in London.  He had met
+with sufficient discouragement to dishearten him from further effort.
+Perhaps his greatest misfortune was his disinclination to make friends
+with anybody save vagabonds.  He could attract and earn the friendship of
+an apple-woman, thimble-riggers, tramps, thieves, gypsies, in short with
+any vagrant he chose to speak to; but his hatred of gentility was a great
+and grave obstacle in the way of his material advancement.  His brother
+John seemed to recognise this; for in 1831 he wrote, “I am convinced that
+_your want of success in life_ is more owing to your being unlike other
+people than to any other cause.”
+
+It would appear that, finding nothing to do in London, Borrow once more
+became a wanderer.  He was in London in March; but on 27th, 28th, and
+29th July 1830 he was unquestionably in Paris.  Writing about the
+Revolution of La Granja (August 1836) and of the energy, courage and
+activity of the war correspondents, he says:
+
+    “I saw them [the war correspondents] during the three days at Paris,
+    mingled with _canaille_ and _gamins_ behind the barriers, whilst the
+    _mitraille_ was flying in all directions, and the desperate
+    cuirassiers were dashing their fierce horses against these seemingly
+    feeble bulwarks.  There stood they, dotting down their observations
+    in their pocket-books as unconcernedly as if reporting the
+    proceedings of a reform meeting in Covent Garden or Finsbury Square.”
+    {88a}
+
+This can have reference only to the “Three Glorious Days” of Revolution,
+27th to 29th July 1830, during which Charles X. lost, and Louis-Philippe
+gained, a throne.  He returned to Norwich sometime during the autumn of
+1830. {88b}  In November he was entering upon his epistolary duel with
+the Army Pay Office in connection with John’s half-pay as a lieutenant in
+the West Norfolk Militia.
+
+In 1826 John had gone to Mexico, then looked upon as a land of promise
+for young Englishmen, who might expect to find fortunes in its silver
+mines.  Allday, brother of Roger Kerrison, was there, and John Borrow
+determined to join him.  Obtaining a year’s leave of absence from his
+colonel, together with permission to apply for an extension, he entered
+the service of the Real del Monte Company, receiving a salary of three
+hundred pounds a year.  He arranged that his mother should have his
+half-pay, and it was in connection with this that George entered upon a
+correspondence with the Army Pay Office that was to extend over a period
+of fifteen months.
+
+Originally John had arranged for the amounts to be remitted to Mexico,
+and he sent them back again to his mother.  This involved heavy losses in
+connection with the bills of exchange, and wishing to avoid this tax,
+John sent to his brother an official copy of a Mexican Power of Attorney,
+which George strove to persuade the Army Pay Office was the original.
+
+Tact was unfortunately not one of George Borrow’s acquirements at this
+period, and in this correspondence he adopted an attitude that must have
+seriously prejudiced his case.  “I am a solicitor myself, Sir,” he
+states, and proceeds to threaten to bring the matter before Parliament.
+He writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury “as a member of the same
+honourable profession to which I was myself bred up,” and demands whether
+he has not law, etc., on his side.  The outcome of the correspondence was
+that the disembodied allowance was refused on the plea “that Lieutenant
+Borrow having been absent without Leave from the Training of the West
+Norfolk Militia has, under the provisions of the 12th Section of the
+Militia Pay and Clothing Act, forfeited his Allowance.”  In consequence,
+payment was made only for the amount due from 25th June 1829 to 24th
+December 1830.  The whole tone of Borrow’s letters was unfortunate for
+the cause he pleaded.  He wrote to the Secretary of State for War as he
+might have written to the little Welsh bookseller with “the small heart.”
+He was indignant at what he conceived to be an injustice, and was unable
+to dissemble his anger.
+
+George had thought of joining his brother, but had not received any very
+marked encouragement to do so.  John despised Mexican methods.  On one
+occasion he writes apropos of George’s suggestion of the army, “If you
+can raise the pewter, come out here rather than that, and _rob_.”  One
+sage thing at least John is to be credited with, when he wrote to his
+brother, “Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec.”  It would have been
+for George Borrow.
+
+Among the papers left at Borrow’s death was a fragment of a political
+article in dispraise of the Radicals.  The editorial “We” suggests that
+Borrow might possibly have been engaged in political journalism.  The
+statement made by him that he “frequently spoke up for Wellington” {90}
+may or may not have had reference to contributions to the press.  The
+fragment itself proves nothing.  Many would-be journalists write
+“leaders” that never see the case-room.
+
+It is useless to speculate further regarding the period that Borrow
+himself elected to veil from the eyes, not only of his contemporaries,
+but those of another generation.  Men who have overcome adverse
+conditions and achieved fame are not as a rule averse from publishing, or
+at least allowing to be known, the difficulties that they had to contend
+with.  Borrow was in no sense of the word an ordinary man.  He
+unquestionably suffered acutely during the years of failure, when it
+seemed likely that his life was to be wasted, barren of anything else
+save the acquirement of a score or more languages; keys that could open
+literary storehouses that nobody wanted to explore, to the very existence
+of which, in fact, the public was frigidly indifferent.
+
+“Poor George . . .  I wish he was making money . . . He works hard and
+remains poor,” is the comment of his brother John, written in the autumn
+of 1830.  To no small degree Borrow was responsible for his own failure,
+or perhaps it would be more just to say that he had been denied many of
+the attributes that make for success.  His independence was aggressive,
+and it offended people.  Even with the Welsh Preacher and his wife he
+refused to unbend.
+
+“‘What a disposition!’” Winifred had exclaimed, holding up her hands;
+“‘and this is pride, genuine pride—that feeling which the world agrees to
+call so noble.  Oh, how mean a thing is pride! never before did I see all
+the meanness of what is called pride!’” {91a}
+
+This pride, magnificent as the loneliness of kings, and about as
+unproductive of a sympathetic view of life, always constituted a barrier
+in the way of Borrow’s success.  There were innumerable other obstacles:
+his choice of friends, his fierce denunciatory hatred of gentility,
+together with humbug, which he always seemed to confuse with it, the
+attacks of the “Horrors,” his grave bearing, which no laugh ever
+disturbed, and, above all, his uncompromising hostility to the things
+that the world chose to consider excellent.  The world in return could
+make nothing of a man who was a mass of moods and sensibilities, strange
+tastes and pursuits.  It is not remarkable that he should fail to make
+the stir that he had hoped to make.
+
+With the unerring instinct of a hypersensitive nature, he knew his merit,
+his honesty, his capacity—knew that he possessed one thing that
+eventually commands success, which “through life has ever been of
+incalculable utility to me, and has not unfrequently supplied the place
+of friends, money, and many other things of almost equal importance—iron
+perseverance, without which all the advantages of time and circumstance
+are of very little avail in any undertaking.” {91b}  It was this dogged
+determination that was to carry him through the most critical period of
+his life, enable him to earn the approval of those in whose interests he
+worked, and eventually achieve fame and an unassailable place in English
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+JANUARY–JULY 1833
+
+
+IT is not a little curious that no one should have thought of putting
+Borrow’s undoubted gifts as a linguist to some practical use.  He himself
+had frequently cast his eyes in the direction of a political appointment
+abroad.  It remained, however, for the Rev. Francis Cunningham, {92}
+vicar of Lowestoft, in Suffolk, to see in this young man against whom the
+curse of Babel was inoperative, a sword that, in the hands of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society, might be wielded with considerable effect
+against the heathen.
+
+Borrow appears to have become acquainted with the Rev. Francis Cunningham
+through the Skeppers of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft, of whom it is
+necessary to give some account.  Edmund Skepper had married Anne Breame
+of Beetley, who, on the death of her father, came into £9000.  She and
+her husband purchased the Oulton Hall estate, upon which Anne Skepper
+seems to have been given a five per cent. mortgage.  There were two
+children of the marriage, Breame (born 1794) and Mary (born 1796).  The
+boy inherited the estate, and the girl the mortgage, worth about £450 per
+annum.  Mary married Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Navy (26th July
+1817), who within eight months died of consumption.  Two months later Mrs
+Clarke gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Henrietta Mary.  Mrs
+Clarke became acquainted with the Cunninghams while they were at
+Pakefield, and there is every reason to believe that she was instrumental
+in introducing Borrow to Cunningham.  It is most probable that they met
+during Borrow’s visit at Oulton Hall in November 1832.
+
+The Rev. Francis Cunningham appears to have been impressed by Borrow’s
+talent for languages, and fully alive to his value to an institution such
+as the Bible Society, of which he, Cunningham, was an active member.  He
+accordingly addressed {93a} to the secretary, the Rev. Andrew Brandram,
+the following letter:
+
+                                                       LOWESTOFT VICARAGE,
+                                                       27_th_ _Dec._ 1832.
+
+    MY DEAR FRIEND,—
+
+    A young farmer in this neighbourhood has introduced me to-day to a
+    person of whom I have long heard, who appears to me to promise so
+    much that I am induced to offer him to you as a successor of Platt
+    and Greenfield. {93b}  He is a person without University education,
+    but who has read the Bible in thirteen languages.  He is independent
+    in circumstances, of no very defined denomination of Christians, but
+    I think of certain Christian principle.  I shall make more enquiry
+    about him and see him again.  Next week I propose to meet him in
+    London, and I could wish that you should see him, and, if you please,
+    take him under your charge for a few days.  He is of the middle order
+    in Society, and a very produceable person.
+
+    I intend to be in town on Tuesday morning to go to the Socy. P. C. K.
+    On Wednesday is Dr Wilson’s meeting at Islington.  He may be in town
+    on Monday evening, and will attend to any appointment.
+
+    Will you write me word by return of post, and believe me ever
+
+    Most truly and affectionately yours,
+
+                                                            F. CUNNINGHAM.
+
+The recommendation was well-timed, for the Bible Society at that
+particular moment required such a man as Borrow for a Manchu-Tartar
+project it had in view.  In 1821 the Bible Society had commissioned
+Stepán Vasiliévitch Lipovzoff, {94a} of St Petersburg, to translate the
+New Testament into Manchu, the court and diplomatic language of China.  A
+year later, an edition of 550 copies of the First Gospel was printed from
+type specially cast for the undertaking.  A hundred copies were
+despatched to headquarters in London, and the remainder, together with
+the type, placed with the Society’s bankers at St Petersburg, {94b} until
+the time should arrive for the distribution of the books.
+
+Three years after (1824), the overflowing Neva flooded the cellars in
+which the books were stored, causing their irretrievable ruin, and doing
+serious damage to the type.  This misfortune appeared temporarily to
+discourage the authorities at home, although Mr Lipovzoff was permitted
+to proceed with the work of translation, which he completed in two years
+from the date of the inundation.
+
+In 1832 the Rev. Wm. Swann, of the London Missionary Society, discovered
+in the famous library of Baron Schilling de Canstadt at St Petersburg the
+manuscript of a Manchu translation of “the principal part of the Old
+Testament,” and two books of the New.  The discovery was considered to be
+so important that Mr Swann decided to delay his departure for his post in
+Siberia and make a transcription, which he did.  The Manchu translation
+was the work of Father Puerot, “originally a Jesuit emissary at Pekin
+[who] passed the latter years of his life in the service of the Russian
+Mission in the capacity of physician.” {95}
+
+The immediate outcome of Mr Cunningham’s letter was an interview between
+Borrow and the Bible Society’s officials.  With characteristic energy and
+determination, Borrow trudged up to London, covering the 112 miles on
+foot in 27.5 hours.  His expenses by the way amounted to
+fivepence-halfpenny for the purchase of a roll, two apples, a pint of ale
+and a glass of milk.  On reaching London he proceeded direct to the Bible
+Society’s offices in Earl Street, in spite of the early hour, and there
+awaited the arrival of the Rev. Andrew Brandram (Secretary), and the Rev.
+Joseph Jowett (Literary Superintendent).
+
+The story of Borrow’s arrival at Earl Street was subsequently told, by
+one of the secretaries at a provincial meeting in connection with the
+Bible Society.  The Rev. Wentworth Webster writes:
+
+    “I was little more than a boy when I first heard George Borrow spoken
+    of at the annual dinner given by a connection of my family to the
+    deputation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in a country town
+    near London . . . I can distinctly recall one of the secretaries
+    telling of his first meeting with Borrow, whom he found waiting at
+    the offices of the Society one morning;—how puzzled he was by his
+    appearance; how, after he had read his letter of introduction, he
+    wished to while away the time until a brother secretary should
+    arrive, and did not want to say anything to commit himself to such a
+    strange applicant; so he began by politely hoping that Borrow had
+    slept well.  ‘I am not aware that I fell asleep on the road,’ was the
+    reply; I have walked from Norwich to London.’” {96a}
+
+It would appear that this conference took place on Friday, 4th January;
+for on that day there is an entry in the records of the Society of the
+loan to George Borrow of several books from the Society’s library.  On
+this and subsequent occasions, Borrow was examined as to his
+capabilities, the result appearing to be quite satisfactory.  To judge
+from the books lent to Borrow, one of the subjects would seem to have
+been Arabic.
+
+Borrow appeared before the Committee on 14th January, with the result
+that they seemed to be “quite satisfied with me and my philological
+capabilities,” which they judged of from the report given by the
+Secretary and his colleague.  A more material sign of approval was found
+in the undertaking to defray “the expenses of my journey to and from
+London, and also of my residence in that city, in the most handsome
+manner.” {96b}  That is to say, the Committee voted him the sum of ten
+pounds.
+
+Borrow had been formally asked if he were prepared to learn Manchu
+sufficiently well to edit, or translate, into that language such portions
+of the Scriptures as the Society might decide to issue, provided means of
+acquiring the language were put within his reach, and employment should
+follow as soon as he showed himself proficient.  To this Borrow had
+willingly agreed.  At this period, the idea appears to have been to
+execute the work in London.
+
+Shortly after appearing before the Committee Borrow returned to Norwich,
+this time by coach, with several books in the Manchu-Tartar dialect,
+including the Gospel of St Matthew and Amyot’s Manchu-French Dictionary.
+His instructions were to learn the language and come up for examination
+in six months’ time.  Possibly the time limit was suggested by Borrow
+himself, for he had said that he believed he could master any tongue in a
+few months.
+
+After two or three weeks of incessant study of a language that Amyot says
+“one may acquire in five or six years,” Borrow, who, it should be
+remembered, possessed no grammar of the tongue, wrote to Mr Jowett:
+
+    “It is, then, your opinion that, from the lack of anything in the
+    form of Grammar, I have scarcely made any progress towards the
+    attainment of Manchu: {97} perhaps you will not be perfectly
+    miserable at being informed that you were never more mistaken in your
+    life.  I can already, with the assistance of Amyot, translate Manchu
+    with no great difficulty, and am perfectly qualified to write a
+    critique on the version of St Matthew’s Gospel, which I brought with
+    me into the country . . . I will now conclude by beseeching you to
+    send me, as soon as possible, _whatever can serve to enlighten me in
+    respect to Manchu Grammar_, for, had I a Grammar, I should in a
+    month’s time be able to send a Manchu translation of _Jonah_.”
+
+The racy style of Borrow’s letters must have been something of a
+revelation to the Bible Society’s officers, who seem to have shown great
+tact and consideration in dealing with their self-confident correspondent
+There is something magnificent in the letters that Borrow wrote about
+this period; their directness and virility, their courage and
+determination suggest, not a man who up to the thirtieth year of his age
+has been a conspicuous failure, as the world gauges failure; but one who
+had grown confident through many victories and is merely proceeding from
+one success to another.
+
+Whilst in London, Borrow had discussed with Mr Brandram “the Gypsies and
+the profound darkness as to religion and morality that envolved them.”
+{98}  The Secretary told him of the Southampton Committee for the
+Amelioration of the Condition of the Gypsies that had recently been
+formed by the Rev. James Crabbe for the express purpose of enlightening
+and spreading the Gospel among the Romanys.  Furthermore, Mr Brandram, on
+hearing of Borrow’s interest in, and knowledge of, the gypsies, had
+requested him immediately on his return to Norwich to draw up a
+vocabulary of Mr Petulengro’s language, during such time as he might have
+free from his other studies.  Borrow showed himself, as usual, prolific
+of suggestions, all of which involved him in additional labour.  He
+enquired through Mr Jowett if Mr Brandram would write about him to the
+Southampton Committee.  He wished to translate into the gypsy tongue the
+Gospel of St John, “which I could easily do,” he tells Mr Jowett, “with
+the assistance of one or two of the old people, but then they must be
+paid, for the gypsies are more mercenary than the Jews.”
+
+He also informed Mr Jowett that he had a brother in Mexico, subsequently
+assuring him that he had no doubt of John’s willingness to assist the
+Society in “flinging the rays of scriptural light o’er that most
+benighted and miserable region.”  He sent to his brother, at Mr Jowett’s
+request, first a sheet, and afterwards a complete copy, of the Gospel of
+St Luke translated into Nahuatl, the prevailing dialect of the Mexican
+Indians, by Mariano Paz y Sanchez. {99a}
+
+In addition to learning Manchu, Borrow is credited with correcting and
+passing for press the Nahuatl version of St. Luke. {99b}  The Bible
+Society’s records, however, point to the fact that this work was carried
+through by John Hattersley, who later was to come up with Borrow for
+examination in Manchu.  In the light of this, the following passage from
+one of John’s letters is puzzling in the extreme:—“I have just received
+your letter of the 16th of February, together with your translation of St
+Luke.  I am glad you have got the job, but I must say that the Bible
+Society are just throwing away their time.”
+
+He goes on to explain how many dialects there are in Mexico.  “The job”
+can only refer to the Mexican translation, as, at that period, Borrow was
+merely studying Manchu.  He had received no appointment from the Society.
+It may have happened that Borrow expressed a wish to look through the
+proofs and that a set was sent to him for this purpose; but there seems
+no doubt that the actual official responsibility for the work rested with
+Hattersley.  A very important point in support of this view is that there
+is no record of Borrow being paid anything in connection with this
+Mexican translation, beyond the amount of fifteen shillings and
+fivepence, which he had expended in postage on the advance sheet and
+complete copy sent to John.  To judge from the subsequent financial
+arrangements between the Society and its agent, it is very improbable
+that he was given work to do without payment.
+
+After seven weeks’ study Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett:
+
+    “I am advancing at full gallop, and . . . able to translate with
+    pleasure and facility the specimens of the best authors who have
+    written in the language contained in the compilation of the Klaproth.
+    But I confess that the want of a Grammar has been, particularly in
+    the beginning of my course, a great clog to my speed, and I have
+    little doubt that had I been furnished with one I should have
+    attained my present knowledge of Manchu in half the time.  I was
+    determined, however, not to be discouraged, and, not having a hatchet
+    at hand to cut down the tree with, to attack it with my knife; and I
+    would advise every one to make the most of the tools which happen to
+    be in his possession until he can procure better ones, and it is not
+    improbable that by the time the good tools arrive he will find he has
+    not much need of them, having almost accomplished his work.” {100a}
+
+There is a hint of the difficulties he was experiencing in his confession
+that tools would still be of service to him, in particular “this same
+tripartite Grammar which Mr Brandram is hunting for, my ideas respecting
+Manchu construction being still very vague and wandering.” {100b}  There
+is also a request for “the original grammatical work of Amyot, printed in
+the _Memoires_.” {100c}
+
+Borrow had been studying Manchu for seven weeks when, feeling that his
+glowing report of the progress he was making might be regarded as “a
+piece of exaggeration and vain boasting,” he enclosed a specimen
+translation from Manchu into English.  This he accompanied with an
+assurance that, if required, he could at that moment edit any book
+printed in the Manchu dialect.  About this period Mr Jowett and his
+colleagues passed from one sensation to another.  The calm confidence of
+this astonishing man was more than justified by his performance.  His
+attitude towards life was strange to Earl Street.
+
+Nineteen weeks from the date of commencing his study of Manchu, Borrow
+wrote again to Mr Jowett with unmistakable triumph: “I have mastered
+Manchu, and I should feel obliged by your informing the Committee of the
+fact, and also my excellent friend Mr Brandram.”  He proceeds to indicate
+some of the many difficulties with which he has had to contend, the
+absolute difference of Manchu from all the other languages that he has
+studied, with the single exception of Turkish; the number of its
+idiomatic phrases, which must of necessity be learnt off by heart; the
+little assistance he has had in the nature of books.  Finally he
+acknowledges “the assistance of God,” and asks “to be regularly employed,
+for though I am not in want, my affairs are not in a very flourishing
+condition.”
+
+The response to this letter was an invitation to proceed to London to
+undergo an examination.  His competitor was John Hattersley, upon whom,
+in the event of Borrow’s failure, would in all probability have devolved
+the duty of assisting Mr Lipovzoff.  A Manchu hymn, a pæan to the great
+Fûtsa, was the test.  Each candidate prepared a translation, which was
+handed to the examiners, who in turn were to report to the Sub-Committee.
+Borrow returned to Norwich to await the result.  This was most probably
+towards the end of June. {101}
+
+Mr Jowett wrote encouragingly to Borrow of his prospects of obtaining the
+coveted appointment.  In acknowledgment of this letter, Borrow dashed off
+a reply, magnificent in its confidence and manly sincerity.  It was a
+defiance to the fate that had so long dogged his footsteps.
+
+    “What you have written has given me great pleasure,” he wrote, “as it
+    holds out hope that I may be employed usefully to the Deity, to man,
+    and myself.  I shall be very happy to visit St Petersburg and to
+    become the coadjutor of Lipovzoff, {102} and to avail myself of his
+    acquirements in what you very happily designate a most singular
+    language, towards obtaining a still greater proficiency in it.  I
+    flatter myself that I am for one or two reasons tolerably well
+    adapted for the contemplated expedition, for besides a competent
+    knowledge of French and German, I possess some acquaintance with
+    Russian, being able to read without much difficulty any printed
+    Russian book, and I have little doubt that after a few months
+    intercourse with the natives, I should be able to speak it fluently.
+    It would ill become me to bargain like a Jew or a Gypsy as to terms;
+    all I wish to say on that point is, that I have nothing of my own,
+    having been too long dependent on an excellent mother, who is not
+    herself in very easy circumstances.”
+
+Whilst still waiting for the confirmation by the General Committee of the
+Sub-Committee’s resolution, which was favourable to Borrow, Mr Jowett
+wrote to him (5th July), telling him how good were his prospects; but
+warning him not to be too confident of success.  The Sub-Committee had
+recommended that Borrow’s services should be engaged that he might go to
+St Petersburg and assist Mr Lipovzoff in editing St Luke and the Acts and
+any other portions of the New Testament that it was thought desirable to
+publish in Manchu.  Should the Russian Government refuse to permit the
+work to be proceeded with, Borrow was to occupy himself in assisting the
+Rev. Wm. Swan to transcribe and collate the manuscript of the Old
+Testament in Manchu that had recently come to light.  At the same time,
+he was to seize every opportunity that presented itself of perfecting
+himself in Manchu.  For this he was to receive a salary of two hundred
+pounds a year to cover all expenses, save those of the journey to and
+from St Petersburg, for which the Society was to be responsible.  Borrow
+was advised to think carefully over the proposal, and, if it should prove
+attractive to him, to hold himself in readiness to start as soon as the
+General Committee should approve of the recommendation that was to be
+placed before it.  In conclusion, Mr Jowett proceeded to administer a
+gentle rebuke to the confident pride with which the candidate indited his
+letters.  Only a quotation can show the tact with which the admonition
+was conveyed.
+
+“Excuse me,” wrote the Literary Superintendent, “if as a clergyman, and
+your senior in years though not in talent, I venture, with the kindest of
+motives, to throw out a hint which may not be without its use.  I am sure
+you will not be offended if I suggest that there is occasionally a tone
+of confidence in speaking of yourself, which has alarmed some of the
+excellent members of our Committee.  It may have been this feeling, more
+than once displayed before, which prepared one or two of them to stumble
+at an expression in your letter of yesterday, in which, till pointed out,
+I confess I was not struck with anything objectionable, but at which,
+nevertheless, a humble Christian might not unreasonably take umbrage.  It
+is where you speak of the prospect of becoming ‘useful to the Deity, to
+man, and to yourself.’  Doubtless you meant the prospect of glorifying
+God.”
+
+Borrow had yet to learn the idiom of Earl Street, which he showed himself
+most anxious to acquire.  He clearly recognised that the Bible Society
+required different treatment from the Army Pay Office, or the Solicitor
+of the Treasury.  It was accustomed to humility in those it employed, and
+a trust in a higher power, and Borrow’s self-confident letters alarmed
+the members of the Committee.  How thoroughly Borrow appreciated what was
+required is shown in a letter that he wrote to his mother from Russia,
+when anticipating the return of his brother.  “Should John return home,”
+he warns her, “by no means let him go near the Bible Society, for he
+would not do for them.”
+
+Borrow’s reply to the Literary Superintendent’s kindly worded admonition
+was entirely satisfactory and “in harmony with the rule laid down by
+Christ himself.”  It was something of a triumph, too, for Mr Jowett to
+rebuke a man of such sensitiveness as Borrow, without goading him to an
+impatient retort.
+
+The meeting of the General Committee that was to decide upon Borrow’s
+future was held on 22nd July, and on the following day Mr Jowett informed
+him that the recommendation of the Sub-Committee had been adopted and
+confirmed, at the same time requesting him to be at Earl Street on the
+morning of Friday, 26th July, that he might set out for St Petersburg the
+following Tuesday.  On 25th July Borrow took the night coach to London.
+On the 29th he appeared before the Editorial Sub-Committee and heard read
+the resolution of his appointment, and drafts of letters recommending him
+to the Rev. Wm. Swan and Dr I. J. Schmidt, a correspondent of the
+Society’s in St Petersburg and a member of the Russian Board of Censors.
+Finally, there was impressed upon him “the necessity of confining himself
+closely to the one object of his mission, carefully abstaining from
+mingling himself with political or ecclesiastical affairs during his
+residence in Russia.  Mr Borrow assured them of his full determination
+religiously to comply with this admonition, and to use every prudent
+method for enlarging his acquaintance with the Manchu language.” {104}
+
+The salary was to date from the day he embarked, and on account of
+expenses to St Petersburg he drew the sum of £37.  The actual amount he
+expended was £27, 7s. 6d., according to the account he submitted, which
+was dated 2nd October 1834.  It is to be feared that Borrow was not very
+punctual in rendering his accounts, as Mr Brandram wrote to him (18th
+October 1837):—“I know you are no accountant, but do not forget that
+there are some who are.  My memory was jogged upon this subject the other
+day, and I was expected to say to you that a letter of figures would be
+acceptable.”
+
+It is not unnatural that those who remembered Borrow as one of William
+Taylor’s “harum-scarum” young men, who at one time intended to “abuse
+religion and get prosecuted,” should find in his appointment as an agent
+of the British and Foreign Bible Society a subject for derisive mirth.
+Harriet Martineau’s voice was heard well above the rest.  “When this
+polyglott gentleman appeared before the public as a devout agent of the
+Bible Society in foreign parts,” she wrote, “there was one burst of
+laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days.” {105}  Like
+hundreds of other men, Borrow had, in youth, been led to somewhat hasty
+and ill-considered conclusions; but this in itself does not seem to be
+sufficiently strong reason why he should not change his views.  Many
+young men pass through an aggressively irreligious phase without
+suffering much harm.  Harriet Martineau was rather too precipitate in
+assuming that what a man believes, or disbelieves, at twenty, he holds to
+at thirty; such a view negatives the reformer.  Perhaps the chief cause
+of the change in Borrow’s views was that he had touched the depths of
+failure.  Here was an opening that promised much.  He was a diplomatist
+when it suited his purpose, and if the old poison were not quite gone out
+of his system, he would hide his wounds, or allow the secretaries to
+bandage them with mild reproof.
+
+Very different from the attitude of Harriet Martineau was that of John
+Venning, an English merchant resident at Norwich and recently returned
+from St Petersburg, where his charity and probity had placed him in high
+favour with the Emperor and the Goverment officials.  Mr Venning gave
+Borrow letters of introduction to a number of influential personages at
+St Petersburg, including Prince Alexander Galitzin and Baron Schilling de
+Canstadt.  Dr Bowring obtained a letter from Lord Palmerston to someone
+whose name is not known.  There were letters of introduction from other
+hands, so that when he was ready to sail Borrow found himself “loaded
+with letters of recommendation to some of the first people in Russia.  Mr
+Venning’s packet has arrived with letters to several of the Princes, so
+that I shall be protected if I am seized as a spy; for the Emperor is
+particularly cautious as to the foreigners whom he admits.  It costs £2,
+7s. 6d. merely for permission to go to Russia, which alone is enough to
+deter most people.” {106}
+
+Before leaving England, Borrow paid into his mother’s account at her bank
+the sum of seventeen pounds, an amount that she had advanced to him
+either during his unproductive years, or on account of his expenses in
+connection with the expedition to St Petersburg.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+AUGUST 1833–JANUARY 1834
+
+
+ON 19th/31st July 1833 Borrow set out on a journey that was to some
+extent to realise his ambitions.  He was to be trusted and encouraged
+and, what was most important of all, praised for what he accomplished;
+for Borrow’s was a nature that responded best to the praise and entire
+confidence of those for whom he worked.
+
+Travelling second class for reasons of economy, he landed at Hamburg at
+seven in the morning of the fourth day, after having experienced “a
+disagreeable passage of three days, in which I suffered much from
+sea-sickness.” {107a}  Exhausted by these days of suffering and want of
+sleep, the heat of the sun brought on “a transient fit of delirium,”
+{107b} in other words, an attack of the “Horrors.”  Two fellow-passengers
+(Jews), with whom he had become acquainted, conveyed him to a comfortable
+hotel, where he was visited by a physician, who administered forty drops
+of laudanum, caused his head to be swathed in wet towels, ordered him to
+bed, and charged a fee of seven shillings.  The result was that by the
+evening he had quite recovered.
+
+One of Borrow’s first duties was to write a lengthy letter to Mr Jowett,
+telling him of his movements, describing the city, the service at a
+church he attended, the lax morality of the Hamburgers in permitting
+rope-dancers in the park, and the opening of dancing-saloons, “most
+infamous places,” on the Lord’s day.  “England, with all her faults,” he
+proceeds, “has still some regard to decency, and will not tolerate such a
+shameless display of vice on so sacred a season, when a decent
+cheerfulness is the freest form in which the mind or countenance ought to
+invest themselves.”  In conclusion, he announced his intention of leaving
+for Lübeck on the sixth, {108a} and he would be on the Baltic two days
+later en route for St Petersburg.  “My next letter, provided it pleases
+the Almighty to vouchsafe me a happy arrival, will be from the Russian
+capital.”  By “a fervent request that you will not forget me in your
+prayers,” he demonstrated that Mr Jowett’s hint had not been forgotten.
+
+The distance between Hamburg and Lübeck is only about thirty miles, yet
+it occupied Borrow thirteen hours, so abominable was the road, which “was
+paved at intervals with huge masses of unhewn rock, and over this
+pavement the carriage was very prudently driven at a snail’s pace; for,
+had anything approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition of
+the wheels in a few minutes must have been the necessary result.  No
+sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement than we sank to our
+axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to render the journey perfectly
+delectable, the rain fell in torrents and ceaselessly.” {108b}  The state
+of the road Borrow attributed to the ill-nature of the King of Denmark,
+for immediately on leaving his dominions it improved into an excellent
+carriageway.
+
+On 28th July/9th August Borrow took steamer from Travemünde, and three
+days later landed at St Petersburg.  His first duty was to call upon Mr
+Swan, whom he found “one of the most amiable and interesting characters”
+he had ever met.  The arrival of a coadjutor caused Mr Swan considerable
+relief, as he had suffered in health in consequence of his uninterrupted
+labours in transcribing the Manchu manuscript.
+
+Borrow was enthusiastic in his admiration of the capital of “our dear and
+glorious Russia.”  St Petersburg he considered “the finest city in the
+world” {109} other European capitals were unworthy of comparison.  The
+enormous palaces, the long, straight streets, the grandeur of the public
+buildings, the noble Neva that flows majestically through “this Queen of
+the cities,” the three miles long Nevsky Prospect, paved with wood; all
+aroused in him enthusiasm and admiration.  “In a word,” he wrote to his
+mother, “I can do little else but look and wonder.”  All that he had read
+and heard of the capital of All the Russias had failed to prepare him for
+this scene of splendour.  The meeting and harmonious mixing of East and
+West early attracted his attention.  The Oriental cultivation of a
+twelve-inch beard among the middle and lower classes, placed them in
+marked contrast with the moustached or clean-shaven patricians and
+foreigners.  In short, Russia gripped hold of and warmed Borrow’s
+imagination.  Here were new types, curious blendings of nationalities
+unthought of and strange to him, a mine of wealth to a man whose studies
+were never books, except when they helped him the better to understand
+men.
+
+Another thing that attracted him to Russia was the great kindness with
+which he was received, both by the English Colony and the natives: to the
+one he appealed by virtue of a common ancestry; to the other, on account
+of his knowledge of the Russian tongue, not to speak of his mission,
+which acted as a strong recommendation to their favour.  On his part
+Borrow reciprocated the esteem.  If he were an implacable enemy, he was
+also a good friend, and he thoroughly appreciated the manner in which he
+was welcomed by his countrymen, especially the invitation he received
+from one of them to make his house his home until he found a suitable
+dwelling.  To his mother he wrote:
+
+    “The Russians are the best-natured, kindest people in the world, and
+    though they do not know as much as the English [he was not referring
+    to the Colony], they have not their fiendish, spiteful dispositions,
+    and if you go amongst them and speak their language, however badly,
+    they would go through fire and water to do you a kindness.”  Later,
+    when in Portugal, he heartily wished himself “back in Russia . . .
+    where I had left cherished friends and warm affections.”
+
+High as was his opinion of the Russians, he was at a loss to understand
+how they had earned their reputation as “the best general linguists in
+the world.”  He found Russian absolutely necessary to anyone who wished
+to make himself understood.  French and German as equivalents were of
+less value in St Petersburg than in England.
+
+At first Borrow took up his residence “for nearly a fortnight in a hotel,
+as the difficulty of procuring lodgings in this place is very great, and
+when you have procured them you have to furnish them yourself at a
+considerable expense . . . eventually I took up my abode with Mr Egerton
+Hubbard, a friend of Mr Venning’s [at 221 Galernoy Ulitza], where I am
+for the present very comfortably situated.” {110}  He stayed with Mr
+Hubbard for three months; but was eventually forced to leave on account
+of constant interruptions, probably by his fellow-boarders, in
+consequence of which he could neither perform his task of transcription
+nor devote himself to study.  He therefore took a small lodging at a cost
+of nine shillings a week, including fires, where he could enjoy quiet and
+solitude.  His meals he got at a Russian eating-house, dinner costing
+fivepence, “consequently,” he writes to his mother, “I am not at much
+expense, being able to live for about sixty pounds a year and pay a
+Russian teacher, who has five shillings for one lesson a week.”
+
+One of Borrow’s earliest thoughts on arriving at St Petersburg had been
+to present his letters of introduction.  Within two days of landing he
+called upon Prince Alexander Galítzin, {111} accompanied by his
+fellow-lodger, young Venning.  One of the most important, and at the same
+time useful, friendships that he made was with Baron Schilling de
+Canstadt, the philologist and savant, who, later, with his accustomed
+generosity, was to place his unique library at Borrow’s disposition.  The
+Baron was one of the greatest bibliophiles of his age, and possessed a
+collection of Eastern manuscripts and other priceless treasures that was
+world-famous.  He spared neither expense nor trouble in procuring
+additions to his collection, which after his death was acquired by the
+Imperial Academy of Science at St Petersburg.  In this literary
+treasure-house Borrow found facilities for study such as he nowhere else
+could hope to obtain.
+
+Another friendship that Borrow made was with John P. Hasfeldt, a man of
+about his own age attached to the Danish Legation, who also gave lessons
+in languages.  Borrow seems to have been greatly attracted to Hasfeldt,
+who wrote to him with such cordiality.  It was Hasfeldt who gave to
+Borrow as a parting gift the silver shekel that he invariably carried
+about with him, and which caused him to be hailed as blessed by the
+Gibraltar Jews.
+
+In his letter Hasfeldt shows himself a delightful correspondent.  His
+generous camaraderie seemed to warm Borrow to response, as indeed well it
+might.  Who could resist the breezy good humour of the following from a
+letter addressed to Borrow by Hasfeldt years later?—
+
+    “Do you still eat Pike soup?  Do you remember the time when you lived
+    on that dish for more than six weeks, and came near exterminating the
+    whole breed?  And the pudding that accompanied it, that always lay as
+    hard as a stone on the stomach?  This you surely have not forgotten.
+    Yes, your kitchen was delicately manipulated by Machmoud, your Tartar
+    servant, who only needed to give you horse-meat to have merited a
+    diploma.  Do you still sing when you are in a good humour?  Doubtless
+    you are not troubled with many friends to visit you, for you are not
+    of the sort who are easily understood, nor do you care to have
+    everyone understand you; you prefer to have people call you grey and
+    let you gae.”
+
+Other friends Borrow made, including Nikolai Ivánovitch Gretch, {112a}
+the grammarian, and Friedrich von Adelung, {112b} who assisted him with
+the loan of books and MSS. in Oriental tongues.
+
+The story of Borrow’s labours in connection with the printing of the
+Manchu version of the New Testament, forms a remarkable study of
+unswerving courage and will-power triumphing over apparently
+insurmountable obstacles.  The mere presence of difficulties seemed to
+increase his eagerness and determination to overcome them.
+Disappointments he had in plenty; but his indomitable courage and
+untiring energy, backed up by the earnest support he received from Earl
+Street, enabled him to emerge from his first serious undertaking with the
+knowledge that he had succeeded where failure would not have been
+discreditable.
+
+He threw himself into his work with characteristic eagerness.  At the end
+of the first two months he had transcribed the Second Book of Chronicles
+and the Gospel of St Matthew.  He formed a very high opinion of the work
+of the translator, and took the opportunity of paying a tribute to the
+followers of Ignatius Loyola (Father Puerot was a Jesuit).  “When,” he
+writes, “did a Jesuit any thing which he undertook, whether laudable or
+the reverse, not far better than any other person?” yet they laboured in
+vain, for “they thought not of His glory, but of the glory of their
+order.” {113}
+
+Borrow discovered that Mr Lipovzoff knew nothing of the Bible Society’s
+scheme for printing the New Testament in Manchu; but he found, what was
+of even greater importance to him, that the old man knew no European
+language but Russian.  Thus the frequent conversations and explanations
+all tended to improve Borrow’s knowledge of the language of the people
+among whom he was living.
+
+Mr Lipovzoff struck Borrow as being “rather a singular man,” as he took
+occasion to inform Mr Jowett, apparently utterly indifferent as to the
+fate of his translation, excellent though it was.  As a matter of fact,
+Mr Lipovzoff was occupied with his own concerns, and, as an official in
+the Russian Foreign Office, most likely saw the inexpediency of a too
+eager enthusiasm for the Bible Society’s Manchu-Tartar programme.  He was
+probably bewildered by the fierce energy of its honest and compelling
+agent, who had descended upon St Petersburg to do the Society’s bidding
+with an impetuosity and determination foreign to Russian official life.
+Borrow was on fire with zeal and impatient of the apathy of those around
+him.
+
+He soon began to show signs of that singleness of purpose and
+resourcefulness that, later, was to arouse so much enthusiasm among the
+members of the Bible Society at home.  The transcribing and collating
+Puerot’s version of the Scriptures occupied the remainder of the year.
+On the completion of this work, it had been arranged that Mr Swan should
+return to his mission-station in Siberia.  The next step was to obtain
+official sanction to print the Lipovzoff version of the New Testament.
+Dr Schmidt, to whom Borrow turned for advice and information, was
+apparently very busily occupied with his own affairs, which included the
+compilation of a Mongolian Grammar and Dictionary.  The Doctor was
+optimistic, and promised to make enquiries about the steps to be taken to
+obtain the necessary permission to print; but Borrow heard nothing
+further from him.
+
+    “Thus circumstanced, and being very uneasy in my mind,” he writes, “I
+    determined to take a bold step, and directly and without further
+    feeling my way, to petition the Government in my own name for
+    permission to print the Manchu Scriptures.  Having communicated this
+    determination to our beloved, sincere, and most truly Christian
+    friend Mr Swan (who has lately departed to his station in Siberia,
+    shielded I trust by the arm of his Master), it met with his perfect
+    approbation and cordial encouragement.  I therefore drew up a
+    petition, and presented it with my own hand to His Excellence Mr
+    Bludoff, Minister of the Interior.” {114a}
+
+The minister made reply that he doubted his jurisdiction in the matter;
+but that he would consider.  Fearful lest the matter should miscarry or
+be shelved, Borrow called on the evening of the same day upon the British
+Minister, the Hon. J. D. Bligh, “a person of superb talents, kind
+disposition, and of much piety,” {114b} whose friendship Borrow had
+“assiduously cultivated,” and who had shown him “many condescending marks
+of kindness.” {114c}  But Mr Bligh was out.  Nothing daunted, Borrow
+wrote a note entreating his interest with the Russian officials.  On
+calling for an answer in the morning, he was received by Mr Bligh, when
+“he was kind enough to say that if I desired it he would apply officially
+to the Minister, and exert all his influence in his official character in
+order to obtain the accomplishment of my views, but at the same time
+suggested that it would, perhaps, be as well at a private interview to
+beg it as a personal favour.” {115a}
+
+There was hesitation, perhaps suspicion, in official quarters.  It is
+easy to realise that the Government was not eager to assist the agent of
+an institution closely allied to the Russian Bible Society, which it had
+recently been successful in suppressing.  It might with impunity suppress
+a Society; but in George Borrow it soon became evident that the officials
+had to deal with a man of purpose and determination who used a British
+Minister as a two-edged sword.  Borrow was invited to call at the Asiatic
+Department: he did so, and learned that if permission were granted, Mr
+Lipovzoff (who was a clerk in the Department) was to be censor (over his
+own translation!) and Borrow editor.  There was still the “If.”  Borrow
+waited a fortnight, then called on Mr Bligh.  By great good chance Mr
+Bludoff was dining that evening with the British Minister.  The same
+night Borrow received a message requesting him to call on Mr Bludoff the
+next day.  On presenting himself he was given a letter to the Director of
+Worship, which he delivered without delay, and was told to call again on
+the first day of the following week.
+
+“On calling there _I found that permission had been granted to print the
+Manchu Scripture_.” {115b}  Baron Schilling had rendered some assistance
+in getting the permission, and Borrow was requested to inform him of “the
+deep sense of obligation” of the Bible Society, to which was added a
+present of some books.
+
+Borrow clearly viewed this as only a preliminary success; he had in mind
+the eventual printing of the whole Bible.  He was beginning to feel
+conscious of his own powers.  Mr Swan had gone, and upon Borrow’s
+shoulders rested the whole enterprise.  A mild wave of enthusiasm passed
+over the Head Office at Earl Street on receipt of the news that
+permission to print had been obtained.
+
+“You cannot conceive,” Borrow wrote to Mr Jowett, “the cold, heartless
+apathy in respect to the affair, on which I have been despatched hither
+as an _assistant_, which I have found in people to whom I looked not
+unreasonably for encouragement and advice.” {116}  Well might he
+underline the word “assistant.”  In this same letter, with a spasmodic
+flicker of the old self-confidence, he adds, “In regard to what we have
+yet to do, let it be borne in mind, that we are by no means dependent
+upon Mr Lipovzoff, though certainly to secure the services, which he is
+capable of performing, would be highly desirable, and though he cannot
+act outwardly in the character of Editor (he having been appointed
+censor), he may privately be of great utility to us.”  Borrow seems to
+have formed no very high opinion of Mr Lipovzoff’s capacity for affairs,
+although he recognised his skill as a translator.
+
+At first Borrow seems to have found the severity of the winter very
+trying.  “The cold when you go out into it,” he writes to his mother
+(1st/13th Feb. 1834), “cuts your face like a razor, and were you not to
+cover it with furs the flesh would be bitten off.  The rooms in the
+morning are heated with a stove as hot as ovens, and you would not be
+able to exist in one for a minute; but I have become used to them and
+like them much, though at first they made me dreadfully sick and brought
+on bilious headaches.”
+
+There was still at the Sarepta House, the premises of the Bible Society’s
+bankers in St Petersburg, the box of Manchu type, which had not been
+examined since the river floods.  In addition to this, the only other
+Manchu characters in St Petersburg belonged to Baron Schilling, who
+possessed a small fount of the type, which he used “for the convenience
+of printing trifles in that tongue,” as Borrow phrased it.  This was to
+be put at Borrow’s disposal if necessary; but first the type at the
+Sarepta House had to be examined.  Borrow’s plan was, provided the type
+were not entirely ruined, to engage the services of a printer who was
+accustomed to setting Mongolian characters, which are very similar to
+those of Manchu, who would, he thought, be competent to undertake the
+work.  He suggested following the style of the St Matthew’s Gospel
+already printed, giving to each Gospel and the Acts a volume and printing
+the Epistles and the Apocalypse in three more, making eight volumes in
+all.
+
+These he proposed putting “in a small thin wooden case, covered with blue
+stuff, precisely after the manner of Chinese books, in order that they
+may not give offence to the eyes of the people for whom they are intended
+by a foreign and unusual appearance, for the mere idea that they are
+barbarian books would certainly prevent them being read, and probably
+cause their destruction if ever they found their way into the Chinese
+Empire.” {117}  Borrow left nothing to chance; he thought out every
+detail with great care before venturing to put his plans into execution.
+
+Although busily occupied in an endeavour to stimulate Russian government
+officials to energy and decision, Borrow was not neglecting what had been
+so strongly urged upon him, the perfecting of himself in the Manchu
+dialect.  In reply to an enquiry from Mr Jowett as to what manner of
+progress he was making, he wrote:—
+
+    “For some time past I have taken lessons from a person who was twelve
+    years in Pekin, and who speaks Manchu and Chinese with fluency.  I
+    pay him about six shillings English for each lesson, which I grudge
+    not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent
+    wishes.” {118a}
+
+This person Borrow subsequently recommended to the Society “to assist me
+in making a translation into Manchu of the Psalms and Isaiah,” but the
+pundit proved “of no utility at all, but only the cause of error.”
+
+Borrow was soon able to transcribe the Manchu characters with greater
+facility and speed than he could English.  In addition to being able to
+translate from and into Manchu, he could compose hymns in the language,
+and even prepared a Manchu rendering of the second Homily of the Church
+of England, “On the Misery of Man.”  He had, however, made the discovery
+that Manchu was far less easy to him than it had at first appeared, and
+that Amyot was to some extent justified in his view of the difficulties
+it presented.  “It is one of those deceitful tongues,” he confesses in a
+letter to Mr Jowett, “the seeming simplicity of whose structure induces
+you to suppose, after applying to it for a month or two, that little more
+remains to be learned, but which, should you continue to study a year, as
+I have studied this, show themselves to you in their veritable colours,
+amazing you with their copiousness, puzzling with their idioms.”{118b}
+Its difficulties, however, did not discourage him; for he had a great
+admiration for the language which “for majesty and grandeur of sound, and
+also for general copiousness is unequalled by any existing tongue.”
+{118c}
+
+However great his exertions or discouragements, Borrow never forgot his
+mother, to whom he was a model son.  On 1st/13th February he sent her a
+draft for twenty pounds, being the second since his arrival six months
+previously.  Thus out of his first half-year’s salary of a hundred
+pounds, he sent to his mother forty pounds (in addition to the seventeen
+pounds he had paid into her account before sailing), and with it a
+promise that “next quarter I shall try and send you thirty,” lest in the
+recent storms of which he had heard, some of her property should have
+suffered damage and be in need of repair.  The larger remittance,
+however, he was unable to make on account of the illness that had
+necessitated the drinking of a bottle of port wine each day (by doctor’s
+orders); but he was punctual in remitting the twenty pounds.  The attack
+which required so drastic a remedy originated in a chill caught as the
+ice was breaking up.  “I went mad,” he tells his mother, “and when the
+fever subsided, I was seized with the ‘Horrors,’ which never left me day
+or night for a week.” {119}  During this illness everyone seems to have
+been extremely kind and attentive, the Emperor’s apothecary, even,
+sending word that Borrow was to order of him anything, medical or
+otherwise, that he found himself in need of.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+FEBRUARY–OCTOBER 1834
+
+
+BORROW had at last found work that was thoroughly congenial to him.  It
+was not in his nature to exist outside his occupations, and his whole
+personality became bound up in the mission upon which he was engaged.
+Not content with preparing the way for printing the New Testament in
+Manchu, he set himself the problem of how it was to be distributed when
+printed.  He foresaw serious obstacles to its introduction into China, on
+account of the suspicion with which was regarded any and everything
+European.  With a modest disclaimer that his suggestion arose “from a
+plenitude of self-conceit and a disposition to offer advice upon all
+matters, however far they may be above my understanding,” he proceeds to
+deal with the difficulties of distribution with great clearness.
+
+To send the printed books to Canton, to be distributed by English
+missionaries, he thought would be productive of very little good, nor
+would it achieve the object of the Society, to distribute copies at
+seaports along the coasts, because it was unlikely that there would be
+many Tartars or people there who understood Manchu.  There was a further
+obstacle in the suspicion in which the Chinese held all things English.
+On the other hand, he tells Mr Jowett,
+
+    “there is a most admirable opening for the work on the Russian side
+    of the Chinese Empire.  About five thousand miles from St Petersburg,
+    on the frontiers of Chinese Tartary, and only nine hundred miles
+    distant from Pekin, the seat of the Tartar Monarchy, stands the town
+    of Kiakhta, {121a} which properly belongs to Russia, but the
+    inhabitants of which are a medley of Tartary, Chinese, and Russ
+    (_sic_).  As far as this town a Russian or foreigner is permitted to
+    advance, but his further progress is forbidden, and if he make the
+    attempt he is liable to be taken up as a spy or deserter, and sent
+    back under guard.  This town is the emporium of Chinese and Russian
+    trade.  Chinese caravans are continually arriving and returning,
+    bringing and carrying away articles of merchandise.  There are
+    likewise a Chinese and a Tartar Mandarin, also a school where Chinese
+    and Tartar are taught, and where Chinese and Tartar children along
+    with Russian are educated.” {121b}
+
+The advantages of such a town as a base of operations were obvious.
+Borrow was convinced that he could dispose “of any quantity of Testaments
+to the Chinese merchants who arrive thither from Pekin and other places,
+and who would be glad to purchase them on speculation.” {121c}
+
+Russia and China were friendly to each other, so much so, that there was
+at Pekin a Russian mission, the only one of its kind.  These good
+relations rendered Borrow confident that books from Russia, especially
+books which had not an outlandish appearance, would be purchased without
+scruple.  “In a word, were an agent for the Bible Society to reside at
+this town [Kiakhta] for a year or so, it is my humble opinion, and the
+opinion of much wiser people, that if he were active, zealous and
+likewise courageous, the blessings resulting from his labours would be
+incalculable.” {121d}
+
+He might even make excursions into Tartary, and become friendly with the
+inhabitants, and eventually perhaps, “with a little management and
+dexterity,” he might “penetrate even to Pekin, and return in safety,
+after having examined the state of the land.  I can only say that if it
+were my fortune to have the opportunity, I would make the attempt, and
+should consider myself only to blame if I did not succeed.”  Borrow was
+to revert to this suggestion on many occasions, in fact it seems to have
+been in his mind during the whole period of his association with the
+Bible Society.
+
+Acting upon instructions from Earl Street, Borrow proceeded to find out
+the approximate cost of printing the Manchu New Testament.  He early
+discovered that in Russia “the wisdom of the serpent is quite as
+necessary as the innocence of the dove,” as he took occasion to inform Mr
+Jowett.  The Russians rendered him estimates of cost as if of the opinion
+that “Englishmen are made of gold, and that it is only necessary to ask
+the most extravagant price for any article in order to obtain it.”
+
+In St Petersburg Borrow was taken for a German, a nation for which he
+cherished a cordial dislike.  This mistake as to nationality, however,
+did not hinder the Russian tradesmen from asking exorbitant prices for
+their services or their goods.  At first Borrow “was quite terrified at
+the enormous sums which some of the printers . . . required for the
+work.”  At length he applied to the University Press, which asked 30
+roubles 60 copecks (24s. 8d.) per sheet of two pages for composition and
+printing.  A young firm of German printers, Schultz & Beneze, was,
+however, willing to undertake the same work at the rate of 12.5 roubles
+(10s.) per two sheets.
+
+In contracting for the paper Borrow showed himself quite equal to the
+commercial finesse of the Russian.  He scoured the neighbourhood round St
+Petersburg in a calash at a cost of about four pounds.  Russian methods
+of conducting business are amazing to the English mind.  At Peterhof, a
+town about twenty miles out of St Petersburg, he found fifty reams of a
+paper such as he required.  “Concerning the price of this paper,” he
+writes, “I could obtain no positive information, for the Director and
+first and second clerks were invariably absent, and the place abandoned
+to ignorant understrappers (according to the custom of Russia).  And
+notwithstanding I found out the Director in St Petersburg, he himself
+could not tell me the price.” {123a}
+
+Eventually 75 roubles (£3) a ream was quoted for the stock, and 100
+roubles (£4) a ream for any further quantity required.  Thus the paper
+for a thousand copies would run to 40,000 roubles (£1600), or 32s. a
+copy.  Borrow found that the law of commerce prevalent in the East was
+that adopted in St Petersburg.  A price is named merely as a basis of
+negotiation, and the customer beats it down to a figure that suits him,
+or he goes elsewhere.  Borrow was a master of such methods.  The sum he
+eventually paid for the paper was 25 roubles (£1) a ream!  Of all these
+negotiations he kept Mr Jowett well informed.  By June he had received
+from Earl Street the official sanction to proceed, together with a
+handsome remittance.
+
+For some time past Borrow had been anxious on account of his brother
+John.  On 9th/21st November, he had written to his mother telling her to
+write to John urging him to come home at once, as he had seen in the
+Russian newspapers how the town of Guanajuato had been taken and sacked
+by the rebels, and also that cholera was ravaging Mexico.  Later {123b}
+he tells her of that nice house at Lakenham, {123c} which he means to
+buy, and how John can keep a boat and amuse himself on the river, and
+adds, “I dare say I shall continue for a long time with the Bible
+Society, as they see that I am useful to them and can be depended upon.”
+
+On the day following that on which Borrow wrote asking his mother to urge
+his brother to return home, viz., 10th/22nd November, John died.  He was
+taken ill suddenly in the morning and passed away the same afternoon.
+
+In February 1832 John Borrow had, much against the advice of his friends,
+left the United Mexican Company, which he had become associated with the
+previous year.  He was of a restless disposition, never content with what
+he was doing.  Thinking he could better himself, and having saved a few
+hundred dollars, he resigned his post.  He appears soon to have
+discovered his mistake.  First he indulged in an unfortunate speculation,
+by which he was a considerable loser, then cholera broke out.  Without a
+thought of himself he turned nurse and doctor, witnessing terrible scenes
+of misery and death and ministering to the poor with an energy and
+humanity that earned for him the admiration of the whole township.
+Finally, finding himself in serious financial difficulties, he entered
+the service of the Colombian Mining Company, and was to be sent to
+Colombia “for the purpose of introducing the Mexican system of
+beneficiating there.”  It only remained for the agreement to be signed,
+when he was taken ill.
+
+In the letter in which she tells George of their loss, Mrs Borrow
+expresses fear that he does “not live regular.  When you find yourself
+low,” she continues, “take a little wine, but not too much at one time;
+it will do you the more good; I find that by myself.”  Her solicitude for
+George’s health is easily understandable.  He is now her “only hope,” as
+she pathetically tells him.  “Do not grieve, my dear George,” she
+proceeds tenderly, “I trust we shall all meet in heaven.  Put a crape on
+your hat for some time.”
+
+George wrote immediately to acknowledge his mother’s letter containing
+the news of John’s death, which had given him “the severest stroke I ever
+experienced.  It [the letter] quite stunned me, and since reading its
+contents I have done little else but moan and lament . . . O that our
+darling John had taken the advice which I gave him nearly three years
+since, to abandon that horrid country and return to England! . . . Would
+that I had died for him! for I loved him dearly, dearly.”  Borrow’s
+affection for his bright and attractive brother is everywhere manifest in
+his writings.  He never showed the least jealousy when his father held up
+his first-born as a model to the strange and incomprehensible younger
+son.  His love for and admiration of John were genuine and deep-rooted.
+In the same letter he goes on to assure his mother that he was never
+better in his life, and that experience teaches him how to cure his
+disorders.  “The ‘Horrors,’ for example.  Whenever they come I must drink
+strong Port wine, and then they are stopped instantly.  But do not think
+that I drink habitually, for you ought to know that I abhor drink.  The
+‘Horrors’ are brought on by weakness.”
+
+He goes on to reassure his mother as to the care he takes of himself,
+telling her that he has three meals a day, although, as a rule, dinner is
+a poor one, “for the Russians, in the first place, are very indifferent
+cooks, and the meat is very bad, as in fact are almost all the
+provisions.”  The fish is without taste, Russian salmon having less
+savour than English skate; the fowls are dry because no endeavour is made
+to fatten them, and the “mutton stinks worst than carrion, for they never
+cut the wool.”
+
+With great thought and tenderness he tells her that he wishes her “to
+keep a maid, for I do not like that you should live alone.  Do not take
+one of the wretched girls of Norwich,” he advises her, but rather the
+daughter of one of her tenants.  “What am I working for here and saving
+money, unless it is for your comfort? for I assure you that to make you
+comfortable is my greatest happiness, almost my only one.”  Urging her to
+keep up her spirits and read much of the things that interest her, he
+concludes with a warning to her not to pay any debts contracted by John.
+{126a}  The letter concludes with the postscript: “I have got the crape.”
+
+In July 1834 Borrow again changed his quarters, taking an unfurnished
+floor, {126b} at the same time hiring a Tartar servant named Mahmoud,
+“the best servant I ever had.” {126c}  The wages he paid this prince of
+body-servants was thirty shillings a month, out of which Mahmoud supplied
+himself “with food and everything.”  Borrow’s reason for making this
+change in his lodgings was that he wanted more room than he had, and
+furnished apartments were very expensive.  The actual furnishing was not
+a very costly matter to a man of Borrow’s simple wants; for the
+expenditure of seven pounds he provided himself with all he required.
+
+After the letter of 27th June/9th July the Bible Society received no
+further news of what was taking place in St Petersburg.  Week after week
+passed without anything being heard of its Russian agent’s movements or
+activities.  On 25th September/7th October Mr Jowett wrote an extremely
+moderate letter beseeching Borrow to remember “the very lively interest”
+taken by the General Committee in the printing of the Manchu version of
+the New Testament; that people were asking, “What is Mr Borrow doing?”
+that the Committee stands between its agents and an eager public,
+desirous of knowing the trials and tribulations, the hopes and fears of
+those actively engaged in printing or disseminating the Scriptures.  “You
+can have no difficulty,” he continues, “in furnishing me with such
+monthly information as may satisfy the Committee that they are not
+expending a large sum of money in vain.”  There was also a request for
+information as to how “some critical difficulty has been surmounted by
+the translator, or editor, or both united, not to mention the advance
+already made in actual printing.”  On 1st/13th Oct. Borrow had written a
+brief letter giving an account of his disbursements during the journey to
+St Petersburg _fifteen months previously_; but he made no mention of what
+was taking place with regard to the printing.
+
+The letter in which Borrow replied to Mr Jowett is probably the most
+remarkable he ever wrote.  It presents him in a light that must have
+astonished those who had been so eager to ridicule his appointment as an
+agent of the Bible Society.  The letter runs:—
+
+                                                            ST PETERSBURG,
+                                            8_th_ [20_th_] _October_ 1834.
+
+    I have just received your most kind epistle, the perusal of which has
+    given me both pain and pleasure—pain that from unavoidable
+    circumstances I have been unable to gratify eager expectation, and
+    pleasure that any individual should have been considerate enough to
+    foresee my situation and to make allowance for it.  The nature of my
+    occupations during the last two months and a half has been such as
+    would have entirely unfitted me for correspondence, had I been aware
+    that it was necessary, which, on my sacred word, I was not.  Now, and
+    only now, when by the blessing of God I have surmounted all my
+    troubles and difficulties, I will tell, and were I not a Christian I
+    should be proud to tell, what I have been engaged upon and
+    accomplished during the last ten weeks.  I have been working in the
+    printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen
+    hours every day during that period; the result of this is that St
+    Matthew’s Gospel, printed from such a copy as I believe nothing was
+    ever printed from before, has been brought out in the Manchu
+    language; two rude Esthonian peasants, who previously could barely
+    compose with decency in a plain language which they spoke and were
+    accustomed to, have received such instruction that with ease they can
+    each compose at the rate of a sheet a day in the Manchu, perhaps the
+    most difficult language for composition in the whole world.
+    Considerable progress has also been made in St Mark’s Gospel, and I
+    will venture to promise, provided always the Almighty smiles upon the
+    undertaking, that the entire work of which I have the superintendence
+    will be published within eight months from the present time.  Now,
+    therefore, with the premise that I most unwillingly speak of myself
+    and what I have done and suffered for some time past, all of which I
+    wished to keep locked up in my own breast, I will give a regular and
+    circumstantial account of my proceedings from the day when I received
+    your letter, by which I was authorised by the Committee to bespeak
+    paper, engage with a printer, and cause our type to be set in order.
+
+    My first care was to endeavour to make suitable arrangements for the
+    obtaining of Chinese paper.  Now those who reside in England, the
+    most civilised and blessed of countries, where everything is to be
+    obtained at a fair price, have not the slightest idea of the anxiety
+    and difficulty which, in a country like this, harass the foreigner
+    who has to disburse money not his own, if he wish that his employers
+    be not shamefully and outrageously imposed upon.  In my last epistle
+    to you I stated that I had been asked 100 roubles per ream for such
+    paper as we wanted.  I likewise informed you that I believed that it
+    was possible to procure it for 35 roubles, notwithstanding our
+    Society had formerly paid 40 roubles for worse paper than the samples
+    I was in possession of.  Now I have always been of opinion that in
+    the expending of money collected for sacred purposes, it behoves the
+    agent to be extraordinarily circumspect and sparing.  I therefore was
+    determined, whatever trouble it might cost me, to procure for the
+    Society unexceptionable paper at a yet more reasonable rate than 35
+    roubles.  I was aware that an acquaintance of mine, a young Dane, was
+    particularly intimate with one of the first printers of this city,
+    who is accustomed to purchase vast quantities of paper every month
+    for his various publications.  I gave this young gentleman a specimen
+    of the paper I required, and desired him (he was under obligations to
+    me) to inquire of his friend, _as if from curiosity_, the least
+    possible sum per ream at which _the printer himself_ (who from his
+    immense demand for paper should necessarily obtain it cheaper than
+    any one else) could expect to purchase the article in question.  The
+    answer I received within a day or two was 25 roubles.  Upon hearing
+    this I prevailed upon my acquaintance to endeavour to persuade his
+    friend to bespeak the paper at 25 roubles, and to allow me,
+    notwithstanding I was a perfect stranger, to have it at that price.
+    All this was brought about.  I was introduced to the printer, Mr
+    Pluchard, by the Dane, Mr Hasfeldt, and between the former gentleman
+    and myself a contract was made to the effect that by the end of
+    October he should supply me with 450 reams of Chinese paper at 25
+    roubles per ream, the first delivery to be made on the 1st of August;
+    for as my order given at an advanced period of the year, when all the
+    paper manufactories were at full work towards the executing of orders
+    already received, it was but natural that I should verify the old
+    apophthegm, ‘Last come, last served.’  As no orders are attended to
+    in Russia unless money be advanced upon them, I deposited in the
+    hands of Mr Pluchard the sum of 2000 roubles, receiving his receipt
+    for that amount.
+
+    Having arranged this most important matter to my satisfaction, I
+    turned my attention to the printing process.  I accepted the offer of
+    Messrs Schultz & Beneze to compose and print the Manchu Testament at
+    the rate of 25 roubles per sheet [of four pages], and caused our
+    fount of type to be conveyed to their office.  I wish to say here a
+    few words respecting the state in which these types came into my
+    possession.  I found them in a kind of warehouse, or rather cellar.
+    They had been originally confined in two cases; but these having
+    burst, the type lay on the floor trampled amidst mud and filth.  They
+    were, moreover, not improved by having been immersed within the
+    waters of the inundation of ’27 [1824].  I caused them all to be
+    collected and sent to their destination, where they were purified and
+    arranged—a work of no small time and difficulty, at which I was
+    obliged to assist.  Not finding with the type what is called
+    ‘Durchschuss’ by the printers here, consisting of leaden wedges of
+    about six ounces weight each, which form the spaces between the
+    lines, I ordered 120 pounds weight of those at a rouble a pound,
+    being barely enough for three sheets. {129}  I had now to teach the
+    compositors the Manchu alphabet, and to distinguish one character
+    from another.  This occupied a few days, at the end of which I gave
+    them the commencement of St Matthew’s Gospel to copy.  They no sooner
+    saw the work they were called upon to perform than there were loud
+    murmurs of dissatisfaction, and . . . ‘It is quite impossible to do
+    the like,’ was the cry—and no wonder.  The original printed Gospel
+    had been so interlined and scribbled upon by the author, in a hand so
+    obscure and irregular, that, accustomed as I was to the perusal of
+    the written Manchu, it was not without the greatest difficulty that I
+    could decipher the new matter myself.  Moreover, the corrections had
+    been so carelessly made that they themselves required far more
+    correction than the original matter.  I was therefore obliged to be
+    continually in the printing-office, and to do three parts of the work
+    myself.  For some time I found it necessary to select every character
+    with my own fingers, and to deliver it to the compositor, and by so
+    doing I learnt myself to compose.  We continued in this way till all
+    our characters were exhausted, for no paper had arrived.  For two
+    weeks and more we were obliged to pause, the want of paper being
+    insurmountable.  At the end of this period came six reams; but partly
+    from the manufacturers not being accustomed to make this species of
+    paper, and partly from the excessive heat of the weather, which
+    caused it to dry too fast, only one ream and a half could be used,
+    and this was not enough for one sheet; the rest I refused to take,
+    and sent back.  The next week came fifteen reams.  This paper, from
+    the same causes, was as bad as the last.  I selected four reams, and
+    sent the rest back.  But this paper enabled us to make a beginning,
+    which we did not fail to do, though we received no more for upwards
+    of a fortnight, which caused another pause.  At the end of that time,
+    owing to my pressing remonstrances and entreaties, a regular supply
+    of about twelve reams per week of most excellent paper commenced.
+    This continued until we had composed the last five sheets of St
+    Matthew, when some paper arrived, which in my absence was received by
+    Mr Beneze, who, without examining it, as was his duty, delivered it
+    to the printers to use in the printing of the said sheets, who
+    accordingly printed upon part of it.  But the next day, when my
+    occupation permitted me to see what they were about, I observed that
+    the last paper was of a quality very different from that which had
+    been previously sent.  I accordingly instantly stopped the press,
+    and, notwithstanding eight reams had been printed upon, I sent all
+    the strange paper back, and caused Mr Beneze to recompose three
+    sheets, which had been broken up, at his own expense.  But this
+    caused the delay of another week.
+
+    This last circumstance made me determine not to depend in future for
+    paper on one manufactory alone.  I therefore stated to Mr P[luchard]
+    that, as his people were unable to furnish me with the article fast
+    enough, I should apply to others for 250 reams, and begged him to
+    supply me with the rest as fast as possible.  He made no objection.
+    Thereupon I prevailed upon my most excellent friend, Baron Schilling,
+    to speak to his acquaintance, State-Councillor Alquin, who is
+    possessed of a paper-factory, on the subject.  M. Alquin, as a
+    personal favour to Baron Schilling (whom, I confess, I was ashamed to
+    trouble upon such an affair, and should never have done so had not
+    zeal for the cause induced me), consented to furnish me with the
+    required paper on the same terms as Mr P.  At present there is not
+    the slightest risk of the progress of our work being retarded—at
+    present, indeed, the path is quite easy; but the trouble, anxiety,
+    and misery which have till lately harassed me, alone in a situation
+    of great responsibility, have almost reduced me to a skeleton.
+
+    My dearest Sir, do me the favour to ask our excellent Committee,
+    Would it have answered any useful purpose if, instead of continuing
+    to struggle with difficulties and using my utmost to overcome them, I
+    had written in the following strain—and what else could I have
+    written if I had written at all?—‘I was sent out to St Petersburg to
+    assist Mr Lipovzoff in the editing of the Manchu Testament.  That
+    gentleman, who holds three important Situations under the Russian
+    Government, and who is far advanced in years, has neither time,
+    inclination, nor eyesight for the task, and I am apprehensive that my
+    strength and powers unassisted are incompetent to it’ (praised be the
+    Lord, they were not!), ‘therefore I should be glad to return home.
+    Moreover, the compositors say they are unaccustomed to compose in an
+    unknown tongue from such scribbled and illegible copy, and they will
+    scarcely assist me to compose.  Moreover, the working printers say
+    (several went away in disgust) that the paper on which they have to
+    print is too thin to be wetted, and that to print on dry requires a
+    twofold exertion of strength, and that they will not do such work for
+    double wages, for it ruptures them.’  Would that have been a welcome
+    communication to the Committee?  Would that have been a communication
+    suited to the public?  I was resolved ‘to do or die,’ and, instead of
+    distressing and perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write
+    nothing until I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I
+    now can; {132a} and to bring about that result I have spared neither
+    myself nor my own money.  I have toiled in a close printing-office
+    the whole day, during ninety degrees of heat, for the purpose of
+    setting an example, and have bribed people to work when nothing but
+    bribes would induce them so to do.
+
+    I am obliged to say all this in self-justification.  No member of the
+    Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what I have
+    undergone but for the question, ‘What has Mr Borrow been about?’  I
+    hope and trust that question is now answered to the satisfaction of
+    those who do Mr Borrow the honour to employ him.  In respect to the
+    expense attending the editing of such a work as the New Testament in
+    Manchu, I beg leave to observe that I have obtained the paper, the
+    principal source of expense, at fifteen roubles per ream less than
+    the Society formerly paid for it—that is to say, at nearly half the
+    price.
+
+    As St Matthew’s Gospel has been ready for some weeks, it is high time
+    that it should be bound; for if that process be delayed, the paper
+    will be dirtied and the work injured.  I am sorry to inform you that
+    book-binding in Russia is incredibly dear, {132b} and that the
+    expenses attending the binding of the Testament would amount, were
+    the usual course pursued, to two-thirds of the entire expenses of the
+    work.  Various book-binders to whom I have applied have demanded one
+    rouble and a half for the binding of every section of the work, so
+    that the sum required for the binding of one Testament alone would be
+    twelve roubles.  Doctor Schmidt assured me that one rouble and forty
+    copecks, or, according to the English currency, fourteenpence
+    halfpenny, were formerly paid for the binding of every individual
+    copy of St Matthew’s Gospel.
+
+    I pray you, my dear Sir, to cause the books to be referred to, for I
+    wish to know if that statement be correct.  In the meantime
+    arrangements have to be made, and the Society will have to pay for
+    each volume of the Testament the comparatively small sum of
+    forty-five copecks, or fourpence halfpenny, whereas the usual price
+    here for the most paltry covering of the most paltry pamphlet is
+    fivepence.  Should it be demanded how I have been able to effect
+    this, my reply is that I have had little hand in the matter.  A
+    nobleman who honours me with particular friendship, and who is one of
+    the most illustrious ornaments of Russia and of Europe, has, at my
+    request, prevailed on his own book-binder, over whom he has much
+    influence, to do the work on these terms.  That nobleman is Baron
+    Schilling.
+
+    Commend me to our most respected Committee.  Assure them that in
+    whatever I have done or left undone, I have been influenced by a
+    desire to promote the glory of the Trinity and to give my employers
+    ultimate and permanent satisfaction.  If I have erred, it has been
+    from a defect of judgment, and I ask pardon of God and them.  In the
+    course of a week I shall write again, and give a further account of
+    my proceedings, for I have not communicated one-tenth of what I have
+    to impart; but I can write no more now.  It is two hours past
+    midnight; the post goes away to-morrow, and against that morrow I
+    have to examine and correct three sheets of St Mark’s Gospel, which
+    lie beneath the paper on which I am writing.  With my best regards to
+    Mr Brandram,
+
+    I remain, dear Sir,
+
+                              Most truly yours,
+
+                                                                G. BORROW.
+
+    Rev. JOSEPH JOWETT.
+
+Closely following upon this letter, and without waiting for a reply,
+Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett, 13th/25th October, enclosing a
+certificate from Mr Lipovzoff, which read:—
+
+    “Testifio:—Dominum Burro ab initio usque ad hoc tempus summa cum
+    diligentia et studio in re Mantshurica laborasse, Lipovzoff.”
+
+He also reported progress as regards the printing, and promised (D.V.)
+that the entire undertaking should be completed by the first of May; but
+the letter was principally concerned with the projected expedition to
+Kiakhta, to distribute the books he was so busily occupied in printing.
+He repeated his former arguments, urging the Committee to send an agent
+to Kiakhta.  “I am a person of few words,” he assured Mr Jowett, “and
+will therefore state without circumlocution that I am willing to become
+that agent.  I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of
+the Russian Steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I
+might easily improve.”  As regards the danger to himself of such a
+hazardous undertaking, the conversion of the Tartar would never be
+achieved without danger to someone.  He had become acquainted with many
+of the Tartars resident in St Petersburg, whose language he had learned
+through conversing with his servant (a native of Bucharia [Bokhara]), and
+he had become “much attached to them; for their conscientiousness,
+honesty, and fidelity are beyond all praise.”
+
+To this further offer Mr Jowett replied:—
+
+    “Be not disheartened, even though the Committee postpone for the
+    present the consideration of your enterprising, not to say intrepid,
+    proposal.  Thus much, however, I may venture to say: that the offer
+    is more likely to be accepted now, than when you first made it.  If,
+    when the time approaches for executing such a plan, you give us
+    reason to believe that a more mature consideration of it in all its
+    bearings still leaves you in hope of a successful result, and in
+    heart for making the attempt, my own opinion is that the offer will
+    ultimately be accepted, and that very cordially.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+NOVEMBER 1834–SEPTEMBER 1835
+
+
+BORROW was an unconventional editor.  He foresaw the interminable delays
+likely to arise from allowing workmen to incorporate his corrections in
+the type.  To obviate these, he first corrected the proof, then,
+proceeding to the printing office, he made with his own hands the
+necessary alterations in the type.  This involved only two proofs, the
+second to be submitted to Mr Lipovzoff, instead of some half a dozen that
+otherwise would have been necessary.  During these days Borrow was
+ubiquitous.  Even the binder required his assistance, “for everything
+goes wrong without a strict surveillance.”
+
+Borrow had passed through _the_ crisis in his career.  Stricken with
+fever, which was followed by an attack of the “Horrors” (only to be
+driven away by port wine), he had scarcely found time in which to eat or
+sleep.  He had emerged triumphantly from the ordeal, and if he had
+“almost killed Beneze and his lads”{135a} with work, he had not spared
+himself.  If he had to report, as he did, that “my two compositors, whom
+I had instructed in all the mysteries of Manchu composition, are in the
+hospital, down with the brain fever,” {135b} he himself had grown thin
+from the incessant toil.
+
+The simple manliness and restrained dignity of his justification had
+produced a marked effect upon the authorities at home.  If the rebuke
+administered by Mr Jowett had been mild, his acknowledgment of the reply
+that it had called forth was most cordial and friendly.  After assuring
+Borrow of the Committee’s high satisfaction at the way in which its
+interests had been looked after, he proceeds sincerely to deprecate
+anything in his previous letter which may have caused Borrow pain, and
+continues:
+
+    “Yet I scarcely know how to be sorry for what has been the occasion
+    of drawing from you (what you might otherwise have kept locked up in
+    your own breast) the very interesting story of your labours,
+    vexations, disappointments, vigilance, address, perseverance, and
+    successes.  How you were able in your solitude to keep up your
+    spirits in the face of so many impediments, apparently
+    insurmountable, I know not . . . Do not fear that _we_ should in any
+    way interrupt your proceedings.  We know our interest too well to
+    interfere with an agent who has shown so much address in planning,
+    and so much diligence in effecting, the execution of our wishes.”
+
+These encouraging words were followed by a request that he would keep a
+careful account of all extraordinary expenses, that they might be duly
+met by the Society:—
+
+    “I allude, you perceive, to such things,” the letter goes on to
+    explain, “as your journies _huc et illuc_ in quest of a better
+    market, and to the occasional bribes to disheartened workmen.  In all
+    matters of this kind the Society is clearly your debtor.”  Borrow
+    replied with a flash of his old independent spirit: “I return my most
+    grateful thanks for this most considerate intimation, which,
+    nevertheless, I cannot avail myself of, as, according to one of the
+    articles of my agreement, my salary of £200 was to cover all extra
+    expenses.  Petersburg is doubtless the dearest capital in Europe, and
+    expenses meet an individual, especially one situated as I have been,
+    at every turn and corner; but an agreement is not to be broken on
+    that account.” {136}
+
+That the Committee, even before this proof of his ability, had been well
+pleased with their engagement of Borrow is shown by the acknowledgment
+made in the Society’s Thirtieth Annual Report: “Mr Borrow has not
+disappointed the expectation entertained.”
+
+There were other words of encouragement to cheer him in his labours.  His
+mother wrote in September of that year, telling him how, at a Bible
+Society’s gathering at Norwich, which had lasted the whole of a week, his
+name “was sounded through the Hall by Mr Gurney and Mr Cunningham”;
+telling how he had left his home and his friends to do God’s work in a
+foreign land, calling upon their fellow-citizens to offer up prayers
+beseeching the Almighty to vouchsafe to him health and strength that the
+great work he had undertaken might be completed.  “All this is very
+pleasing to me,” added the proud old lady.  “God bless you!”
+
+From Mrs Clarke of Oulton Hall, with whom he kept up a correspondence, he
+heard how his name had been mentioned at many of the Society’s meetings
+during the year, and how the Rev. Francis Cunningham had referred to him
+as “one of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the
+present day.”  Even at that date, viz., before the receipt of the
+remarkable account of his labours, the members and officials of the Bible
+Society seem to have come to the conclusion that he had achieved far more
+than they had any reason to expect of him.  Their subsequent approval is
+shown by the manner in which they caused his two letters of 8th/20th and
+13th/25th October to be circulated among the influential members of the
+Society, until at last they had reached the Rev. F. Cunningham and Mrs
+Clarke.
+
+About the middle of January (old style) 1835, Borrow placed in the hands
+of Baron Schilling a copy of each of the four Gospels in Manchu, to be
+conveyed to the Bible Society by one of the couriers attached to the
+Foreign Department at St Petersburg; but they did not reach Earl Street
+until several weeks later.  There were however, still the remaining four
+volumes to complete, and many more difficulties to overcome.
+
+One vexation that presented itself was a difference of opinion between
+Borrow and Lipovzoff, who “thought proper, when the Father Almighty is
+addressed, to erase the personal and possessive pronouns _thou_ or
+_thine_, as often as they occur, and in their stead to make use of the
+noun as the case may require.  For example, ‘O Father! thou art merciful’
+he would render, ‘O Father! the Father is merciful.’”  Borrow protested,
+but Lipovzoff, who was “a gentleman, whom the slightest contradiction
+never fails to incense to a most incredible degree,” told him that he
+talked nonsense, and refused to concede anything. {138a}  Lipovzoff, who
+had on his side the Chinese scholars and unlimited powers as official
+censor (from whose decree there was no appeal) over his own work, carried
+his point.  He urged that “amongst the Chinese and Tartars, none but the
+dregs of society were ever addressed in the second person; and that it
+would be most uncouth and indecent to speak of the Almighty as if He were
+a servant or a slave.”  This difficulty of the verbal ornament of the
+East was one that the Bible Society had frequently met with in the past.
+It was rightly considered as ill-fitting a translation of the words of
+Christ.  Simplicity of diction was to be preserved at all costs, whatever
+might be the rule with secular books.  Mr Jowett had warned Borrow to
+“beware of confounding the two distinct ideas of translation and
+interpretation!” {138b} and also informed him that “the passion for
+honorific-abilitudinity is a vice of Asiatic languages, which a Scripture
+translator, above all others, ought to beware of countenancing.” {139a}
+
+Well might Borrow write to Mr Jowett, “How I have been enabled to
+maintain terms of friendship and familiarity with Mr Lipovzoff, and yet
+fulfil the part which those who employ me expect me to fulfil, I am much
+at a loss to conjecture; and yet such is really the case.” {139b}  On the
+whole, however, the two men worked harmoniously together, the
+censor-translator being usually amenable to editorial reason and
+suggestion; and Borrow was able to assure Mr Jowett that with the
+exception of this one instance “the word of God has been rendered into
+Manchu as nearly and closely as the idiom of a very singular language
+would permit.”
+
+Borrow’s mind continued to dwell upon the project of penetrating into
+China and distributing the Scriptures himself.  He wrote again, repeating
+“the assurance that I am ready to attempt anything which the Society may
+wish me to execute, and, at a moment’s warning, will direct my course
+towards Canton, Pekin, or the court of the Grand Lama.” {139c}  The
+project had, however, to be abandoned.  The Russian Government, desirous
+of maintaining friendly relations with China, declined to risk her
+displeasure for a missionary project in which Russia had neither interest
+nor reasonable expectation of gain.  In agreeing to issue a passport such
+as Borrow desired, it stipulated that he should carry with him “not one
+single Manchu Bible thither.” {139d}  In spite of this discouragement,
+Borrow wrote to Mr Jowett with regard to the Chinese programme, “_I again
+repeat that I am at command_.” {139e}
+
+This determination on Borrow’s part to become a missionary filled his
+mother with alarm.  She had only one son now, and the very thought of his
+going into wild and unknown regions seemed to her tantamount to his going
+to his death.  Mrs Clarke also expressed strong disapproval of the
+project.  “I must tell you,” she wrote, “that your letter chilled me when
+I read your intention of going as a Missionary or Agent, with the Manchu
+Scriptures in your hand, to the Tartars, the land of incalculable
+dangers.”
+
+By the middle of May 1835 Borrow saw the end of his labours in sight.  On
+3rd/15th May he wrote asking for instructions relative to the despatch of
+the bulk of the volumes, and also as to the disposal of the type.  “As
+for myself,” he continues, “I suppose I must return to England, as my
+task will be speedily completed.  I hope the Society are convinced that I
+have served them faithfully, and that I have spared no labour to bring
+out the work, which they did me the honor of confiding to me, correctly
+and within as short a time as possible.  At my return, if the Society
+think that I can still prove of utility to them, I shall be most happy to
+devote myself still to their service.  I am a person full of faults and
+weaknesses, as I am every day reminded by bitter experience, but I am
+certain that my zeal and fidelity towards those who put confidence in me
+are not to be shaken.” {140}
+
+On 15th/27th June he reported the printing completed and six out of the
+eight volumes bound, and that as soon as the remaining two volumes were
+ready, he intended to take his departure from St Petersburg; but a new
+difficulty arose.  The East had laid a heavy hand upon St Petersburg.
+“To-morrow, please God!” met the energetic Westerner at every turn.  The
+bookbinder delayed six weeks because he could not procure some paper he
+required.  But the real obstacle to the despatch of the books was the
+non-arrival of the Government sanction to their shipment.  Nothing was
+permitted to move either in or out of the sacred city of the Tsars
+without official permission.  Probably those responsible for the
+administration of affairs had never in their experience been called upon
+to deal with a man such as Borrow.  To apply to him the customary rules
+of procedure was to bring upon “the House of Interior Affairs” a series
+of visits and demands that must have left it limp with astonishment.
+
+On 16th/28th July Borrow wrote to the Bible Society, “I herewith send you
+a bill of lading for six of the eight parts of the New Testament, which I
+have at last obtained permission to send away, after having paid sixteen
+visits to the House of Interior Affairs.” {141a}  He expresses a hope
+that in another fortnight he will have despatched the remaining two
+volumes and have “bidden adieu to Russia”; but it was dangerous to
+anticipate the official course of events in Russia.  Even to the last
+Borrow was tormented by red tape.  Early in August the last two volumes
+were ready for shipment to England; but he could not obtain the necessary
+permission.  He was told that he ought never to have printed the work, in
+spite of the license that had been granted, and that grave doubts existed
+in the official mind as to whether or no he really were an agent of the
+Bible Society.  At length Borrow lost patience and told the officials
+that during the week following the books would be despatched, with or
+without permission, and he warned them to have a care how they acted.
+These strong measures seem to have produced the desired result.
+
+Despite his many occupations on behalf of the Bible Society, Borrow found
+time in which to translate into Russian the first three Homilies of the
+Church of England, and into Manchu the Second.  His desire was that the
+Homily Society should cause these translations to be printed, and in a
+letter to the Rev. Francis Cunningham he strove to enlist his interest in
+the project, offering the translations without fee to the Society if they
+chose to make use of them. {141b}  As “a zealous, though most unworthy,
+member of the Anglican Church,” he found that his “cheeks glowed with
+shame at seeing dissenters, English and American, busily employed in
+circulating Tracts in the Russian tongue, whilst the members of the
+Church were following their secular concerns, almost regardless of things
+spiritual in respect to the Russian population.” {142a}
+
+Borrow also translated into English “one of the sacred books of Boudh, or
+Fo,” from Baron Schilling de Canstadt’s library.  The principal
+occupation of his leisure hours, however, was a collection of
+translations, which he had printed by Schultz & Beneze, and published
+(3rd/ 15th June 1835) under the title of _Targum_, _or Metrical
+Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects_. {142b}  In a prefatory
+note, the collection is referred to as “selections from a huge and
+undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted
+to philological pursuits.”  Three months later he published another
+collection entitled _The Talisman_, _From the Russian of Alexander
+Pushkin_.  _With Other Pieces_. {143a}  There were seven poems in all,
+two after Pushkin, one from the Malo-Russian, one from Mickiewicz, and
+three “ancient Russian Songs.”  Again the printers were Schultz & Beneze.
+Each of these editions appears to have been limited to one hundred
+copies. {143b}
+
+Writing in the _Athenæum_, {143c} J. P. H[asfeldt] says:—“The work is a
+pearl in literature, and, like pearls, derives value from its scarcity,
+for the whole edition was limited to about a hundred copies.”  W. B.
+Donne admired the translations immensely, considering “the language and
+rhythm as vastly superior to Macaulay’s _Lays of Ancient Rome_.” {143d}
+
+Whilst the last two volumes of the Manchu New Testament were waiting for
+paper (probably for end-papers), Borrow determined to pay a hurried visit
+to Moscow, “by far the most remarkable city it has ever been my fortune
+to see.”  One of his principal objects in visiting the ancient capital of
+Russia was to see the gypsies, who flourished there as they flourished
+nowhere else in Europe.  They numbered several thousands, and many of
+them inhabited large and handsome houses, drove in their carriages, and
+were “distinguishable from the genteel class of the Russians only . . .
+by superior personal advantages and mental accomplishments.” {143e}  For
+this unusual state of prosperity the women were responsible, “having from
+time immemorial cultivated their vocal powers to such an extent that,
+although in the heart of a country in which the vocal art has arrived at
+greater perfection than in any other part of the world, the principal
+Gypsy choirs in Moscow are allowed by the general voice of the public to
+be unrivalled and to bear away the palm from all competitors.  It is a
+fact notorious in Russia that the celebrated Catalani was so filled with
+admiration for the powers of voice displayed by one of the Gypsy
+songsters, who, after the former had sung before a splendid audience at
+Moscow, stepped forward and with an astonishing burst of melody ravished
+every ear, that she [Catalani] tore from her own shoulders a shawl of
+immense value which had been presented to her by the Pope, and embracing
+the Gypsy, compelled her to accept it, saying that it had been originally
+intended for the matchless singer, which she now discovered was not
+herself.” {144a}
+
+These Russian gypsy singers lived luxurious lives and frequently married
+Russian gentry or even the nobility.  It was only the successes, however,
+who achieved such distinction, and there were “a great number of low,
+vulgar, and profligate females who sing in taverns, or at the various
+gardens in the neighbourhood, and whose husbands and male connections
+subsist by horse-jobbing and such kinds of low traffic.” {144b}
+
+One fine evening Borrow hired a calash and drove out to Marina Rotze, “a
+kind of sylvan garden,” about one and a half miles out of Moscow, where
+this particular class of Romanys resorted.  “Upon my arriving there,” he
+writes, “the Gypsies swarmed out of their tents and from the little
+_tracteer_ or tavern, and surrounded me.  Standing on the seat of the
+calash, I addressed them in a loud voice in the dialect of the English
+Gypsies, with which I have some slight acquaintance.  A scream of wonder
+instantly arose, and welcomes and greetings were poured forth in torrents
+of musical Romany, amongst which, however, the most pronounced cry was:
+_ah kak mi toute karmuma_ {145a}—‘Oh how we love you’; for at first they
+supposed me to be one of their brothers, who, they said, were wandering
+about in Turkey, China, and other parts, and that I had come over the
+great _pawnee_, or water, to visit them.” {145b}
+
+On several other occasions during his stay at Moscow, Borrow went out to
+Marina Rotze, to hold converse with the gypsies.  He “spoke to them upon
+their sinful manner of living,” about Christianity and the advent of
+Christ, to which the gypsies listened with attention, but apparently not
+much profit.  The promise that they would soon be able to obtain the
+teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in their own tongue interested them far
+more on account of the pleasurable strangeness of the idea, than from any
+anticipation that they might derive spiritual comfort from such writings.
+
+Returning to St Petersburg from Moscow, after four-days’ absence, Borrow
+completed his work, settled up his affairs, bade his friends good-bye,
+and on 28th August/9th September left for Cronstadt to take the packet
+for Lübeck.  The authorities seem to have raised no objection to his
+departure.  His passport bore the date 28th August O/S (the actual day he
+left) and described him as “of stature, tall—hair, grey—face,
+oval—forehead, medium—eyebrows, blonde—eyes, brown—nose and mouth,
+medium—chin, round.”
+
+Borrow’s work at St Petersburg gave entire satisfaction to the Bible
+Society.  The Official Report for the year 1835 informed the members
+that—
+
+    “The printing of the Manchu New Testament in St Petersburg is now
+    drawing to a conclusion.  Mr G. Borrow, who has had to superintend
+    the work, has in every way afforded satisfaction to the Committee.
+    They have reason to believe that his acquirements in the language are
+    of the most respectable order; while the devoted diligence with which
+    he has laboured, and the skill he has shown in surmounting
+    difficulties, and conducting his negotiations for the advantage of
+    the Society, justly entitle him to this public acknowledgment of his
+    services.” {146a}
+
+Of the actual work itself John Hasfeldt justly wrote:
+
+    “I can only say, that it is a beautiful edition of an oriental
+    work—that it is printed with great care on a fine imitation of
+    Chinese paper, made on purpose.  At the outset, Mr Borrow spent weeks
+    and months in the printing office to make the compositors acquainted
+    with the intricate Manchu types; and that, as for the contents, I am
+    assured by well-informed persons, that this translation is remarkable
+    for the correctness and fidelity with which it has been executed.”
+    {146b}
+
+The total cost to the Society of his labours in connection with the
+transcription of Puerot’s MS., and printing and binding one thousand
+copies of Lipovzoff’s New Testament had reached the very considerable sum
+of £2600.  What the amount would have been if Borrow had not proved a
+prince of bargainers, it is impossible to imagine.  The entire edition
+was sent to Earl Street, and eventually distributed in China as occasion
+offered.  An edition of the Gospels in this version has recently been
+reprinted, and is still in use among certain tribes in Mongolia.
+
+Borrow arrived in London somewhere about 20th September (new style),
+after an absence of a little more than two years.  He went to St
+Petersburg “prejudiced against the country, the government, and the
+people; the first is much more agreeable than is generally supposed; the
+second is seemingly the best adapted for so vast an empire; and the
+third, even the lowest classes, are in general kind, hospitable, and
+benevolent.” {147}
+
+On 23rd September Borrow was still in London writing his report to the
+General Committee upon his recent labours.  In all probability he left
+immediately afterwards for Norwich, there to await events.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+OCTOBER 1835–JANUARY 1836
+
+
+BORROW had strong hopes that the Bible Society would continue to employ
+him.  Mr Brandram had written (5th June 1835) that the Committee “will
+not very willingly suffer themselves to be deprived of your services.
+From Russia Borrow had written to his mother: {148}
+
+    “They [the Bible Society] place great confidence in me, and I am
+    firmly resolved to do all in my power to prove that they have not
+    misplaced that confidence.  I dare say that when I return home they
+    will always be happy to employ me to edit their Bibles, and there is
+    no employment in the whole world which I should prefer and for which
+    I am better fitted.  I shall, moreover, endeavour to get ordained.”
+
+On another occasion he wrote, also to his mother:
+
+    “I hope that the Bible Society will employ me upon something new, for
+    I have of late led an active life, and dread the thought of having
+    nothing to do except studying as formerly, and I am by no means
+    certain that I could sit down to study now.  I can do anything if it
+    is to turn to any account; but it is very hard to dig holes in the
+    sand and fill them up again, as I used to do.  However, I hope God
+    will find me something on which I can employ myself with credit and
+    profit.  I should like very much to get into the Church, though I
+    suppose that that, like all other professions, is overstocked.”
+
+Mrs Borrow reminded him that he had a good home ready to receive him, and
+a mother grown lonely with long waiting.  She told him, among other
+things, that she had spent none of the money that he had so generously
+and unsparingly sent her.
+
+Borrow certainly had every reason to expect further employment.  He had
+proved himself not only a thoroughly qualified editor; but had discovered
+business qualities that must have astonished and delighted the General
+Committee.  Above all he had brought to a most successful conclusion a
+venture that, but for his ability and address, would in all probability
+have failed utterly.  The application for permission to proceed with the
+distribution had, it is true, been unsuccessful; but there was, as Mr
+Brandram wrote, the “seed laid up in the granary; but ‘it is not yet
+written’ that the sowers are to go forth to sow.”
+
+After remaining for a short time with his mother at Norwich, Borrow
+appears to have paid a visit to his friends the Skeppers of Oulton.  Old
+Mrs Skepper, Mrs Clarke’s mother, had just died, and it is a proof of
+Borrow’s intimacy with the family that he should be invited to stay with
+them whilst they were still in mourning.  Although there is no record of
+the date when he arrived at Oulton, he is known to have been there on 9th
+October, when he addressed a Bible Society meeting, about which he wrote
+the following delectable postscript to a letter he addressed to Mr
+Brandram: {149}
+
+    “There has been a Bible meeting at Oulton, in Suffolk, to which I was
+    invited.  The speaking produced such an effect, that some of the most
+    vicious characters in the neighbourhood have become weekly
+    subscribers to the Branch Society.  So says the Chronicle of Norfolk
+    in its report.”  The actual paragraph read:
+
+    “It will doubtless afford satisfaction to the Christian public to
+    learn that many poor individuals in this neighbourhood, who previous
+    to attending this meeting were averse to the cause or indifferent to
+    it, had their feelings so aroused by what was communicated to them,
+    that they have since voluntarily subscribed to the Bible Society,
+    actuated by the hope of becoming humbly instrumental in extending the
+    dominion of the true light, and of circumscribing the domains of
+    darkness and of Satan.”
+
+On returning to the quiet of the old Cathedral city, Borrow had an
+opportunity of resting and meditating upon the events of the last two
+years; but he soon became restless and tired of inaction. {150a}  “I am
+weary of doing nothing, and am sighing for employment,” {150b} he wrote.
+He had impatiently awaited some word from Earl Street, where, seemingly,
+he had discussed various plans for the future, including a journey to
+Portugal and Spain, as well as the printing in Armenian of an edition of
+the New Testament.  Hearing nothing from Mr Jowett, he wrote begging to
+be excused for reminding him that he was ready to undertake any task that
+might be allotted to him.
+
+On the day following, he received a letter from Mr Brandram telling of
+how a resolution had been passed that he should go to Portugal.  Then the
+writer’s heart misgave him.  In his mind’s eye he saw Borrow set down at
+Oporto.  What would he do?  Fearful that the door was not sufficiently
+open to justify the step, he had suggested the suspension of the
+resolution.  Borrow was asked what he himself thought.  What did he think
+of China, and could he foresee any prospect for the distribution of the
+Scriptures there?  “Favour us with your thoughts,” Mr Brandram wrote.
+“Experimental agency in a Society like ours is a formidable undertaking.”
+Borrow replied the same day, {150c}
+
+    “As you ask me to favour you with my thoughts, I certainly will; for
+    I have thought much upon the matters in question, and the result I
+    will communicate to you in a very few words.  I decidedly approve
+    (and so do all the religious friends whom I have communicated it to)
+    of the plan of a journey to Portugal, and am sorry that it has been
+    suspended, though I am convinced that your own benevolent and
+    excellent heart was the cause, unwilling to fling me into an
+    undertaking which you supposed might be attended with peril and
+    difficulty.  Therefore I wish it to be clearly understood that I am
+    perfectly willing to undertake the expedition, nay, to extend it into
+    Spain, to visit the town and country, to discourse with the people,
+    especially those connected with institutions for infantine education,
+    and to learn what ways and opportunities present themselves for
+    conveying the Gospel into those benighted countries.  I will moreover
+    undertake, with the blessing of God, to draw up a small volume of
+    what I shall have seen and heard there, which cannot fail to be
+    interesting, and if patronised by the Society will probably help to
+    cover the expenses of the expedition.  On my return I can commence
+    the Armenian Testament, and whilst I am editing that, I may be
+    acquiring much vulgar Chinese from some unemployed Lascar or stray
+    Cantonman whom I may pick up upon the wharves, and then . . . to
+    China.  I have no more to say, for were I to pen twenty pages, and I
+    have time enough for so doing, I could communicate nothing which
+    would make my views more clear.”
+
+The earnestness of this letter seems effectually to have dissipated Mr
+Brandram’s scruples, for events moved forward with astonishing rapidity.
+Four days after the receipt of Borrow’s letter, a resolution was adopted
+by the Committee to the following effect:—
+
+    “That Mr Borrow be requested to proceed forthwith to Lisbon and
+    Oporto for the purpose of visiting the Society’s correspondents
+    there, and of making further enquiries respecting the means and
+    channels which may offer for promoting the circulation of the Holy
+    Scriptures in Portugal.” {151}
+
+Mr Brandram gave Borrow two letters of introduction, one to John Wilby, a
+merchant at Lisbon, and the other to the British Chaplain, the Rev. E.
+Whiteley.  Having explained to Mr Whiteley how Borrow had recently been
+eventually going to be employed in St Petersburg in editing the Manchu New
+Testament, he wrote:—
+
+    “We have some prospect of his eventually going to China; but having proved by experience
+    that he possesses an order of talent remarkably suited to the
+    purposes of our Society, we have felt unwilling to interrupt our
+    connection with him with the termination of his engagement at St
+    Petersburg.  In the interval we have thought that he might
+    advantageously visit Portugal, and strengthen your hands and those of
+    other friends, and see whether he could not extend the promising
+    opening at present existing.  He has no specific instructions, though
+    he is enjoined to confer very fully with yourself and Mr Wilby of
+    Lisbon.
+
+    “I have mentioned his recent occupation at St Petersburg, and you may
+    perhaps think that there is little affinity between it and his
+    present visit to Portugal.  But Mr Borrow possesses no little tact in
+    addressing himself to anything.  With Portugal he is already
+    acquainted, and speaks the language.  He proposes visiting several of
+    the principal cities and towns . . .
+
+    “Our correspondence about Spain is at this moment singularly
+    interesting, and if it continues so, and the way seems to open, Mr
+    Borrow will cross the frontier and go and enquire what can be done
+    there.  We believe him to be one who is endowed with no small portion
+    of address and a spirit of enterprise.  I recommend him to your kind
+    attentions, and I anticipate your thanks for so doing, after you
+    shall have become acquainted with him.  Do not, however, be too hasty
+    in forming your judgment.”
+
+This letter outlines very clearly what was in the minds of the Committee
+in sending Borrow to Portugal.  He was to spy out the land and advise the
+home authorities in what direction he would be most likely to prove
+useful.  He was in particular to direct his attention to schools, and was
+“authorised to be liberal in _giving_ New Testaments.”  Furthermore, he
+was to be permitted to draw upon the Society’s agents to the extent of
+one hundred pounds.
+
+The most significant part of this letter is the passage relating to
+China.  It leaves no doubt that Borrow’s reiterated requests to be
+employed in distributing the Manchu New Testament had appealed most
+strongly to the General Committee.  Mr Brandram was evidently in doubt as
+to how Borrow would strike his correspondent as an agent of the Bible
+Society, hence his warning against a hasty judgment.  Apparently this
+letter was never presented, as it was found among Borrow’s papers, and Mr
+Whiteley had to form his opinion entirely unaided.
+
+On 6th November Borrow sailed from the Thames for Lisbon in the steamship
+_London Merchant_.  The voyage was fair for the time of year, and was
+marked only by the tragic occurrence of a sailor falling from the
+cross-trees into the sea and being drowned.  The man had dreamed his fate
+a few minutes previously, and had told Borrow of the circumstances on
+coming up from below. {153}
+
+Borrow had scarcely been in Lisbon an hour before he heartily wished
+himself “back in Russia . . . where I had left cherished friends and warm
+affections.”  The Customs-house officers irritated him, first with their
+dilatoriness, then by the minuteness with which they examined every
+article of which he was possessed.  Again, there was the difficulty of
+obtaining a suitable lodging, which when eventually found proved to be
+“dark, dirty and exceedingly expensive without attendance.”  Mr Wilby was
+in the country and not expected to return for a week.  It would also
+appear that the British Chaplain was likewise away.  Thus Borrow found
+himself with no one to advise him as to the first step he should take.
+This in itself was no very great drawback; but he felt very much a
+stranger in a city that struck him as detestable.
+
+Determined to commence operations according to the dictates of his own
+judgment, he first engaged a Portuguese servant that he might have ample
+opportunities of perfecting himself in the language.  He was fortunate in
+his selection, for Antonio turned out an excellent fellow, who “always
+served me with the greatest fidelity, and . . . exhibited an assiduity
+and a wish to please which afforded me the utmost satisfaction.” {154a}
+
+When Borrow arrived in Portugal, it was to find it gasping and dazed by
+eight years of civil war (1826–1834).  In 1807, when Junot invaded the
+country, the Royal House of Braganza had sailed for Brazil.  In 1816 Dom
+Joāo succeeded to the thrones of Brazil and Portugal, and six years later
+he arrived in Portugal, leaving behind him as Viceroy his son Dom Pedro,
+who promptly declared himself Emperor of Brazil.  Dom Joāo died in 1826,
+leaving, in addition to the self-styled Emperor of Brazil, another son,
+Miguel.  Dom Pedro relinquished his claim to the throne of Portugal in
+favour of his seven years old daughter, Maria da Gloria, whose right was
+contested by her uncle Dom Miguel.  In 1834 Dom Miguel resigned his
+imaginary rights to the throne by the Convention of Evora, and departed
+from the country that for eight years had been at war with itself, and
+for seven with a foreign invader.
+
+Borrow proceeded to acquaint himself with the state of affairs in Lisbon
+and the surrounding country, that he might transmit a full account to the
+Bible Society.  He visited every part of the city, losing no opportunity
+of entering into conversation with anyone with whom he came in contact.
+The people he found indifferent to religion, the lower orders in
+particular.  They laughed in his face when he enquired if ever they
+confessed themselves, and a muleteer on being asked if he reverenced the
+cross, “instantly flew into a rage, stamped violently, and, spitting on
+the ground, said it was a piece of stone, and that he should have no more
+objection to spit upon it than the stones on which he trod.” {154b}
+
+Many of the people could read, as they proved when asked to do so from
+the Portuguese New Testament; but of all those whom he addressed none
+appeared to have read the Scriptures, or to know anything of what they
+contain.
+
+After spending four or five days at Lisbon, Borrow, accompanied by
+Antonio, proceeded to Cintra. {155a}  Here he pursued the same method,
+also visiting the schools and enquiring into the nature of the religious
+instruction.  During his stay of four days, he “traversed the country in
+all directions, riding into the fields, where I saw the peasants at work,
+and entering into discourse with them, and notwithstanding many of my
+questions must have appeared to them very singular, I never experienced
+any incivility, though they frequently answered me with smiles and
+laughter.” {155b}
+
+From Cintra he proceeded on horseback to Mafra, a large village some
+three leagues distant.  Everywhere he subjected the inhabitants to a
+searching cross-examination, laying bare their minds upon religious
+matters, experiencing surprise at the “free and unembarrassed manner in
+which the Portuguese peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of
+the language in which they express their thoughts,” {155c} although few
+could read or write.
+
+On the return journey from Mafra to Cintra he nearly lost his life, owing
+to the girth of his saddle breaking during his horse’s exertions in
+climbing a hill.  Borrow was cast violently to the ground; but
+fortunately on the right side, otherwise he would in all probability have
+been bruised to death by tumbling down the steep hill-side.  As it was,
+he was dazed, and felt the effects of his mishap for several days.
+
+On his return to Lisbon, Borrow found that Mr Wilby was back, and he had
+many opportunities of taking counsel with him as to the best means to be
+adopted to further the Society’s ends.  He learned that four hundred
+copies of the Bible and the New Testament had arrived, and it was decided
+to begin operations at once.  Mr Wilby recommended the booksellers as the
+best medium of distribution; but Borrow urged strongly that at least half
+of the available copies “should be entrusted to colporteurs,” who were to
+receive a commission upon every copy sold.  To this Mr Wilby agreed,
+provided the operations of the colporteurs were restricted to Lisbon, as
+there was considerable danger in the country, where the priests were very
+powerful and might urge the people to mishandle, or even assassinate, the
+bearers of the Word.
+
+By nature Borrow was not addicted to half measures.  His whole record as
+an agent of the Bible Society was of a series of determined onslaughts
+upon the obstacles animate and inanimate, that beset his path.  Sometimes
+he took away the breath of his adversaries by the very vigour of his
+attack, and, like the old Northern leaders, whose deeds he wished to give
+to an uneager world in translated verse, he faced great dangers and
+achieved great ends.  Recognising that the darkest region is most in need
+of light, he enquired of Mr Wilby in what province of Portugal were to be
+found the most ignorant and benighted people, and on being told the
+Alemtejo (the other side of the Tagus), he immediately announced his
+intention of making a journey through it, in order to discover how dense
+spiritual gloom could really be in an ostensibly Christian country.
+
+The Alemtejo was an unprepossessing country, consisting for the most part
+of “heaths, broken by knolls and gloomy dingles, swamps and forests of
+stunted pine,” with but few hills and mountains.  The place was infested
+with banditti, and robberies, accompanied by horrible murders, were of
+constant occurrence.  On 6th December, accompanied by his servant
+Antonio, Borrow set out for Evora, the principal town, formerly a seat of
+the dreaded Inquisition, which lies about sixty miles east of Lisbon.
+After many adventures, which he himself has narrated, including a
+dangerous crossing of the Tagus, and a meeting with Dom Geronimo Jozé
+d’Azveto, secretary to the government of Evora, Borrow arrived at his
+destination, having spent two nights on the road.  During the journey he
+had been constantly mindful of his mission; beside the embers of a
+bandit’s fire he left a New Testament, and the huts that mark the spot
+where Dom Pedro and Dom Miguel met, he sweetened with some of “the
+precious little tracts.”
+
+He had brought with him to Evora twenty Testaments and two Bibles, half
+of which he left with an enlightened shopkeeper, to whom he had a letter
+of introduction.  The other half he subsequently bestowed upon Dom
+Geronimo, who proved to be a man of great earnestness, deeply conscious
+of his countrymen’s ignorance of true Christianity.  Each day during his
+stay at Evora, Borrow spent two hours beside the fountain where the
+cattle were watered, entering into conversation with all who approached,
+the result being that before he left the town, he had spoken to “about
+two hundred . . . of the children of Portugal upon matters connected with
+their eternal welfare.”  Sometimes his hearers would ask for proofs of
+his statements that they were not Christians, being ignorant of Christ
+and his teaching, and that the Pope was Satan’s prime minister.  He
+invariably replied by calling attention to their own ignorance of the
+Scripture, for if the priests were in reality Christ’s ministers, why had
+they kept from their flocks the words of their Master?
+
+When not engaged at the fountain, Borrow rode about the neighbourhood
+distributing tracts.  Fearful lest the people might refuse them if
+offered by his own hand, he dropped them in their favourite walks, in the
+hope that they would be picked up out of curiosity.  He caused the
+daughter of the landlady of the inn at which he stopped to burn a copy of
+Volney’s _Ruins of Empire_, because the author was an “emissary of
+Satan,” the girl standing by telling her beads until the book were
+entirely consumed.
+
+Borrow had been greatly handicapped through the lack of letters of
+introduction to influential people in Portugal.  He wrote, therefore, to
+Dr Bowring, now M.P. for Kilmarnock, telling him of his wanderings among
+the rustics and banditti of Portugal, with whom he had become very
+popular; but, he continues:
+
+    “As it is much more easy to introduce oneself to the cottage than the
+    hall (though I am not utterly unknown in the latter), I want you to
+    give or procure me letters to the most liberal and influential minds
+    in Portugal.  I likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office to
+    Lord [Howard] de Walden.  In a word, I want to make what interest I
+    can towards obtaining the admission of the Gospel of Jesus into the
+    public schools of Portugal, which are about to be established.  I beg
+    leave to state that this is _my plan_ and no other person’s, as I was
+    merely sent over to Portugal to observe the disposition of the
+    people, therefore I do not wish to be named as an Agent of the B.S.,
+    but as a person who has plans for the mental improvement of the
+    Portuguese; should I receive _these letters_ within the space of six
+    weeks it will be time enough, for before setting up my machine in
+    Portugal, I wish to lay the foundations of something similar in
+    Spain.”
+
+    P.S.—“I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want letters something
+    similar (there is impudence for you) for Madrid, _which I should like
+    to have as soon as possible_.  I do not much care at present for an
+    introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I shall not commence
+    operations seriously in Spain until I have disposed of Portugal.  I
+    will not apologise for writing to you in this manner, for you know
+    me, but I will tell you one thing, which is, that the letter which
+    you procured for me, on my going to St Petersburg, from Lord
+    Palmerston, assisted me wonderfully; I called twice at your domicile
+    on my return; the first time you were in Scotland—the second in
+    France, and I assure you I cried with vexation.  Remember me to Mrs
+    Bowring, and God bless you.” {159a}
+
+In this letter Borrow gives another illustration of his shrewdness.  He
+saw clearly the disadvantage of appealing for assistance as an agent of
+the Bible Society, a Protestant institution which was anathema in a Roman
+Catholic country, whereas if he posed merely as “a gentleman who has
+plans for the mental improvement of the Portuguese,” he could enlist the
+sympathetic interest of any and every broad-minded Portuguese mindful of
+his country’s intellectual gloom.  In response to this request Dr
+Bowring, writing from Brussels, sent two letters of introduction, one
+each for Lisbon and Madrid.
+
+After remaining at Evora for a week (8th to 17th December) Borrow
+returned to Lisbon, thoroughly satisfied with the results of his journey.
+The next fortnight he spent in a further examination of Lisbon, and
+becoming acquainted with the Jews of the city, by whom he was welcomed as
+a powerful rabbi.  He favoured the mistake, with the result that in a few
+days he “knew all that related to them and their traffic in Lisbon.”
+{159b}
+
+Borrow’s methods seem to have impressed Earl Street most favourably.  In
+a letter of acknowledgment Mr Brandram wrote:—
+
+    “We have been much interested by your two communications. {159c}
+    They are both very painful in their details, and you develop a truly
+    awful state of things.  You are probing the wound, and I hope
+    preparing the way for our pouring in by and by the healing balsam of
+    the Scripture.  We shall be anxious to hear from you again.  We often
+    think of you in your wanderings.  We like your way of communicating
+    with the people, meeting them in their own walks.”
+
+Thoroughly convinced as to the irreligious state of Portugal, Borrow
+determined to set out for Spain, in order that he might examine into the
+condition of the people, and report to the Bible Society their state of
+preparedness to receive the Scriptures.  On the afternoon of 1st January
+1836 he set out, bound for Badajos, a hundred miles south of Lisbon.
+From Badajos he intended to take the diligence on to Madrid, which he
+decided to make his headquarters.
+
+Having taken leave of his servant Antonio (who had accompanied him as far
+as Aldéa Galléga) almost with tears, Borrow mounted a hired mule, and
+with no other companion than an idiot lad, who, when spoken to, made
+reply only with an uncouth laugh, he plunged once more into the dangerous
+and desolate Alemtejo on a four days’ journey “over the most savage and
+ill-noted track in the whole kingdom.”  At first he was overwhelmed with
+a sense of loneliness, and experienced a great desire for someone with
+whom to talk.  There was no one to be seen—he was hemmed in by desolation
+and despair.
+
+At Montemôr Novo Borrow appears in a new light when he kisses his hand
+repeatedly to the tittering nuns who, with “dusky faces and black waving
+hair,” {160a} strove to obtain a glance of the stranger who, a few
+minutes previously, had dared to tell one of their number that he had
+come “to endeavour to introduce the gospel of Christ into a country where
+it is not known.” {160b}
+
+One adventure befel him that might have ended in tragedy.  Soon after
+leaving Arrayólos he overtook a string of carts conveying ammunition into
+Spain.  One of the Portuguese soldiers of the guard began to curse
+foreigners in general and Borrow, whom he mistook for a Frenchmen, in
+particular, because “the devil helps foreigners and hates the
+Portuguese.”  When about forty yards ahead of the advance guard, with
+which the discontented soldier marched, Borrow had the imprudence to
+laugh, with the result that the next moment two well-aimed bullets sang
+past his ears.  Taking the hint, Borrow put spurs to his mule, and,
+followed by the terrified guide, soon outdistanced these official
+banditti.  With great _naïveté_ he remarks, “Oh, may I live to see the
+day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated in any civilised, or at
+least Christian country!” {161a}
+
+For two and a half days the idiot guide had met Borrow’s most dexterous
+cross-examination with a determined silence; but on reaching a hill
+overlooking Estremóz he suddenly found tongue, and, in an epic of
+inspiration, told of the wonderful hunting that was to be obtained on the
+Serre Dorso, the Alemtejo’s finest mountain.  “He likewise described with
+great minuteness a wonderful dog, which was kept in the neighbourhood for
+the purpose of catching the wolves and wild boars, and for which the
+proprietor had refused twenty _moidores_.” {161b}  From this it would
+appear that the idiocy of the guide was an armour to be assumed at will
+by one who preferred the sweetness of his own thoughts to the
+cross-questionings of his master’s clients.
+
+At Elvas, which he reached on 5th January, Borrow showed very strongly
+one rather paradoxical side of his character.  Never backward in his
+dispraise of Englishmen and things English, in particular those
+responsible for the administration of the nation’s affairs, past and
+present, he demonstrated very clearly, in his expressions of indignation
+at the Portuguese attitude towards England, that he reserved this right
+of criticism strictly to himself.  At the inn where he stayed, he
+thoroughly discomfited a Portuguese officer who dared to criticise the
+English Government for its attitude in connection with the Spanish civil
+war.  When refused entrance to the fort, where he had gone in order to
+satisfy his curiosity, Borrow exclaims, “This is one of the beneficial
+results of protecting a nation, and squandering blood and treasure in its
+defence.” {162a}
+
+Borrow was essentially an Englishman and proud of his blood, prouder
+perhaps of that which came to him from Norfolk, {162b} and although
+permitting himself and his fellow-countrymen considerable license in the
+matter of caustic criticism of public men and things, there the matter
+must end.  Let a foreigner, a Portuguese, dare to say a word against his,
+Borrow’s, country, and he became subjected to either a biting
+cross-examination, or was denounced in eloquent and telling periods.  “I
+could not command myself,” he writes in extenuation of his unchristian
+conduct in discomfiting the officer at Elvas, “when I heard my own
+glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner.  By whom?  A Portuguese?
+A native of a country which has been twice liberated from horrid and
+detestable thraldom by the hands of Englishmen.” {162c}
+
+On 6th January 1836, {162d} having sent back the “idiot” guide with the
+two mules, Borrow “spurred down the hill of Elvas to the plain, eager to
+arrive in old, chivalrous, romantic Spain,” and having forded the stream
+that separates the two countries, he crossed the bridge over the Guadiana
+and entered the North Gate of Badajos, immortalised by Wellington and the
+British Army.  He had reached Spain “in the humble hope of being able to
+cleanse some of the foul stains of Popery from the minds of its
+children.” {162e}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+JANUARY–OCTOBER 1836
+
+
+WHEN Borrow entered Spain she was in the throes of civil war.  In 1814
+British blood and British money had restored to the throne Ferdinand
+VII., who, immediately he found himself secure, and forgetting his
+pledges to govern constitutionally, dissolved the Cortes and became an
+absolute monarch.  All the old abuses were revived, including the
+re-establishment of the Inquisition.  For six years the people suffered
+their King’s tyranny, then they revolted, with the result that Ferdinand,
+bending to the wind, accepted a re-imposition of the Constitution.  In
+1823 a French Army occupied Madrid in support of Ferdinand, who promptly
+reverted to absolutism.
+
+In 1829 Ferdinand married for the fourth time, and, on the birth of a
+daughter, declared that the Salic law had no effect in Spain, and the
+young princess was recognised as heir-apparent to the throne.  This drew
+from his brother, Don Carlos, who immediately left the country, a protest
+against his exclusion from the succession.  When his daughter was four
+years of age, Ferdinand died, and the child was proclaimed Queen as
+Isabel II.
+
+A bitter war broke out between the respective adherents of the Queen and
+her uncle Don Carlos.  Prisoners and wounded were massacred without
+discrimination, and an uncivilised and barbarous warfare waged when
+Borrow crossed the Portuguese frontier “to undertake the adventure of
+Spain.”
+
+Spain had always appealed most strongly to Borrow’s imagination.
+
+    “In the day-dreams of my boyhood,” he writes, “Spain always bore a
+    considerable share, and I took a particular interest in her, without
+    any presentiment that I should, at a future time, be called upon to
+    take a part, however humble, in her strange dramas; which interest,
+    at a very early period, led me to acquire her noble language, and to
+    make myself acquainted with the literature (scarcely worthy of the
+    language), her history and traditions; so that when I entered Spain
+    for the first time I felt more at home than I should otherwise have
+    done.” {164a}
+
+Whilst standing at the door of the Inn of the Three Nations on the day
+following his arrival at Badajos, meditating upon the deplorable state of
+the country he had just entered, Borrow recognised in the face of one of
+two men who were about to pass him the unmistakable lineaments of Egypt.
+Uttering “a certain word,” he received the reply he expected and
+forthwith engaged in conversation with the two men, who both proved to be
+gypsies.  These men spread the news abroad that staying at the Inn of the
+Three Nations was a man who spoke Romany.  “In less than half an hour the
+street before the inn was filled with the men, women, and children of
+Egypt.”  Borrow went out amongst them, and confesses that “so much
+vileness, dirt, and misery I had never seen among a similar number of
+human beings; but worst of all was the evil expression of their
+countenances.” {164b}  He soon discovered that their faces were an
+accurate index to their hearts, which were capable of every species of
+villainy.  The gypsies clustered round him, fingering his hands, face and
+clothes, as if he were a holy man.
+
+Gypsies had always held for Borrow a strange attraction, {164c} and he
+determined to prolong his stay at Badajos in order that he might have an
+opportunity of becoming “better acquainted with their condition and
+manners, and above all to speak to them of Christ and His Word; for I was
+convinced, that should I travel to the end of the universe, I should meet
+with no people more in need of a little Christian exhortation.” {165a}
+
+Intimate though his acquaintance with the gypsies of other countries had
+been, Borrow was aghast at the depravity of those of Spain.  The men were
+drunkards, brigands, and murderers; the women unchaste, and inveterate
+thieves.  Their language was terrifying in its foulness.  They seemed to
+have no religion save a misty glimmering of metempsychosis, which had
+come down to them through the centuries, and having been very wicked in
+this world they asked, with some show of reason, why they should live
+again.  They were incorrigible heathens, keenly interested in the
+demonstration that their language was capable of being written and read,
+but untouched by the parables of Lazarus or the Prodigal Son, which
+Borrow read and expounded to them.  “Brother,” exclaimed one woman, “you
+tell us strange things, though perhaps you do not lie; a month since I
+would sooner have believed these tales, than that this day I should see
+one who could read Romany.” {165b}
+
+Neither by exhortation nor by translating into Romany a portion of the
+Gospel of St Luke could Borrow make any impression upon the minds of the
+gypsies, therefore when one of them, Antonio by name, announced that “the
+affairs of Egypt” called for his presence “on the frontiers of
+Costumbra,” and that he and Borrow might as well journey thus far
+together, he decided to avail himself of the opportunity.  It was
+arranged that Borrow’s luggage should be sent on ahead, for, as Antonio
+said, “How the _Busné_ [the Spaniards] on the road would laugh if they
+saw two _Calés_ [Gypsies] with luggage behind them.” {166a}  Thus it came
+about that an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, mounted
+upon a most uncouth horse “of a spectral white, short in the body, but
+with remarkably long legs” and high in the withers, set out from Badajos
+on 16th January 1836, escorted by a smuggler astride a mule; for the
+affairs of Egypt on this occasion were the evasion of the Customs dues.
+
+Towards evening on the first day the curiously assorted pair arrived at
+Mérida, and proceeded to a large and ruinous house, a portion of which
+was occupied by some connections of the gypsy Antonio’s.  In the large
+hall of the old mansion they camped, and here, acting on the gypsy’s
+advice, Borrow remained for three days.  Antonio himself was absent from
+early morning until late at night, occupied with his own affairs. {166b}
+
+The fourth night was spent in the forest by the campfire of some more of
+Antonio’s friends.  On one occasion, but for the fortunate possession of
+a passport, the affairs of Egypt would have involved Borrow in some
+difficulties with the authorities.  At another time, for safety’s sake,
+he had to part from Antonio and proceed on his way alone, picking up the
+_contrabandista_ further on the road.
+
+When some distance beyond Jaraicéjo, it was discovered that the affairs
+of Egypt had ended disastrously in the discomfiture and capture of
+Antonio’s friends by the authorities.  The news was brought by the
+gypsy’s daughter.  Antonio must return at once, and as the steed Borrow
+was riding, which belonged to Antonio, would be required by him, Borrow
+purchased the daughter’s donkey, and having said good-bye to the
+smuggler, he continued his journey alone.
+
+By way of Almaráz and Oropésa Borrow eventually reached Talavéra (24th
+Jan.).  On the advice of a Toledo Jew, with whom he had become acquainted
+during the last stage of his journey, he decided to take the diligence
+from Talavéra to Madrid, the more willingly because the Jew amiably
+offered to purchase the donkey.  On the evening of 25th Jan. Borrow
+accordingly took his place on the diligence, and reached the capital the
+next morning.
+
+On arriving at Madrid, Borrow first went to a Posada; but a few days
+later he removed to lodgings in the Calle de la Zarza (the Street of the
+Brambles),—“A dark and dirty street, which, however, was close to the
+Puerta del Sol, the most central point of Madrid, into which four or five
+of the principal streets debouche, and which is, at all times of the
+year, the great place of assemblage for the idlers of the capital, poor
+or rich.” {167a}
+
+The capital did not at first impress Borrow very favourably. {167b}
+“Madrid is a small town,” he wrote to his mother, {167c} “not larger than
+Norwich, but it is crammed with people, like a hive with bees, and it
+contains many fine streets and fountains . . .  Everything in Madrid is
+excessively dear to foreigners, for they are made to pay six times more
+than natives . . .  I manage to get on tolerably well, for I make a point
+of paying just one quarter of what I am asked.”
+
+He suffered considerably from the frost and cold.  From the snow-covered
+mountains that surround the city there descend in winter such cold blasts
+“that the body is drawn up like a leaf.” {167d}  Then again there were
+the physical discomforts that he had to endure.
+
+“You cannot think,” he wrote, {168a} “what a filthy, uncivilised set of
+people the Spanish and Portuguese are.  There is more comfort in an
+English barn than in one of their palaces; and they are rude and ill-bred
+to a surprising degree.”
+
+Borrow was angry with Spain, possibly for being so unlike his “dear and
+glorious Russia.”  He saw in it a fertile and beautiful country,
+inhabited by a set of beings that were not human, “almost as bad as the
+Irish, with the exception that they are not drunkards.” {168b}  They were
+a nation of thieves and extortioners, who regarded the foreigner as their
+legitimate prey.  Even his own servant was “the greatest thief and
+villain that ever existed; who, if I would let him, would steal the teeth
+out of my head,” {168c} and who seems actually to have destroyed some of
+his master’s letters for the sake of the postage.  Being forced to call
+upon various people whose addresses he did not know, Borrow found it
+necessary to keep the man, in spite of his thievish proclivities, for he
+was clever, and had he been dismissed his place would, in all
+probability, have been taken by an even greater rogue.
+
+At night he never went out, for the streets were thronged with hundreds
+of people of the rival factions, bent on “cutting and murdering one
+another; . . . for every Spaniard is by nature a cruel, cowardly tiger.
+Nothing is more common than to destroy a whole town, putting man, woman,
+and child to death, because two or three of the inhabitants have been
+obnoxious.” {168d}  Thus he wrote to his mother, all-unconscious of the
+anxiety and alarm that he was causing her lest he, her dear George,
+should be one of the cut or murdered.
+
+Later, Borrow seems to have revised his opinion of Madrid and of its
+inhabitants.  He confesses that of all the cities he has known Madrid
+interested him the most, not on account of its public buildings, squares
+or fountains, for these are surpassed in other cities; but because of its
+population.  “Within a mud wall scarcely one league and a half in
+circuit, are contained two hundred thousand human beings, certainly
+forming the most extraordinary vital mass to be found in the entire
+world.” {169}  In the upper classes he had little interest.  He mixed but
+little with them, and what he saw did not impress him favourably.  It was
+the Spaniard of the lower orders that attracted him.  He regarded this
+class as composed not of common beings, but of extraordinary men.  He
+admired their spirit of proud independence, and forgave them their
+ignorance.  His first impressions of Spain had been unfavourable because,
+as a stranger, he had been victimised by the amiable citizens, who were
+merely doing as their fathers had done before them.  Once, however, he
+got to know them, he regarded with more indulgence their constitutional
+dishonesty towards the stranger, a weakness they possessed in common with
+the gypsies, and hailed them as “extraordinary men.”  Borrow’s
+impulsiveness frequently led him to ill-considered and hasty conclusions,
+which, however, he never hesitated to correct, if he saw need for
+correction.
+
+The disappointment he experienced as regards Madrid and the Spaniards is
+not difficult to understand.  He arrived quite friendless and without
+letters of introduction, to find the city given over to the dissensions
+and strifes of the supporters of Isabel II. and Don Carlos.  His journey
+had been undertaken in “the hope of obtaining permission from the
+Government to print the New Testament in the Castilian language, without
+the notes insisted on by the Spanish clergy, for circulation in Spain,”
+and there seemed small chance of those responsible for the direction of
+affairs listening to the application of a foreigner for permission to
+print the unannotated Scriptures.  For one thing, any acquiescence in
+such a suggestion would draw forth from the priesthood bitter reproaches
+and, most probably, active and serious opposition.  It is only natural
+that despondency should occasionally seize upon him who sought to light
+the lamp of truth amidst such tempests.
+
+[Picture: George Villiers, Fourth Earl of Clarendon.  British Minister at
+  Madrid, 1833–1839.  From the engraving after Sir Francis Grant in the
+                        National Portrait Gallery]
+
+The man to approach was the premier, Juan Álvarez y Mendizábal, {170a} a
+Christianised Jew.  He was enormously powerful, and Borrow decided to
+appeal to him direct; for, armed with the approval of Mendizábal, no one
+would dare to interfere with his plans or proceedings.  Borrow made
+several attempts to see Mendizábal, who “was considered as a man of
+almost unbounded power, in whose hands were placed the destinies of the
+country.”  Without interest or letters of introduction, he found it
+utterly impossible to obtain an audience.  Recollecting the assistance he
+had received from the Hon. J. D. Bligh at St Petersburg, Borrow
+determined to make himself known to the British Minister at Madrid, the
+Hon. George Villiers, {170b} and, “with the freedom permitted to a
+British subject . . . ask his advice in the affair.”  Borrow was received
+with great kindness, and, after conversing upon various topics for some
+time, he introduced the subject of his visit.  Mr Villiers willingly
+undertook to help him as far as lay in his power, and promised to
+endeavour to procure for him an audience with the Premier.  In this he
+was successful, and Borrow had an interview with Mendizábal, who was
+almost inaccessible to all but the few.
+
+At eight o’clock on the morning of 7th February Borrow presented himself
+at the palace, where Mendizábal resided, and after waiting for about
+three hours, was admitted to the presence of the Prime Minister of Spain,
+whom he found—“A huge athletic man, somewhat taller than myself, who
+measure six foot two without my shoes.  His complexion was florid, his
+features fine and regular, his nose quite aquiline, and his teeth
+splendidly white; though scarcely fifty years of age, his hair was
+remarkably grey.  He was dressed in a rich morning gown, with a gold
+chain round his neck, and morocco slippers on his feet.” {171}
+
+Borrow began by assuring Mendizábal that he was labouring under a grave
+error in thinking that the Bible Society had sought to influence unduly
+the slaves of Cuba, that they had not sent any agents there, and they
+were not in communication with any of the residents.  Mr Villiers had
+warned Borrow that the premier was very angry on account of reports that
+had reached him of the action in Cuba of certain people whom he insisted
+were sent there by the Bible Society.  In vain Borrow suggested that the
+disturbers of the tranquillity of Spain’s beneficent rule in the Island
+were in no way connected with Earl Street; he was several times
+interrupted by Mendizábal, who insisted that he had documentary proof.
+Borrow with difficulty restrained himself from laughing in the premier s
+face.  He pointed out that the Committee was composed of quiet,
+respectable English gentlemen, who attended to their own concerns and
+gave a little of their time to the affairs of the Bible Society.
+
+On Borrow asking for permission to print at Madrid the New Testament in
+Spanish without notes, he was met with an unequivocal refusal.  In spite
+of his arguments that the whole tenor of the work was against
+bloodshedding and violence, he could not shake the premier’s opinion that
+it was “an improper book.”
+
+At first Borrow had experienced some difficulty in explaining himself, on
+account of the Spaniard’s habit of persistent interruption, and at last
+he was forced in self-defence to hold on in spite of Mendizábal’s
+remarks.  The upshot of the interview was that he was told to renew his
+application when the Carlists had been beaten and the country was at
+peace.  Borrow then asked permission to introduce into Spain a few copies
+of the New Testament in the Catalan dialect, but was refused.  He next
+requested to be allowed to call on the following day and submit a copy of
+the Catalan edition, and received the remarkable reply that the
+prime-minister refused his offer to call lest he should succeed in
+convincing him, and Mendizábal did not wish to be convinced.  This seemed
+to show that the Mendizábal was something of a philosopher and a little
+of a humorist.
+
+With this Borrow had to be content, and after an hour’s interview he
+withdrew.  The premier was unquestionably in a difficult position.  On
+the one hand, he no doubt desired to assist a man introduced to him by
+the representative of Great Britain, to whom he looked for assistance in
+suppressing Carlism; on the other hand, he had the priesthood to
+consider, and they would without question use every means of which they
+stood possessed to preserve the prohibition against the dissemination of
+the Scriptures, without notes, a prohibition that had become almost a
+tradition.
+
+But Borrow was not discouraged.  He wrote in a most hopeful strain that
+he foresaw the speedy and successful termination of the Society’s
+negotiations in the Peninsula.  He looked forward to the time when only
+an agent would be required to superintend the engagement of colporteurs,
+and to make arrangements with the booksellers.  He proceeds to express a
+hope that his exertions have given satisfaction to the Society.
+
+Borrow received an encouraging letter from Mr Brandram, telling him of
+the Committee’s appreciation of his work, but practically leaving with
+him the decision as to his future movements.  They were inclined to
+favour a return to Lisbon, but recognised that “in these wondrous days
+opportunities may open unexpectedly.”  In the matter of the Gospel of St
+Luke in Spanish Romany, the publication of extracts was authorised, but
+there was no enthusiasm for the project.  “We say,” wrote Mr Brandram,
+“_festina lente_.  You will be doing well to occupy leisure hours with
+this work; but we are not prepared for printing anything beyond portions
+at present.”
+
+In the meantime, however, an article in the Madrid newspaper, _El
+Español_, upon the history, aims, and achievements of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, had determined Borrow to remain on at Madrid for a
+few weeks at least.
+
+    “Why should Spain, which has explored the New World, why should she
+    alone be destitute of Bible Societies,” asked the _Español_.  “Why
+    should a nation eminently Catholic continue isolated from the rest of
+    Europe, without joining in the magnificent enterprise in which the
+    latter is so busily engaged?” {173a}
+
+This article fired Borrow, and with the promise of assistance from the
+liberal-minded _Español_, he set to work “to lay the foundation of a
+Bible Society at Madrid.” {173b}  As a potential head of the Spanish
+organization, Borrow’s eyes were already directed towards the person of
+“a certain Bishop, advanced in years, a person of great piety and
+learning, who has himself translated the New Testament” {173c} and who
+was disposed to print and circulate it.
+
+Nothing, however, came of the project.  Mr Brandram wrote to
+Borrow:—“With regard to forming a Bible Society in Madrid, and appointing
+Dr Usoz Secretary, it is so out of our usual course that the Committee,
+for various reasons, cannot comply with your wishes—of the desirableness
+of forming such a Society at present, you and your friend must be the
+best judges.  If it is to be an independent society, as I suppose must be
+the case,” Mr Brandram continues, and the Bible Society’s aid or that of
+its agent is sought, the new Society must be formed on the principles of
+the British and Foreign Bible Society, admitting, “on the one hand,
+general cooperation, and on the other, that it does not circulate
+Apocryphal Bibles.”  There was doubt at Earl Street as to whether the
+time was yet ripe; so the decision was very properly left with Borrow,
+and he was told that he “need not fear to hold out great hopes of
+encouragement in the event of the formation of such a Society.” {174}
+
+A serious difficulty now arose in the resignation of Mendizábal (March
+1836).  Two of his friends and supporters, in the persons of Francisco de
+Isturitz and Alcala Galiano, seceded from his party, and, under the name
+of _moderados_, formed an opposition to their Chief in the Cortes.  They
+had the support of the Queen Regent and General Cordova, whom Mendizábal
+had wished to remove from his position as head of the army on account of
+his great popularity with the soldiers, whose comforts and interests he
+studied.  Isturitz became Premier, Galiano Minister of Marine (a mere
+paper title, as there was no navy at the time), and the Duke of Rivas
+Minister of the Interior.
+
+Conscious of the advantage of possessing powerful friends, especially in
+a country such as Spain, Borrow had used every endeavour to enlarge the
+circle of his acquaintance among men occupying influential positions, or
+likely to succeed those who at present filled them.  The result was that
+he was able to announce to Mr Brandram that the new ministry, which had
+been formed, was composed “entirely of _my_ friends.” {175a}  With
+Galiano in particular he was on very intimate terms.  Everything promised
+well, and the new Cabinet showed itself most friendly to Borrow and his
+projects, until the actual moment arrived for writing the permission to
+print the Scriptures in Spanish.  Then doubts arose, and the decrees of
+the Council of Trent loomed up, a threatening barrier, in the eyes of the
+Duke of Rivas and his secretary.
+
+So hopeful was Borrow after his first interview with the Duke that he
+wrote:—“I shall receive the permission, the Lord willing, in a few days . . .
+The last skirts of the cloud of papal superstition are vanishing
+below the horizon of Spain; whoever says the contrary either knows
+nothing of the matter or wilfully hides the truth.” {175b}
+
+At Earl Street the good news about the article in the _Español_ gave the
+liveliest satisfaction.  “Surely a new and wonderful thing in Spain,”
+wrote Mr Brandram {175c} in a letter in which he urged Borrow to “guard
+against becoming too much committed to one political party,” and asked
+him to write more frequently, as his letters were always most welcome.
+This letter reached Madrid at a time when Borrow found himself absolutely
+destitute.
+
+“For the last three weeks,” he writes, {175d} “I have been without money,
+literally without a farthing.”  Everything in Madrid was so dear.  A
+month previously he had been forced to pay £12, 5s. for a suit of
+clothes, “my own being so worn that it was impossible to appear longer in
+public with them.” {175e}  He had written to Mr Wilby, but in all
+probability his letter had gone astray, the post to Estremadura having
+been three times robbed.  “The money may still come,” he continues,
+{176a} “but I have given up all hopes of it, and I am compelled to write
+home, though what I am to do till I can receive your answer I am at a
+loss to conceive . . . whatever I undergo, I shall tell nobody of my
+situation, it might hurt the Society and our projects here.  I know
+enough of the world to be aware that it is considered as the worst of
+crimes to be without money.” {176b}
+
+For weeks Borrow devoted himself to the task of endeavouring to obtain
+permission to print the Scriptures in Spanish.  The Duke of Rivas
+referred him to his secretary, saying, “He will do for you what you
+want!”  But the secretary retreated behind the decrees of the Council of
+Trent.  Then Mr Villiers intervened, saw the Duke and gave Borrow a
+letter to him.  Again the Council of Trent proved to be the obstacle.
+Galiano took up the matter and escorted Borrow to the Bureau of the
+Interior, and had an interview with the Duke’s secretary.  When Galiano
+left, there remained nothing for the conscientious secretary to do but to
+write out the formal permission, all else having been satisfactorily
+settled; but no sooner had Galiano departed, than the recollection of the
+Council of Trent returned to the secretary with terrifying distinctness,
+and no permission was given.
+
+Tired of the Council of Trent and the Duke’s secretary, Borrow would
+sometimes retire to the banks of the canal and there loiter in the sun,
+watching the gold and silver fish basking on the surface of its waters,
+or gossiping with the man who sold oranges and water under the shade of
+the old water-tower.  Once he went to see an execution—anything to drive
+from his mind the conscientious secretary and the Council of Trent, the
+sole obstacles to the realisation of his plans.
+
+Borrow informed Mr Brandram at the end of May that the Cabinet was
+unanimously in favour of granting his request; nothing happened.  There
+seems no doubt that the Cabinet’s policy was one of subterfuge.  It could
+not afford to offend the British Minister, nor could it, at that
+juncture, risk the bitter hostility of the clergy, consequently it
+promised and deferred.  A petition to the Ecclesiastical Committee of
+Censors, although strongly backed by the Civil Governor of Madrid (within
+whose department lay the censorship), produced no better result.  There
+was nothing heard but “To-morrow, please God!”
+
+Foiled for the time being in his constructive policy, Borrow turned his
+attention to one of destruction.  He had already announced to the Bible
+Society that the authority of the Pope was in a precarious condition.
+
+    “Little more than a breath is required to destroy it,” he writes,
+    {177} “and I am almost confident that in less than a year it will be
+    disowned.  I am doing whatever I can in Madrid to prepare the way for
+    an event so desirable.  I mix with the people, and inform them who
+    and what the Pope is, and how disastrous to Spain his influence has
+    been.  I tell them that the indulgences, which they are in the habit
+    of purchasing, are of no more intrinsic value than so many pieces of
+    paper, and were merely invented with the view of plundering them.  I
+    frequently ask: ‘Is it possible that God, who is good, would sanction
+    the sale of sin? and, supposing certain things are sinful, do you
+    think that God, for the sake of your money, would permit you to
+    perform them?’  In many instances my hearers have been satisfied with
+    this simple reasoning, and have said that they would buy no more
+    indulgences.”
+
+Mr Brandram promptly wrote warning Borrow against becoming involved in
+any endeavour to hasten the fall of the Pope.  Although deeply interested
+in what their agent had to say, there was a strong misgiving at
+headquarters that for a few moments Borrow had “forgotten that our hopes
+of the fall of — are founded on the simple distribution of the
+Scriptures,” {178a} and he was told that, as their agent, he must not
+pursue the course that he described.  The warning was carefully worded,
+so that it might not wound Borrow’s feelings or lessen his enthusiasm.
+
+Borrow had found that the climate of Madrid did not agree with him.  It
+had proved very trying during the winter; but now that summer had arrived
+the heat was suffocating and the air seemed to be filled with “flaming
+vapours,” and even the Spaniards would “lie gasping and naked upon their
+brick floors.” {178b}  In spite of the heat, however, he was occupied
+“upon an average ten hours every day, dancing attendance on one or
+another of the Ministers.” {178c}
+
+Sometimes the difficulties that he had to contend with reduced him almost
+to despair of ever obtaining the permission he sought.  “Only those,” he
+writes, {178d} “who have been in the habit of dealing with Spaniards, by
+whom the most solemn promises are habitually broken, can form a correct
+idea of my reiterated disappointments, and of the toil of body and agony
+of spirit which I have been subjected to.  One day I have been told, at
+the Ministry, that I had only to wait a few moments and all I wished
+would be acceded to; and then my hopes have been blasted with the
+information that various difficulties, which seemed insurmountable, had
+presented themselves, whereupon I have departed almost broken-hearted;
+but the next day I have been summoned in a great hurry and informed that
+‘all was right,’ and that on the morrow a regular authority to print the
+Scriptures would be delivered to me, but by that time fresh and yet more
+terrible difficulties had occurred—so that I became weary of my life.”
+
+Mr Villiers evidently saw through the Spanish Cabinet’s policy of delay;
+for he spoke to the ministers collectively and individually, strongly
+recommending that the petition be granted.  He further pointed out the
+terrible condition of the people, who lacked religious instruction of any
+kind, and that a nation of atheists would not prove very easy to govern.
+It may have been these arguments, or, what is more likely, a desire on
+the part of the Cabinet to please the representative of Great Britain, in
+any case a greater willingness was now shown to give the necessary
+permission.  Measures were accordingly taken to evade the law and protect
+the printer into whose hands the work was to be entrusted, until an
+appropriate moment arrived for repealing the existing statute.
+
+Borrow forwarded to Earl Street the following interesting letter that he
+had received from Mr Villiers, which confirms his words as to the keen
+interest taken by the British Minister in the endeavour to obtain the
+permission to print the New Testament in Spanish
+
+    DEAR SIR,
+
+    I have had a long conversation with Mr Isturitz upon the subject of
+    printing the Testament, in which he showed himself to be both
+    sagacious and liberal.  He assured me that the matter should have his
+    support whenever the Duque de Ribas brought it before the Cabinet,
+    and that as far as he was concerned the question _might be considered
+    as settled_.
+
+    You are quite welcome to make any use you please of this note with
+    the D. de Ribas or Mr Olivan. {179a}
+
+    I am, Dear Sir,
+
+                              Yours faithfully,
+
+                                                          GEORGE VILLIERS.
+
+    _June_ 23_rd_ [1836].
+
+It was unquestionably Borrow’s personality that was responsible for Mr
+Villiers’ interest in the scheme, as when Lieutenant Graydon {179b} had
+applied to him on a previous occasion he declined to interfere.
+
+At Borrow’s suggestion the President of the Bible Society, Lord Bentley,
+wrote to Mr Villiers thanking him for the services he had rendered in
+connection with the Spanish programme.  It was characteristic of Borrow
+that he added to his letter as a reason for his request, that “I may be
+again in need of Mr V’s. assistance before I leave Spain.” {180}  Borrow
+was always keenly alive to the advantage of possessing influential
+friends who would be likely to assist him in his labours for the Society.
+He was not a profound admirer of the Society of Jesus for nothing, and
+although he would scorn to exercise tact in regard to his own concerns,
+he was fully prepared to make use of it in connection with those of the
+Bible Society.  He was a Jesuit at heart, and would in all probability
+have preferred a good compositor who had been guilty of sacrilege to a
+bad one who had not.  He saw that besides being something of a
+diplomatist, an agent of the Bible Society had also to be a good business
+man.  He has been called tactless, until the word seems to have become
+permanently identified with his name; how unjustly is shown by a very
+hasty examination of his masterly diplomacy, both in Russia and Spain.
+Diplomacy, as Borrow understood it, was the art of being persuasive when
+persuasion would obtain for him his object, and firm, even threatening,
+when strong measures were best calculated to suit his ends.  It is only
+the fool who defines tact as the gentle art of pleasing everybody.
+Diplomacy is the art of getting what you want at the expense of
+displeasing as few people as possible.
+
+“The affair is settled—thank God!!! and we may begin to print whenever we
+think proper.”  With these words Borrow announces the success of his
+enterprise.  “Perhaps you have thought,” he continues, “that I have been
+tardy in accomplishing the business which brought me to Spain; but to be
+able to form a correct judgment you ought to be aware of all the
+difficulties which I have had to encounter, and which I shall not
+enumerate.  I shall content myself with observing that for a thousand
+pounds I would not undergo again all the mortifications and
+disappointments of the last two months.” {181a}
+
+There were moments when Borrow forgot the idiom of Earl Street and
+reverted to his old, self-confident style, which had so alarmed some of
+the excellent members of the Committee.  He had achieved a great triumph,
+how great is best shown by the suggestion made by the prime minister that
+if determined to avail himself of the permission that had been obtained,
+he had better employ “the confidential printer of the Government, who
+would keep the matter secret; as in the present state of affairs he [the
+prime minister] would not answer for the consequences if it were noised
+abroad.” {181b}  By giving the license to print the New Testament without
+notes, the Cabinet was assuming a very grave responsibility.  All this
+shows how great was the influence of the British Minister upon the
+Isturitz Cabinet, and how considerable that of Borrow upon the British
+Minister.
+
+Now that his object was gained, there was nothing further to keep Borrow
+in Spain, and he accordingly asked for instructions, suggesting that, as
+soon as the heats were over, Lieutenant Graydon might return to Madrid
+and take charge, “as nothing very difficult remains to be accomplished,
+and I am sure that Mr Villiers, at my entreaty, would extend to him the
+patronage with which he has honoured me.” {181c}  In conclusion he
+announced himself as ready to do “whatever the Bible Society may deem
+expedient.” {181d}
+
+Borrow now began to suffer from the reaction after his great exertions.
+He became so languid as scarcely to be able to hold a pen.  He had no
+books, and conversation was impossible, for the heat had driven away all
+who could possibly escape, among them his acquaintances, and he
+frequently remembered with a sigh the happy days spent in St Petersburg.
+
+A few days later (25th July) he wrote proposing as a member of the Bible
+Society Dr Luis de Usoz y Rio, “a person of great respectability and
+great learning.” {182a}  Dr Usoz, who was subsequently to be closely
+associated with Borrow in his labours in Spain, was a man of whom he was
+unable to “speak in too high terms of admiration; he is one of the most
+learned men in Spain, and is become in every point a Christian according
+to the standard of the New Testament.” {182b}
+
+Dr Usoz also addressed a letter to the Society asking to be considered as
+a correspondent and entrusted with copies of the Scriptures, which he was
+convinced he could circulate in every province of Spain.  The advantage
+of having one of the editors of the principal newspaper of Spain on the
+side of the Society did not fail to appeal to Borrow.  Dr Usoz not only
+became a member of the Bible Society, but earned from Borrow a splendid
+tribute in the Preface to _The Bible in Spain_.
+
+Before advantage could be taken of the hardly earned permission to print
+the New Testament in Madrid, the Revolution of La Granja {182c} broke
+out, resulting in the proclamation of the Constitution of 1812, by which
+the press became free.  In Madrid chaos reigned as a result.  Borrow
+himself has given a vivid account of how Quesada, by his magnificent
+courage, quelled for the time being the revolution, how the ministers
+fled, how eventually the heroic tyrant was recognised and killed, and,
+finally, how, at a celebrated coffee-house in Madrid, Borrow saw the
+victorious Nationals drink to the Constitution from a bowl of coffee,
+which had first been stirred with one of the mutilated hands of the hated
+Quesada. {183a}
+
+Now that no obstacle stood in the way of the printing of the Spanish New
+Testament, Borrow was requested to return to England that he might confer
+with the authorities at Earl Street.  “You may now consider yourself
+under marching orders to return home as soon as you have made all the
+requisite arrangements; . . . you have done, we are persuaded, a good and
+great work,” {183b} Mr Brandram wrote.  It was thought by the Committee
+that the advantages to be derived from a conference with Borrow would be
+well worth the expense involved in his having to return again to Spain.
+
+To this request for his immediate presence in London Borrow replied:
+
+    “I shall make the provisional engagement as desired [as regards the
+    printing of the New Testament] and shall leave Madrid as soon as
+    possible; but I must here inform you, that I shall find much
+    difficulty in returning to England, as all the provinces are
+    disturbed in consequence of the Constitution of 1812 having been
+    proclaimed, and the roads are swarming with robbers and banditti.  It
+    is my intention to join some muleteers, and attempt to reach Granada,
+    from whence, if possible, I shall proceed to Malaga or Gibraltar, and
+    thence to Lisbon, where I left the greatest part of my baggage.  Do
+    not be surprised, therefore, if I am tardy in making my appearance;
+    it is no easy thing at present to travel in Spain.  But all these
+    troubles are for the benefit of the Cause, and must not be repined
+    at.” {183c}
+
+Leaving Madrid on 20th August, Borrow was at Granada on the 30th, as
+proved by the Visitors’ Book, in which he signed himself
+
+    “George Borrow Norvicensis.”
+
+The real object of this visit appears to have been his desire to study
+more closely the Spanish gypsies.  From Granada he proceeded to Malaga.
+Neither place can be said to be on the direct road to England; but the
+disturbed state of the country had to be taken into consideration, and it
+was a question not of the shortest road but the safest.
+
+On his return to London, early in October, Borrow wrote a report {184}
+upon his labours, roughly sketching out his work since he left Badajos.
+He repeated his view that the Papal See had lost its power over Spain,
+and that the present moment was a peculiarly appropriate one in which to
+spread the light of the Gospel over the Peninsula.  Forgetting the
+thievish propensities of the race, he wrote glowingly of the Spaniards
+and their intellectual equipment, the clearness with which they expressed
+themselves, and the elegance of their diction.  The mind of the Spaniard
+was a garden run to waste, and it was for the British and Foreign Bible
+Society to cultivate it and purge it of the rank and bitter weeds.
+
+He foresaw no difficulty whatever in disposing of 5000 copies of the New
+Testament in a short time in the capital and provincial towns, in
+particular Cadiz and Seville where the people were more enlightened.  He
+was not so confident about the rural districts, where those who assured
+him that they were acquainted with the New Testament said that it
+contained hymns addressed to the Virgin which were written by the Pope.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+NOVEMBER 1836–MAY 1837
+
+
+BORROW remained in England for a month (3rd October/4th November), during
+which time he conferred with the Committee and Officials at Earl Street
+as to the future programme in Spain.  On 4th November, having sent to his
+mother £130 of the £150 he had drawn as salary, and promising to write to
+Mr Brandram from Cadiz, he sailed from London in the steamer
+_Manchester_, bound for Lisbon and Cadiz.
+
+In a letter to his mother, he describes his fellow passengers as invalids
+fleeing from the English winter.  “Some of them are three parts gone with
+consumption,” he writes, “some are ruptured, some have broken backs; I am
+the only sound person in the ship, which is crowded to suffocation.  I am
+in a little hole of a berth where I can scarcely breathe, and every now
+and then wet through.”
+
+The horrors of the voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon he has described with
+terrifying vividness; {185a} how the engines broke down and the vessel
+was being driven on to Cape Finisterre; how all hope had been abandoned,
+and the Captain had told the passengers of their impending fate; how the
+wind suddenly “_veered right about_, and pushed us from the horrible
+coast faster than it had previously driven us towards it.” {185b}
+
+During the whole of that terrible night Borrow had remained on deck, all
+the other passengers having been battened down below.  He was almost
+drowned in the seas that broke over the vessel, and, on one occasion, was
+struck down by a water cask that had broken away from its lashings.  Even
+after he had escaped Cape Finisterre, the ordeal was not over; for the
+ship was in a sinking condition, and fire broke out on board.  Eventually
+the engines were repaired, the fire extinguished, and Lisbon was reached
+on the 13th, where Borrow landed with his water-soaked luggage, and found
+on examination that the greater part of his clothes had been ruined.  In
+spite of this experience, he determined to continue his voyage to Cadiz
+in the _Manchester_, probably for reasons of economy, indifferent to the
+fact that she was utterly unseaworthy, and that most of the other
+passengers had abandoned her.  During his enforced stay in Lisbon, whilst
+the ship was being patched up, Borrow saw Mr Wilby and made enquiry into
+the state of the Society’s affairs in Portugal.  Many changes had taken
+place and the country was in a distracted state.
+
+After a week’s delay at Lisbon the _Manchester_ continued her voyage to
+Cadiz, where she arrived without further mishap on the 21st.  During this
+voyage a fellow passenger with Borrow was the Marqués de Santa Coloma.
+“According to the expression of the Marqués, when they stepped on to the
+quay at Cadiz, Borrow looked round, saw some Gitanos lounging there, said
+something that the Marqués could not understand, and immediately ‘that
+man became _une grappe de Gitanos_.’  They hung round his neck, clung to
+his knees, seized his hands, kissed his feet, so that the Marqués hardly
+liked to join his comrade again after such close embraces by so dirty a
+company.” {186}
+
+Borrow now found himself in his allotted field—unhappy, miserable,
+distracted Spain.  Gomez, the Carlist leader, had been sweeping through
+Estremadura like a pestilence, and Borrow fully expected to find Seville
+occupied by his banditti; but Carlists possessed no terrors for him.
+Unless he could do something to heal the spiritual wounds of the wretched
+country, he assured Mr Brandram, he would never again return to England.
+
+On 1st December Mr Brandram wrote to Borrow expressing deep sympathy with
+all he had been through, and adding: “If you go forward . . . we will
+help you by prayer.  If you retreat we shall welcome you cordially.”  He
+appears to have written before consulting with the Committee, who, on
+hearing of the actual state of affairs in Spain, became filled with
+misgiving and anxiety for the safety of their agent, who seemed to be
+destitute of fear.  Mr Brandram had been content for Borrow to go forward
+if he so decided, but, as he wrote later, “your prospective dangers,
+while they created an absorbing interest, were viewed in different lights
+by the Committee,” who thought they had “no right to commit you to such
+perils.  My own feeling was that, while I could not urge you forward,
+there were peculiarities in your history and character that I would not
+keep you back if you were minded to go.  A few felt with me—most,
+however, thought that you should have been restrained.” {187}  It was
+decided therefore to forbid him to proceed on his hazardous adventure,
+and accordingly a letter was addressed to him care of the British Consul
+at Cadiz.  If Borrow received this he disregarded the instructions it
+contained.
+
+Cadiz proved to be in a state of great confusion.  It was reported that
+numerous bands of Carlists were in the neighbourhood, and the whole city
+was in a state of ferment in consequence.  In the coffee-houses the din
+of tongues was deafening; would-be orators, sometimes as many as six at
+one time, sprang up upon chairs and tables and ventilated their political
+views.  The paramount, nay, the only, interest was not in the words of
+Christ; but the probable doings of the Carlists.
+
+On the night of his arrival Borrow was taken ill with what, at the time,
+he thought to be cholera, and for some time in the little “cock-loft or
+garret” that had been allotted to him at the over-crowded French hotel,
+he was “in most acute pain, and terribly sick,” drinking oil mixed with
+brandy.  For two days he was so exhausted as to be able to do nothing.
+
+On the morning of the 24th he embarked in a small Spanish steamer bound
+for Seville, which was reached that same night.  The sun had dissipated
+the melancholy and stupor left by his illness, and by the time he arrived
+at Seville he was repeating Latin verses and fragments of old Spanish
+ballads to a brilliant moon.  The condition of affairs at Seville was as
+bad if not worse than at Cadiz.  There was scarcely any communication
+with the capital, the diligences no longer ran, and even the fearless
+_arrieros_ (muleteers) declined to set out.  Famine, plunder and murder
+were let loose over the land.  Bands of banditti robbed, tortured and
+slew in the name of Don Carlos.  They stripped the peasantry of all they
+possessed, and the poor wretches in turn became brigands and preyed upon
+those weaker than themselves.  Through all this Borrow had to penetrate
+in order to reach Madrid.  Had the road been familiar to him he would
+have performed the journey alone, dressed either as a beggar or as a
+gypsy.  It is obvious that he appreciated the hazardous nature of the
+journey he was undertaking, for he asked Mr Brandram, in the event of his
+death, to keep the news from old Mrs Borrow as long as possible and then
+to go down to Norwich and break it to her himself.
+
+At Seville Borrow encountered Baron Taylor, {188} whom he states that he
+had first met at Bayonne (during the “veiled period”), and later in
+Russia, beside the Bosphorus, and finally in the South of Ireland.  Than
+Baron Taylor there was no one for whom Borrow entertained “a greater
+esteem and regard . . .  There is a mystery about him which, wherever he
+goes, serves not a little to increase the sensation naturally created by
+his appearance and manner.” {189}  Borrow was much attracted to this
+mysterious personage, about whom nothing could be asserted “with
+downright positiveness.”
+
+From Seville Borrow proceeded to Cordoba, accompanied by “an elderly
+person, a Genoese by birth,” whose acquaintance he had made and whom he
+hoped later to employ in the distribution of the Testaments.  Borrow had
+hired a couple of miserable horses.  The Genoese had not been in the
+saddle for some thirty years, and he was an old man and timid.  His horse
+soon became aware of this, and neither whip nor spur could persuade it to
+exert itself.  When approaching night rendered it necessary to make a
+special effort to hasten forward, the bridle of the discontented steed
+had to be fastened to that of its fellow, which was then urged forward
+“with spur and cudgel.”  Both the Genoese and his mount protested against
+such drastic measures, the one by entreaties to be permitted to dismount,
+the other by attempting to fling itself down.  The only notice Borrow
+took of these protests was to spur and cudgel the more.
+
+On the night of the third day the party arrived at Cordoba, and was
+cordially welcomed by the Carlist innkeeper, who, although avowing
+himself strictly neutral, confessed how great had been his pleasure at
+welcoming the Carlists when they occupied the City a short time before.
+It was at this inn that Borrow explained to the elderly Genoese, who had
+indiscreetly resented his host’s disrespectful remarks about the young
+Queen Isabel, how he invariably managed to preserve good relations with
+all sorts of factions.  “My good man,” he said, “I am invariably of the
+politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I
+sleep; at least I never say anything which can lead them to suspect the
+contrary; by pursuing which system I have more than once escaped a bloody
+pillow, and having the wine I drank spiced with sublimate.” {190a}
+
+Borrow remained at Cordoba much longer than he had intended, because of
+the reports that reached him of the unsafe condition of the roads.  He
+sent back the old Genoese with the horses, and spent the time in
+thoroughly examining the town and making acquaintances among its
+inhabitants.  At length, after a stay of ten or eleven days, despairing
+of any improvement in the state of the country, he continued his journey
+in the company of a _contrabandista_, temporarily retired from the
+smuggling trade, from whom he hired two horses for the sum of forty-two
+dollars.  Borrow allowed no compunction to assail him as to the means he
+employed when he was thoroughly convinced as to the worthiness of the end
+he had in view.  To further his projects he would cheerfully have
+travelled with the Pope himself.
+
+The journey to Madrid proved dismal in the extreme.  The _contrabandista_
+was sullen and gloomy, despite the fact that his horses had been insured
+against loss and the handsome fee he was to receive for his services.
+The Despeñaperros in the Sierra Morena through which Borrow had to pass,
+had, even in times of peace, a most evil reputation; but by great good
+luck for Borrow, the local banditti had during the previous day
+“committed a dreadful robbery and murder by which they sacked 40,000
+_reals_.” {190b}  They were in all probability too busily occupied in
+dividing their spoil to watch for other travellers.  Another factor that
+was much in Borrow’s favour was a change in the weather.
+
+    “Suddenly the Lord breathed forth a frozen blast,” Borrow writes,
+    “the severity of which was almost intolerable.  No human being but
+    ourselves ventured forth.  We traversed snow-covered plains, and
+    passed through villages and towns to all appearance deserted.  The
+    robbers kept close to their caves and hovels, but the cold nearly
+    killed us.  We reached Aranjuez late on Christmas day, and I got into
+    the house of an Englishman, where I swallowed nearly a pint of
+    brandy: {191a} it affected me no more than warm water.” {191b}
+
+Borrow arrived at Madrid on 26th December, having almost by a miracle
+avoided death or capture by the human wolves that infested the country.
+He took up his quarters at 16 Calle de Santiago at the house of Maria
+Díaz, who was to prove so loyal a friend during many critical periods of
+his work in Spain.  His first care was to call upon the British Minister,
+and enquire if he considered it safe to proceed with the printing without
+special application to the new Government.  Mr Villiers’ answer is
+interesting, as showing how thoroughly he had taken Borrow under his
+protection.
+
+    “You obtained the permission of the Government of Isturitz,” he
+    replied, “which was a much less liberal one than the present; I am a
+    witness to the promise made to you by the former Ministers, which I
+    consider sufficient; you had best commence and complete the work as
+    soon as possible without any fresh application, and should anyone
+    attempt to interrupt you, you have only to come to me, whom you may
+    command at any time.” {191c}
+
+Having saved the Bible Society 9000 _reals_ in its paper bill alone,
+{191d} Borrow proceeded to arrange for the printing.  He had already
+opened negotiations with Charles Wood, who was associated with Andréas
+Borrégo, {192a} the most fashionable printer in Madrid, who not only had
+the best printing-presses in Spain, but had been specially recommended by
+Isturitz.  It had been tentatively arranged that an edition of 5000
+copies of the New Testament should be printed from the version of Father
+Felipe Scio de San Miguel, confessor to Ferdinand VII., without notes or
+commentaries, and delivered within three months.
+
+Remembering the advice of Isturitz, Borrow determined to entrust the work
+to Borrégo, including the binding.  He was the Government printer, and,
+furthermore, enjoyed the good opinion of Mr Villiers.  Having persuaded
+Borrégo to reduce his price to 10 _reals_ a sheet, he placed the order.
+It was agreed that the work should be completed in ten weeks from 20th
+January.
+
+Each sheet was to be passed by Borrow.  As a matter of fact he read every
+word three times; but in order to insure absolute accuracy, he engaged
+the services of Dr Usoz, “the first scholar in Spain,” {192b} who was to
+be responsible for the final revision, leaving the question of the
+remuneration to the generosity of the Bible Society.  The result of all
+this care was that, according to Borrow the edition exhibited scarcely
+one typographical error. {192c}
+
+The question of systematic distribution had next to be considered.  After
+much musing and cogitation, Borrow came to the conclusion that the only
+satisfactory method was for him to “ride forth from Madrid into the
+wildest parts of Spain,” where the word is most wanted and where it seems
+next to an impossibility to introduce it, and this he proposed to the
+Committee.
+
+    “I will take with me 1200 copies,” he wrote, {193} “which I will
+    engage to dispose of for little or much to the wild people of the
+    wild regions which I intend to visit; as for the rest of the edition,
+    it must be disposed of, if possible, in a different way—I may say the
+    usual way; part must be entrusted to booksellers, part to
+    colporteurs, and a depôt must be established at Madrid.  Such work is
+    every person’s work, and to anyone may be confided the execution of
+    it; it is a mere affair of trade.  What I wish to be employed in is
+    what, I am well aware, no other individual will undertake to do:
+    namely, to scatter the Word upon the mountains, amongst the valleys
+    and the inmost recesses of the worst and most dangerous parts of
+    Spain, where the people are more fierce, fanatic and, in a word,
+    Carlist.”
+
+In the same letter Borrow shows how thoroughly he understood his own
+character when he wrote:
+
+    “I shall not feel at all surprised should it [the plan] be
+    disapproved of all-together; but I wish it to be understood that in
+    that event I could do nothing further than see the work through the
+    press, as I am confident that whatever ardour and zeal I at present
+    feel in the cause would desert me immediately, and that I should
+    neither be able nor willing to execute anything which might be
+    suggested.  I wish to engage in nothing which would not allow me to
+    depend entirely on myself.  It would be heart-breaking to me to
+    remain at Madrid expending the Society’s money, with almost the
+    certainty of being informed eventually by the booksellers and their
+    correspondents that the work has no sale.  In a word, to make sure
+    that some copies find their way among the people, I must be permitted
+    to carry them to the people myself.”
+
+He goes on to inform Mr Brandram that in anticipation of the acquiescence
+of the Committee in his schemes, he has purchased, for about £12, one of
+the smuggler’s horses, which he has preferred to a mule, on account of
+the expense of the popular hybrid, and also because of its enormous
+appetite, to satisfy which two pecks of barley and a proportionate amount
+of straw are required each twenty-four hours, as the beast must be fed
+every four hours, day and night.  Thus the members of the Committee
+learned something about the ways of the mule.
+
+The response to this suggestion was a resolution passed by the
+Sub-Committee for General Purposes, by which Borrow was permitted to
+enter into correspondence with the principal booksellers and other
+persons favourable to the dissemination of the Scriptures.  In a covering
+letter {194a}  Mr Brandram very pertinently enquired, “Can the people in
+these wilds read?”  Whilst not wishing to put a final negative to the
+proposal, the Secretary asked if there were no middle course.  Could
+Borrow not establish a depôt at some principal place, and from it make
+excursions occupying two or three days each, “instead of devoting
+yourself wholly to the wild people.”
+
+Borrow assured Mr Brandram that he had misunderstood.  The care of “the
+wild people” was only to be incidental on his visits to towns and
+villages to establish depôts or agencies.  “On my way,” he wrote, “I
+intended to visit the secret and secluded spots amongst the rugged hills
+and mountains, and to talk to the people, after my manner, of Christ.”
+{194b}
+
+It was on 3rd April that Borrow had received the letter from Earl Street
+authorising him “to undertake the tour suggested . . . for the purpose of
+circulating the Spanish New Testament in some of the principal cities of
+Spain.”  He was requested to write as frequently as possible, giving an
+account of his adventures.  At the same time Mr Brandram wrote: “You will
+perceive by the Resolution that nearly all your requests are complied
+with.  You have authority to go forth with your horses, and may you have
+a prosperous journey . . .  Pray for wisdom to discern between
+presumptuousness and want of Faith.” {195a}
+
+The printing of the 5000 copies of the New Testament in Spanish was
+completed early in April, but there was considerable delay over the
+binding.  The actual date of publication was 1st May.  The work had been
+well done, and was “allowed by people who have perused it, and with no
+friendly feeling, to be one of the most correct works that have ever
+issued from the press in Spain, and to be an exceedingly favourable
+specimen of typography and paper.” {195b}
+
+In addition to the _contrabandista’s_ horse, Borrow had acquired “a black
+Andalusian stallion of great size and strength, and capable of performing
+a journey of a hundred leagues in a week’s time.” {195c}  In spite of his
+unbroken state, Borrow decided to purchase the animal, relying upon “a
+cargo of bibles” to reduce him to obedience.  It was with this black
+Andalusian that he created a sensation by riding about Madrid, “with a
+Russian skin for a saddle, and without stirrups.  Altogether making so
+conspicuous a figure that [the Marqués de] Santa Coloma hesitated, and it
+needed all his courage to be seen riding with him.  At this period Borrow
+spent a good deal of money and lived very freely (i.e., luxuriously) in
+Spain.  From the point of view of the Marqués, a Spanish Roman Catholic,
+Borrow was excessively bigoted, and fond of attacking Roman Catholics and
+Catholicism.  He evidently, however, liked him as a companion; but he
+says Borrow never, as far as he saw or could learn, spoke of religion to
+his Gypsy friends, and that he soon noticed his difference of attitude
+towards them.  He was often going to the British Embassy, and he thinks
+was considered a great bore there.” {195d}
+
+The unanimous advice of Borrow’s friends, Protestant and Roman Catholic,
+was “that for the present I should proceed with the utmost caution, but
+without concealing the object of my mission.” {196a}  He was to avoid
+offending people’s prejudices and endeavour everywhere to keep on good
+terms with the clergy, “at least one-third of whom are known to be
+anxious for the dissemination of the Word of God, though at the same time
+unwilling to separate themselves from the discipline and ceremonials of
+Rome.” {196b}
+
+Thus equipped with sage counsel, Borrow was just about to start upon his
+journey into the North, when he found it necessary to dismiss his servant
+owing to misconduct.  This caused delay.  Through Mr O’Shea, the banker,
+he got to know Antonio Buchini, the Greek of Constantinople, who, of all
+the strange characters Borrow had met he considered “the most
+surprising.” {196c}  Antonio’s vices were sufficiently obvious to
+discourage anyone from attempting to discover his virtues.  He loved
+change, quarrelled with everybody, masters, mistresses, and
+fellow-servants.  Borrow engaged him; but looked to the future with
+misgiving.  Antonio unquestionably had his bad points; yet he was a
+treasure compared with the Spaniard whom he succeeded.  This man was much
+given to drink and was always engaged in some quarrel.  He drew his
+terrible knife, such as all Spaniards carry, upon all who offended him.
+On one occasion Borrow saved from his wrath a poor maid-servant who had
+incurred his ire by burning a herring she was toasting for him.
+Antonio’s virtues comprised an unquestioned honesty and devotion, and on
+the whole he was a desirable servant in a country where such virtues were
+extremely rare.
+
+It was not until 15th May that Borrow, accompanied by Antonio, was able
+to get away from Madrid.  A few days previously he had contracted “a
+severe cold which terminated in a shrieking, disagreeable cough.”  This,
+following on a fortnight’s attack of influenza, proved difficult to shake
+off.  Finding himself scarcely able to stand, he at length appealed to a
+barber-surgeon, who drew 16 oz. of blood, assuring his patient that on
+the following day he would be well enough to start.
+
+That same evening Mr Villiers sent round to Borrow’s lodgings informing
+him that he had decided to help him by every means in his power.  He
+announced his intention of purchasing a large number of the Testaments,
+and despatching them to the various British Consuls in Spain, with
+instructions “to employ all the means which their official situation
+should afford them to circulate the books in question, and to assure
+their being noticed.” {197a}  They were also to render every assistance
+in their power to Borrow “as a friend of Mr Villiers, and a person in the
+success of whose enterprise he himself took the warmest interest.” {197b}
+Mr Villiers’ interest in Borrow’s mission seems to have led him into a
+diplomatic indiscretion.  Borrow himself confesses that he could scarcely
+believe his ears.  Although assured of the British Minister’s friendly
+attitude, he “could never expect that he would come forward in so noble,
+and to say the least of it, considering his high diplomatic situation, so
+bold and decided a manner.” {197c}  This act of friendliness becomes a
+personal tribute to Borrow, when it is remembered that at first Mr
+Villiers had been by no means well disposed towards the Bible Society.
+
+Before leaving Madrid, Borrow had circularised all the principal
+booksellers, offering to supply the New Testament at fifteen _reals_ a
+copy, the actual cost price; but he was not sanguine as to the result,
+for he found the Spaniard “short-sighted and . . . so utterly
+unacquainted with the rudiments of business.” {198}  Advertisements had
+been inserted in all the principal newspapers stating that the
+booksellers of Madrid were now in a position to supply the New Testament
+in Spanish, unencumbered by obscuring notes and comments.  Borrow also
+provided for an advertisement to be inserted each week during his
+absence, which he anticipated would be about five months.  After that he
+knew not what would happen—there was always China.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+MAY–OCTOBER 1837
+
+
+THE prediction of the surgeon-barber was fulfilled; by the next morning
+the fever and cough had considerably abated, although the patient was
+still weak from loss of blood.  This, however, did not hinder him from
+mounting his black Andalusian, and starting upon his initial journey of
+distribution.  On arriving at Salamanca, his first objective, he
+immediately sought out the principal bookseller and placed with him
+copies of the New Testament.  He also inserted an advertisement in the
+local newspaper, stating that the volume was the only guide to salvation;
+at the same time he called attention to the great pecuniary sacrifices
+that the Bible Society was making in order to proclaim Christ crucified.
+This advertisement he caused to be struck off in considerable numbers as
+bills and posted in various parts of the town, and he even went so far as
+to affix one to the porch of the church.  He also distributed them as he
+progressed through the villages. {199}
+
+From Salamanca (10th June) Borrow journeyed to Valladolid, and from
+thence to León, {200a} (a hotbed of Carlism), where the people were
+ignorant and brutal and refused to the stranger a glass of water, unless
+he were prepared to pay for it.  At León he was seized by a fever that
+prostrated him for a week.  He also experienced marked antagonism from
+the clergy, who threatened every direful consequence to whosoever read or
+purchased “the accursed books” which he brought.  A more serious evidence
+of their displeasure was shown by the action they commenced in the
+ecclesiastical court against the bookseller whom Borrow had arranged with
+to act as agent for his Testaments.  The bookseller himself did not mend
+matters by fixing upon the doors of the cathedral itself one of the
+advertisements that he had received with the books.
+
+When sufficiently recovered to travel, Borrow proceeded to Astorga, which
+he reached with the utmost difficulty owing to bad roads and the fierce
+heat.
+
+    “We were compelled to take up our abode,” he writes, {200b} “in a
+    wretched hovel full of pigs’ vermin and misery, and from this place I
+    write, for this morning I felt myself unable to proceed on my
+    journey, being exhausted with illness, fatigue and want of food, for
+    scarcely anything is to be obtained; but I return God thanks and
+    glory for being permitted to undergo these crosses and troubles for
+    His Word’s sake.  I would not exchange my present situation,
+    unenviable as some may think it, for a throne.”
+
+Thus Borrow wrote when burning with fever, after having just been told to
+vacate his room at the _posada_, and having his luggage flung into the
+yard to make room for the occupants of the “waggon” from Madrid to
+Coruña.
+
+From Astorga he proceeded by way of Puerto de Manzanál, Bembibre,
+Cacabélos, Villafranca, Puerto de Fuencebadón and Nogáles, “through the
+wildest mountains and wildernesses” to Lugo.
+
+Owing to the unsafety of the roads, it was customary for travellers to
+attach themselves to the Grand Post, which was always guarded by an
+escort.  At Nogáles Borrow joined the mail courier; but as a rule he was
+too independent, too much in a hurry, and too indifferent to danger to
+wait for such protection against the perils of the robber-infested roads.
+He has given the following graphic account “of the grand post from Madrid
+to Coruña, attended by a considerable escort, and an immense number of
+travellers . . . We were soon mounted and in the street, amidst a
+confused throng of men and quadrupeds.  The light of a couple of
+flambeaus, which were borne before the courier, shone on the arms of
+several soldiers, seemingly drawn up on either side of the road; the
+darkness, however, prevented me from distinguishing objects very clearly.
+The courier himself was mounted on a little shaggy pony; before and
+behind him were two immense portmanteaus, or leather sacks, the ends of
+which nearly touched the ground.  For about a quarter of an hour there
+was much hubbub, shouting, and trampling, at the end of which period the
+order was given to proceed.  Scarcely had we left the village when the
+flambeaus were extinguished, and we were left in almost total darkness.
+In this manner we proceeded for several hours, up hill and down dale, but
+generally at a very slow pace.  The soldiers who escorted us from time to
+time sang patriotic songs . . . At last the day began to break, and I
+found myself amidst a train of two or three hundred people, some on foot,
+but the greater part mounted, either on mules or the pony mares: I could
+not distinguish a single horse except my own and Antonio’s.  A few
+soldiers were thinly scattered along the road.” {201}
+
+After about a week’s stay at Lugo, Borrow again attached himself to the
+Grand Post; but tiring of its slow and deliberate progress, he decided to
+push on alone, and came very near to falling a prey to the banditti.  He
+was suddenly confronted by two of the fraternity, who presented their
+carbines, “which they probably intended to discharge into my body, but
+they took fright at the noise of Antonio’s horse, who was following a
+little way behind.” {202}
+
+The night was spent at Betanzos, where the black Andalusian was stricken
+with “a deep, hoarse cough.”  Remembering a prophetic remark that had
+been made by a roadside acquaintance to the effect that “the man must be
+mad who brings a horse to Galicia, and doubly so he who brings an
+_entero_,” Borrow, determined to have the animal bled, sent for a
+farrier, meanwhile rubbing down his steed with a quart of _anis_ brandy.
+The farrier demanded an ounce of gold for the operation, which decided
+Borrow to perform it himself.  With a large fleam that he possessed, he
+twice bled the Andalusian, to the astonishment of the discomfited
+farrier, and saved its valuable life, also an ounce of gold.  Next day he
+and Antonio walked to Coruña, leading their horses.
+
+At Coruña were five hundred copies of the New Testament that had been
+sent on from Madrid.  So far Borrow had himself disposed of sixty-five
+copies, irrespective of those sold at Lugo and other places by means of
+the advertisement.  These books were all sold at prices ranging from 10
+to 12 _reals_ each.  Borrow made a special point of this, “to give a
+direct lie to the assertion” that the Bible Society, having no vent for
+the Bibles and New Testaments it printed, was forced either to give them
+away or sell them by auction, when they were purchased as waste paper.
+
+The condition of the roads at that period was so bad, on account of
+robbers and Carlists, that it was forbidden to anyone to travel along the
+thoroughfare leading to Santiago unless in company with the mail courier
+and his escort of soldiers.  Unfortunately for Borrow his black
+Andalusian was not of a companionable disposition, and to bring him near
+other horses was to invite a fierce contest.  On the rare occasions that
+he did travel with the Grand Post, Borrow was frequently involved in
+difficulties on account of the _entero’s_ unsociable nature; but as he
+was deeply attached to the noble beast, he retained him and suffered
+dangers rather than give up the companion of many an adventure.
+
+Some idea may be obtained of the state of rural Spain in 1837, when the
+highways teemed with “patriots” bent upon robbing friend and foe alike
+and afterwards assassinating or mutilating their victims, from a story
+that Borrow tells of how a viper-catcher, who was engaged in pursuing his
+calling in the neighbourhood of Orense, fell into the hands of these
+miscreants, who robbed and stripped him.  They then pinioned his hands
+behind him and drew over his head the mouth of the bag containing the
+_living_ vipers, which they fastened round his neck and listened with
+satisfaction to the poor wretch’s cries.  The reptiles stung their victim
+to madness, and after having run raving through several villages he
+eventually fell dead. {203a}
+
+Making Coruña his headquarters, Borrow proceeded to Santiago, “travelling
+with the courier or weekly post,” and from thence to Padrón, Pontevedra,
+and Vigo.  At Vigo he was apprehended as a spy, but immediately released.
+It was whilst at Santiago that he repeated an experiment he had
+previously made at Valladolid.
+
+    “I . . . sallied forth,” he writes, {203b} “alone and on horseback,
+    and bent my course to a distant village; on my arrival, which took
+    place just after the _siesta_ or afternoon’s nap had concluded, I
+    proceeded . . . to the market place, where I spread a horse-cloth on
+    the ground, upon which I deposited my books.  I then commenced crying
+    with a loud voice: ‘Peasants, peasants, I bring you the Word of God
+    at a cheap price.  I know you have but little money, but I bring it
+    you at whatever you can command, at four or three _reals_, according
+    to your means.’  I thus went on till a crowd gathered round me, who
+    examined the books with attention, many of them reading aloud, but I
+    had not long to wait; . . . my cargo was disposed of almost
+    instantaneously, and I mounted my horse without a question being
+    asked me, and returned to my temporary abode lighter than I came.”
+
+Borrow did not repeat the experiment for fear of giving offence to the
+clergy.  The new means of distribution was to be used only as a last
+resource.
+
+Arriving at Padrón on the return journey, Borrow found that he had only
+one book left.  He determined to send Antonio forward with the horses to
+await him at Coruña, whilst he made an excursion to Cape Finisterre.
+
+    “It would be,” he says, “difficult to assign any plausible reason for
+    the ardent desire which I entertained to visit this place; but I
+    remembered that last year I had escaped almost by a miracle from
+    shipwreck and death on the rocky sides of this extreme point of the
+    Old World, and I thought that to convey the Gospel to a place so wild
+    and remote might perhaps be considered an acceptable pilgrimage in
+    the eyes of my Maker.” {204a}
+
+Hiring a guide and a pony, he reached the Cape, after surmounting
+tremendous difficulties, and on arrival he and his guide were arrested as
+Carlist spies. {204b}  In all probability he would have been shot, such
+was the certainty of the _Alcalde_ that he was a spy, had not the
+professional hero of the place come forward and, after having
+cross-examined him as to his knowledge of “knife” and “fork,” the only
+two English words the Spaniard knew, pronounced him English, and
+eventually conveyed him to the _Alcalde_ of Convucion, who released him.
+On the man who had saved him Borrow privately bestowed a gratuity, and
+publicly the copy of the New Testament that had led to the expedition.
+He then returned to Coruña, by his journey having accomplished “what has
+long been one of the ardent wishes of my heart.  I have carried the
+Gospel to the extreme point of the Old World.” {205a}
+
+The black Andalusian was totally unfitted for the long mountainous
+journey into the Asturias that Borrow now planned to undertake, and he
+decided to dispose of him.  He was greatly attached to the creature,
+notwithstanding his vicious habits and the difficulties that arose out of
+them.  Now the _entero_ would be engaged in a deadly struggle with some
+gloomy mule; again, by rushing among a crowd outside a _posada_, he would
+do infinite damage and earn for his master and himself an evil name.
+Borrow thus announces to the Bible Society the sale of its property:
+“This animal cost the Society about 2000 _reals_ at Madrid; I, however,
+sold him for 3000 at Coruña, notwithstanding that he has suffered much
+from the hard labour which he had been subjected to in our wanderings in
+Galicia, and likewise from bad provender.” {205b}
+
+Borrow next set out upon an expedition to Orviedo in the Asturias, {205c}
+then in daily expectation of being attacked by the Carlists.  It was at
+Orviedo that he received a striking tribute from a number of Spanish
+gentlemen.
+
+    “A strange adventure has just occurred to me,” he wrote. {205d}  “I
+    am in the ancient town of Orviedo, in a very large, scantily
+    furnished and remote room of an ancient _posada_, formerly a palace
+    of the Counts of Santa Cruz, it is past ten at night and the rain is
+    descending in torrents.  I ceased writing on hearing numerous
+    footsteps ascending the creeking stairs which lead to my
+    apartment—the door was flung open, and in walked nine men of tall
+    stature, marshalled by a little hunchbacked personage.  They were all
+    muffled in the long cloaks of Spain, but I instantly knew by their
+    demeanour that they were _caballeros_, or gentlemen.  They placed
+    themselves in a rank before the table where I was sitting; suddenly
+    and simultaneously they all flung back their cloaks, and I perceived
+    that every one bore a book in his hand, a book which I knew full
+    well.  After a pause, which I was unable to break, for I sat lost in
+    astonishment and almost conceived myself to be visited by
+    apparitions, the hunchback advancing somewhat before the rest, said,
+    in soft silvery tones, ‘_Señor_ Cavalier, was it you who brought this
+    book to the Asturias?’  I now supposed that they were the civil
+    authorities of the place come to take me into custody, and, rising
+    from my seat, I exclaimed: ‘It certainly was I, and it is my glory to
+    have done so; the book is the New Testament of God; I wish it was in
+    my power to bring a million.’  ‘I heartily wish so too,’ said the
+    little personage with a sigh; ‘be under no apprehension, Sir
+    Cavalier, these gentlemen are my friends.  We have just purchased
+    these books in the shop where you have placed them for sale, and have
+    taken the liberty of calling upon you in order to return you our
+    thanks for the treasure you have brought us.  I hope you can furnish
+    us with the Old Testament also!’  I replied that I was sorry to
+    inform him that at present it was entirely out of my power to comply
+    with his wish, as I had no Old Testaments in my possession, but I did
+    not despair of procuring some speedily from England. {206}  He then
+    asked me a great many questions concerning my Biblical travels in
+    Spain and my success, and the views entertained by the Society in
+    respect to Spain, adding that he hoped we should pay particular
+    attention to the Asturias, which he assured me was the best ground in
+    the Peninsula for our labour.  After about half an hour’s
+    conversation, he suddenly said in the English language, ‘Good night,
+    Sir,’ wrapped his cloak around him and walked out as he had come.
+    His companions, who had hitherto not uttered a word, all repeated,
+    ‘Good night, Sir,’ and adjusting their cloaks followed him.”
+
+This anecdote greatly impressed the General Committee.  Mr Brandram wrote
+(15th November 1837): “We were all deeply interested with your ten
+gentlemen of Orviedo.  I have introduced them at several meetings.”
+
+Whilst at Orviedo, Borrow began to be very uneasy about the state of
+affairs at the capital.  “Madrid,” he wrote, {207} “is the depôt of our
+books, and I am apprehensive that in the revolutions and disturbances
+which at present seem to threaten it, our whole stock may perish.  True
+it is that in order to reach Madrid I should have to pass through the
+midst of the Carlist hordes, who would perhaps slay or make me prisoner;
+but I am at present so much accustomed to perilous adventure, and have
+hitherto experienced so many fortunate escapes, that the dangers which
+infest the route would not deter me a moment from venturing.  But there
+is no certain intelligence, and Madrid may be in safety or on the brink
+of falling.”
+
+Another factor that made him desirous of returning to the capital was
+that, ever since leaving Coruña, he had been afflicted with a dysentery
+and, later, with ophthalmia, which resulted from it, and he was anxious
+to obtain proper medical advice.  He determined, however, first to carry
+out his project of visiting Santandér, which he reached by way of Villa
+Viciosa, Colunga, Riba de Sella, Llánes, Colombres, San Vicente,
+Santillana.  It was at Santandér that he encountered the unfortunate
+Flinter, {208} as brave with his sword as with his tongue.
+
+Instructions had been given in a letter to Borrégo to forward to
+Santandér two hundred copies of the New Testament; but, much to Borrow’s
+disappointment, he found that they had not arrived.  He thought that
+either they had fallen into the hands of the Carlists, or his letter of
+instruction had miscarried: as a matter of fact they did not leave Madrid
+until 30th October, the day before Borrow arrived at the capital.  Thus
+his journey was largely wasted.  It would be folly to remain at
+Santandér, where, in spite of the strictest economy, his expenses
+amounted to two pounds a day, whilst a further supply of books was
+obtained.  Accordingly he determined to make for Madrid without further
+delay.
+
+Purchasing a small horse, and notwithstanding that he was so ill as
+scarcely to be able to support himself; indifferent to the fact that the
+country between Santandér and Madrid was overrun with Carlists, whose
+affairs in Castile had not prospered; too dispirited to collect his
+thoughts sufficiently to write to Mr Brandram, he set out, accompanied by
+Antonio, “determined to trust, as usual, in the Almighty and to venture.”
+Physical ailments, however, did not in any way cause him to forget why he
+had come to Santandér, and before leaving he made tentative arrangements
+with the booksellers of the town as to what they should do in the event
+of his being able to send them a supply of Testaments.
+
+That journey of a hundred leagues was a nightmare.  “Robberies, murders,
+and all kinds of atrocity were perpetrated before, behind, and on both
+sides” of them; but they passed through it all as if travelling along an
+English highway.  Even when met at the entrance of the Black Pass by a
+man, his face covered with blood, who besought him not to enter the pass,
+where he had just been robbed of all he possessed, Borrow, without making
+reply, proceeded on his way.  He was too ill to weigh the risks, and
+Antonio followed cheerfully wherever his master went.  Madrid was reached
+on 31st October. {209a}   The next day Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram:
+“People say we have been very lucky; Antonio says, ‘It was so written’;
+but I say, Glory be to the Lord for His mercies vouchsafed.”
+
+The expedition to the Northern Provinces had occupied five and a half
+months.  Every kind of fatigue had been experienced, dangers had been
+faced, even courted, and every incident of the road turned to further the
+end in view—the distribution of the Scriptures in Spain.  The countryside
+had proved itself ignorant and superstitious, and the towns eager, not
+for the Word of God but “for stimulant narratives, and amongst too many a
+lust for the deistical writings of the French, especially for those of
+Talleyrand, which have been translated into Spanish and published by the
+press of Barcelona, and for which I was frequently pestered.” {209b}
+Antonio had proved himself a unique body-servant and companion, and if
+with a previous employer he had valued his personal comfort so highly as
+to give notice because his mistress’s pet quail disturbed his slumbers,
+he was nevertheless utterly indifferent to the hardships and discomforts
+that he endured when with Borrow, and always proved cheerful and willing.
+
+Borrow had “by private sale disposed of one hundred and sixteen
+Testaments to individuals entirely of the lower classes, namely,
+muleteers, carmen, _contrabandistas_, etc.” {209c}  He had dared to
+undertake what perhaps only he was capable of carrying to a successful
+issue; for, left alone to make his own plans and conduct the campaign
+along his own lines, Borrow has probably never been equalled as a
+missionary, strange though the term may seem when applied to him.  His
+fear of God did not hinder him from making other men fear God’s
+instrument, himself.  His fine capacity for affairs, together with what
+must have appeared to the clergy of the districts through which he passed
+his outrageous daring, conspired to his achieving what few other men
+would have thought, and probably none were capable of undertaking.  A
+missionary who rode a noble, black Andalusian stallion, who could use a
+fleam as well as a blacksmith’s hammer, who could ride barebacked, and,
+above all, made men fear him as a physical rather than a spiritual force,
+was new in Spain, as indeed elsewhere.  The very novelty of Borrow’s
+methods, coupled with the daring and unconventional independence of the
+man himself, ensured the success of his mission.  There was something of
+the Camel-Driver of Mecca about his missionary work.  He saw nothing
+anomalous in being possessed of a strong arm as well as a Christian
+spirit.  He would endeavour to win over the ungodly; but woe betide them
+if they should attempt to pit their strength against his.  Borrow’s own
+comment upon his journey in the Northern Provinces was, “Insignificant
+are the results of man’s labours compared with the swelling ideas of his
+presumption; something, however, had been effected by the journey which I
+had just concluded.” {210}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+NOVEMBER 1837–APRIL 1838
+
+
+GREAT changes had taken place in Madrid during Borrow’s absence.  The
+Carlists had actually appeared before its gates, although they had
+subsequently retired.  Liberalism had been routed and a _Moderado_
+Cabinet, under the leadership of Count Ofalia, ruled the city and such
+part of the country as was sufficiently complaisant as to permit itself
+to be ruled.  As the _Moderados_ represented the Court faction, Borrow
+saw that he had little to expect from them.  He was unacquainted with any
+of the members of the Cabinet, and, what was far more serious for him,
+the relations between the new Government and Sir George Villiers {211}
+were none too cordial, as the British Minister had been by no means
+favourable to the new ministry.
+
+Having written to Mr Brandram telling of his arrival in Madrid, “begging
+pardon for all errors of commission and omission,” and confessing himself
+“a frail and foolish vessel,” that had “accomplished but a slight portion
+of what I proposed in my vanity,” Borrow proceeded to disprove his own
+assertion.  He found the affairs of the Bible Society in a far from
+flourishing condition.  The Testaments had not sold to any considerable
+extent, for which “only circumstances and the public poverty” were the
+cause, as Dr Usoz explained.
+
+To awaken interest in his campaign, Borrow planned to print a thousand
+advertisements, which were to be posted in various parts of the city, and
+to employ colporteurs to vend the books in the streets.  He despatched
+consignments of books to towns he had visited that required them, and in
+the enthusiasm of his eager and active mind foresaw that, “as the circle
+widens in the lake into which a stripling has cast a pebble, so will the
+circle of our usefulness continue widening, until it has embraced the
+whole vast region of Spain.” {212a}
+
+It soon became evident that there was to be a very strong opposition.  A
+furious attack upon the Bible Society was made in a letter addressed to
+the editors of _El Español_ on 5th November, prefixed to a circular of
+the Spiritual Governor of Valencia, forbidding the purchase or reading of
+the London edition of Father Scio’s Bible.  The letter described the
+Bible Society as “an infernal society,” and referred in passing to “its
+accursed fecundity.”  It also strongly resented the omission of the
+Apocrypha from the Scio Bible.  Borrow promptly replied to this attack in
+a letter of great length, and entirely silenced his antagonist, whom he
+described to Mr Brandram (20th Nov.) as “an unprincipled benefice-hunting
+curate.”  “You will doubtless deem it too warm and fiery,” he writes,
+referring to his reply, “but tameness and gentleness are of little avail
+when surrounded by the vassal slaves of bloody Rome.” {212b}  Borrow’s
+response to the “benefice-hunting curate” not only silenced him, but was
+listened to by the General Committee of the Society “with much pleasure.”
+
+The cause of the trouble in Valencia lay with the other agent of the
+Bible Society in Spain, Lieutenant James Newenham Graydon, R.N., who
+first took up the work of distributing the Scriptures at Gibraltar in
+1835.  Here he became associated with the Rev. W. H. Rule, of the
+Wesleyan Methodist Society.  “The Lieutenant, who seems to have combined
+the personal charm of the Irish gentleman with some of the perfervid
+incautiousness of the Keltic temperament, finding himself unemployed at
+Gibraltar, resolved to do what lay in his power for the spiritual
+enlightenment of Spain.  Without receiving a regular commission from any
+society, he took up single-handed the task which he had imposed upon
+himself.” {213a}
+
+Borrow had first met Lieutenant Graydon at Madrid, in the summer of 1836,
+where he saw him two or three times.  When Graydon left, on account of
+the heat, Borrow had removed to Graydon’s lodgings as being more
+comfortable than his own.  The prohibition in Valencia was directly due
+to the indiscretion and incaution of Graydon.  The Vicar-General of the
+province gave as a reason for his action, an advertisement that had
+appeared in the _Diario Comercial_ of Valencia, undertaking to supply
+Bibles gratis to those who could not afford to buy them.  For this
+advertisement Graydon was admonished by the General Committee, which
+refused to entertain his plea that, being unpaid, he was not, strictly
+speaking, an agent of the Bible Society.  He was given to understand that
+as the Society was responsible for his acts he must be guided by its
+views and wishes.
+
+The next occasion on which Borrow came into conflict with this impulsive
+missionary free-lance was in March 1838, when he heard from the Rev. W.
+H. Rule that Graydon was on his way to Andalusia.  Borrow immediately
+wrote to Mr Brandram that he, acting on the advice of Sir George
+Villiers, had already planned an expedition into that province, and
+furthermore that he had despatched there a number of Testaments.  He
+explained to Mr Brandram that he was apprehensive “of the re-acting at
+Seville of the Valencian Drama, which I have such unfortunate cause to
+rue, as I am the victim on whom an aggravated party have wreaked their
+vengeance, and for the very cogent reason that I was within their reach.”
+{213b}  On this occasion Graydon was instructed not to start upon his
+projected journey, although Mr Brandram gave the order much against his
+own inclination. {214a}
+
+One great difficulty that Borrow had to contend with was the apathy of
+the Madrid booksellers, who “gave themselves no manner of trouble to
+secure the sale, and even withheld [the] advertisements from the public.”
+{214b}  This determined him to open a shop himself, and, accordingly,
+towards the end of November, he secured premises in the Calle del
+Principe, one of the main thoroughfares, for which he agreed to pay a
+rent of eight _reals_ a day.  He furnished the premises handsomely, with
+glass cases and chandeliers, and caused to be painted in large yellow
+characters the sign “Despacho de la Sociedad Bíblica y Estrangera” (Depôt
+of the Biblical and Foreign Society).  He engaged a Gallegan (José
+Calzado, whom he called Pepe) as salesman, and on 27th November formally
+opened his new premises.  Customers soon presented themselves; but many
+were disappointed on finding that they could not obtain the Bible.  “I
+could have sold ten times the amount of what I did,” Borrow writes.  “I
+_must_ therefore be furnished with Bibles instanter; send me therefore
+the London edition, bad as it is, say 500 copies.” {214c}
+
+To facilitate the passing of these books through the customs, Borrow
+suggested that they should be consigned to the British Consul at Cadiz,
+who was friendly to the Society and “would have sufficient influence to
+secure their admission into Spain.  But the most advisable way,” he goes
+on to explain with great guile, “would be to pack them in two chests,
+placing at the top Bibles in English and other languages, for there is a
+demand, viz., 100 English, 100 French, 50 German, 50 Hebrew, 50 Greek, 10
+Modern Greek, 10 Persian, 20 Arabic.  _Pray do not fail_.” {215a}
+
+When Sir George Villiers first obtained from Isturitz permission for
+Borrow to print and sell the New Testament in Spanish without notes, he
+had cautioned him “to use the utmost circumspection, and in order to
+pursue his vocation with success, to avoid offending popular prejudices,
+which would not fail to be excited against a Protestant and a Foreigner
+engaged in the propagation of the Gospel.” {215b}  This warning the
+British Minister had repeated frequently since.  It was without
+consulting Sir George that Borrow opened his depôt, and “imprudently
+painted upon the window that it was the Depôt of the London (sic) Bible
+Society for the sale of Bibles.  I told him,” Sir George writes “that
+such a measure would render the interference of the Authorities
+inevitable, and so it turned out.” {215c}
+
+Borrow now lost the services of the faithful Antonio, who, on the last
+day of the year, informed him that he had become unsettled and
+dissatisfied with everything at his master’s lodgings, including the
+house, the furniture, and the landlady herself.  Therefore he had hired
+himself out to a count for four dollars a month less than he was
+receiving from Borrow, because he was “fond of change, though it be for
+the worse.  _Adieu_, _mon maitre_,” he said in parting; “may you be as
+well served as you deserve.  Should you chance, however, to have any
+pressing need _de mes soins_, send for me without hesitation, and I will
+at once give my new master warning.”  A few days later Borrow engaged a
+Basque, named Francisco, who “to the strength of a giant joined the
+disposition of a lamb,” {216a} and who had been strongly recommended to
+him.
+
+On his return from a hurried visit to Toledo, Borrow found his _Despacho_
+succeeding as well as could be expected.  To call attention to his
+premises he now took an extremely daring step.  He caused to be printed
+three thousand copies of an advertisement on paper yellow, blue, and
+crimson, “with which I almost covered the sides of the streets” he wrote,
+“and besides this inserted notices in all the journals and periodicals,
+employing also a man, after the London fashion, to parade the streets
+with a placard, to the astonishment of the populace.” {216b}  The result
+of this move, Borrow declared, was that every man, woman and child in
+Madrid became aware of the existence of his _Despacho_, as well they
+might.  In spite of this commercial enterprise, the first month’s trading
+showed a sale of only between seventy and eighty New Testaments, and ten
+Bibles, {216c} these having been secured from a Spanish bookseller who
+had brought them secretly from Gibraltar, but who was afraid to sell them
+himself.  Mr Brandram’s comment upon the letter from Borrow telling of
+the posters was that its contents had “afforded us no little merriment.
+The idea of your placards and placard-bearers in Madrid is indeed a novel
+one.  It cannot but be effectual in giving publicity.  I sincerely hope
+it may not be prejudicial.” {216d}
+
+When in England, at the end of 1836, Borrow had been authorised by the
+Bible Society to find “a person competent to translate the Scriptures in
+Basque.”  On 27_th_ February 1837, he wrote telling Mr Brandram that he
+had become “acquainted with a gentleman well versed in that dialect, of
+which I myself have some knowledge.”  Dr Oteiza, the domestic physician
+of the Marqués de Salvatierra, was accordingly commissioned to proceed
+with the work, for which, when completed, he was paid the sum of “£8 and
+a few odd shillings.”  Borrow reported to Mr Brandram (7th June 1837):
+
+    “I have examined it with much attention, and find it a very faithful
+    version.  The only objection which can be brought against it is that
+    Spanish words are frequently used to express ideas for which there
+    are equivalents in Basque; but this language, as spoken at present in
+    Spain, is very corrupt, and a work written entirely in the Basque of
+    Larramendi’s Dictionary would be intelligible to very few.  I have
+    read passages from it to men of Guipuscoa, who assured me that they
+    had no difficulty in understanding it, and that it was written in the
+    colloquial style of the province.”
+
+Borrow had “obtained a slight acquaintance” with Basque when a youth,
+which he lost no opportunity of extending by mingling with Biscayans
+during his stay in the Peninsula.  He also considerably improved himself
+in the language by conversing with his Basque servant Francisco.  Borrow
+now decided to print the Gitano and Basque versions of St Luke, which he
+accordingly put in hand; but as the compositors were entirely ignorant of
+both languages, he had to exercise the greatest care in reading the
+proofs.
+
+During his stay in Spain he had found time to translate into the dialect
+of the Spanish gypsies the greater part of the New Testament. {217a}  His
+method had been somewhat original.  Believing that there is “no
+individual, however wicked and hardened, who is utterly _godless_,”
+{217b} he determined to apply his belief to the gypsies.  To enlist their
+interest in the work, he determined to allow them to do the translating
+themselves.  At one period of his residence in Madrid he was regularly
+visited by two gypsy women, and these he decided to make his translators;
+for he found the women far more amenable than the men.  In spite of the
+fact that he had already translated into Gitano the New Testament, or the
+greater part of it, he would read out to the women from the Spanish
+version and let them translate it into Romany themselves, thus obtaining
+the correct gypsy idiom.  The women looked forward to these gatherings
+and also to “the one small glass of Malaga” with which their host regaled
+them.  They had got as far as the eighth chapter before the meetings
+ended.  What was the moral effect of St Luke upon the minds of two
+gypsies?  Borrow confessed himself sceptical; first, because he was
+acquainted with the gypsy character; second, because it came to his
+knowledge that one of the women “committed a rather daring theft shortly
+afterwards, which compelled her to conceal herself for a fortnight.”
+{218a}  Borrow comforted himself with the reflection that “it is quite
+possible, however, that she may remember the contents of those chapters
+on her death-bed.” {218b}  The translation of the remaining chapters was
+supplied from Borrow’s own version begun at Badajos in 1836.
+
+It is not strange that Borrow should be regarded with suspicion by the
+Spaniards on account of his association with the Gitanos.  Sometimes
+there would be as many as seventeen gypsies gathered together at his
+lodgings in the Calle de Santiago.
+
+    “The people in the street in which I lived,” he writes, {218c}
+    “seeing such numbers of these strange females continually passing in
+    and out, were struck with astonishment, and demanded the reason.  The
+    answers which they obtained by no means satisfied them.  ‘Zeal for
+    the conversion of souls—the souls too of Gitánas,—disparáte! the
+    fellow is a scoundrel.  Besides he is an Englishman, and is not
+    baptised; what cares he for souls?  They visit him for other
+    purposes.  He makes base ounces, which they carry away and circulate.
+    Madrid is already stocked with false money.’  Others were of the
+    opinion that we met for the purposes of sorcery and abomination.  The
+    Spaniard has no conception that other springs of action exist than
+    interest or villany.”
+
+Borrow was in reality endeavouring to convey to his “little
+congregation,” as he called them, some idea of abstract morality.  He was
+bold enough “to speak against their inveterate practices, thieving and
+lying, telling fortunes,” etc., and at first experienced much opposition.
+About the result, he seems to have cherished no illusions; still, he
+wrote a hymn in their dialect which he taught his guests to sing.
+
+For some time past it had been obvious to Borrow that he was becoming
+more than ever unpopular with certain interested factions in Madrid, who
+looked upon his missionary labours with angry disapproval.  The opening
+of his _Despacho_ had caused a great sensation.  “The Priests and Bigots
+are teeming with malice and fury,” he had written to Mr Brandram, {219a}
+“which hitherto they have thought proper to exhibit only in words, as
+they know that all I do here is favoured by Mr Villiers {219b} (sic) . . .
+There is no attempt, however atrocious, which may not be expected from
+such people, and were it right and seemly for _me_, the most
+insignificant of worms, to make such a comparison, I would say that, like
+Paul at Ephesus, I am fighting with wild beasts.”  He was attacked in
+print and endeavours were made to incite the people against him as a
+sorcerer and companion of gypsies and witches.  When he decided upon the
+campaign of the posters it would appear, at first glance, that in the
+claims of the merchant Borrow had entirely forgotten the obligations of
+the diplomatist.  On the other hand, he may have foreseen that the
+priestly party would soon force the Government to action, and was
+desirous of selling all the books he could before this happened.  His own
+words seem to indicate that this was the case.
+
+    “People who know me not,” he wrote to Mr Brandram, “nor are
+    acquainted with my situation, may be disposed to call me rash; but I
+    am far from being so, as I never adopt a venturous course when any
+    other is open to me; but I am not a person to be terrified by any
+    danger when I see that braving it is the only way to achieve an
+    object.” {220}
+
+Whatever may have been Borrow’s motives, the crisis arrived on 12th
+January, when he received a peremptory order from the Civil Governor of
+Madrid (who had previously sent for and received two copies, to submit
+for examination to the Ecclesiastical Authorities) to sell no more of the
+New Testament in Spanish without notes.  At that period the average sale
+was about twenty copies a day.  “The priests have at length ‘swooped upon
+me,’” Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram, three days later.  The order did not,
+however, take him unawares.
+
+Borrow saw that little assistance was to be expected from Sir George
+Villiers, who, for obvious reasons, was not popular with the Ofalia
+ministry, and, accepting the British Minister’s advice, he promptly
+complied with the edict.  He recognised that for the time being his
+enemies were paramount.  He accuses the priests of employing the ruffian
+who, one night in a dark street, warned him to discontinue selling his
+“Jewish books,” or he would “have a knife ‘_nailed in his heart_’” to
+which he replied by telling the fellow to go home, say his prayers and
+inform his employers that he, Borrow, pitied them.  It was a few days
+after this episode that Borrow received the formal notice of prohibition.
+
+Consoling himself with the fact that he was not ordered to close his
+_Despacho_, and refusing the advice that was tendered to him to erase
+from its windows the yellow-lettered sign, he determined to continue his
+campaign with the Bibles that were on their way to him, and the Gitano
+and Basque versions of St Luke as soon as they were ready.  The
+prohibition referred only to the Spanish New Testament without notes, and
+in this Borrow took comfort.  He had every reason to feel gratified; for,
+since opening the _Despacho_, he had sold nearly three hundred copies of
+the New Testament.
+
+At Earl Street it was undoubtedly felt that Borrow had to some extent
+precipitated the present crisis.  On 8th February Mr Brandram wrote that,
+whilst there was no wish on the part of the Committee to censure him,
+they were not altogether surprised at what had occurred; for, when they
+first heard about them, “some _did_ think that your tri-coloured placards
+and placard-bearer were somewhat calculated to provoke what has
+occurred.”  In reply Borrow confessed that the view of the “some” gave
+him “a pang, more especially as I knew from undoubted sources that
+nothing which I had done, said, or written, was the original cause of the
+arbitrary step which had been adopted in respect to me.” {221a}
+
+The printing of the Gitano and Basque editions of St Luke (500 copies
+{221b} of each) was completed in March, and they were published
+respectively in March and April.  The Gitano version attracted much
+attention.  Some months later Borrow wrote:—
+
+    “No work printed in Spain ever caused so great and so general a
+    sensation, not so much amongst the Gypsies, that peculiar people for
+    whom it was intended, as amongst the Spaniards themselves, who,
+    though they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low
+    and thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest
+    in all that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their
+    practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to
+    cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos, as they are popularly
+    called, probably attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the
+    lascivious dances of the females.  The apparation, therefore, of the
+    Gospel of St Luke at Madrid in the peculiar jargon of these people,
+    was hailed as a strange novelty and almost as a wonder, and I believe
+    was particularly instrumental in bruiting the name of the Bible
+    Society far and wide through Spain, and in creating a feeling far
+    from inimical towards it and its proceedings.” {222a}
+
+The little volume appears to have sold freely among the gypsies.  “Many
+of the men,” Borrow says, {222b} “understood it, and prized it highly,
+induced of course more by the language than the doctrine; the women were
+particularly anxious to obtain copies, though unable to read; but each
+wished to have one in her pocket, especially when engaged in thieving
+expeditions, for they all looked upon it in the light of a charm.”
+
+All endeavours to get the prohibition against the sale of the New
+Testament removed proved unavailing.  Borrow’s great strength lay in the
+support he received from the British Minister, and, in all probability,
+this prevented his expulsion from Spain, which alone would have satisfied
+his enemies.  At the request of Sir George Villiers, he drew up an
+account of the Bible Society and an exposition of its views, telling
+Count Ofalia, among other things, that “the mightiest of earthly
+monarchs, the late Alexander of Russia, was so convinced of the
+single-mindedness and integrity of the British and Foreign Bible Society,
+that he promoted their efforts within his own dominions to the utmost of
+his ability.”  He pointed to the condition of Spain, which was
+“overspread with the thickest gloom of heathenish ignorance, beneath
+which the fiends and demons of the abyss seem to be holding their ghastly
+revels.”  He described it as “a country in which all sense of right and
+wrong is forgotten . . . where the name of Jesus is scarcely ever
+mentioned but in blasphemy, and His precepts [are] almost utterly unknown
+. . . [where] the few who are enlightened are too much occupied in the
+pursuit of lucre, ambition, or ungodly revenge to entertain a desire or
+thought of bettering the moral state of their countrymen.”  This report,
+in which Borrow confesses that he “made no attempts to flatter and
+cajole,” must have caused the British Minister some diplomatic
+embarrassment when he read it; but it seems to have been presented,
+although, as is scarcely surprising, it appears to have been ineffectual
+in causing to be removed the ban against which it was written as a
+protest.
+
+The Prime Minister was in a peculiarly unpleasant position.  On the one
+hand there was the British Minister using all his influence to get the
+prohibition rescinded; on the other hand were six bishops, including the
+primate, then resident in Madrid, and the greater part of the clergy.
+Count Ofalia applied for a copy of the Gipsy St Luke, and, seeing in this
+an opening for a personal appeal, Borrow determined to present the
+volume, specially and handsomely bound, in person, probably the last
+thing that Count Ofalia expected or desired.  The interview produced
+nothing beyond the conviction in Borrow’s mind that Spain was ruled by a
+man who possessed the soul of a mouse.  Borrow had been received “with
+great affability,” thanked for his present, urged to be patient and
+peaceable, assured of the enmity of the clergy, and promised that an
+endeavour should be made to devise some plan that would be satisfactory
+to him.  The two then “parted in kindness,” and as he walked away from
+the palace, Borrow wondered “by what strange chance this poor man had
+become Prime Minister of a country like Spain.”
+
+In reporting progress to the Bible Society on 17th March Borrow, after
+assuring Mr Brandram that he had “brought every engine into play which it
+was in my power to command,” asked for instructions.  “Shall I wait a
+little time longer in Madrid,” he enquired; “or shall I proceed at once
+on a journey to Andalusia and other places?  I am in strength, health and
+spirits, thanks be to the Lord! and am at all times ready to devote
+myself, body and mind, to His cause.” {224a}  The decision of the
+Committee was that he should remain at Madrid.
+
+During the time that Borrow had been preparing his Depôt in Madrid,
+Lieutenant Graydon had been feverishly active in the South.  On 19th
+April Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram:—
+
+    “Sir George Villiers has vowed to protect me and has stated so
+    publicly . . . He has gone so far as to state to Ofalia and [Don
+    Ramon de] Gamboa [the Civil Governor], that provided I be allowed to
+    pursue my plans without interruption, he will be my bail (_fiador_)
+    and answerable for everything I do, as he does me the honor to say
+    that he knows me, and can confide in _my_ discretion.”
+
+In the same letter he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no
+encouragement to any disposed “‘to run the muck’ (_sic_) (it is Sir
+George’s expression) against the religious and political _institutions_
+of Spain”; but “the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have
+been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home.”
+{224b}  They saw the astonishing success of Graydon in distributing the
+Scripture, and became infused with his enthusiasm, oblivious to the fact
+that the greater the enthusiasm the greater the possibilities of
+indiscretion.  On the other hand Graydon himself saw only the glory of
+the Gospel.  If he were indiscreet, it was because he was blinded by the
+success that attended his efforts, and he failed to see the clouds that
+were gathering. {225}  Borrow saw the danger of Graydon’s reckless
+evangelism, and although he himself had few good words for the pope and
+priestcraft, he recognised that a discreet veiling of his opinions was
+best calculated to further the ends he had in view.
+
+About this period Borrow became greatly incensed at the action of the
+Rev. W. H. Rule of Gibraltar in consigning to his care an ex-priest, Don
+Pascual Mann, who, it was alleged, had been persuaded to secede from Rome
+“by certain promises and hopes held out” to him.  He had accordingly left
+his benefice and gone to Gibraltar to receive instruction at the hands of
+Mr Rule.  On his return to Valencia his salary was naturally
+sequestrated, and he was reduced to want.  When he arrived at Madrid it
+was with a letter (12th April) from Mr Rule to Borrow, in which it was
+stated that Mann was sent that he might “endeavour to circulate the Holy
+Scriptures, Religious Tracts and books, and if possible prepare the minds
+of some with a view to the future establishment of a Mission in Madrid.”
+
+Borrow had commiserated with the unfortunate Mann, even to the extent of
+sending him 500 _reals_ out of his own pocket; but on hearing that he was
+on his way to Madrid to engage in missionary work, he immediately wrote a
+letter of protest to Mr Brandram.  He was angry at Mr Rule’s conduct in
+saddling him with Mann, and that without any preliminary correspondence.
+He had entertained Mr Rule when in Madrid, had conversed with him about
+the unfortunate ex-priest; but there had never been any mention of his
+being sent to Madrid.  Mr Rule, on the other hand, thought it had been
+arranged that Mann should be sent to Borrow.  The whole affair appears to
+have arisen out of a misunderstanding.  There was considerable danger to
+Borrow in Mann’s presence in the capital; but it was not the thought of
+the danger that incensed him so much as what he conceived to be Mr Rule’s
+unwarrantable conduct, and his own deeply-rooted objection to working
+with anyone else.  Mr Brandram repudiated the suggestion that assistance
+had been promised Mann from London (although he authorised Borrow to give
+him ten pounds in his, Brandram’s, name), and gave as an excuse for what
+Borrow described as the desertion of the ex-priest by those who were
+responsible for his conversion, that “the man had returned of his own
+accord to Rome,” Graydon vouching for the accuracy of the statement.
+
+On the other hand, Mann stated that he was persuaded to secede by
+promises made by Graydon and Rule, and induced to sign a document
+purporting to be a separation from the Roman Church.  He further stated
+that he was abandoned because he refused to preach publicly against the
+Chapter of Valencia, which in all probability would have resulted in his
+imprisonment.  Whatever the truth, there appears to have been some
+embarrassment among those responsible for bringing in the lost sheep as
+to what should be done with him.  “I hope that Mann’s history will be a
+warning to many of our friends,” Borrow wrote to Mr Rule and quoted the
+passage in his letter to Mr Brandram, {226} “and tend to a certain extent
+to sober down the desire for doing what is called at home _smart things_,
+many of which terminate in a manner very different from the original
+expectations of the parties concerned.”  Mr Brandram thought that Borrow
+was a little hard upon Graydon, and that he had not received “with the
+due _grano salis_ the statements of the unfortunate M.”  He intimated,
+nevertheless, that the Committee had no opening for Mann’s services.
+
+That Borrow was justified in his anger is shown by the fact that, as he
+had foreseen, he reaped all the odium of Mann’s conversion.  The Bishop
+of Cordoba in Council branded him as “a dangerous, pestilent person, who
+under the pretence of selling the Scriptures went about making converts,
+and moreover employed subordinates for the purpose of deluding weak and
+silly people into separation from the Mother Church.” {227a}
+
+Although Borrow was angry about the Mann episode, he did not allow his
+personal feelings to prevent him from ministering to the needs of the
+poor ex-priest “as far as prudence will allow,” when he fell ill.  He
+even went the length of writing to Mr Rule, being wishful “not to offend
+him.”  None the less he felt that he had not been well treated.  To Mr
+Brandram he wrote reminding him “that all the difficulty and danger
+connected with what has been accomplished in Spain have fallen to my
+share, I having been labouring on the flinty rock and sierra, and not in
+smiling meadows refreshed by sea breezes.” {227b}
+
+On 14th July 1838 Borrow made the last reference to the ex-priest in a
+letter to Mr Brandram: “The unfortunate M. is dying of a galloping
+consumption, brought on by distress of mind.  All the medicine in the
+world would not accomplish his cure.” {227c}
+
+The watchful eye of the law was still on Borrow, and fearful lest his
+stock of Bibles, of which 500 had arrived from Barcelona, and the Gypsy
+and Basque editions of St Luke should be seized, he hired a room where he
+stored the bulk of the books.  He now advertised the two editions of St
+Luke, with the result that on 16th April a party of _Alguazils_ entered
+the shop and took possession of twenty-five copies of the Romany Gospel
+of St Luke.
+
+On the publication of the Gypsy St Luke, a fresh campaign had been opened
+against Borrow, and accusations of sorcery were made and fears expressed
+as to the results of the publication of the book.  Application was made
+by the priestly party to the Civil Governor, with the result that all the
+copies at the _Despacho_ of the Basque and Gitano versions of St Luke had
+been seized.  Borrow states that the _Alguazils_ “divided the copies of
+the gypsy volume among themselves, selling subsequently the greater
+number at a large price, the book being in the greatest demand.” {228a}
+Thus the very officials responsible for the seizure and suppression of
+the Bible Society’s books in Spain became “unintentionally agents of an
+heretical society.” {228b}
+
+Disappointed at the smallness of the spoil, the authorities strove by
+artifice to discover if Borrow still had copies of the books in his
+possession.  To this end they sent to the _Despacho_ spies, who offered
+high prices for copies of the Gitano St Luke, in which their interest
+seemed specially to centre, to the exclusion of the Basque version.  To
+these enquiries the same answer was returned, that at present no further
+books would be sold at the _Despacho_.
+
+As evidence of the high opinion formed of the Romany version of St Luke,
+the following story told by Borrow is amusing:—
+
+    “Shortly before my departure a royal edict was published, authorising
+    all public libraries to provide themselves with copies of the said
+    works [the Basque and Gypsy St Lukes] on account of their
+    philological merit; whereupon on application being made to the Office
+    [of the Civil Governor, where the books were supposed to be stored],
+    it was discovered that the copies of the Gospel in Basque were safe
+    and forthcoming, whilst every one of the sequestered copies of the
+    Gitano Gospel had been plundered by hands unknown [to the
+    authorities].  The consequence was that I was myself applied to by
+    the agents of the public libraries of Valencia and other places, who
+    paid me the price of the copies which they received, assuring me at
+    the same time that they were authorised to purchase them at whatever
+    price which might be demanded.” {229a}
+
+Borrow’s enemies acknowledged that the Gitano St Luke was a philological
+curiosity; but that it was impossible to allow it to pass into
+circulation without notes.  How great a philological curiosity it
+actually was, is shown by the fact that the ecclesiastical authorities
+were unable to find anywhere a person, in whom they had confidence,
+capable of pronouncing upon it, consequently they could only condemn it
+on two counts of omission; firstly the notes, secondly the imprint of the
+printer from the title-page.
+
+The Basque version was by no means so popular; for one thing, “It can
+scarcely be said to have been published,” Borrow wrote, “it having been
+prohibited, and copies of it seized on the second day of its appearance.”
+{229b}  Several orders were received from San Sebastian and other towns
+where Basque predominates, which could not be supplied on account of the
+prohibition.
+
+The official remonstrance from Sir George Villiers to Count Ofalia in
+respect of the seizure of the Gypsy and Basque Gospels is of great
+interest as showing, not only the British Minister’s attitude towards
+Borrow, but how, and with what wrath, Borrow “desisted from his
+meritorious task.”  The communication runs:—
+
+                                              MADRID, 24_th_ _April_ 1838.
+
+    SIR,
+
+    It is my duty to request the attention of Your Excellency to an act
+    of injustice committed against a British subject by the Civil
+    Authorities of Madrid.
+
+    It appears that on the 16th inst., two officers of Police were sent
+    by the Civil Governor to a Shop, No. 25 Calle del Principe occupied
+    by Mr Borrow, where they seized and carried away 25 Copies of the
+    Gospel of St Luke in the Gitano language, being the entire number
+    exposed there for sale.
+
+    Mr Borrow is an agent of the British Bible Society, who has for some
+    time past been in Spain, and in the year 1836 obtained permission
+    from the Government of Her Catholic Majesty to print, at the expense
+    of the Society, Padre Scio’s translation of the New Testament.  He
+    subsequently sold the work at a moderate price and had no reason to
+    believe that in so doing he infringed any law of Spain or exposed
+    himself to the animadversion of the Authorities, otherwise, from my
+    knowledge of Mr Borrow’s character, I feel justified in assuring Your
+    Excellency that he would at once, although with regret, have desisted
+    from his meritorious task of propagating the Gospel.  Some months
+    ago, however, the late Civil Governor of Madrid, after having sent
+    for and examined a copy of the work, thought proper to direct that
+    its further sale should be suspended, which order was instantly
+    complied with.
+
+    Mr Borrow is a man of great learning and research and master of many
+    languages, and having translated the Gospel of St Luke into the
+    Gitano, he presented a copy of it to Don Ramon Gamboa, the late Civil
+    Governor, and announced his intention to advertise it for sale, to
+    which no objection was made.
+
+    Since that time neither Mr Borrow nor the persons employed by him
+    received any communication from the present Civil Governor forbidding
+    the sale of this work until it was seized in the manner I have above
+    described to Your Excellency.
+
+    I feel convinced that the mere statement of these facts without any
+    commentary on my part will be sufficient to induce your Excellency to
+    take steps for the indemnification of Mr Borrow, who is not only a
+    very respectable British subject but the Agent of one of the most
+    truly benevolent and philanthropic Societies in the world.
+
+    I have, etc., etc., etc.
+
+                                                          GEORGE VILLIERS.
+
+    His Excellency Count Ofalia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+MAY 1–13, 1838
+
+
+ON the morning of 30th April, whilst at breakfast, Borrow, according to
+his own account, received a visit from a man who announced that he was “A
+Police Agent.”  He came from the Civil Governor, who was perfectly aware
+that he, Borrow, was continuing in secret to dispose of the “evil books”
+that he had been forbidden to sell.  The man began poking round among the
+books and papers that were lying about, with the result that Borrow led
+his visitor by the arm down the three flights of stairs into the street,
+“looking him steadfastly in the face the whole time,” and subsequently
+sending down by his landlady the official’s sombrero, which, in the
+unexpectedness of his departure, he had left behind him.
+
+The official report of Pedro Martin de Eugenio, the police agent in
+question, runs as follows:—
+
+                                              MADRID, 30_th_ _April_ 1838.
+
+        OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE POLICE AGENT OF THE LANGUAGE HELD BY MR
+                                   BORROW.
+
+    _Public Security_.—In virtue of an order from His Excellency the
+    Civil Governor, {231} I went to seize the Copies Entitled the Gospel
+    of St Luke, in the Shop Princes Street No. 25, belonging to Mr George
+    Borrow, but not finding him there; I went to his lodgings, which are
+    in St James Street, No. 16, on the third floor and presenting the
+    said order to Him He read it, and with an angry look threw it on the
+    ground saying, that He had nothing to do with the Civil Governor,
+    that He was authorised by His Ambassador to sell the Work in
+    question, and that an English Stable Boy, is more than any Spanish
+    Civil Governor, and that I had forcibly entered his house, to which I
+    replied that I only went there to communicate the order to Him, as
+    proprietor as he was of the said Shop, and to seize the Copies in it
+    in virtue of that Order, and He answered I might do as I liked, that
+    He should go to the House of His Ambassador, and that I should be
+    responsible for the consequences; to which I replied that He had
+    personally insulted the Civil Governor and all Spain, to which He
+    answered in the same terms, holding the same language as above
+    stated.
+
+    All of which I communicate to you for the objects required.
+
+                                                          THE POLICE AGENT
+                                           PEDRO MARTIN DE EUGENIO. {232a}
+
+Borrow felt that the fellow had been sent to entrap him into some
+utterance that should justify his arrest.  In any case a warrant was
+issued that same morning.  The news caused Borrow no alarm; for one thing
+he was indifferent to danger, for another he was desirous of studying the
+robber language of Spain, and had already, according to his own
+statement, {232b} made an unsuccessful effort to obtain admission to the
+city prison.
+
+The official account of the interview between Borrow and the “Police
+Agent” is given in the following letter from the Civil Governor to Sir
+George Villiers:—
+
+    To the British Minister,—
+
+                                              MADRID, 30_th_ _April_ 1838.
+
+    SIR,
+
+    The Vicar of the Diocese having, on the 16th and 26th Instant,
+    officially represented to me, that neither the publication nor the
+    sale of the Gospel of St Luke translated into the romain, or Gitano
+    Dialect ought to be permitted, until such time as the translation had
+    been examined and approved by the competent Ecclesiastical Authority,
+    in conformity with the Canonical and Civil regulations existing on
+    the matter, I gave an order to a dependent of this civil
+    administration, to present himself in the house of Mr George Borrow,
+    a British Subject, charged by the London Bible Society with the
+    publication of this work, and to seize all the Copies of it.  In
+    execution of this order my Warrant was yesterday morning {233}
+    presented to the said Mr George Borrow; who, so far from obeying it,
+    broke out in insults most offensive to my authority, threw the order
+    on the ground with angry gestures, and grossly abused the bearer of
+    it, and said that he had nothing to do with the Civil Governor.  The
+    detailed report in writing which has been made to me of this
+    disageeeable occurrence could not but deeply affect me, being a
+    question of a British Subject, to whom the Government of Her Catholic
+    Majesty has always afforded the same protection as to its own.  As
+    Executor of the Law it is my duty to cause its decrees to be
+    inviolably observed; and you will well understand, that both the
+    Canonical as the Civil Laws now existing, in this kingdom, relative
+    to writings and works published upon Dogmas, Morals, and holy and
+    religious matters, are the same without distinction for the Subjects
+    of all Countries residing in Spain.  No one can be permitted to
+    violate them with impunity, without detriment to the Laws themselves,
+    to the Royal Authority and to the Evangelical Moral which is highly
+    interested in preventing the propagation of doctrines which may be
+    erroneous, and that the purity of the sublime maxims of our divine
+    Faith should remain intact.
+
+    In conformity with these undeniable principles, which are in the Laws
+    of all civilised nations, you must acknowledge that the offensive
+    conduct of Mr George Borrow, and his disobedience to a legitimate
+    Authority sufficiently authorised the proceeding to his arrest . . .
+
+                              I have, etc., etc.
+
+                                                         DEIGO DE ENTRENA.
+
+The “Police Agent” seems to have boasted that within twenty-four hours
+Borrow would be in prison; Borrow, on the other hand, determined to prove
+the “Police Agent” wrong.  He therefore spent the rest of the day and the
+following night at a café. {234a}  In the evening he received a visit
+from Maria Diaz, {234b} his landlady and also his strong adherent and
+friend, whom he had informed of his whereabouts.  From her he learned
+that his lodgings had been searched and that the _alguazils_, who bore a
+warrant for his arrest, were much disappointed at not finding him.
+
+The next morning, 1st May, at the request of Sir George Villiers, Borrow
+called at the Embassy and narrated every circumstance of the affair, with
+the result that he was offered the hospitality of the Embassy, which he
+declined.  Whilst in conversation with Mr Sothern, Sir George Villiers’
+private secretary, Borrow’s Basque servant Francisco rushed in with the
+news that the _alguazils_ were again at his rooms searching among his
+papers, whereat Borrow at once left the Embassy, determined to return to
+his lodgings.  Immediately afterwards he was arrested, {234c} within
+sight of the doors of the Embassy, and conducted to the office of the
+Civil Governor.  Francisco in the meantime, acting on his master’s
+instructions, conveyed to him in Basque that the _alguazils_ might not
+understand, proceeded immediately to the British Embassy and informed Sir
+George Villiers of what had just taken place, with such eloquence and
+feeling that Mr Sothern afterwards remarked to Borrow, “That Basque of
+yours is a noble fellow,” and asked to be given the refusal of his
+services should Borrow ever decide to part with him.  With his dependents
+Borrow was always extremely popular, even in Spain, where, according to
+Mr Sothern, a man’s servant seemed to be his worst enemy.
+
+Borrow submitted quietly to his arrest and was first taken to the office
+of the Civil Governor (_Gefatura Politica_), and subsequently to the
+Carcel de la Corte, by two Salvaguardias, “like a common malefactor.”
+Here he was assigned a chamber that was “large and lofty, but totally
+destitute of every species of furniture with the exception of a huge
+wooden pitcher, intended to hold my daily allowance of water.” {235}  For
+this special accommodation Borrow was to pay, otherwise he would have
+been herded with the common criminals, who existed in a state of foulness
+and misery.  Acting on the advice of the _Alcayde_, Borrow despatched a
+note to Maria Diaz, with the result that when Mr Sothern arrived, he
+found the prisoner not only surrounded by his friends and furniture, but
+enjoying a comfortable meal, whereat he laughed heartily.
+
+Borrow learned that, immediately on hearing what had taken place, Sir
+George Villiers had despatched Mr Sothern to interview Señor Entrena, the
+Civil Governor, who rudely referred him to his secretary, and refused to
+hold any communication with the British Legation save in writing.
+Nothing further could be done that night, and on hearing that Borrow was
+determined to remain in durance, even if offered his liberty, now that he
+had been illegally placed there, Mr Sothern commended his resolution.
+The Government had put itself grievously in the wrong, and Sir George,
+who had already sent a note to Count Ofalia demanding redress, seemed
+desirous of making it as difficult for them as possible, now that they
+had perpetrated this wanton outrage on a British subject.  He determined
+to make it a national affair.
+
+It is by no means certain that Borrow was anxious to leave the _Carcel de
+la Corte_, even with the apologies of Spain in his pocket.  The prison
+afforded him unique opportunities for the study of criminal vagabonds.
+An entirely new phase of life presented itself to him, and, but for this
+arrest and his subsequent decision to involve the authorities in
+difficulties, _The Bible in Spain_ would have lacked some of its most
+picturesque pages.  It would have been strange if he had not encountered
+some old friend or acquaintance in the prison of the Spanish capital.  At
+the _Carcel de la Corte_ he found the notorious and immense Gitana,
+Aurora, who had fallen into the hands of the _Busné_ for defrauding a
+rather foolish widow.
+
+“A great many people came to see me,” Borrow wrote to his mother,
+“amongst others, General Quiroga, the Military Governor, who assured me
+that all he possessed was at my service.  The Gypsies likewise came, but
+were refused admittance.”  His dinner was taken to him from an inn, and
+Sir George Villiers sent his butler each day to make enquiries.  There
+was, however, one very unpleasant feature of his prison life, the
+verminous condition of the whole building.  In spite of having fresh
+linen taken to him each day, he suffered very much from what the polished
+Spaniard prefers to call _miseria_.
+
+Sir George Villiers took active and immediate steps, not only to secure
+Borrow’s release, but to obtain an unqualified apology.  Referring to the
+letter he had received from the Civil Governor (30th April), he expressed
+himself as convinced that “a gentleman of Borrow’s character and
+education was incapable of the conduct alleged,” and had accordingly
+requested Mr Sothern to enquire into the matter and then to call upon the
+Civil Governor to explain in what manner he had been misinformed.  As the
+Civil Governor refused to receive Mr Sothern, Sir George adds that he
+need trouble him no further, as the affair had been placed before Her
+Catholic Majesty’s Government; but during his five years of office at the
+Court of Madrid, he proceeded, “no circumstance has occurred likely to be
+more prejudicial to the relations between the two Countries than the
+insult and imprisonment to which a respectable Englishman has now been
+subjected upon the unsupported evidence of a Police Officer,” acting
+under the orders of the Civil Governor.
+
+On 3rd May Sir George Villiers wrote again to Count Ofalia, reminding him
+that he had not received the letter from him that he had expected.  In
+the course of a lengthy recapitulation of the occurrences of the past ten
+days, Sir George reminded Count Ofalia that, as a result of their
+interview on 30th April about the ill-usage of Borrow, the Count had
+written on 1st May to him a private letter stating that measures had been
+taken to release Borrow on _parole_, he to appear when necessary, and
+that if Sir George would abstain from making a written remonstrance,
+Count Ofalia would see that both he and Borrow received the ample
+satisfaction to which they were entitled.  Borrow had been taken by two
+Guards “like a Malefactor, to the Common Prison, where he would have been
+confined with Criminals of every description if he had not had money to
+pay for a Cell to Himself.”  The British Minister complained that every
+step that he had taken for Borrow’s protection was followed by fresh
+insult, and he further intimated that Borrow refused to leave the prison
+until his character had been publicly cleared.
+
+The Spanish Government now found itself in a quandary.  The British
+Minister was pressing for satisfaction, and he was too powerful and too
+important to the needs of Spain to be offended.  The prisoner himself
+refused to be liberated, because he had been illegally arrested, inasmuch
+as he, a foreigner, had been committed to prison without first being
+conducted before the Captain-General of Madrid, as the law provided.
+Furthermore, Borrow advised the authorities that if they chose to eject
+him from the prison he would resist with all his bodily strength.  In
+this determination he was confirmed by the British Minister.
+
+A Cabinet Council was held, at which Señor Entrena was present.  The
+Premier explained the serious situation in which the ministry found
+itself, owing to the attitude assumed by the British Minister, and he
+remarked that the Civil Governor must respect the privileges of
+foreigners.  Señor Entrena suggested that he should be relieved of his
+duties; but the majority of the Cabinet seems to have been favourable to
+him.  The _Affaire Borrow_ is said to have come up for debate even during
+a secret session of the Chamber.
+
+When Count Ofalia had called at the British Embassy (4th May) he was
+informed by Sir George Villiers that the affair had passed beyond the
+radius of a subordinate authority of the Government, and that he
+“considered that great want of respect had been shown to me, as Her
+Majesty’s Minister, and that an unjustifiable outrage had been committed
+upon a British Subject,” {238a} and that the least reparation that he was
+disposed to accept was a written declaration that an injustice had been
+done, and the dismissal of the Police Officer. {238b}
+
+The value of a British subject’s freedom was brought home to the Spanish
+Government with astonishing swiftness and decision.  The Civil Governor
+wrote to Sir George Villiers (3rd May), apparently at the instance of the
+distraught premier, discoursing sagely upon the Civil and Canon Laws of
+Spain, and adding that the 25 copies of the Gitano St Luke were seized,
+“not as being confiscated, but as a deposit to be restored in due time.”
+He concluded by hoping that he had convinced the British Minister of his
+good faith.
+
+In his reply, Sir George considered that the Civil Governor had been led
+to view the matter in a light that would not “bear the test of impartial
+examination.”  The result of this interchange of letters was twofold.
+Sir George dropped the correspondence with “that Functionary [who]
+displays so complete a disregard for fact,” {239a} and as Count Ofalia
+evaded the real question at issue, holding out “slender hopes of the
+matter ending in the reparation which I considered to be peremptorily
+called for,” {239b} he advised Borrow to claim protection from the
+Captain-General, the only authority competent to exercise any
+jurisdiction over him.  The Captain-General Quiroga, jealous of his
+authority, entered warmly into the dispute and ordered the Civil Governor
+to hand over the case to him.  There was now a danger of the _Affaire
+Borrow_ being made a party question, in which case it would have been
+extremely difficult to settle.
+
+The intervention of the Captain-General rendered all the more obvious the
+illegality of the Civil Governor’s action, and increased the
+embarrassment of Count Ofalia, who called on Sir George to ask him to
+have Borrow’s memorial to the Captain-General withdrawn.  He refused, and
+said the only way now to finish the affair was that “His Excellency
+should in an official Note declare to me that Mr Borrow left the prison,
+where he had been improperly placed, with unstained honour,—that the
+Police Agent, upon whose testimony he had been arrested, should be
+dismissed,—that all expenses imposed upon Mr Borrow by his detention
+should be repaid him by the Government,—that Mr Borrow’s not having
+availed himself of the ‘Fuero Militar’ should not be converted into a
+precedent, or in any way be considered to prejudice that important right,
+and that Count Ofalia should add with reference to maintaining the
+friendly relations between Great Britain and Spain, that he hoped I would
+accept this satisfaction as sufficient.” {240a}
+
+Borrow states that Sir George Villiers went to the length of informing
+Count Ofalia that unless full satisfaction were accorded Borrow, he would
+demand his passports and instruct the commanders of the British war
+vessels to desist from furnishing further assistance to Spain. {240b}
+There is, however, no record of this in the official papers sent by Sir
+George to the Foreign Office.  What actually occurred was that, on 8th
+May, the British Minister, determined to brook no further delay, wrote a
+grave official remonstrance, in which he stated that, “if the desire had
+existed to bring it to a close,” the case of Borrow could have been
+settled.  “Having up to the present moment,” he proceeds, “trusted that
+in Your Excellency’s hands, this affair would be treated with all that
+consideration required by its nature and the consequences that may follow
+upon it . . . I have forborne from denouncing the whole extent of the
+illegality which has marked the proceedings of the case” (viz., the Civil
+Governor’s having usurped the right of the Captain-General of the
+Province in causing Borrow’s arrest).  In conclusion, Sir George states
+that he considers the
+
+    “case of most pressing importance, for it may compromise the
+    relations now existing between Great Britain and Spain.  It is one
+    that requires a complete satisfaction, for the honor of England and
+    the future position of Englishmen in the Country are concerned; and
+    the satisfaction, in order to be complete, required to be promptly
+    given.”
+
+    “This disagreeable business,” Sir George writes in another of his
+    despatches, “is rendered yet more so by the impossibility of
+    defending with success all Mr Borrow’s proceedings . . .  His
+    imprudent zeal likewise in announcing publicly that the Bible Society
+    had a depôt of Bibles in Madrid, and that he was the Agent for their
+    sale, irritated the Ecclesiastical Authorities, whose attention has
+    of late been called to the proceedings of a Mr Graydon,—another agent
+    of the Bible Society, who has created great excitement at Malaga (and
+    I believe in other places) by publishing in the Newspapers that the
+    Catholic Religion was not the religion of God, and that he had been
+    sent from England to convert Spaniards to Protestantism.  I have upon
+    more than one occasion cautioned Mr Graydon, but in vain, to be more
+    prudent.  The Methodist Society of England is likewise endeavouring
+    to establish a School at Cadiz, and by that means to make
+    conversions.
+
+    “Under all these circumstances it is not perhaps surprising that the
+    Archbishop of Toledo and the Heads of the Church should be alarmed
+    that an attempt at Protestant Propagandism is about to be made, or
+    that the Government should wish to avert the evils of religious
+    schism in addition to all those which already weigh upon the Country;
+    and to these different causes it must, in some degree, be attributed
+    that Mr Borrow has been an object of suspicion and treated with such
+    extreme rigor.  Still, however, they do not justify the course
+    pursued by the Civil Governor towards him, or by the Government
+    towards myself, and I trust Your Lordship will consider that in the
+    steps I have taken upon the matter, I have done no more than what the
+    National honor, and the security of Englishmen in this Country,
+    rendered obligatory upon me.” {241a}
+
+Whilst Borrow was in the _Carcel de la Corte_, a grave complication had
+arisen in connection with the misguided Lieutenant Graydon.  Borrow gives
+a strikingly dramatic account {241b} of Count Ofalia’s call at the
+British Embassy.  He is represented as arriving with a copy of one of
+Graydon’s bills, which he threw down upon a table calling upon Sir George
+Villiers to read it and, as a gentleman and the representative of a great
+and enlightened nation, tell him if he could any longer defend Borrow and
+say that he had been ill or unfairly treated.  According to the Foreign
+Office documents, Count Ofalia _wrote_ to Sir George Villiers on 5th May,
+_enclosing_ a copy of an advertisement inserted by Lieutenant Graydon in
+the _Boletin Oficial de Malaga_, which, translated, runs as follows:—
+
+    “The Individual in question most earnestly calls the greatest
+    attention of each member of the great Spanish Family to this _divine_
+    Book, in order that _through it_ he may learn the chief cause, if not
+    the _sole one_, of all his terrible afflictions and of his _only_
+    remedy, as it is so clearly manifested in the Holy Scripture . . .  A
+    detestable system of superstition and fanaticism, _only greedy for
+    money_, and not so either of the temporal or eternal felicity of man,
+    has prevailed in Spain (as also in other Nations) during several
+    Centuries, by the _absolute_ exclusion of the true knowledge of the
+    Great God and last Judge of Mankind: and thus it has been plunged
+    into the most frightful calamities.  There was a time in which
+    precisely the same was read in the then _very little_ Kingdom of
+    England, but at length Her Sons recognising their imperative _Duty_
+    towards God and their Neighbour, as also their unquestionable rights,
+    and that since the world exists it has never been possible to gather
+    grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, they destroyed the system
+    and at the price of their blood chose the Bible.  Oh that the
+    unprejudiced and enlightened inhabitants not only of Malaga and of so
+    many other Cities, but of all Spain, would follow so good an
+    example.” {242a}
+
+The result of Graydon’s advertisement was that “the people flocked in
+crowds to purchase it [the Bible], so much so that 200 copies, all that
+were in Mr Graydon’s possession at the time, were sold in the course of
+the day.  The Bishop sent the Fiscal to stop the sale of the work, but
+before the necessary measures were taken they were all disposed of.”
+{242b}  In consequence Graydon “was detained and under my [the Consul’s]
+responsibility allowed to remain at large.” {243a}  A jury of nine all
+pronounced the article to contain “matter subject to legal process”
+{243b} but a second jury of twelve at the subsequent public trial
+“unanimously absolved” Graydon.
+
+Sir George Villiers acknowledged the letter from Count Ofalia (9th May)
+saying that he had written to Graydon warning him to be more cautious in
+future.  He stated that from personal knowledge he could vouch for the
+purity of Lieutenant Graydon’s intentions; but he regretted that he
+should have announced his object in so imprudent a manner as to give
+offence to the ministers of the Catholic religion of Spain.  In a
+despatch to Lord Palmerston he states that he has not thought it in the
+interests of the Bible Society to defend this conduct of Graydon, “whose
+zeal appears so little tempered by discretion,” {243c} as he had written
+to Count Ofalia.  “Had I done so,” he proceeds, “and thereby tended to
+confirm some of the idle reports that are current, that England had a
+national object to serve in the propagation of Protestantism in Spain, it
+is not improbable that a legislative Enactment might have been introduced
+by some Member of the Cortes, which would be offensive to England, and
+render it yet more difficult than it is the task the Bible Society seems
+desirous to undertake in this Country.” {243d}  Sir George concludes by
+saying that he gave to “these Agents the best advice and assistance in my
+power, but if by their acts they infringe the laws of the Country,” it
+will be impossible to defend them.
+
+Sir George thought so seriously of the _Affaire Borrow_, as endangering
+the future liberty of Englishmen in Spain, that he went so far as to send
+a message to the Queen Regent, “by a means which I always have at my
+disposal,” {244a} in which he told her that he thought the affair “might
+end in a manner most injurious to the continuance of friendly relations
+between the two Countries.” {244b}  He received a gracious assurance that
+he should have satisfaction.  Later there reached him
+
+    “a second message from the Queen Regent expressing Her Majesty’s hope
+    that Count Ofalia’s Note [of 11th May] would be satisfactory to me,
+    and stating that Her Ministers had so fully proved their incompetency
+    by giving any just cause of complaint to the Minister of Her only
+    real Friend and Ally, The Queen of England, that she should have
+    dismissed them, were it not that the state of affairs in the Northern
+    Provinces at this moment might be prejudiced by a change of
+    Government, which Her Majesty said she knew no one more than myself
+    would regret, but at the same time if I was not satisfied I had only
+    to state what I required and it should be immediately complied with.
+    My answer was confined to a grateful acknowledgement of Her Majesty’s
+    condescension and kindness.  Count Ofalia has informed me that as
+    President of the Council He had enjoined all his Colleagues never to
+    take any step directly or indirectly concerning an Englishman without
+    a previous communication with Him as to its propriety, and I
+    therefore venture to hope that the case of Mr Borrow will not be
+    unattended with ultimate advantage to British subjects in Spain.”
+    {244c}
+
+The “Note” referred to by the Queen Regent in her message was Count
+Ofalia’s acquiescence in Sir George Villiers’ demands, with the exception
+of the dismissal of the Police Officer.  His communication runs:—
+
+                                                       “11_th_ _May_ 1838.
+
+    “SIR,—The affair of Mr Borrow is already decided by the Judge of
+    First Instance and his decision has been approved by the Superior or
+    Territorial Court of the Province.  As I stated to you in my note of
+    the fourth last, the foundation of the arrest of Mr Borrow, who was
+    detained (and not committed), was an official communication from the
+    Agent of Police, Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio, in which he averred
+    that on intimating to Mr Borrow the written order of the Civil
+    Governor relative to the seizure of a book which he had published and
+    exposed for sale without complying with the forms prescribed by the
+    Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws of Spain, he (Mr Borrow) had thrown on
+    the floor the order of the Superior Authority of the Province and
+    used offensive expressions with regard to the said Authority.
+
+    “The judicial proceedings have had for their object the ascertainment
+    of the fact.  Mr Borrow has denied the truth of the statement and the
+    Agent of Police, who it appears entered the lodgings of Mr Borrow
+    without being accompanied by any one, has been unable to confirm by
+    evidence what he alleged in his official report, or to produce the
+    testimony of any one in support of it.
+
+    “This being the case the judge has declared and the Territorial Court
+    approved the superceding of the cause, putting Mr Borrow immediately
+    at complete liberty, with the express declaration that the arrest he
+    has suffered in no wise affects his honor and good fame, and that the
+    ‘_celador_ of Public Security,’ Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio, be
+    admonished for the future to proceed in the discharge of his duty
+    with proper respect and circumspection according to the condition and
+    character of the persons whom he has to address.
+
+    “In accordance with the judicial decision and anxious to give
+    satisfaction to Mr Borrow, correcting at the same time the fault of
+    the Agent of Police in having presented himself without being
+    accompanied by any person in order to effect the seizure in the
+    lodging of Mr Borrow, Her Majesty has thought proper to command that
+    the aforesaid Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio be suspended from his
+    office for the space of Four Months, an order which I shall
+    communicate to the Minister of the Interior, and that Mr Borrow be
+    indemnified for the expenses which may have been incurred by his
+    lodging in the apartment of the Alcaide (chief gaoler or Governor)
+    for the days of his detention, although even before the expiration of
+    24 hours after his arrest he was permitted to return to his house
+    under his word of honor during the judicial proceedings, as I stated
+    to you in my note already cited.  I flatter myself that in this
+    determination you as well as your Government will see a fresh proof
+    of the desire which animates that of H.M. the Queen Regent to
+    maintain and draw closer the relation of friendship and alliance
+    existing between the two countries.  And with respect to the claim
+    advanced by Mr Borrow, and of which you also make mention in Your
+    Note of the 8th inst., I ought to declare to you that when the Judge
+    of First Instance received official information of the said claim the
+    business was already concluded in his tribunal, and consequently
+    there was nothing to be done.  Without, for this reason, there being
+    understood any innovation with respect to the matter of privilege
+    (_fuero_) according as it is now established.” {246a}
+
+Borrow was liberated with unsullied honour on 12th May, after twelve
+days’ imprisonment.  He refused the compensation that Sir George Villiers
+had made a condition, and later wrote to the Bible Society asking that
+there might be deducted from the amount due to him the expenses of the
+twelve days.  He states also that he refused to acquiesce in the
+dismissal of the Agent of Police, by which he doubtless means his
+suspension, giving as a reason that there might be a wife and family
+likely to suffer.  In any case the man was only carrying out his
+instructions.  Borrow’s reason for refusing the payment of his expenses
+was that he was unwilling to afford them, the Spanish Government, an
+opportunity of saying that after they had imprisoned an Englishman
+unjustly, and without cause, he condescended to receive money at their
+hands. {246b}
+
+The greatest loss to Borrow, consequent upon his imprisonment, no
+government could make good.  His faithful Basque, Francisco, had
+contracted typhus, or gaol fever, that was raging at the time, and died
+within a few days of his master’s release.  “A more affectionate creature
+never breathed,” Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram.  The poor fellow, who, “to
+the strength of a giant joined the disposition of a lamb . . . was
+beloved even in the _patio_ of the prison, where he used to pitch the bar
+and wrestle with the murderers and felons, always coming off victor.”
+{247a}  The next day Antonio presented himself at Borrow’s lodging, and
+without invitation or comment assumed the duties he had relinquished in
+order that he might enjoy the excitements of change.  “Who should serve
+you now but myself?” he asked when questioned as to the meaning of his
+presence, “N’est pas que le sieur François est mort!” {247b}
+
+John Hasfeldt’s comment on his friend’s imprisonment was characteristic.
+In September 1838 he wrote:—
+
+    “The very last I heard of you is that you have had the great good
+    fortune to be stopping in the _carcel de corte_ at Madrid, which
+    pleasing intelligence I found in the _Preussiche Staats-Zeitung_ this
+    last spring.  If you were fatter no doubt the monks would have got up
+    an _Auto de Fé_ on your behalf, and you might easily have become a
+    nineteenth-century martyr.  Then your strange life would have been
+    hawked about the streets of London for one penny, though you never
+    obtained a fat living to eat and drink and take your ease after all
+    the hardships you have endured.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+MAY–JULY 1838
+
+
+BORROW was now to enter upon that lengthy dispute with the Bible Society
+that almost brought about an open breach, and eventually proved the
+indirect cause that led to the severance of their relations.  Graydon’s
+mistake lay in not contenting himself with printing and distributing the
+Scriptures, of which he succeeded in getting rid of an enormous quantity.
+He had advertised his association with the Bible Society and proclaimed
+Borrow as a colleague, and the authorities at Madrid were not greatly to
+blame for being unable to distinguish between the two men.  Whereas
+Graydon and Rule, who was also extremely obnoxious to the Spanish Clergy,
+were safe at Gibraltar or generally within easy reach of it, Borrow was
+in the very midst of the enemy.  He was not unnaturally furiously angry
+at the situation that he conceived to have been brought about by these
+evangelists in the south.  He referred to Graydon as the Evil Genius of
+the Society’s Cause in Spain.
+
+It may be felt that Borrow was a prejudiced witness, he had every reason
+for being so; but a despatch from Sir George Villiers to the Consul at
+Malaga shows clearly how the British Minister viewed Lieutenant Graydon’s
+indiscretion:
+
+    “You will communicate Count Ofalia’s note to Mr Graydon,” he writes,
+    “and tell him from me that, feeling as I do a lively interest in the
+    success of his mission, I cannot but regret that he should have
+    published his opinions upon the Catholic religion and clergy in a
+    form which should render inevitable the interference of
+    ecclesiastical authority.  I have no doubt that Mr Graydon, in the
+    pursuit of the meritorious task he has undertaken, is ready to endure
+    persecution, but he should bear in mind that it will not lead him to
+    success in this country, where prejudices are so inveterate, and at
+    this moment, when party spirit disfigures even the best intentions.
+    Unless Mr Graydon proceeds with the utmost circumspection it will be
+    impossible for me, with the prospect of good result, to defend his
+    conduct with the Government, for no foreigner has a right, however
+    laudable may be his object, to seek the attainment of that object by
+    infringing the laws of the country in which he resides.” {249}
+
+In writing to Mr Brandram, Borrow pointed out that although he had
+travelled extensively in Spain and had established many depôts for the
+sale of the Scriptures, not one word of complaint had been transmitted to
+the Government.  He had been imprisoned; but he had the authority of
+Count Ofalia for saying that it was not on account of his own, but rather
+of the action of others.  Furthermore the Premier had advised him to
+endeavour to make friends among the clergy, and for the present at least
+make no further effort to promote the actual sale of the New Testament in
+Madrid.
+
+On the day following his release from prison (13th May) Borrow, after
+being sent for by the British Minister, wrote to Mr Brandram as follows:—
+
+    “Sir George has commanded me . . . to write to the following
+    effect:—Mr Graydon must leave Spain, or the Bible Society must
+    publicly disavow that his proceedings receive their encouragement,
+    unless they wish to see the Sacred book, which it is their object to
+    distribute, brought into universal odium and contempt.  He has lately
+    been to Malaga, and has there played precisely the same part which he
+    acted last year at Valencia, with the addition that in printed
+    writings he has insulted the Spanish Government in the most
+    inexcusable manner.  A formal complaint of his conduct has been sent
+    up from Malaga, and a copy of one of his writings.  Sir George
+    blushed when he saw it, and informed Count Ofalia that any steps
+    which might be taken towards punishing the author would receive no
+    impediment from him.  I shall not make any observation on this matter
+    farther than stating that I have never had any other opinion of Mr
+    Graydon than that he is insane—insane as the person who for the sake
+    of warming his own hands would set a street on fire.  Sir George said
+    to-day that he (Graydon) was the cause of my _harmless_ shop being
+    closed at Madrid and also of my imprisonment.  The Society will of
+    course communicate with Sir George on the subject, I wash my hands of
+    it.”
+
+On 23rd May Borrow wrote again to Mr Brandram:
+
+    “In the name of the _Most Highest_ take steps for preventing that
+    miserable creature Graydon from ruining us all.”  Borrow’s use of the
+    term “insane” with regard to Graydon was fully justified.  The Rev.
+    W. H. Rule wrote to him on 14th May:
+
+    “Our worthy brother Graydon is, I suppose, in Granada.  I overtook
+    him in Cartagena, endured the process of osculation, saw him without
+    rhime or reason wrangle with and publicly insult our Consul there.
+    Had his company in the steamer to Almeria, much to my discomfort.
+    Never was a man fuller of love and impudence, compounded in the most
+    provoking manner.  In Malaga, just as we were to part, he broke out
+    into a strain highly disagreeable, and I therefore thought it a
+    convenient occasion to tell him that I should have no more to do with
+    him.  I left him dancing and raving like an energumen.”
+
+This letter Borrow indiscreetly sent to Mr Brandram, much to Mr Rule’s
+regret, who wrote to Mr Brandram, saying that whilst he had nothing to
+retract, he would not have written for the eyes of the Bible Society’s
+Committee what he had written to Borrow.  To Mr Rule Lieut. Graydon was
+“a good man, or at least a well-meaning [one], who has not the balance of
+judgment and temper necessary for the situation he occupies.”  He was
+given to “the promulgation of Millenianism,” and to calling the Bible
+“the true book of the Constitution.”
+
+Mann had confirmed all the rumours current about Graydon.  In order to
+remove from his shoulders “the burden of obloquy,” Borrow’s first act on
+leaving prison was to publish in the _Correo Nacional_ an advertisement
+disclaiming, in the name of the Bible Society, any writings which may
+have been circulated tending to lower the authorities, civil and
+ecclesiastical, in the eyes of the people.  He denied that it was the
+Society’s intention or wish to make proselytes from the Roman Catholic
+form of worship, and that it was at all times prepared to extend the hand
+of brotherhood to the Spanish clergy.  This notice was signed “George
+Borrow, Sole authorised Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in
+Spain.”
+
+_El Gazeta Oficial_ in commenting on the situation, saw in the
+anti-Catholic tracts circulated by Graydon “part of the monstrous plan,
+whose existence can no longer be called in question, concocted by the
+enemies of all public order, for the purpose of inaugurating on our
+unhappy soil a _social_ revolution, just as the political one is drawing
+to a close.”  The Government was urged to allow no longer these attacks
+upon the religion of the country.  Rather illogically the article
+concludes by paying a tribute to the Bible Society, “considered not under
+the religious but the social aspect.”  After praising its prudence for
+“accommodating itself to the civil and ecclesiastical laws of each
+country, and by adopting the editions there current,” it concludes with
+the sophisticated argument that, “if the great object be the propagation
+of evangelic maxims, the notes are no obstacle, and by preserving them we
+fulfil our religious principle of not permitting to private reason the
+interpretation of the Sacred Word.”
+
+The General Committee expressed themselves, somewhat enigmatically, it
+must be confessed, as in no way surprised at this article, being from
+past experience learned enough in the ways of Rome to anticipate her.
+
+    “That advertisement,” Borrow wrote six months later in his Report
+    that was subsequently withdrawn, “gave infinite satisfaction to the
+    liberal clergy.  I was complimented for it by the Primate of Spain,
+    who said I had redeemed my credit and that of the Society, and it is
+    with some feeling of pride that I state that it choked and prevented
+    the publication of a series of terrible essays against the Bible
+    Society, which were intended for the Official Gazette, and which were
+    written by the Licentiate Albert Lister, the editor of that journal,
+    the friend of Blanco White, and the most talented man in Spain.
+    These essays still exist in the editorial drawer, and were
+    communicated to me by the head manager of the royal printing office,
+    my respected friend and countryman Mr Charles Wood, whose evidence in
+    this matter and in many others I can command at pleasure.  In lieu of
+    which essays came out a mild and conciliatory article by the same
+    writer, which, taking into consideration the country in which it was
+    written, and its peculiar circumstances, was an encouragement to the
+    Bible Society to proceed, although with secrecy and caution; yet this
+    article, sadly misunderstood in England, gave rise to communications
+    from home highly mortifying to myself and ruinous to the Bible
+    cause.”
+
+Borrow had written from prison to Mr Brandram {252} telling him that it
+had “pleased God to confer upon me the highest of mortal honors, the
+privilege of bearing chains for His sake.”  After describing how it had
+always been his practice, before taking any step, to consult with Sir
+George Villiers and receive his approval, and that the present situation
+had not been brought about by any rashness on his, Borrow’s, part, he
+proceeds to convey the following curious piece of information that must
+have caused some surprise at Earl Street:—
+
+    “I will now state a fact, which speaks volumes as to the state of
+    affairs at Madrid.  My arch-enemy, the Archbishop of Toledo, the
+    primate of Spain, wishes to give me the kiss of brotherly Peace.  He
+    has caused a message to be conveyed to me in my dungeon, assuring me
+    that he has had no share in causing my imprisonment, which he says
+    was the work of the Civil Governor, who was incited to the step by
+    the Jesuits.  He adds that he is determined to seek out my
+    persecutors amongst the clergy, and to have them punished, and that
+    when I leave prison he shall be happy to co-operate with me in the
+    dissemination of the Gospel!!  I cannot write much now, for I am not
+    well, having been bled and blistered.  I must, however, devote a few
+    lines to another subject, but not one of rejoicing or Christian
+    exultation.  Mann arrived just after my arrest, and visited me in
+    prison, and there favoured me with a scene of despair, abject
+    despair, which nearly turned my brain.  I despised the creature, God
+    forgive me, but I pitied him; for he was without money and expected
+    every moment to be seized like myself and incarcerated, and he is by
+    no means anxious to be invested with the honors of martyrdom.”
+
+That the Primate of Spain should have sent to Borrow such a message is
+surprising; but what is still more so is that six days later Borrow wrote
+telling Mr Brandram that he had asked a bishop to arrange an interview
+between him and the Archbishop of Toledo, and Sir George Villiers, who
+was present, begged the same privilege. {253}  On 23rd May Borrow wrote
+again to Mr Brandram: “I have just had an interview with the Archbishop.
+It was satisfactory to a degree I had not dared to hope for.”  In his
+next letter (25th May) he writes:
+
+    “I have had, as you are aware, an interview with the Archbishop of
+    Toledo.  I have not time to state particulars, but he said amongst
+    other things, ‘Be prudent, the Government are disposed to arrange
+    matters amicably, and I am disposed to co-operate with them.’  At
+    parting he shook me most kindly by the hand saying that he liked me.
+    Sir George intends to visit him in a few days.  He is an old,
+    venerable-looking man, between seventy and eighty.  When I saw him he
+    was dressed with the utmost simplicity, with the exception of a most
+    splendid amethyst ring, the lustre of which was truly dazzling.”
+
+There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this archiepiscopal
+condescension, if the interview were not indeed sought by Borrow, that it
+was a political move to pacify the wounded feelings of an outraged
+Englishman at a time when the goodwill of England was as necessary to the
+kingdom of Spain as the sun itself.
+
+The upshot of the Malaga Incident was that “the Spanish Government
+resolved to put an end to Bible transactions in Spain, and forthwith gave
+orders for the seizure of all the Bibles and Testaments in the country,
+wherever they might be deposited or exposed for sale.  They notified Sir
+George Villiers of the decision, expressly stating that the resolution
+was taken in consequence of the ‘_Ocurrido en Malaga_.’” {254a}  The
+letter in which Sir George Villiers was informed of the Government’s
+decision runs as follows:—
+
+                                                MADRID, 19_th_ _May_ 1838.
+
+    SIR,
+
+    I have the honor to inform You that in consequence of what has taken
+    place at Malaga and other places, respecting the publication and sale
+    of the Bible translated by Padre Scio, which are not complete (since
+    they do not contain all the Books which the Catholic Church
+    recognises as Canonical) nor even being complete could they be
+    printed unless furnished with the Notes of the said Padre Scio,
+    according to the existing regulations; Her Majesty has thought proper
+    to prevent this publication and sale, but without insulting or
+    molesting those British Subjects who for some time past have been
+    introducing them into the Kingdom and selling them at the lowest
+    prices, thinking they were conferring a benefit when in reality they
+    were doing an injury.
+
+    I have also to state to You that in order to carry this Royal
+    determination into effect, orders have been issued to prohibit its
+    being printed in Spain, in the vulgar tongue, unless it should be the
+    entire Bible as recognised by the Catholic Church with corresponding
+    Notes, preventing its admittance at the Frontiers, as is the case
+    with books printed in Spanish abroad; that the Bibles exposed for
+    public sale be seized and given to their owners in a packet marked
+    and sealed, upon the condition of its being sent out of the country
+    through the Custom Houses on the Frontier or at the Ports.
+
+                          I avail myself, etc., etc.
+
+                                               THE COUNT OF OFALIA. {255a}
+
+Borrow and Graydon were advised of this inhibition, and both ordered
+their establishments for the sale of books to be closed, thus showing
+that they were “Gentlemen who are animated with due respect for the Laws
+of Spain.” {255b}  At Valladolid, Santiago, Orviedo, Pontevedra, Seville,
+Salamanca, and Malaga the decree was at once enforced.  On learning that
+the books at his depôts had all been seized, Borrow became apprehensive
+for the safety of his Madrid stock of New Testaments, some three thousand
+in number.  He accordingly had them removed, under cover of darkness, to
+the houses of his friends.
+
+Borrow was not the man to accept defeat, and he wrote to Mr Brandram with
+great cheerfulness:
+
+    “This, however, gives me little uneasiness, for, with the blessing of
+    God, I shall be able to repair all, always provided I am allowed to
+    follow my own plans, and to avail myself of the advantages which have
+    lately been opened—especially to cultivate the kind feeling lately
+    manifested towards me by the principal Spanish clergy.” {255c}
+
+Later he wrote:
+
+    “Another bitter cup has been filled for my swallowing.  The Bible
+    Society and myself have been accused of blasphemy, sedition, etc.  A
+    collection of tracts has been seized in Murcia, in which the Catholic
+    religion and its dogmas are handled with the most abusive severity;
+    {256a} these books have been sworn to as having been left _by the
+    Committee of the Bible Society whilst in that town_, and Count Ofalia
+    has been called upon to sign an order for my arrest and banishment
+    from Spain.  Sir George, however, advises me to remain quiet and not
+    to be alarmed, as he will answer for my innocence.” {256b}
+
+Borrow strove to galvanise the General Committee into action.  The
+Spanish newspapers were inflamed against the Society as a sectarian, not
+a Christian institution.  “Zeal is a precious thing,” he told Mr
+Brandram, “when accompanied with one grain of common sense.”  The theme
+of his letters was the removal of Graydon.  “Do not be cast down,” he
+writes; “all will go well if the stumbling block [Graydon] be removed.”
+
+Borrow’s state of mind may well be imagined, and if by his impulsive
+letters he unwittingly harmed his own cause at Earl Street, he did so as
+a man whose liberty, perhaps his life even, was being jeopardised,
+although not deliberately, by another whom the reforming spirit seemed
+likely to carry to any excess.  It must be admitted that for the time
+being Borrow had forgotten the idiom of Earl Street.
+
+The president (a bishop) of the body of ecclesiastics that was engaged in
+examining the Society’s Spanish Bible, communicated with Borrow, through
+Mr Charles Wood, the suggestion that “the Committee of the Bible Society
+should in the present exigency draw up an exposition of their views
+respecting Spain, stating what they are prepared to do and what they are
+not prepared to do; above all, whether in seeking to circulate the Gospel
+in this Country they harbour any projects hostile to the Government or
+the established religion; moreover, whether the late distribution of
+tracts was done by their connivance or authority, and whether they are
+disposed to sanction in future the publication in Spain of such a class
+of writings.” {257a}
+
+Borrow was of the opinion that this should be done, although he would not
+take upon himself to advise the Committee upon such a point, he merely
+remarked that “the Prelate in question is a most learned and respectable
+man, and one of the warmest of our friends.” {257b}  The Society very
+naturally declined to commit itself to any such undertaking.  It would
+not have been quite logical or conceivable that a Protestant body should
+give a guarantee that it harboured no projects hostile to Rome.
+
+Undeterred by the official edict against the circulation in Spain of the
+Scriptures, Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram (14th June):
+
+    “I should wish to make another Biblical tour this summer, until the
+    storm be blown over.  Should I undertake such an expedition, I should
+    avoid the towns and devote myself entirely to the peasantry.  I have
+    sometimes thought of visiting the villages of the Alpujarra Mountains
+    in Andalusia, where the people live quite secluded from the world;
+    what do you think of my project?”
+
+All this time Borrow had heard nothing from Earl Street as to the effect
+being produced there by his letters.  On 15th or 16th June he received a
+long letter from Mr Brandram enclosing the Resolutions of the General
+Committee with regard to the crisis.  They proved conclusively that the
+officials failed entirely to appreciate the state of affairs in Spain,
+and the critical situation of their paid and accredited agent, George
+Borrow.  Their pride had probably been wounded by Borrow’s impetuous
+requests, that might easily have appeared to them in the light of
+commands.  It may have struck some that the Spanish affairs of the
+Society were being administered from Madrid, and that they themselves
+were being told, not what it was expedient to do, but what they _must_
+do.  Another factor in the situation was the Committee’s friendliness for
+their impulsive, unsalaried servant Lieut. Graydon, who was certainly a
+picturesque, almost melodramatic figure.  In any case the letter from Mr
+Brandram that accompanied the Resolutions was couched in a strain of fair
+play to Graydon that became a thinly disguised partizanship.  At the
+meeting of the Committee held on 28th May the following Resolutions had
+been adopted:—
+
+    _First_.—“That Mr Borrow be requested to inform Sir George Villiers
+    that this Committee have written to Mr Graydon through their
+    Secretary, desiring him to leave Spain on account of his personal
+    safety.”
+
+    _Second_.—“That Mr Borrow be informed that in the absence of specific
+    documents, this Committee cannot offer any opinion on the proceedings
+    of Mr Graydon, and that therefore he be desired to obtain, either in
+    original or copy, the objectionable papers alleged to have been
+    issued by Mr Graydon and to transmit them hither.”
+
+    _Third_.—“That Mr Borrow be requested not to repeat the Advertisement
+    contained in the _Corréo Nacional_ of the 17th inst., and that he be
+    cautioned how he commits the Society by advertisements of a similar
+    character.  And further, that he be desired to state to Sir George
+    Villiers that the advertisement in question was inserted by him on
+    the spur of the moment, and without any opportunity of obtaining
+    instructions from this Committee.”
+
+In justice to the Committee, it must be said that they did not appreciate
+the delicacy of the situation, being only Christians and not
+diplomatists.  Perhaps they were unaware that the _whole of Spain was
+under martial law_, or if they were, the true significance of the fact
+failed to strike them.  Mr Brandram’s letter accompanying these
+Resolutions is little more than an amplification of the Committee’s
+decision:
+
+    “I have, I assure you,” he writes, “endeavoured to place myself in
+    your situation and enter into your feelings strongly excited by the
+    irreparable mischief which you suppose Mr G. to have done to our
+    cause so dear to you.  Under the influence of these feelings you have
+    written with, what appears to us, unmitigated severity of his
+    conduct.  But now, let me entreat you to enter into our feelings a
+    little, and to consider what we owe to Mr Graydon.  If we have at
+    times thought him imprudent, we have seen enough in him to make us
+    both admire and love him.  He has ever approved himself as an
+    upright, faithful, conscientious, indefatigable agent; one who has
+    shrunk from no trials and no dangers; one who has gone through in our
+    service many and extraordinary hardships.  What have we against him
+    at present?  He has issued certain documents of a very offensive
+    character, as is alleged.  We have not seen them, neither does it
+    appear that you have, but that you speak from the recollections of Mr
+    Sothern.” {259}
+
+The letter goes on to say that if it can be shown that Lieut. Graydon is
+acting in the same manner as he did in Valencia, for which he was
+admonished,
+
+    “he will assuredly be recalled on this ground.  You wonder perhaps
+    that we for a moment doubt the fact of his reiterated imprudence; but
+    _audi alteram partem_ must be our rule—and besides, on reviewing the
+    Valencia proceedings, we draw a wide distinction.  Had he been as
+    free, as you suppose him to be, of the trammels of office in our
+    service, many would say and think that he was prefectly at liberty to
+    act and speak as he did of the Authorities, if he chose to take the
+    consequences.  Really in such a country it is no marvel if his Spirit
+    has been stirred within him!  Will you allow me to remind you of the
+    strong things in your own letter to the Valencia ecclesiastic, the
+    well pointed and oft repeated Væ!”
+
+Mr Brandram points out that strong language is frequently the sword of
+the Reformer, and that there are times when it has the highest sanction;
+but
+
+    “the judgment of all [the members of the Committee] will be that an
+    Agent of the Bible Society is a Reformer, not by his preaching or
+    denouncing, but by the distribution of the Bible.  If Mr G’s. conduct
+    is no worse than it was in Valencia,” the letter continues, rather
+    inconsistently, in the light of the assurance in the early part that
+    recall would be the punishment for another such lapse into
+    indiscretion, “you must not expect anything beyond a qualified
+    disavowal of it, and that simply as unbecoming an Agent of such a
+    Society as ours.
+
+    “After what I have written, you will hardly feel surprised that our
+    Committee could not quite approve of your Advertisement.  We have
+    ever regarded Mr Graydon as much our Agent as yourself.  In three of
+    our printed reports in succession we make no difference in speaking
+    of you both.  We are anxious to do nothing to weaken your hands at so
+    important a crisis, and we conceive that the terms we have employed
+    in our Resolution are the mildest we could have used.  Do not insert
+    the Advertisement a second time.  Let it pass; let it be forgotten.
+    If necessary we shall give the public intimation that Mr G. was, but
+    is not our agent any longer.  Remember, we entreat you, the very
+    delicate position that such a manifesto places us in, as well as the
+    effect which it may have on Mr Graydon’s personal safety.  We give
+    you full credit for believing it was your duty, under the peculiar
+    circumstances of the case, to take so decided and bold a step, and
+    that you thought yourself fully justified by the distinction of
+    salaried and unsalaried Agent, in speaking of yourself as the alone
+    accredited Agent of the Society.  Possibly when you reflect a little
+    upon the matter you may view it in another light.  There are besides
+    some sentiments in the Advertisement which we cannot perhaps fully
+    accord with . . .  If to our poor friend there has befallen the
+    saddest of all calamities to which you allude, should we not speak of
+    him with all tenderness.  If he be insane I believe much of it is to
+    be attributed to that entire devotion with which he has devoted
+    himself to our work.”
+
+No complaint can be urged against the Committee for refusing to condemn
+one of their agents unheard, and without documentary evidence; but it was
+strange that they should pass resolutions that contained no word of
+sympathy with Borrow for his sufferings in a typhus-infested prison.  It
+is even more strange that the covering letter should refer to Graydon’s
+sufferings and hardships and the danger to his person, without apparently
+realising that Borrow _had actually_ suffered what the Committee feared
+that Graydon _might_ suffer.  There is no doubt that Borrow’s impulsive
+letters had greatly offended everybody at Earl Street, where Lieut.
+Graydon appears to have been extremely popular; and the few words of
+sympathy with Borrow that might have saved much acrimonious
+correspondence were neither resolved nor written.
+
+The other side of the picture is shown in a vigorous passage from
+Borrow’s Report, which was afterwards withdrawn:
+
+    “A helpless widow [the mother of Don Pascual Mann] was insulted, her
+    liberty of conscience invaded, and her only son incited to rebellion
+    against her.  A lunatic [Lieut. Graydon] was employed as the
+    _repartidor_, or distributor, of the Blessed Bible, who, having his
+    head crammed with what he understood not, ran through the streets of
+    Valencia crying aloud that Christ was nigh at hand and would appear
+    in a short time, whilst advertisements to much the same effect were
+    busily circulated, in which the name, the noble name, of the Bible
+    Society was prostituted; whilst the Bible, exposed for sale in the
+    apartment of a public house, served for little more than a decoy to
+    the idle and curious, who were there treated with incoherent railings
+    against the Church of Rome and Babylon in a dialect which it was well
+    for the deliverer that only a few of the audience understood.  But I
+    fly from these details, and will now repeat the consequences of the
+    above proceedings to myself; for I, I, and only I, as every
+    respectable person in Madrid can vouch, have paid the penalty for
+    them all, though as innocent as the babe who has not yet seen the
+    light.”
+
+If the General Committee at a period of anxiety and annoyance failed to
+pay tribute to Borrow’s many qualities, the official historian of the
+Society makes good the omission when he describes him as “A strange,
+impulsive, more or less inflammable creature as he must have occasionally
+seemed to the Secretaries and Editorial Superintendent, he had proved
+himself a man of exceptional ability, energy, tact, prudence—above all, a
+man whose heart was in his work.” {262}
+
+Borrow’s acknowledgment of the Resolutions was dated 16th June.  It ran:—
+
+    “I have received your communication of the 30th ult. containing the
+    resolutions of the Committee, to which I shall of course attend.
+
+    “Of your letter in general, permit me to state that I reverence the
+    spirit in which it is written, and am perfectly disposed to admit the
+    correctness of the views which it exhibits; but it appears to me that
+    in one or two instances I have been misunderstood in the letters
+    which I have addressed [to you] on the subject of Graydon.
+
+    “I bear this unfortunate gentleman no ill will, God forbid, and it
+    will give me pain if he were reprimanded publicly or privately;
+    moreover, I can see no utility likely to accrue from such a
+    proceeding.  All that I have stated hitherto is the damage which he
+    has done in Spain to the cause and myself, by the—what shall I call
+    it?—imprudence of his conduct; and the idea which I have endeavoured
+    to inculcate is the absolute necessity of his leaving Spain
+    instantly.
+
+    “Take now in good part what I am about to say, and O! do not
+    misunderstand me!  I owe a great deal to the Bible Society, and the
+    Bible Society owes nothing to me.  I am well aware and am always
+    disposed to admit that it can find thousands more zealous, more
+    active, and in every respect more adapted to transact its affairs and
+    watch over its interests; yet, with this consciousness of my own
+    inutility, I must be permitted to state that, linked to a man like
+    Graydon, I can no longer consent to be, and that if the Society
+    expect such a thing, I must take the liberty of retiring, perhaps to
+    the wilds of Tartary or the Zingani camps of Siberia.
+
+    “My name at present is become public property, no very enviable
+    distinction in these unhappy times, and neither wished nor sought by
+    myself.  I have of late been subjected to circumstances which have
+    rendered me obnoxious to the hatred of those who never forgive, the
+    Bloody Church of Rome, which I have [no] doubt will sooner or later
+    find means to accomplish my ruin; for no one is better aware than
+    myself of its fearful resources, whether in England or Spain, in
+    Italy or in any other part.  I should not be now in this situation
+    had I been permitted to act alone.  How much more would have been
+    accomplished, it does not become me to guess.
+
+    “I had as many or more difficulties to surmount in Russia than I
+    originally had here, yet all that the Society expected or desired was
+    effected, without stir or noise, and that in the teeth of an imperial
+    _Ukase_ which forbade the work which I was employed to superintend.
+
+    “Concerning my late affair, I must here state that I was sent to
+    prison on a charge which was subsequently acknowledged not only to be
+    false but ridiculous; I was accused of uttering words disrespectful
+    towards the _Gefé Politico_ of Madrid; my accuser was an officer of
+    the police, who entered my apartment one morning before I was
+    dressed, and commenced searching my papers and flinging my books into
+    disorder.  Happily, however, the people of the house, who were
+    listening at the door, heard all that passed, and declared on oath
+    that so far from mentioning the _Gefé Politico_, I merely told the
+    officer that he, the officer, was an insolent fellow, and that I
+    would cause him to be punished.  He subsequently confessed that he
+    was an instrument of the Vicar General, and that he merely came to my
+    apartment in order to obtain a pretence for making a complaint.  He
+    has been dismissed from his situation and the Queen [Regent] has
+    expressed her sorrow at my imprisonment.  If there be any doubt
+    entertained on the matter, pray let Sir George Villiers be written
+    to!
+
+    “I should be happy to hear what success attends our efforts in China.
+    I hope a prudent conduct has been adopted; for think not that a
+    strange and loud language will find favour in the eyes of the
+    Chinese; and above all, I hope that we have not got into war with the
+    Augustines and their followers, who, if properly managed, may be of
+    incalculable service in propagating the Scriptures . . . _P.S._—The
+    Documents, or some of them, shall be sent as soon as possible.”
+
+Nine days later (25th June) Borrow wrote:
+
+    “I now await your orders.  I wish to know whether I am at liberty to
+    pursue the course which may seem to me best under existing
+    circumstances, and which at present appears to be to mount my horses,
+    which are neighing in the stable, and once more betake myself to the
+    plains and mountains of dusty Spain, and to dispose of my Testaments
+    to the muleteers and peasants.  By doing so I shall employ myself
+    usefully, and at the same time avoid giving offence.  Better days
+    will soon arrive, which will enable me to return to Madrid and reopen
+    my shop, till then, however, I should wish to pursue my labours in
+    comparative obscurity.”
+
+Replying to Borrow’s letter of 16th June, Mr Brandram wrote (29th June):
+“I trust we shall not easily forget your services in St Petersburg, but
+suffer me to remind you that when you came to the point of distribution
+your success ended.” {265a}  This altogether unworthy remark was neither
+creditable to the writer nor to the distinguished Society on whose behalf
+he wrote.  Borrow had done all that a man was capable of to distribute
+the books.  His reply was dignified and effective.
+
+    “It was unkind and unjust to taunt me with having been unsuccessful
+    in distributing the Scriptures.  Allow me to state that no other
+    person under the same circumstances would have distributed the tenth
+    part; yet had I been utterly unsuccessful, it would have been wrong
+    to check me with being so, after all I have undergone, and with how
+    little of that are you acquainted.” {265b}
+
+In response, Mr Brandram wrote (28th July):
+
+    “You have considered that I have taunted you with want of success in
+    St Petersburg.  I thought that the way in which I introduced that
+    subject would have prevented any such unpleasant and fanciful
+    impression.”
+
+That was all!  It became evident to all at Earl Street that a conference
+between Borrow, the Officials and the General Committee was imperative if
+the air were to be cleared of the rancour that seemed to increase with
+each interchange of letters. {265c}  Unless something were done, a breach
+seemed inevitable, a thing the Society did not appear to desire.  When
+Borrow first became aware that he was wanted at Earl Street for the
+purpose of a personal conference, he in all probability conceived it to
+be tantamount to a recall, and he was averse from leaving the field to
+the enemy.
+
+    “In the name of the Highest,” he wrote, {266} “I entreat you all to
+    banish such a preposterous idea; a journey home (provided you intend
+    that I should return to Spain) could lead to no result but expense
+    and the loss of precious time.  I have nothing to explain to you
+    which you are not already perfectly well acquainted with by my late
+    letters.  I was fully aware at the time I was writing them that I
+    should afford you little satisfaction, for the plain unvarnished
+    truth is seldom agreeable; but I now repeat, and these are perhaps
+    among the last words which I shall ever be permitted to pen, that I
+    cannot approve, and I am sure no Christian can, of the system which
+    has lately been pursued in the large sea-port cities of Spain, and
+    which the Bible Society has been supposed to sanction,
+    notwithstanding the most unreflecting person could easily foresee
+    that such a line of conduct could produce nothing in the end but
+    obloquy and misfortune.”
+
+Borrow saw that his departure from Spain would be construed by his
+enemies as flight, and that their joy would be great in consequence.
+
+The Spanish authorities were determined if possible to rid the country of
+missionaries.  The _Gazeta Oficial_ of Madrid drew attention to the fact
+that in Valencia there had been distributed thousands of pamphlets
+“against the religion we profess.”  Sir George Villiers enquired into the
+matter and found that there was no evidence that the pamphlets had been
+written, printed, or published in England; and when writing to Count
+Ofalia on the subject he informed him that the Bible Society distributed,
+not tracts or controversial writings, but the Scriptures.
+
+The next move on the part of the authorities was to produce sworn
+testimony from three people (all living in the same house, by the way)
+that they had purchased copies of “the New Testament and other Biblical
+translations at the _Despacho_ on 5th May.”  Borrow was in prison at the
+time, and his assistant denied the sale.  Documents were also produced
+proving that the imprint on the title-page of the Scio New Testament was
+false, as at the time it was printed no such printer as Andréas Borrégo
+(who by the way was the Government printer and at one time a candidate
+for cabinet rank) lived in Madrid.  In drawing the British Minister’s
+attention to these matters, Count Ofalia wrote (31st May):
+
+    “It would be opportune if you would be pleased to advise Mr Borrow
+    that, convinced of the inutility of his efforts for propagating here
+    the translation in the vulgar tongue of Sacred Writings without the
+    forms required by law, he would do much better in making use of his
+    talents in some other class of scientifical or literary Works during
+    his residence in Spain, giving up Biblical Enterprises, which may be
+    useful in other countries, but which in this Kingdom are prejudicial
+    for very obvious reasons.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+JULY–NOVEMBER 1838
+
+
+BORROW’S spirit chafed under this spell of enforced idleness.  His horses
+were neighing in the stable and “Señor Antonio was neighing in the
+house,” as Maria Diaz expressed it; and for himself, Borrow required
+something more actively stimulating than pen and ink encounters with Mr
+Brandram.  He therefore determined to defy the prohibition and make an
+excursion into the rural districts of New Castile, offering his
+Testaments for sale as he went, and sending on supplies ahead.  His first
+objective was Villa Seca, a village situated on the banks of the Tagus
+about nine leagues from Madrid.
+
+He was aware of the danger he ran in thus disregarding the official
+decree.
+
+    “I will not conceal from you,” he writes to Mr Brandram on 14th July,
+    “that I am playing a daring game, and it is very possible that when I
+    least expect it I may be seized, tied to the tail of a mule, and
+    dragged either to the prison of Toledo or Madrid.  Yet such a
+    prospect does not discourage me in the least, but rather urges me on
+    to persevere; for I assure you, and in this assertion there lurks not
+    the slightest desire to magnify myself and produce an effect, that I
+    am eager to lay down my life in this cause, and whether a Carlist’s
+    bullet or a gaol-fever bring my career to an end, I am perfectly
+    indifferent.”
+
+He was not averse from martyrdom; but he objected to being precipitated
+into it by another man’s folly.  In his interview with Count Ofalia, he
+had been solemnly warned that if a second time he came within the
+clutches of the authorities he might not escape so easily, and had
+replied that it was “a pleasant thing to be persecuted for the Gospel’s
+sake.”
+
+In his decision to make Villa Seca his temporary headquarters, Borrow had
+been influenced by the fact that it was the home of Maria Diaz, his
+friend and landlady.  Her husband was there working on the land, Maria
+herself living in Madrid that her children might be properly educated.
+Borrow left Madrid on 10th July, and on his arrival at Villa Seca he was
+cordially welcomed by Juan Lopez, the husband of Maria Diaz, who
+continued to use her maiden name, in accordance with Spanish custom.
+Lopez subsequently proved of the greatest possible assistance in the work
+of distribution, shaming both Borrow and Antonio by his energy and powers
+of endurance.
+
+The inhabitants of Villa Seca and the surrounding villages of Bargas,
+Coveja, Villa Luenga, Mocejon, Yunclér eagerly bought up “the book of
+life,” and each day the three men rode forth in heat so great that “the
+very _arrieros_ frequently fall dead from their mules, smitten by a
+sun-stroke.” {269a}
+
+It was in Villa Seca that Borrow found “all that gravity of deportment
+and chivalry of disposition which Cervantes is said to have sneered away”
+{269b} and there were to be heard “those grandiose expressions which,
+when met with in the romances of chivalry, are scoffed at as ridiculous
+exaggerations.” {269c}  Borrow so charmed the people of the district with
+the elaborate formality of his manner, that he became convinced that any
+attempt to arrest or do him harm would have met with a violent
+resistance, even to the length of the drawing of knives in his defence.
+
+In less than a week some two hundred Testaments had been disposed of, and
+a fresh supply had to be obtained from Madrid.  Borrow’s methods had now
+changed.  He had, of necessity, to make as little stir as possible in
+order to avoid an unenviable notoriety.  He carefully eschewed
+advertisements and handbills, and limited himself almost entirely to the
+simple statement that he brought to the people “the words and life of the
+Saviour and His Saints at a price adapted to their humble means.” {270a}
+
+It is interesting to note in connection with this period of Borrow’s
+activities in Spain, that in 1908 one of the sons of Maria Diaz and Juan
+Lopez was sought out at Villa Seca by a representative of the Bible
+Society, and interrogated as to whether he remembered Borrow.  Eduardo
+Lopez (then seventy-four years of age) stated that he was a child of
+eight {270b} when Borrow lived at the house of his mother; yet he
+remembers that “_El inglés_” was tall and robust, with fair hair turning
+grey.  Eduardo and his young brother regarded Borrow with both fear and
+respect; for, their father being absent, he used to punish them for
+misdemeanours by setting them on the table and making them remain
+perfectly quiet for a considerable time.  The old man remembered that
+Borrow had two horses whom he called “la Jaca” and “el Mondrágon,” and
+that he used to take to the house of Maria Diaz “his trunk full of books
+which were beautifully bound.”  He remembered Borrow’s Greek servant,
+“Antonio Guchino” (the Antonio Buchini of _The Bible in Spain_), who
+spoke very bad Spanish.
+
+The most interesting of Eduardo Lopez’ recollections of Borrow was that
+he “often recited a chant which nobody understood,” and of which the old
+man could remember only the following fragment:—
+
+    “Sed un la in la en la la
+    Sino Mokhamente de resu la.”
+
+It has been suggested, {271a} and with every show of probability, that
+“this is the Moslem _kalimah_ or creed which he had heard sung from the
+minarets”:
+
+    “La illaha illa allah
+    Wa Muhammad rasoul allah.”
+
+Borrow recognised that he must not stay very long in any one place, and
+accordingly it was his intention, as soon as he had supplied the
+immediate wants of the Sagra (the plain) of Toledo, “to cross the country
+to Aranjuez, and endeavour to supply with the Word the villages on the
+frontier of La Mancha.” {271b}  As he was on the point of setting out,
+however, he received two letters from Mr Brandram, which decided him to
+return immediately to Madrid instead of pursuing his intended route.
+
+Borrow was informed that if, after consulting with Sir George Villiers,
+it was thought desirable that he should leave Madrid, he was given a free
+hand to do so.  Furthermore, the President of the Bible Society (Lord
+Bexley), with whom Mr Brandram had consulted, was of the opinion that
+Borrow should return home to confer with the Committee.  It was clear
+from the correspondence that nothing short of an interview could remove
+the very obvious feeling of irritation that existed between Borrow and
+the Society.  In his reply (23rd July), Borrow showed a dignity and
+calmness of demeanour that had been lacking from his previous letters;
+and it most likely produced a far more favourable effect at Earl Street
+than the impassioned protests of the past two months:—
+
+    “My answer will be very brief;” he wrote, “as I am afraid of giving
+    way to my feelings; I hope, however, that it will be to the purpose.
+
+    “It is broadly hinted in yours of the 7th that I have made false
+    statements in asserting that the Government, in consequence of what
+    has lately taken place, had come to the resolution of seizing the
+    Bible depôts in various parts of this country.  [Borrow had written
+    to Mr Brandram on 25th June, “The Society are already aware of the
+    results of the visit of our friend to Malaga; all their Bibles and
+    Testaments having been seized throughout Spain, with the exception of
+    my stock in Madrid.”]
+
+    “In reply I beg leave to inform you that by the first courier you
+    will receive from the British Legation at Madrid the official notice
+    from Count Ofalia to Sir George Villiers of the seizures already
+    made, and the motives which induced the Government to have recourse
+    to such a measure.
+
+    “The following seizures have already been made, though some have not
+    as yet been officially announced:—The Society’s books at Orviedo,
+    Pontevedra, Salamanca, Santiago, Seville, and Valladolid.
+
+    “It appears from your letters that the depôts in the South of Spain
+    have escaped.  I am glad of it, although it be at my own expense.  I
+    see the hand of the Lord throughout the late transactions.  He is
+    chastening me; it is His pleasure that the guilty escape and the
+    innocent be punished.  The Government gave orders to seize the Bible
+    depôts throughout the country on account of the late scenes at Malaga
+    and Valencia—I have never been there, yet only _my_ depôts are
+    meddled with, as it appears!  The Lord’s will be done, blessed be the
+    name of the Lord!
+
+    “I will write again to-morrow, I shall have then arranged my
+    thoughts, and determined on the conduct which it becomes a Christian
+    to pursue under these circumstances.  Permit me, in conclusion, to
+    ask you:
+
+    “Have you not to a certain extent been partial in this matter?  Have
+    you not, in the apprehension of being compelled to blame the conduct
+    of one who has caused me unutterable anxiety, misery and persecution,
+    and who has been the bane of the Bible cause in Spain, refused to
+    receive the information which it was in _your_ power to command?  I
+    called on the Committee and yourself from the first to apply to Sir
+    George Villiers; no one is so well versed as to what has lately been
+    going as himself; but no.  It was God’s will that I, who have risked
+    all and lost _almost_ all in the cause, be taunted, suspected, and
+    the sweat of agony and tears which I have poured out be estimated at
+    the value of the water of the ditch or the moisture which exudes from
+    rotten dung; but I murmur not, and hope I shall at all times be
+    willing to bow to the dispensations of the Almighty.
+
+    “Sir George Villiers has returned to England for a short period; you
+    have therefore the opportunity of consulting him.  I _will not_ leave
+    Spain until the whole affair has been thoroughly sifted.  I shall
+    then perhaps appear and bid you an eternal farewell. {273a}  Four
+    hundred Testaments have been disposed of in the Sagra of Toledo.
+
+    “_P.S._—I am just returned from the Embassy, where I have had a long
+    interview with that admirable person Lord Wm. Hervey [Chargé
+    d’Affaires during Sir George Villiers’ absence].  He has requested me
+    to write him a letter on the point in question, which with the
+    official documents he intends to send to the Secretary of State in
+    order to be laid before the Bible Society.  He has put into my hands
+    the last communication from Ofalia {273b} it relates to the seizure
+    of _my_ depots at Malaga, Pontevedra, etc.  I have not opened it, but
+    send it for your approval.”
+
+It is pleasant to record that the Sub-Committee expressed itself as
+unable to see in Mr Brandram’s letter what Borrow saw.  There was no
+intention to convey the impression that he had made false statements, and
+regret was expressed that he had thought it necessary to apply to the
+Embassy for confirmation of what he had written.  All this Mr Brandram
+conveyed in a letter dated 6th August.  He continues: “I am now in full
+possession of all that Mr Graydon has done, and find it utterly
+impossible to account for that very strong feeling that you have imbibed
+against him.”
+
+On 20th July Mr Brandram had written that, after consulting with two or
+three members of the Committee, they all confirmed a wish already
+expressed that their Agent should not continue to expose himself to such
+dangers.  If, however, he still saw the way open before him,
+
+    “as so pleasantly represented in your letter . . . you need not think
+    of returning . . . Do allow me to suggest to you,” he continues, “to
+    drop allusion to Mr Graydon in your letters.  His conduct is not
+    regarded here as you regard it.  I could fancy, but perhaps it is all
+    fancy, that you have him in your eye when you tell us that you have
+    eschewed handbills and advertisements.  Time has been when you have
+    used them plentifully . . .  Sir George Villiers is in England—but I
+    do not know that we shall seek an interview with him—We are afraid of
+    being hampered with the trammels of office.”
+
+The Committee, however, did not endorse Mr Brandram’s view as to Borrow
+continuing in Spain, and further, they did “not see it right,” the
+secretary wrote (6th August), “after the confidential communication in
+which you have been in with the Government, that you should be acting now
+in such open defiance of it, and putting yourself in such extreme
+jeopardy.”  Later Borrow made reference to the remark about the
+handbills.
+
+    “It would have been as well,” he wrote, “if my respected and revered
+    friend, the writer, had made himself acquainted with the character of
+    my advertisements before he made that observation.  There is no harm
+    in an advertisement, if truth, decency and the fear of God are
+    observed, and I believe my own will be scarcely found deficient in
+    any of these three requisites.  It is not the use of a serviceable
+    instrument, but its abuse that merits reproof, and I cannot conceive
+    that advertising was abused by me when I informed the people of
+    Madrid that the New Testament was to be purchased at a cheap price in
+    the _Calle del Principe_.” {275}
+
+Elsewhere he referred to these same advertisements as “mild yet
+expressive.”
+
+In spite of the strained state of his relations with the Bible Society,
+Borrow had no intention of remaining in Madrid brooding over his wrongs.
+Encouraged by the success that had attended his efforts in the Sagra of
+Toledo, and indifferent to the fact that his renewed activity was known
+at Toledo, where it was causing some alarm, he determined to proceed to
+Aranjuez, and, on his arrival there, to be guided by events as to his
+future movements.  Accordingly about 28th July he set out attended by
+Antonio and Lopez, who had accompanied him from Villa Seca to Madrid,
+proceeding in the direction of La Mancha, and selling at every village
+through which they passed from twenty to forty Testaments.  At Aranjuez
+they remained three days, visiting every house in the town and disposing
+of about eighty books.  It was no unusual thing to see groups of the
+poorer people gathered round one of their number who was reading aloud
+from a recently purchased Testament.
+
+Feeling that his enemies were preparing to strike, Borrow determined to
+push on to the frontier town of Ocaña, beyond which the clergy had only a
+nominal jurisdiction on account of its being in the hands of the
+Carlists.  Lopez was sent on with between two and three hundred
+Testaments, and Borrow, accompanied by Antonio, followed later by a
+shorter route through the hills.  As they approached the town, a man, a
+Jew, stepped out from the porch of an empty house and barred their way,
+telling them that Lopez had been arrested at Ocaña that morning as he was
+selling Testaments in the streets, and that the authorities were now
+waiting for Borrow himself.
+
+Seeing that no good could be done by plunging into the midst of his
+enemies, who had their instructions from the _corregidor_ of Toledo,
+Borrow decided to return to Aranjuez.  This he did, on the way narrowly
+escaping assassination at the hands of three robbers.  The next morning
+he was rejoined by Lopez, who had been released.  He had sold 27
+Testaments, and 200 had been confiscated and forwarded to Toledo.  The
+whole party then returned to Madrid.
+
+The unfortunate affair at Ocaña by no means discouraged Borrow.  It was
+his intention “with God’s leave” to “fight it out to the last.”  He saw
+that his only chance of distributing his store of Testaments lay in
+visiting the smaller villages before the order to confiscate his books
+arrived from Toledo.  His enemies were numerous and watchful; but Borrow
+was as cunning as a gypsy and as far-seeing as a Jew.  Thinking that his
+notoriety had not yet crossed the Guadarrama mountains and penetrated
+into Old Castile, he decided to anticipate it.  Lopez was sent ahead with
+a donkey bearing a cargo of Testaments, his instructions being to meet
+Borrow and Antonio at La Granja.  Failing to find Lopez at the appointed
+place, Borrow pushed on to Segovia, where he received news that some men
+were selling books at Abades, to which place he proceeded with three more
+donkeys laden with books that had been consigned to a friend at Segovia.
+At Abades Lopez was discovered busily occupied in selling Testaments.
+
+Hearing that an order was about to be sent from Segovia to Abades for the
+confiscation of his Testaments, Borrow immediately left the town,
+donkeys, Testaments and all, and for safety’s sake passed the night in
+the fields.  The next day they proceeded to the village of Labajos.  A
+few days after their arrival the Carlist leader Balmaceda, at the head of
+his robber cavalry, streamed down from the pine woods of Soria into the
+southern part of Old Castile, Borrow “was present at all the horrors
+which ensued—the sack of Arrevalo, and the forcible entry into Marrin
+Muñoz and San Cyprian.  Amidst these terrible scenes we continued our
+labours undaunted.” {277a}  He witnessed what “was not the war of men or
+even cannibals . . . it seemed a contest of fiends from the infernal
+pit.”  Antonio became seized with uncontrollable fear and ran away to
+Madrid.  Lopez soon afterwards disappeared, and, left alone, Borrow
+suffered great anxiety as to the fate of the brave fellow.  Hearing that
+he was in prison at Vilallos, about three leagues distant, and in spite
+of the fact that Balmaceda’s cavalry division was in the neighbourhood,
+Borrow mounted his horse and set off next day (22nd Aug.) alone.  He
+found on his arrival at Vilallos, that Lopez had been removed from the
+prison to a private house.  Disregarding an order from the _corregidor_
+of Avila that only the books should be confiscated and that the vendor
+should be set at liberty, the _Alcalde_, at the instigation of the
+priest, refused to liberate Lopez.  It had been hinted to the unfortunate
+man that on the arrival of the Carlists he was to be denounced as a
+liberal, which would mean death.  “Taking these circumstances into
+consideration,” Borrow wrote, {277b} “I deemed it my duty as a Christian
+and a gentleman to rescue my unfortunate servant from such lawless hands,
+and in consequence, defying opposition, I bore him off, though perfectly
+unarmed, through a crowd of at least one hundred peasants.  On leaving
+the place I shouted ‘Viva Isabella Segunda.’”
+
+In this affair Borrow had, not only the approval of Lord William Hervey,
+but of Count Ofalia also.  In all probability the Bible Society has never
+had, and never will have again, an agent such as Borrow, who on occasion
+could throw aside the cloak of humility and grasp a two-edged sword with
+which to discomfit his enemies, and who solemnly chanted the creed of
+Islam whilst engaged as a Christian missionary.  There was something
+magnificent in his Christianity; it savoured of the Crusades in its
+pre-Reformation virility.  Martyrdom he would accept if absolutely
+necessary; but he preferred that if martyrs there must be they should be
+selected from the ranks of the enemy, whilst he, George Borrow,
+represented the strong arm of the Lord.
+
+After the Vilallos affair, Borrow returned to Madrid, crossing the
+Guadarramas alone and with two horses.  “I nearly perished there,” he
+wrote to Mr Brandram (1st Sept.), “having lost my way in the darkness and
+tumbled down a precipice.”  The perilous journey north had resulted in
+the sale of 900 Testaments, all within the space of three weeks and
+amidst scenes of battle and bloodshed.
+
+On his return to Madrid, Borrow found awaiting him the Resolution of the
+General Committee (6th Aug.), recalling him “without further delay.”
+
+    “I will set out for England as soon as possible,” he wrote in reply;
+    {278} “but I must be allowed time.  I am almost dead with fatigue,
+    suffering and anxiety; and it is necessary that I should place the
+    Society’s property in safe and sure custody.”
+
+On 1st September he wrote to Mr Brandram that he should “probably be in
+England within three weeks.”  Shortly after this he was attacked with
+fever, and confined to his bed for ten days, during which he was
+frequently delirious.  When the fever departed, he was left very weak and
+subject to a profound melancholy.
+
+    “I bore up against my illness as long as I could,” he wrote, {279a}
+    “but it became too powerful for me.  By good fortune I obtained a
+    decent physician, a Dr Hacayo, who had studied medicine in England,
+    and aided by him and the strength of my constitution I got the better
+    of my attack, which, however, was a dreadfully severe one.  I hope my
+    next letter will be from Bordeaux.  I cannot write more at present,
+    for I am very feeble.”
+
+The actual date that Borrow left Madrid is not known.  He himself gave it
+as 31st August, {279b} which is obviously inaccurate, as on 19th
+September he wrote to Mr Brandram: “I am now better, and hope in a few
+days to be able to proceed to Saragossa, which is the only road open.”
+He travelled leisurely by way of the Pyrenees, through France to Paris,
+where he spent a fortnight.  Of Paris he was very fond; “for, leaving all
+prejudices aside, it is a magnificent city, well supplied with sumptuous
+buildings and public squares, unequalled by any town in Europe.” {279c}
+Having bought a few rare books he proceeded to Boulogne, “and thence by
+steamboat to London,” {279d} where in all probability he arrived towards
+the end of October.
+
+He had “long talks on Spanish affairs” {279e} with his friends at Earl
+Street, where personal interviews seem to have brought about a much
+better feeling.  The General Committee requested Borrow to put into
+writing his views as to the best means to be adopted for the future
+distribution of the Scriptures in Spain.  He accordingly wrote a
+statement, {280} a fine, vigorous piece of narrative, putting his case so
+clearly and convincingly as to leave little to be said for the
+unfortunate Graydon.  He expressed himself as “eager to be carefully and
+categorically questioned.”  This Report appears subsequently to have been
+withdrawn, probably on the advice of Borrow’s friends, who saw that its
+uncompromising bluntness of expression would make it unacceptable to the
+General Committee.  It was certainly presented to and considered by the
+Sub-Committee.  Another document was drawn up entitled, “Report of Mr
+Geo. Borrow on Past and Future Operations in Spain.”  This reached Earl
+Street on 28th November.  In it Borrow states that as the inhabitants of
+the cities had not shown themselves well-disposed towards the Scriptures,
+it would be better to labour in future among the peasantry.  It was his
+firm conviction, he wrote,
+
+    “that every village in Spain will purchase New Testaments, from
+    twenty to sixty, according to its circumstances.  During the last two
+    months of his sojourn in Spain he visited about forty villages, and
+    in only two instances was his sale less than thirty copies in each .
+    . . If it be objected to the plan which he has presumed to suggest
+    that it is impossible to convey to the rural districts of Spain the
+    book of life without much difficulty and danger, he begs leave to
+    observe that it does not become a real Christian to be daunted by
+    either when it pleases his Maker to select him as an instrument; and
+    that, moreover, if it be not written that a man is to perish by wild
+    beasts or reptiles he is safe in the den even of the Cockatrice as in
+    the most retired chamber of the King’s Palace; and that if, on the
+    contrary, he be doomed to perish by them, his destiny will overtake
+    him notwithstanding all the precautions which he, like a blind worm,
+    may essay for his security.”
+
+In conclusion Borrow calls attention, without suggesting intimate
+alliance and co-operation, to the society of the liberal-minded Spanish
+ecclesiastics, which has been formed for the purpose of printing and
+circulating the Scriptures in Spanish _without commentary or notes_.
+This had reference to a movement that was on foot in Madrid, supported by
+the Primate and the Bishops of Vigo and Joen, to challenge the Government
+in regard to its attempt to prevent the free circulation of the
+Scriptures.  It was held that nowhere among the laws of Spain is it
+forbidden to circulate the Scriptures either with or without annotations.
+The only prohibition being in the various Papal Bulls.  Charles Wood was
+chosen as “the ostensible manager of the concern”; but had it not been
+for the trouble in the South, Borrow would have been the person selected.
+
+It would have been in every way deplorable had Borrow severed his
+connection with the Bible Society as a result of the Graydon episode.
+Borrow had been impulsive and indignant in his letters to Earl Street, Mr
+Brandram, on the other hand, had been “a little partial,” and on one or
+two occasions must have written hastily in response to Borrow’s letters.
+There is no object in administering blame or directing reproaches when
+the principals in a quarrel have made up their differences; but there can
+be no question that the failure of the Officials and Committee of the
+Bible Society to appreciate the situation in Spain retarded their work in
+that country very considerably.  This fact is now generally recognised.
+Mr Canton has admirably summed up the situation when he says:
+
+    “Borrow had his faults, but insincerity and lack of zeal in the cause
+    he had espoused were not among them.  Both Sir George Villiers and
+    his successor [during Sir George’s visit to England], Lord William
+    Hervey, were satisfied with the propriety of his conduct.  Count
+    Ofalia himself recognised his good faith—‘_cuia buena fé me es
+    conocida_.’  To see his plans thwarted, his work arrested, the
+    objects of the Society jeopardised, and his own person endangered by
+    the indiscretion of others, formed, if not a justification, at least
+    a sufficient excuse for the expression of strong feeling.  On the
+    other hand, it was difficult for those at home to ascertain the
+    actual facts of the case, to understand the nicety of the situation,
+    and to arrive at an impartial judgment.  Mr Brandram, who in any case
+    would have been displeased with Borrow’s unrestrained speech, appears
+    to have suspected that his statements were not free from
+    exaggeration, and that his discretion was not wholly beyond reproach.
+    Happily the tension caused by this painful episode was relieved by
+    Lieut. Graydon’s withdrawal to France in June.” {282}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+DECEMBER 1838–MAY 1839
+
+
+ON 14th December 1838 it was resolved by the General Committee of the
+Bible Society that Borrow should proceed once more to Spain to dispose of
+such copies of the Scriptures as remained on hand at Madrid and other
+depôts established by him in various parts of the country.  He left
+London on the 21st, and sailed from Falmouth two days later, reaching
+Cadiz on the 31st, after a stormy passage, and on 2nd January he arrived
+at Seville, “rather indisposed with an old complaint,” probably “the
+Horrors.”
+
+In such stirring times to be absent from the country, even for so short a
+period as two months, meant that on his return the traveller found a new
+Spain.  Borrow learned that the Duke of Frias had succeeded Count Ofalia
+in September.  The Duke had advised the British Ambassador in November
+that the Spanish authorities were possessed of a quantity of Borrow’s
+Bibles (?New Testaments) that had been seized and taken to Toledo, and
+that if arrangements were not made for them to be taken out of Spain they
+would be destroyed.  Sir George Villiers had replied that Mr Borrow, who
+was then out of the country, had been advised of the Duke’s notification,
+and as soon as word was received from him, the Duke should be
+communicated with.  Then the Duke of Frias in turn passed out of office
+and was succeeded by another, and so, politically, change followed
+change.
+
+The Government, however, had no intention of putting itself in the wrong
+a second time.  Great Britain’s friendship was of far too great
+importance to the country to be jeopardised for the mere gratification of
+imprisoning George Borrow.  An order had been sent out to all the
+authorities that an embargo was to be placed upon the books themselves;
+but those distributing them were not to be arrested or in any way harmed.
+
+At Seville he found evidences of the activity of the Government in the
+news that of the hundred New Testaments that he had left with his
+correspondent there, seventy-six had been seized during the previous
+summer.  Hearing that the books were in the hands of the Ecclesiastical
+Governor, Borrow astonished that “fierce, persecuting Papist by calling
+to make enquiries concerning them.”  The old man treated his visitor to a
+stream of impassioned invective against the Bible Society and its agent,
+expressing his surprise that he had ever been permitted to leave the
+prison in Madrid.  Seeing that nothing was to be gained, although he had
+an absolute right to the books, provided he sent them out of the country,
+Borrow decided not to press the matter.
+
+On the night of 12th Jan. 1839, he left Seville with the Mail Courier and
+his escort bound for Madrid, where he arrived on the 16th without
+accident or incident, although the next Courier traversing the route was
+stopped by banditti.  It was during this journey, whilst resting for four
+hours at Manzanares, a large village in La Mancha, that he encountered
+the blind girl who had been taught Latin by a Jesuit priest, and whom he
+named “the Manchegan Prophetess.” {284}  In telling Mr Brandram of the
+incident, Borrow tactlessly remarked, “what wonderful people are the
+Jesuits; when shall we hear of an English rector instructing a beggar
+girl in the language of Cicero?”  Mr Brandram clearly showed that he
+liked neither the remark, which he took as personal, nor the use of the
+term “prophetess.”
+
+On reaching Madrid a singular incident befell Borrow.  On entering the
+arch of the _posada_ called La Reyna, he found himself encircled by a
+pair of arms, and, on turning round, found that they belonged to the
+delinquent Antonio, who stood before his late master “haggard and
+ill-dressed, and his eyes seemed starting from their sockets.”  The poor
+fellow, who was entirely destitute, had, on the previous night, dreamed
+that he saw Borrow arrive on a black horse, and, in consequence, had
+spent the whole day in loitering about outside the _posada_.  Borrow was
+very glad to engage him again, in spite of his recent cowardice and
+desertion.  Borrow once more took up his abode with the estimable Maria
+Diaz, and one of his first cares was to call on Lord Clarendon (Sir
+George Villiers had succeeded his uncle as fourth earl), by whom he was
+kindly received.
+
+A week later, there arrived from Lopez at Villa Seca his “largest and
+most useful horse,” the famous Sidi Habismilk (My Lord the Sustainer of
+the Kingdom), “an Arabian of high caste . . . the best, I believe, that
+ever issued from the desert,” {285a} Lopez wrote, regretting that he was
+unable to accompany “The Sustainer of the Kingdom” in person, being
+occupied with agricultural pursuits, but he sent a relative named
+Victoriano to assist in the work of distributing the Gospel.
+
+Borrow’s plan was to make Madrid his headquarters, with Antonio in charge
+of the supplies, and visit all the villages and hamlets in the vicinity
+that had not yet been supplied with Testaments.  He then proposed to turn
+eastward to a distance of about thirty leagues.
+
+    “I have been very passionate in prayer,” he writes, {285b} “during
+    the last two or three days; and I entertain some hope that the Lord
+    has condescended to answer me, as I appear to see my way with
+    considerable clearness.  It may, of course, prove a delusion, and the
+    prospects which seem to present themselves may be mere palaces of
+    clouds, which a breath of wind is sufficient to tumble into ruin;
+    therefore bearing this possibility in mind it behoves me to beg that
+    I may be always enabled to bow meekly to the dispensations of the
+    Almighty, whether they be of favour or severity.”
+
+Mr Brandram’s comment on this portion of Borrow’s letter is rather
+suggestive of deliberate fault-finding.
+
+    “May your ‘passionate’ prayers be answered,” he writes. {286}  “You
+    see I remark your unusual word—very significant it is, but one rather
+    fitted for the select circle where ‘passion’ is understood in its own
+    full sense—and not in the restricted meaning attached to it
+    ordinarily.  Perhaps you will not often meet with a better set of men
+    than those who assembled in Earl Street, but they may not always be
+    open to the force of language, and so unwonted a phrase may raise odd
+    feelings in their minds.  Do not be in a passion, will you, for the
+    freedom of my remarks.  You will perhaps suppose remarks were made in
+    Committee.  This does not happen to be the case, though I fully
+    anticipated it.  Mr Browne, Mr Jowett and myself had first privately
+    devoured your letter, and we made our remarks.  We could relish such
+    a phrase.”
+
+Sometimes there was a suggestion of spite in Mr Brandram’s letters.  He
+was obviously unfriendly towards Borrow during the latter portion of his
+agency.  It was clear that the period of Borrow’s further association
+with the Bible Society was to be limited.  If he replied at all to this
+rather unfair criticism, he must have done so privately to Mr Brandram,
+as there is no record of his having referred to it in any subsequent
+letters among the Society’s archives.
+
+All unconscious that he had so early offended, Borrow set out upon his
+first journey to distribute Testaments among the villages around Madrid.
+Dressed in the manner of the peasants, on his head a _montera_, a species
+of leathern helmet, with jacket and trousers of the same material, and
+mounted on Sidi Habismilk, he looked so unlike the conventional
+missionary that the housewife may be excused who mistook him for a pedlar
+selling soap.
+
+In some villages where the people were without money, they received
+Testaments in return for refreshing the missionaries.  “Is this right?”
+Borrow enquires of Mr Brandram.  The village priests frequently proved of
+considerable assistance; for when they pronounced the books good, as they
+sometimes did, the sale became extremely brisk.  After an absence of
+eight days, Borrow returned to Madrid.  Shortly afterwards, when on the
+eve of starting out upon another expedition to Guadalajara and the
+villages of Alcarria, he received a letter from Victoriano saying that he
+was in prison at Fuente la Higuera, a village about eight leagues
+distant.  Acting with his customary energy and decision, Borrow obtained
+from an influential friend letters to the Civil Governor and principal
+authorities of Guadalajara.  He then despatched Antonio to the rescue,
+with the result that Victoriano was released, with the assurance that
+those responsible for his detention should be severely punished.
+
+Whilst Victoriano was in prison, Borrow and Antonio had been very
+successful in selling Testaments and Bibles in Madrid, disposing of
+upwards of a hundred copies, but entirely to the poor, who “receive the
+Scriptures with gladness,” although the hearts of the rich were hard.
+The work in and about Madrid continued until the middle of March, when
+Borrow decided to make an excursion as far as Talavera.  The first halt
+was made at the village of Naval Carnero.  Soon after his arrival orders
+came from Madrid warning the _alcaldes_ of every village in New Castile
+to be on the look out for the tall, white-haired heretic, of whom an
+exact description was given, who to-day was in one place and to-morrow
+twenty leagues distant.  No violence was to be offered either to him or
+to his assistants; but he and they were to be baulked in their purpose by
+every legitimate means.
+
+Foiled in the rural districts, Borrow instantly determined to change his
+plan of campaign.  He saw that he was less likely to attract notice in
+the densely-populated capital than in the provinces.  He therefore
+galloped back to Madrid, leaving Victoriano to follow more leisurely.  He
+rejoiced at the alarm of the clergy.  “Glory to God!” he exclaims, “they
+are becoming thoroughly alarmed, and with much reason.” {288a}  The
+“reason” lay in the great demand for Testaments and Bibles.  A new
+binding-order had to be given for the balance of the 500 Bibles that had
+arrived in sheets, or such as had been left of them by the rats, who had
+done considerable damage in the Madrid storehouse.
+
+It was at this juncture that Borrow’s extensive acquaintance with the
+lower orders proved useful.  Selecting eight of the most intelligent from
+among them, including five women, he supplied them with Testaments and
+instructions to vend the books in all the parishes of Madrid, with the
+result that in the course of about a fortnight 600 copies were disposed
+of in the streets and alleys.  A house to house canvass was instituted
+with remarkable results, for manservant and maidservant bought eagerly of
+the books.  Antonio excelled himself and made some amends for his flight
+from Labajos, when, like a torrent, the Carlist cavalry descended upon
+it.  Dark Madrid was becoming illuminated with a flood of Scriptural
+light.  In two of its churches the New Testament was expounded every
+Sunday evening.  Bibles were particularly in demand, a hundred being sold
+in about three weeks.  The demand exceeded the supply.  “The Marques de
+Santa Coloma,” Borrow wrote, “has a large family, but every individual of
+it, old or young, is now in possession of a Bible and likewise of a
+Testament.” {288b}
+
+Borrow appears to have enlisted the aid of other distributors than the
+eight colporteurs.  One of his most zealous agents was an ecclesiastic,
+who always carried with him beneath his gown a copy of the Bible, which
+he offered to the first person he encountered whom he thought likely to
+become a purchaser.  Yet another assistant was found in a rich old
+gentleman of Navarre, who sent copies to his own province.
+
+One night after having retired to bed, Borrow received a visit from a
+curious, hobgoblin-like person, who gave him grave, official warning that
+unless he present himself before the _corregidor_ on the morrow at eleven
+A.M., he must be prepared to take the consequences.  The hour chosen for
+this intimation was midnight.  On the next day at the appointed time
+Borrow presented himself before the _corregidor_, who announced that he
+wished to ask a question.  The question related to a box of Testaments
+that Borrow had sent to Naval Carnero, which had been seized and
+subsequently claimed on Borrow’s behalf by Antonio.  In Spain they have
+the dramatic instinct.  If it strike the majestic mind of a _corregidor_
+at midnight that he would like to see a citizen or a stranger on the
+morrow about some trifling affair, time or place are not permitted to
+interfere with the conveyance of the intimation to the citizen or
+stranger to present himself before the gravely austere official, who will
+carry out the interrogation with a solemnity becoming a capital charge.
+
+By the middle of April barely a thousand Testaments remained; these
+Borrow determined to distribute in Seville.  Sending Antonio, the
+Testaments and two horses with the convoy, Borrow decided to risk
+travelling with the Mail Courier.  For one thing, he disliked the
+slowness of a convoy, and for another the insults and irritations that
+travellers had to put up with from the escort, both officers and men.
+His original plan had been to proceed by Estremadura; but a band of
+Carlist robbers had recently made its appearance, murdering or holding at
+ransom every person who fell into its clutches.  Borrow wrote:—
+
+    “I therefore deem it wise to avoid, if possible, the alternative of
+    being shot or having to pay one thousand pounds for being set at
+    liberty . . . It is moreover wicked to tempt Providence
+    systematically.  I have already thrust myself into more danger than
+    was, perhaps, strictly necessary, and as I have been permitted
+    hitherto to escape, it is better to be content with what it has
+    pleased the Lord to do for me up to the present moment, than to run
+    the risk of offending Him by a blind confidence in His forbearance,
+    which may be over-taxed.  As it is, however, at all times best to be
+    frank, I am willing to confess that I am what the world calls
+    exceedingly superstitious; perhaps the real cause of my change of
+    resolution was a dream, in which I imagined myself on a desolate road
+    in the hands of several robbers, who were hacking me with their long,
+    ugly knives.” {290}
+
+In the same letter, which was so to incur Mr Brandram’s disapproval,
+Borrow tells of the excellent results of his latest plan for disposing of
+Bibles and Testaments, three hundred and fifty of the former having been
+sold since he reached Spain.  He goes on to explain and expound the
+difficulties that have been met and overcome, and hopes that his friends
+at Earl Street will be patient, as it may not be in his power to send
+“for a long time any flattering accounts of operations commenced there.”
+In conclusion, he assures Mr Brandram that from the Church of Rome he has
+learned one thing, “_Ever to expect evil_, _and ever to hope for good_.”
+
+Nothing could have been more unfortunate than the effect produced upon Mr
+Brandram’s mind by this letter.
+
+    “I scarcely know what to say,” he writes.  “You are in a very
+    peculiar country; you are doubtless a man of very peculiar
+    temperament, and we must not apply common rules in judging either of
+    yourself or your affairs.  What, _e.g._, shall we say to your
+    confession of a certain superstitiousness?  It is very frank of you
+    to tell us what you need not have told; but it sounded very odd when
+    read aloud in a large Committee.  Strangers that know you not would
+    carry away strange ideas . . . In bespeaking our patience, there is
+    an implied contrast between your own mode of proceeding and that
+    adopted by others—a contrast this a little to the disadvantage of
+    others, and savouring a little of the praise of a personage called
+    number one . . . Perhaps my vanity is offended, and I feel as if I
+    were not esteemed a person of sufficient discernment to know enough
+    of the real state of Spain . . .
+
+    “Bear with me now in my criticisms on your second letter [that of 2nd
+    May].  You narrate your perilous journey to Seville, and say at the
+    beginning of the description: ‘My usual wonderful good fortune
+    accompanying us.’  This is a mode of speaking to which we are not
+    well accustomed; it savours, some of our friends would say, a little
+    of the profane.  Those who know you will not impute this to you.  But
+    you must remember that our Committee Room is public to a great
+    extent, and I cannot omit expressions as I go reading on.  Pious
+    sentiments may be thrust into letters _ad nauseam_, and it is not for
+    that I plead; but is there not a _via media_?  “We are odd people, it
+    may be, in England; we are not fond of prophets or ‘prophetesses’ [a
+    reference to her of La Mancha about whom Borrow had previously been
+    rebuked].  I have not turned back to your former description of the
+    lady whom you have a second time introduced to our notice.  Perhaps
+    my wounded pride had not been made whole after the infliction you
+    before gave it by contrasting the teacher of the prophetess with
+    English rectors.”
+
+Borrow replied to this letter from Seville on 28th June, and there are
+indications that before doing so he took time to deliberate upon it.
+
+    “Think not, I pray you,” he wrote, “that any observation of yours
+    respecting style, or any peculiarities of expression which I am in
+    the habit of exhibiting in my correspondence, can possibly awaken in
+    me any feeling but that of gratitude, knowing so well as I do the
+    person who offers them, and the motives by which he is influenced.  I
+    have reflected on those passages which you were pleased to point out
+    as objectionable, and have nothing to reply further than that I have
+    erred, that I am sorry, and will endeavour to mend, and that,
+    moreover, I have already prayed for assistance to do so.  Allow me,
+    however, to offer a word, not in excuse but in explanation of the
+    expression ‘wonderful good fortune’ which appeared in a former letter
+    of mine.  It is clearly objectionable, and, as you very properly
+    observe, savours of pagan times.  But I am sorry to say that I am
+    much in the habit of repeating other people’s sayings without
+    weighing their propriety.  The saying was not mine; but I heard it in
+    conversation and thoughtlessly repeated it.  A few miles from Seville
+    I was telling the Courier of the many perilous journeys which I had
+    accomplished in Spain in safety, and for which I thank the Lord.  His
+    reply was, ‘La mucha suerte de Usted tambien nos ha acompañado en
+    este viage.’”
+
+Thus ended another unfortunate misunderstanding between secretary and
+agent.
+
+Borrow had taken considerable risk in making the journey to Seville with
+the Courier.  The whole of La Mancha was overrun with the
+Carlist-banditti, who, “whenever it pleases them, stop the Courier, burn
+the vehicle and letters, murder the paltry escort which attends, and
+carry away any chance passenger to the mountains, where an enormous
+ransom is demanded, which if not paid brings on the dilemma of four shots
+through the head, as the Spaniards say.”  The Courier’s previous journey
+over the same route had ended in the murder of the escort and the burning
+of the coach, the Courier himself escaping through the good offices of
+one of the bandits, who had formerly been his postilion.  Borrow was
+shown the blood-soaked turf and the skull of one of the soldiers.  At
+Manzanares, Borrow invited to breakfast with him the Prophetess who was
+so unpopular at Earl Street.  Continuing the journey, he reached Seville
+without mishap, and a few days later Antonio arrived with the horses.  It
+was found that the two cases of Testaments that had been forwarded from
+Madrid had been stopped at the Seville Customs House, and Borrow had
+recourse to subterfuge in order to get them and save his journey from
+being in vain.
+
+    “For a few dollars,” he tells Mr Brandram (2nd May), “I procured a
+    _fiador_ or person who engaged _that the chests_ should be carried
+    down the river and embarked at San Lucar for a foreign land.
+    Yesterday I hired a boat and sent them down, but on the way I landed
+    in a secure place all the Testaments which I intend for this part of
+    the country.”
+
+The _fiador_ had kept to the letter of his undertaking, and the chests
+were duly delivered at San Lucar; but a considerable portion of their
+contents, some two hundred Testaments, had been abstracted, and these had
+to be smuggled into Seville under the cloaks of master and servant.  The
+officials appear to have treated Borrow with the greatest possible
+courtesy and consideration, and they told him that his “intentions were
+known and honored.”
+
+Borrow had great hopes of achieving something for the Gospel’s sake in
+Seville; but the operation would be a delicate one.  To Mr Brandram he
+wrote:—
+
+    “Consider my situation here.  I am in a city by nature very
+    Levitical, as it contains within it the most magnificent and
+    splendidly endowed cathedral of any in Spain.  I am surrounded by
+    priests and friars, who know and hate me, and who, if I commit the
+    slightest act of indiscretion, will halloo their myrmidons against
+    me.  The press is closed to me, the libraries are barred against me,
+    I have no one to assist me but my hired servant, no pious English
+    families to comfort or encourage me, the British subjects here being
+    ranker papists and a hundred times more bigoted than the Spanish
+    themselves, the Consul, a _renegade Quaker_.  Yet notwithstanding,
+    with God’s assistance, I will do much, though silently, burrowing
+    like the mole in darkness beneath the ground.  Those who have
+    triumphed in Madrid, and in the two Castiles, where the difficulties
+    were seven times greater, are not to be dismayed by priestly frowns
+    at Seville.” {293}
+
+On arriving at Seville Borrow had put up at the _Posada de la Reyna_, in
+the Calle Gimios, and here on 4th May (he had arrived about 24th April)
+he encountered Lieut.-Colonel Elers Napier.  Borrow liked nothing so well
+as appearing in the _rôle_ of a mysterious stranger.  He loved mystery as
+much as a dramatic moment.  His admiration of Baron Taylor was largely
+based upon the innumerable conjectures as to who it was that surrounded
+his puzzling personality with such an air of mystery.  That May morning
+Colonel Napier, who was also staying at the _Posada de la Reyna_, was
+wandering about the galleries overlooking the _patio_.  He writes:—
+
+    “whilst occupied in moralising over the dripping water spouts, I
+    observed a tall, gentlemanly-looking man dressed in a _semarra_
+    [_zamarra_, a sheepskin jacket with the wool outside] leaning over
+    the balustrades and apparently engaged in a similar manner with
+    myself . . .  From the stranger’s complexion, which was fair, but
+    with brilliant black eyes, I concluded he was not a Spaniard; in
+    short, there was something so remarkable in his appearance that it
+    was difficult to say to what nation he might belong.  He was tall,
+    with a commanding appearance; yet, though apparently in the flower of
+    manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged with the winter of either age
+    or sorrow as to be nearly snow white.” {294a}
+
+Colonel Napier was thoroughly mystified.  The stranger answered his
+French in “the purest Parisian Accent”; yet he proved capable of speaking
+fluent English, of giving orders to his Greek servant in Romaïc, of
+conversing “in good Castillian with ‘mine host’,” and of exchanging
+salutations in German with another resident at the _fonda_.  Later the
+Colonel had the gratification of startling the Unknown by replying to
+some remark of his in Hindi; but only momentarily, for he showed himself
+“delighted on finding I was an Indian, and entered freely, and with depth
+and acuteness, on the affairs of the East, most of which part of the
+world he had visited.” {294b}
+
+No one could give any information about “the mysterious Unknown,” who or
+what he was, or why he was travelling.  It was known that the police
+entertained suspicions that he was a Russian spy, and kept him under
+strict observation.  Whatever else he was, Colonel Napier found him “a
+very agreeable companion.” {295}
+
+On the following morning (a Sunday) Colonel Napier and his Unknown set
+out on horseback on an excursion to the ruins of Italica.  As they sat on
+a ruined wall of the Convent of San Isidoro, contemplating the scene of
+ruin and desolation around, “the ‘Unknown’ began to feel the vein of
+poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting
+with great emphasis and effect” some lines that the scene called up to
+his mind.
+
+    “I had been too much taken up with the scene,” Colonel Napier
+    continues, “the verses, and the strange being who was repeating them
+    with so much feeling, to notice the approach of a slight female
+    figure, beautiful in the extreme, but whose tattered garments, raven
+    hair, swarthy complexion and flashing eyes proclaimed to be of the
+    wandering tribe of _Gitanos_.  From an intuitive sense of politeness,
+    she stood with crossed arms and a slight smile on her dark and
+    handsome countenance until my companion had ceased, and then
+    addressed us in the usual whining tone of
+    supplication—‘_Caballeritos_, _una limosnita_!  _Dios se la pagará á
+    ustedes_!’—‘Gentlemen, a little charity; God will repay it to you!’
+    The gypsy girl was so pretty and her voice so sweet, that I
+    involuntarily put my hand in my pocket.
+
+    “‘Stop!’ said the Unknown.  ‘Do you remember what I told you about
+    the Eastern origin of these people?  You shall see I am
+    correct.’—‘Come here, my pretty child,’ said he in Moultanee, ‘and
+    tell me where are the rest of your tribe.’
+
+    “The girl looked astounded, replied in the same tongue, but in broken
+    language; when, taking him by the arm, she said in Spanish, ‘Come,
+    cabellero—come to one who will be able to answer you’; and she led
+    the way down amongst the ruins, towards one of the dens formerly
+    occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings
+    scarcely less savage.  The sombre walls of the gloomy abode were
+    illumined by a fire the smoke from which escaped through a deep
+    fissure in the mossy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a
+    blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of
+    two men, and a decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in some
+    culinary preparations.
+
+    “On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of the party, and
+    a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of the ‘faja’ [a sash in
+    which the Spaniard carries a formidable clasp-knife] caused in me, at
+    least, anything but a comfortable sensation; but their hostile
+    intentions, if ever entertained, were immediately removed by a wave
+    of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my companion towards
+    the sibyl, whispered something in her ear.  The old crone appeared
+    incredulous.  The ‘Unknown’ uttered one word; but that word had the
+    effect of magic; she prostrated herself at his feet, and in an
+    instant, from an object of suspicion he became one of worship to the
+    whole family, to whom, on taking leave, he made a handsome present,
+    and departed with their united blessings, to the astonishment of
+    myself and what looked very like terror in our Spanish guide.
+
+    “I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and as soon as we
+    mounted our horses, exclaimed—‘Where, in the name of goodness, did
+    you pick up your acquaintance with the language of those
+    extraordinary people?’
+
+    “‘Some years ago, in Moultan,’ he replied.
+
+    “‘And by what means do you possess such apparent influence over
+    them?’  But the ‘Unknown’ had already said more than he perhaps
+    wished on the subject.  He drily replied that he had more than once
+    owed his life to gypsies, and had reason to know them well; but this
+    was said in a tone which precluded all further queries on my part.
+    The subject was never again broached, and we returned in silence to
+    the fonda . . .  This is a most extraordinary character, and the more
+    I see of him the more am I puzzled.  He appears acquainted with
+    everybody and everything, but apparently unknown to every one
+    himself.  Though his figure bespeaks youth—and by his own account his
+    age does not exceed thirty [he would be thirty-six in the following
+    July]—yet the snows of eighty winters could not have whitened his
+    locks more completely than they are.  But in his dark and searching
+    eye there is an almost supernatural penetration and lustre, which,
+    were I inclined to superstition, might induce me to set down its
+    possessor as a second Melmoth.” {297}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+MAY–DECEMBER 1839
+
+
+BORROW confesses that he was at a loss to know how to commence operations
+in Seville.  He was entirely friendless, even the British Consul being
+unapproachable on account of his religious beliefs.  However, he soon
+gathered round him some of those curious characters who seemed always to
+gravitate towards him, no matter where he might be, or with what
+occupied.  Surely the Scriptures never had such a curious assortment of
+missionaries as Borrow employed?  At Seville there was the gigantic
+Greek, Dionysius of Cephalonia; the “aged professor of music, who, with
+much stiffness and ceremoniousness, united much that was excellent and
+admirable”; {298} the Greek bricklayer, Johannes Chysostom, a native of
+Morea, who might at any time become “the Masaniello of Seville.”  With
+these assistants Borrow set to work to throw the light of the Gospel into
+the dark corners of the city.
+
+Soon after arriving at Seville, he decided to adopt a new plan of living.
+
+    “On account of the extreme dearness of every article at the
+    _posada_,” he wrote to Mr Brandram on 12th June, “where, moreover, I
+    had a suspicion that I was being watched [this may have reference to
+    the police suspicion that he was a Russian spy], I removed with my
+    servant and horses to an empty house in a solitary part of the town .
+    . .  Here I live in the greatest privacy, admitting no person but two
+    or three in whom I had the greatest confidence, who entertain the
+    same views as myself, and who assist me in the circulation of the
+    Gospel.”
+
+The house stood in a solitary situation, occupying one side of the
+Plazuela de la Pila Seca (the Little Square of the Empty Trough).  It was
+a two-storied building and much too large for Borrow’s requirements.
+Having bought the necessary articles of furniture, he retired behind the
+shutters of his Andalusian mansion with Antonio and the two horses.  He
+lived in the utmost seclusion, spending a large portion of his time in
+study or in dreamy meditation.  “The people here complain sadly of the
+heat,” he writes to Mr Brandram (28th June 1839), “but as for myself, I
+luxuriate in it, like the butterflies which hover about the _macetas_, or
+flowerpots, in the court.”  In the cool of the evening he would mount
+Sidi Habismilk and ride along the _Dehesa_ until the topmost towers of
+the city were out of sight, then, turning the noble Arab, he would let
+him return at his best speed, which was that of the whirlwind.
+
+Throughout his work in Spain Borrow had been seriously handicapped by
+being unable to satisfy the demand for Bibles that met him everywhere he
+went.  In a letter (June) from Maria Diaz, who was acting as his agent in
+Madrid, {299} the same story is told.
+
+    “The binder has brought me eight Bibles,” she writes, “which he has
+    contrived to make up out of _the sheets gnawn by the rats_, and which
+    would have been necessary even had they amounted to eight thousand (y
+    era necesario se puvièran vuelto 8000), because the people are
+    innumerable who come to seek more.  Don Santiago has been here with
+    some friends, who insisted upon having a part of them.  The Aragonese
+    Gentleman has likewise been, he who came before your departure, and
+    bespoke twenty-four; he now wants twenty-five.  I begged them to take
+    Testaments, but they would not.” {300}
+
+The Greek bricklayer proved a most useful agent.  His great influence
+with his poor acquaintances resulted in the sale of many Testaments.
+More could have been done had it not been necessary to proceed with
+extreme caution, lest the authorities should take action and seize the
+small stock of books that remained.
+
+When he took and furnished the large house in the little square, there
+had been in Borrow’s mind another reason than a desire for solitude and
+freedom from prying eyes.  Throughout his labours in Spain he had kept up
+a correspondence with Mrs Clarke of Oulton, who, on 15th March, had
+written informing him of her intention to take up her abode for a short
+time at Seville.
+
+For some time previously Mrs Clarke had been having trouble about her
+estate.  Her mother (September 1835) and father (February 1836) were both
+dead, and her brother Breame had inherited the estate and she the
+mortgage together with the Cottage on Oulton Broad.  Breame Skepper died
+(May 1837), leaving a wife and six children.  In his will he had
+appointed Trustees, who demanded the sale of the Estate and division of
+the money, which was opposed by Mrs Clarke as executrix and mortgagee.
+Later it was agreed between the parties that the Estate should be sold
+for £11,000 to a Mr Joseph Cator Webb, and an agreement to that effect
+was signed.  Anticipating that the Estate would increase in value, and
+apparently regretting their bargain, the Trustees delayed carrying out
+their undertaking, and Mr Webb filed a bill in Chancery to force them to
+do so.  Mrs Clarke’s legal advisers thought it better that she should
+disappear for a time.  Hence her letter to Borrow, in replying to which
+(29th March), he expresses pleasure at the news of his friend’s
+determination “to settle in Seville for a short time—which, I assure you,
+I consider to be the most agreeable retreat you can select . . . for
+_there_ the growls of your enemies will scarcely reach you.”  He goes on
+to tell her that he laughed outright at the advice of her counsellor not
+to take a house and furnish it.
+
+    “Houses in Spain are let by the day: and in a palace here you will
+    find less furniture than in your cottage at Oulton.  Were you to
+    furnish a Spanish house in the style of cold, wintry England, you
+    would be unable to breathe.  A few chairs, tables, and mattresses are
+    all that is required, with of course a good stock of bed-linen . . .
+
+    “Bring with you, therefore, your clothes, plenty of bed-linen, etc.,
+    half-a-dozen blankets, two dozen knives and forks, a mirror or two,
+    twelve silver table spoons, and a large one for soup, tea things and
+    urn (for the Spaniards never drink tea), a few books, but not
+    many,—and you will have occasion for nothing more, or, if you have,
+    you can purchase it here as cheap as in England.”
+
+Borrow’s ideas of domestic comfort were those of the old campaigner.  For
+all that, he showed himself very thorough in the directions he gave as to
+how and where Mrs Clarke should book her passage and obtain “a passport
+for yourself and Hen.”  (Henrietta her daughter, now nearly twenty years
+of age), and the warning he gave that no attempt should be made to go
+ashore at Lisbon, “a very dangerous place.”
+
+On 7th June Mrs Clarke and her daughter Henrietta sailed from London on
+board the steam-packet _Royal Tar_ bound for Cadiz, where they arrived on
+the 16th, and, on the day following, entered into possession of their
+temporary home where Borrow was already installed, safe for the time from
+Mr Webb’s Chancery bill.  It was no doubt to Mrs and Miss Clarke that
+Borrow referred when he wrote to Mr Brandram {301} saying that “two or
+three ladies of my acquaintance occasionally dispose of some [Testaments]
+amongst their friends, but they say that they experience some difficulty,
+the cry for Bibles being great.”
+
+Borrow continued to reside at 7 Plazuela de la Pila Seca, and Mrs Clarke
+and Henrietta soon learned something of the vicissitudes and excitements
+of a missionary’s life.  On Sunday, 8th July, as Borrow “happened to be
+reading the Liturgy,” he received a visit from “various _alguacils_,
+headed by the _Alcade del Barrio_, or headborough, who made a small
+seizure of Testaments and Gypsy Gospels which happened to be lying
+about.” {302}  This circumstance convinced Borrow of the good effect of
+his labours in and around Seville.
+
+The time had now arrived, however, when the whole of the smuggled
+Testaments had been disposed of, and there was no object in remaining
+longer in Seville, or in Spain for that matter.  There were books at San
+Lucar that might without official opposition be shipped out of the
+country, and Borrow therefore determined to see what could be done
+towards distributing them among the Spanish residents on the Coast of
+Barbary.  This done, he hoped to return to Spain and dispose of the 900
+odd Testaments lying at Madrid.  On 18th July he wrote to Mr Brandram:—
+
+    “I should wish to be permitted on my return from my present
+    expedition to circulate some in La Mancha.  The state of that
+    province is truly horrible; it appears peopled partly with spectres
+    and partly with demons.  There is famine, and such famine; there is
+    assassination and such unnatural assassination [another of Borrow’s
+    phrases that must have struck the Committee as odd].  There you see
+    soldiers and robbers, ghastly lepers and horrible and uncouth maimed
+    and blind, exhibiting their terrible nakedness in the sun.  I was
+    prevented last year in carrying the Gospel amongst them.  May I be
+    more successful this.”
+
+Antonio had been dismissed, his master being “compelled to send [him]
+back to Madrid . . . on account of his many irregularities,” and in
+consequence it was alone, on the night of 31st July, that Borrow set out
+upon his expedition.  From Seville he took the steamer to Bonanza, from
+whence he drove to San Lucar, where he picked up a chest of New
+Testaments and a small box of St Luke’s Gospel in Gitano, with a pass for
+them to Cadiz.  It proved expensive, this claiming of his own property,
+for at every step there was some fee to be paid or gratuity to be given.
+The last payment was made to the Spanish Consul at Gibraltar, who claimed
+and received a dollar for certifying the arrival of books he had not
+seen.
+
+Borrow was instinctively a missionary, even a great missionary.  At the
+Customs House of San Lucar some questions were asked about the books
+contained in the cases, and he seized the occasion to hold an informal
+missionary meeting, with the officials clustered round him listening to
+his discourse.  One of the cases had to be opened for inspection, and the
+upshot of it was that, to the very officials whose duty it was to see
+that the books were not distributed in Spain, Borrow sold a number of
+copies, not only of the Spanish Testament, but of the Gypsy St Luke.
+Such was the power of his personality and the force of his eloquence.
+
+From San Lucar Borrow returned to Bonanza and again took the boat, which
+landed him at Cadiz, where he was hospitably entertained by Mr
+Brackenbury, the British Consul, who gave him a letter of introduction to
+Mr Drummond Hay, the Consul-General at Tangier.  On 4th August he
+proceeded to Gibraltar.  It was not until the 8th, however, that he was
+able to cross to Tangier, where he was kindly received by Mr Hay, who
+found for him a very comfortable lodging.
+
+Taking the Consul’s advice, Borrow proceeded with extreme caution.  For
+the first fortnight of his stay he made no effort to distribute his
+Testaments, contenting himself with studying the town and its
+inhabitants, occasionally speaking to the Christians in the place
+(principally Spanish and Genoese sailors and their families) about
+religious matters, but always with the greatest caution lest the two or
+three friars, who resided at what was known as the Spanish Convent,
+should become alarmed.  Again Borrow obtained the services of a curious
+assistant, a Jewish lad named Hayim Ben Attar, who carried the Testaments
+to the people’s houses and offered them for sale, and this with
+considerable success.  On 4th September Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram:—
+
+    “The blessed book is now in the hands of most of the Christians of
+    Tangier, from the lowest to the highest, from the fisherman to the
+    consul.  One dozen and a half were carried to Tetuan on speculation,
+    a town about six leagues from hence; they will be offered to the
+    Christians who reside there.  Other two dozen are on their way to
+    distant Mogadore.  One individual, a tavern keeper, has purchased
+    Testaments to the number of thirty, which he says he has no doubt he
+    can dispose of to the foreign sailors who stop occasionally at his
+    house.  You will be surprised to hear that several amongst the Jews
+    have purchased copies of the New Testament with the intention, as
+    they state, of improving themselves in Spanish, but I believe from
+    curiosity.”
+
+During his stay in Tangier, Borrow had some trouble with the British
+Vice-Consul, who seems to have made himself extremely offensive with his
+persistent offers of service.  His face was “purple and blue” and in
+whose blood-shot eyes there was an expression “much like that of a
+departed tunny fish or salmon,” and he became so great an annoyance that
+Borrow made a complaint to Mr Drummond Hay.  This is one of the few
+instances of Borrow’s experiencing difficulty with any British official,
+for, as a rule, he was extremely popular.  In this particular instance,
+however, the Vice-Consul was so obviously seeking to make profit out of
+his official position, that there was no other means open to Borrow than
+to make a formal complaint.
+
+In the case of Mr Drummond Hay, he obtained the friendship of a “true
+British gentleman.”  At first the Consul had been reserved and distant,
+and apparently by no means inclined to render Borrow any service in the
+furtherance of his mission; but a few days sufficed to bring him under
+the influence of Borrow’s personal magnetism, and he ended by assuring
+him that he would be happy to receive the Society’s commands, and would
+render all possible assistance, officially or otherwise, to the
+distribution of the Scriptures “in Fez or Morocco.”
+
+Borrow was thoroughly satisfied with the result of his five weeks’ stay
+in Tangier.  He reached Cadiz on his way to Seville on 21st Sept., after
+undergoing a four days’ quarantine at Tarifa, when he wrote to Mr
+Brandram (29th Sept.):
+
+    “I am very glad that I went to Tangier, for many reasons.  In the
+    first place, I was permitted to circulate many copies of God’s Word
+    both among the Jews and the Christians, by the latter of whom it was
+    particularly wanted, their ignorance of the most vital points of
+    religion being truly horrible.  In the second place, I acquired a
+    vast stock of information concerning Africa and the state of its
+    interior.  One of my principal Associates was a black slave whose
+    country was only three days’ journey from Timbuctoo, which place he
+    had frequently visited.  The Soos men also told me many of the
+    secrets of the land of wonders from which they come, and the Rabbis
+    from Fez and Morocco were no less communicative.”
+
+Borrow had started upon his expedition to the Barbary Coast without any
+definite instructions from Earl Street.  On 29th July the Sub-Committee
+had resolved that as his mission to Spain was “nearly attained by the
+disposal of the larger part of the Spanish Scriptures which he went out
+to distribute,” the General Committee be recommended to request him to
+take measures for selling or placing in safe custody all copies remaining
+on hand and returning to England “without loss of time.”  This was
+adopted on 5th Aug.; but before it received the formal sanction of the
+General Committee Mr Browne had written (29th July) to Borrow acquainting
+him with the feeling of the Sub-Committee, thinking that he ought to have
+early intimation of what was taking place.  This letter Borrow found
+awaiting him at Cadiz on his return from Tangier.  He replied immediately
+(21st Sept.):
+
+    “Had I been aware of that resolution before my departure for Tangier
+    I certainly should not have gone; my expedition, however, was the
+    result of much reflection.  I wished to carry the Gospel to the
+    Christians of the Barbary shore, who were much in want of it; and I
+    had one hundred and thirty Testaments at San Lucar, which I could
+    only make available by exportation.  The success which it has pleased
+    the Lord to yield me in my humble efforts at distribution in Barbary
+    will, I believe, prove the best criterion as to the fitness of the
+    enterprise.
+
+    “I stated in my last communication to Mr Brandram the plan which I
+    conceived to be the best for circulating that portion of the edition
+    of the New Testament which remains unsold at Madrid, and I scarcely
+    needed a stimulant in the execution of my duty.  At present, however,
+    I know not what to do; I am sorrowful, disappointed and unstrung.
+
+    “I wish to return to England as soon as possible; but I have books
+    and papers at Madrid which are of much importance to me and which I
+    cannot abandon, this perhaps alone prevents me embarking in the next
+    packet.  I have, moreover, brought with me from Tangier the Jewish
+    youth [Hayim Ben Attar], who so powerfully assisted me in that place
+    in the work of distribution.  I had hoped to have made him of service
+    in Spain, he is virtuous and clever . . .
+
+    “I am almost tempted to ask whether some strange, some unaccountable
+    delusion does not exist: what should induce me to stay in Spain, as
+    you appear to suppose I intend?  I may, however, have misunderstood
+    you.  I wish to receive a fresh communication as soon as possible,
+    either from yourself or Mr Brandram; in the meantime I shall go to
+    Seville, to which place and to the usual number pray direct.”
+
+It would appear that the Bible Society had become aware of Borrow’s
+_ménage_ at Seville, and concluded that he meant to take up his abode in
+Spain more or less permanently.
+
+Borrow’s next plan was to order a chest of Testaments to be sent to La
+Mancha, where he had friends, then to mount his horse and proceed there
+in person.  With the assistance of his Jewish body-servant he hoped to
+circulate many copies before the authorities became aware of his
+presence.  Later he would proceed to Madrid, put his affairs in order,
+and make for France by way of Saragossa (where he hoped to accomplish
+some good), and then—home.
+
+In September a circular signed by Lord Palmerston was received by all the
+British Consuls in Spain, strictly forbidding them “to afford the
+slightest countenance to religious agents. {307a}  What was the cause of
+this last blow?” {307b}  Borrow rather unfortunately enquired of Mr
+Brandram.  The Consul at Cadiz, Mr Brackenbury, explained it, according
+to Borrow, as due to “an ill-advised application made to his Lordship to
+interfere with the Spanish Government on behalf of a certain individual
+{307c} [Lieut. Graydon] whose line of conduct needs no comment.” {307d}
+After pointing out that once the same consuls had received from a British
+Ambassador instructions to further, in their official capacity, the work
+of the Bible Society, he concludes with the following remark, as
+ill-advised as it is droll: “When dead flies fall into the ointment of
+the apothecary they cause it to send forth an unpleasant savour.” {308a}
+
+It must have been obvious to both Borrow and Mr Brandram that matters
+were rapidly approaching a crisis.  Mr Brandram seems to have been almost
+openly hostile, and draws Borrow’s attention to the fact that after all
+his distributions have been small.  Borrow replies by saying that the
+fault did not rest with him.  Had he been able to offer Bibles instead of
+Testaments for sale, the circulation would have been ten times greater.
+He expresses it as his belief that had he received 20,000 Bibles he could
+have sold them all in Madrid during the Spring of 1839.
+
+    “When the Bible Society has no further occasion for my poor labours,”
+    he wrote {308b} somewhat pathetically, “I hope it will do me justice
+    to the world.  I have been its faithful and zealous servant.  I shall
+    on a future occasion take the liberty of addressing you as a friend
+    respecting my prospects.  I have the materials of a curious book of
+    travels in Spain; I have enough metrical translations from all
+    languages, especially the Celtic and Sclavonic, to fill a dozen
+    volumes; and I have formed a vocabulary of the Spanish Gypsy tongue,
+    and also a collection of the songs and poetry of the Gitanos, with
+    introductory essays.  Perhaps some of these literary labours might be
+    turned to account.  I wish to obtain honourably and respectably the
+    means of visiting China or particular parts of Africa.”
+
+It is clear from this that Borrow saw how unlikely it was that his
+association with the Bible Society would be prolonged beyond the present
+commission.  For one thing Spain was, to all intents and purposes, closed
+to the unannotated Scriptures.  Something might be done in the matter of
+surreptitious distribution; but that had its clearly defined limitations,
+as the authorities were very much alive to the danger of the light that
+Borrow sought to cast over the gloom of ignorance and superstition.
+
+At Earl Street it was clearly recognised that Borrow’s work in Spain was
+concluded.  On 1st November the Sub-Committee resolved that it could “not
+recommend to the General Committee to engage the further services of Mr
+Borrow until he shall have returned to this country from his Mission in
+Spain.”  Again, on 10th January following, it recommends the General
+Committee to recall him “without further delay.”
+
+Although he had been officially recalled, nothing was further from
+Borrow’s intentions than to retire meekly from the field.  He intended to
+retreat with drums sounding and colours flying, fighting something more
+than a rearguard action.  This man’s energy and resource were terrible—to
+the authorities!  Seville he felt was still a fruitful ground, and
+sending to Madrid for further supplies of Testaments, he commenced
+operations.  “Everything was accomplished with the utmost secrecy, and
+the blessed books obtained considerable circulation.” {309}  Agents were
+sent into the country and he went also himself, “in my accustomed
+manner,” until all the copies that had arrived from the capital were put
+into circulation.  He then rested for a while, being in need of quiet, as
+he was indisposed.
+
+By this action Borrow was incurring no little risk.  The Canons of the
+Cathedral watched him closely.  Their hatred amounted “almost to a
+frenzy,” and Borrow states that scarcely a day passed without some
+accusation of other being made to the Civil Governor, all of which were
+false.  People whom he had never seen were persuaded to perjure
+themselves by swearing that he had sold or given them books.  The same
+system was carried on whilst he was in Africa, because the authorities
+refused to believe that he was out of Spain.
+
+There now occurred another regrettable incident, and Borrow once more
+suffered for the indiscretion of those whom he neither knew nor
+controlled.  To Mr Brandram he wrote:
+
+    “Some English people now came to Seville and distributed tracts in a
+    very unguarded manner, knowing nothing of the country or the
+    inhabitants.  They were even so unwise as _to give tracts instead of
+    money on visiting public buildings_, _etc._ [!].  These persons came
+    to me and requested my coöperation and advice, and likewise
+    introductions to people spiritually disposed amongst the Spaniards,
+    to all which requests I returned a decided negative.  But I foresaw
+    all.  In a day or two I was summoned before the Civil Governor, or,
+    as he was once called, the _Corregidor_, of Seville, who, I must say,
+    treated me with the utmost politeness and indeed respect; but at the
+    same time he informed me that he had (to use his own expression)
+    terrible orders from Madrid concerning me if I should be discovered
+    in the act of distributing the Scriptures or any writings of a
+    religious tendency; he then taxed me with having circulated both
+    lately, especially tracts; whereupon I told him that I had never
+    distributed a tract since I had been in Spain nor had any intention
+    of doing so.  We had much conversation and parted in kindness.” {310}
+
+For a few days nothing happened; then, determined to set out on an
+expedition to La Mancha (the delay had been due to the insecure state of
+the roads), Borrow sent his passport (24th Nov.) for signature to the
+_Alcalde del Barrio_.
+
+    “This fellow,” Borrow informs Mr Brandram, “is the greatest ruffian
+    in Seville, and I have on various occasions been insulted by him; he
+    pretends to be a liberal, but he is of no principle at all, and as I
+    reside within his district he has been employed by the Canons of the
+    Cathedral to vex and harrass me on every possible occasion.”
+
+In the following letter, addressed to the British _Chargé d’Affaires_
+(the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham), Borrow gives a full account of what
+transpired between him and the _Alcalde_ of Seville:—
+
+    SIR,
+
+    I beg leave to lay before you the following statement of certain
+    facts which lately occurred at Seville, from which you will perceive
+    that the person of a British Subject has been atrociously outraged,
+    the rights and privileges of a foreigner in Spain violated, and the
+    sanctuary of a private house invaded without the slightest reason or
+    shadow of authority by a person in the employ of the Spanish
+    Government.
+
+    For some months past I have been a resident at Seville in a house
+    situated in a square called the “Plazuela de la Pila Seca.”  In this
+    house I possess apartments, the remainder being occupied by an
+    English Lady and her daughter, the former of whom is the widow of an
+    officer of the highest respectability who died in the naval service
+    of Great Britain.  On the twenty-fourth of last November, I sent a
+    servant, a Native of Spain, to the Office of the “_Ayuntamiento_” of
+    Seville for the purpose of demanding my passport, it being my
+    intention to set out the next day for Cordoba.  The “_Ayuntamiento_”
+    returned for answer that it was necessary that the ticket of
+    residence (_Billete de residencia_) which I had received on sending
+    in the Passport should be signed by the _Alcalde_ of the district in
+    which I resided, to which intimation I instantly attended.  I will
+    here take the liberty of observing that on several occasions during
+    my residence at Seville, I have experienced gross insults from this
+    _Alcalde_, and that more than once when I have had occasion to leave
+    the Town, he has refused to sign the necessary document for the
+    recovery of the passport; he now again refused to do so, and used
+    coarse language to the Messenger; whereupon I sent the latter back
+    with money to pay any fees, lawful or unlawful, which might be
+    demanded, as I wished to avoid noise and the necessity of applying to
+    the Consul, Mr Williams; but the fellow became only more outrageous.
+    I then went myself to demand an explanation, and was saluted with no
+    inconsiderable quantity of abuse.  I told him that if he proceeded in
+    this manner I would make a complaint to the Authorities through the
+    British Consul.  He then said if I did not instantly depart he would
+    drag me off to prison and cause me to be knocked down if I made the
+    slightest resistance.  I dared him repeatedly to do both, and said
+    that he was a disgrace to the Government which employed him, and to
+    human nature.  He called me a vile foreigner.  We were now in the
+    street and a mob had collected, whereupon I cried: “Viva Inglaterra y
+    viva la Constitucion.”  The populace remained quiet, notwithstanding
+    the exhortations of the _Alcalde_ that they would knock down “the
+    foreigner,” for he himself quailed before me as I looked him in the
+    face, defying him.  At length he exclaimed, with the usual obscene
+    Spanish oath, “I will make you lower your head” (Yo te haré abajar la
+    cabeza), and ran to a neighbouring guard-house and requested the
+    assistance of the Nationals in conducting me to prison.  I followed
+    him and delivered myself up at the first summons, and walked to the
+    prison without uttering a word; not so the _Alcalde_, who continued
+    his abuse until we arrived at the gate, repeatedly threatening to
+    have me knocked down if I moved to the right or left.
+
+    I was asked my name by the Authorities of the prison, which I refused
+    to give unless in the presence of the Consul of my Nation, and indeed
+    to answer any questions.  I was then ordered to the _Patio_, or
+    Courtyard, where are kept the lowest thieves and assassins of
+    Seville, who, having no money, cannot pay for better accommodation,
+    and by whom I should have been stripped naked in a moment as a matter
+    of course, as they are all in a state of raging hunger and utter
+    destitution.  I asked for a private cell, which I was told I might
+    have if I could pay for it.  I stated my willingness to pay anything
+    which might be demanded, and was conducted to an upper ward
+    consisting of several cells and a corridor; here I found six or seven
+    Prisoners, who received me very civilly, and instantly procured me
+    paper and ink for the purpose of writing to the Consul.  In less than
+    an hour Mr Williams arrived and I told him my story, whereupon he
+    instantly departed in order to demand redress of the Authorities.
+    The next morning the _Alcalde_, without any authority from the
+    Political [Civil] Governor of Seville, and unaccompanied by the
+    English Consul, as the law requires in such cases, and solely
+    attended by a common _Escribano_, went to the house in which I was
+    accustomed to reside and demanded admission.  The door was opened by
+    my Moorish Servant, Hayim Ben-Attar, whom he commanded instantly to
+    show the way to my apartments.  On the Servant’s demanding by what
+    authority he came, he said, “Cease chattering” (Deje cuentos), “I
+    shall give no account to you; show me the way; if not, I will take
+    you to prison as I did your master: I come to search for prohibited
+    books.”  The Moor, who being in a strange land was somewhat
+    intimidated, complied and led him to the rooms occupied by me, when
+    the _Alcalde_ flung about my books and papers, finding nothing which
+    could in the slightest degree justify his search, the few books being
+    all either in Hebrew or Arabic character (they consisted of the
+    Mitchna and some commentaries on the Coran); he at last took up a
+    large knife which lay on a chair and which I myself purchased some
+    months previous at Santa Cruz in La Mancha as a curiosity—the place
+    being famous for those knives—and expressed his determination to take
+    it away as a prohibited article.  The _Escribano_, however, cautioned
+    him against doing so, and he flung it down.  He now became very
+    vociferous and attempted to force his way into some apartments
+    occupied by the Ladies, my friends; but soon desisted and at last
+    went away, after using some threatening words to my Moorish Servant.
+    Late at night of the second day of my imprisonment, I was set at
+    liberty by virtue of an order of the Captain General, given on
+    application of the British Consul, after having been for thirty hours
+    imprisoned amongst the worst felons of Andalusia, though to do them
+    justice I must say that I experienced from them nothing but kindness
+    and hospitality.
+
+    The above, Sir, is the correct statement of the affair which has now
+    brought me to Madrid.  What could have induced the _Alcalde_ in
+    question to practise such atrocious behaviour towards me I am at a
+    loss to conjecture, unless he were instigated by certain enemies
+    which I possess in Seville.  However this may be, I now call upon
+    you, as the Representative of the Government of which I am a Subject,
+    to demand of the Minister of the Spanish Crown full and ample
+    satisfaction for the various outrages detailed above.  In conclusion,
+    I must be permitted to add that I will submit to no compromise, but
+    will never cease to claim justice until the culprit has received
+    condign punishment.
+
+                            I am, etc., etc., etc.
+
+                                                            GEORGE BORROW.
+
+    MADRID (no date).
+
+                                      Recorded 6th December [1839].” {313}
+
+Thus it happened that on 19th December Mr Brandram received the following
+letter:—
+
+                                    PRISON OF SEVILLE, 25_th_ _Nov._ 1839.
+
+    I write these lines, as you see, from the common prison of Seville,
+    to which I was led yesterday, or rather dragged, neither for murder
+    nor robbery nor debt, but simply for having endeavoured to obtain a
+    passport for Cordoba, to which place I was going with my Jewish
+    servant Hayim Ben-Attar.
+
+When questioned by the Vice-Consul as to his authority for searching
+Borrow’s house, the _Alcalde_ produced a paper purporting to be the
+deposition of an old woman to whom Borrow was alleged to have sold a
+Testament some ten days previously.  The document Borrow pronounced a
+forgery and the statement untrue.
+
+Borrow’s fellow-prisoners treated him with unbounded kindness and
+hospitality, and he was forced to confess that he had “never found
+himself amongst more quiet and well-behaved men.”  Nothing shows more
+clearly the power of Borrow’s personality over rogues and vagabonds than
+the two periods spent in Spanish prisons—at Madrid and at Seville.  Mr
+Brandram must have shuddered when he read Borrow’s letter telling him by
+what manner of men he was surrounded.
+
+    “What is their history?” he writes apropos of his fellow-prisoners.
+    “The handsome black-haired man, who is now looking over my shoulder,
+    is the celebrated thief, Pelacio, the most expert housebreaker and
+    dexterous swindler in Spain—in a word, the modern Guzman D’alfarache.
+    The brawny man who sits by the _brasero_ of charcoal is Salvador, the
+    highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders.  A
+    fashionably dressed man, short and slight in person, is walking about
+    the room: he wears immense whiskers and mustachios; he is one of that
+    most singular race the Jews of Spain; he is imprisoned for
+    counterfeiting money.  He is an atheist; but, like a true Jew, the
+    name which he most hates is that of Christ.  Yet he is so quiet and
+    civil, and they are all so quiet and civil, and it is that which most
+    horrifies me, for quietness and civility in them seems so unnatural.”
+    {315}
+
+Such were the men who fraternised with an agent of a religious society
+and showed him not only civility but hospitality and kindness.  It is
+open to question if they would have shown the same to any other
+unfortunate missionary.  In all probability they recognised a
+fellow-vagabond, who was at much at issue with the social conventions of
+communities as they were with the laws of property.
+
+On this occasion the period of Borrow’s imprisonment was brief.  He was
+released late at night on 25th Nov., within thirty hours of his arrest,
+and he immediately set to work to think out a plan by which he could once
+more discomfit the Spanish authorities for this indignity to a British
+subject.  He would proceed to Madrid without delay and put his case
+before the British Minister, at the same time he would “make preparations
+for leaving Spain as soon as possible.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+DECEMBER 1839–MAY 1840
+
+
+It was probably about this time (1839) that
+
+    “The Marqués de Santa Coloma met Borrow again at Seville.  He had
+    great difficulty in finding him out; though he was aware of the
+    street in which he resided, no one knew him by name.  At last, by
+    dint of inquiry and description, some one exclaimed, ‘Oh! you mean el
+    Brujo’ (the wizard), and he was directed to the house.  He was
+    admitted with great caution, and conducted through a lot of passages
+    and stairs, till at last he was ushered into a handsomely furnished
+    apartment in the ‘_mirador_,’ where Borrow was living _with his wife
+    and daughter_. . .  It is evident . . . that, to his Spanish friends
+    at least, he thus called Mrs Clarke and her daughter Henrietta his
+    wife and daughter: and the Marqués de Santa Coloma evidently believed
+    that the young lady was Borrow’s _own_ daughter, and not his
+    step-daughter merely (!).  At the time the roads from Seville to
+    Madrid were very unsafe.  Santa Coloma wished Borrow to join his
+    party, who were going well armed.  Borrow said he would be safe with
+    his Gypsies.  Both arrived without accident in Madrid; the Marqués’s
+    party first.  Borrow, on his arrival, told Santa Coloma that his
+    Gypsy chief had led him by by-paths and mountains; that they had not
+    slept in a village, nor seen a town the whole way.” {316}
+
+It must be confessed that Mr Webster was none too reliable a witness, and
+it seems highly improbable that Borrow would wish to pass Mrs Clarke off
+as his wife before their marriage.  The fact of their occupying the same
+house may have seemed to their Spanish friends compromising, as it
+unquestionably was; but had he spoken of Mrs Clarke as his wife, it would
+have left her not a vestige of reputation.
+
+On arriving at Madrid Borrow found that Lord Clarendon’s successor, Mr
+Arthur Aston, had not yet arrived, he therefore presented his complaint
+to the _Chargé d’Affaires_, the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham, who had
+succeeded Mr Sothern as private secretary.  Mr Sothern had not yet left
+Madrid to take up his new post as First Secretary at Lisbon, and
+therefore presented Borrow to Mr Jerningham, by whom he was received with
+great kindness.  He assured Mr Jerningham that for some time past he had
+given up distributing the Scriptures in Spain, and he merely claimed the
+privileges of a British subject and the protection of his Government.
+The First Secretary took up the case immediately, forwarding Borrow’s
+letter to Don Perez de Castro with a request for “proper steps to be
+taken, should Mr Borrow’s complaint . . . be considered by His Excellency
+as properly founded.”  Borrow himself was doubtful as to whether he would
+obtain justice, “for I have against me,” he wrote to Mr Brandram (24th
+December), “the Canons of Seville; and all the arts of villany which they
+are so accustomed to practise will of course be used against me for the
+purpose of screening the ruffian who is their instrument. . . .  I have
+been, my dear Sir, fighting with wild beasts.”
+
+The rather quaint reply to Borrow’s charges was not forthcoming until he
+had left Spain and was living at Oulton.  It runs: {317}
+
+                                                MADRID, 11_th_ _May_ 1840.
+
+    SIR,
+
+    Under date of 20th December last, Mr Perez de Castro informed Mr
+    Jerningham that in order to answer satisfactorily his note of 8th
+    December _re_ complaint made by Borrow, he required a faithful report
+    to be made.  These have been stated by the Municipality of Seville to
+    the Civil Governor of that City, and are as follows:—
+
+    “When Borrow meant to undertake his journey to Cadiz towards the end
+    of last year, he applied to the section of public security for his
+    Passport, for which purpose he ought to deliver his paper of
+    residence which was given to him when he arrived at Seville.  That
+    paper he had not presented in its proper time to the _Alcalde_ of his
+    district, on which account this person had not been acquainted as he
+    ought with his residence in the district, and as his Passport could
+    not be issued in consequence of this document not being in order,
+    Borrow addressed, through the medium of a Servant, to the house of
+    the said district _Alcalde_ that the defect might be remedied.  That
+    functionary refused to do so, founded on the reasons already stated;
+    and for the purpose of overcoming his resistance he was offered a
+    gratification, the Servant with that intent presenting half a dollar.
+    The _Alcalde_, justly indignant, left his house to make the necessary
+    complaint respecting their indecorous action when he met Borrow, who,
+    surprised at the refusal of the _Alcalde_, expressed to him his
+    astonishment, addressing insulting expressions not only against his
+    person but against the authorities of Spain, who, he said, he was
+    sure were to be bought at a very small price—crying on after this,
+    Long live the Constitution, Death to the Religion, and Long live
+    England.  These and other insults gave rise to the _Alcalde_
+    proceeding to his arrest and the assistance of the armed force of
+    Veterans, and not of the National Militia, as Borrow supposed, making
+    a detailed report to the Constitutional _Alcalde_, who forwarded it
+    original to the Captain General of the Province as Judge Protector of
+    Foreigners, leaving him under detention at his disposition.  He did
+    the same with another report transmitted by the said functionary, in
+    which reference to a Lady who lived at the Gate of Xerez; he
+    denounced Borrow as a seducer of youth in matters of Religion by
+    facilitating to them the perusal of prohibited books, of which a
+    copy, that was in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Governor, was
+    likewise transmitted to the Captain General.  These antecedents were
+    sufficient to have authorised a summary to have been formed against
+    Borrow, but the repeated supplications of the British Vice-Consul, Mr
+    Williams, who among other things stated that Borrow laboured under
+    fits of madness, had the effect of causing the above Constitutional
+    _Alcalde_ to forgive him the fault committed and recommend to the
+    Captain General that the matter should be dropped, which was acceded
+    to, and he was put at liberty.  The above facts, official proofs of
+    which exist in the Captain General’s Office, clearly disprove the
+    statement of Borrow, who ungrateful for the generous hospitality
+    which he has received, and for the consideration displayed towards
+    him on account of his infirmity, and out of deference to the request
+    of the British Vice-Consul, makes an unfounded complaint against the
+    very authorities who have used attentions towards him which he is
+    certainly not deserving; it being worthy of remark, in order to prove
+    the bad faith of his procedure, that in his own _exposé_, although he
+    disfigures facts at pleasure, using a language little decorous, he
+    confesses part of his faults, such as the offering of money _to pay_,
+    as he says, ‘_the legal or extra-legal dues that might be exacted_,
+    and his having twice challenged the _Alcalde_.’
+
+    “I should consider myself wanting towards your enlightened sense of
+    justice if, after the reasons given, I stopped to prove the just and
+    prudent conduct of Seville authorities.
+
+    “Hope he will therefore be completely satisfied, especially after the
+    want of exactitude on Borrow’s part.
+
+                                     From
+
+                                                EVARISTO PEREZ DE CASTRO.”
+
+    To Mr Aston. {319}
+
+And so the matter ended.  The Spanish authorities knew that they no
+longer had a Sir George Villiers to deal with, and had recourse to that
+trump card of weak and vacillating diplomatists—delay.  Whatever Borrow’s
+offence, the method of his arrest and imprisonment was in itself
+unlawful.
+
+It was Borrow’s intention on his return to England to endeavour to obtain
+an interview with some members of the House of Lords, in order to
+acquaint them with the manner in which Protestants were persecuted in
+Spain.  They were debarred from the exercise of their religion from being
+married by Protestant rites, and the common privileges of burial were
+denied them.  He was anxious for Protestant England, lest it should fall
+a victim to Popery.  This fear of Rome was a very real one to Borrow.  He
+marvelled at people’s blindness to the danger that was threatening them,
+and he even went so far as to entreat his friends at Earl Street “to drop
+all petty dissensions and to comport themselves like brothers” against
+their common enemy the Pope.
+
+Unfortunately Borrow had shown to a number of friends one of his letters
+to Mr Brandram dealing with the Seville imprisonment, and had even
+allowed several copies of it to be taken “in order that an incorrect
+account of the affair might not get abroad.”  The result was an article
+in a London newspaper containing remarks to the disparagement of other
+workers for the Gospel in Spain.  Borrow disavowed all knowledge of these
+observations.
+
+    “I am not ashamed of the Methodists of Cadiz,” he assures Mr
+    Brandram, “their conduct in many respects does them honor, nor do I
+    accuse any one of fanaticism amongst our dear and worthy friends; but
+    I cannot answer for the tittle-tattle of Madrid.  Far be it from me
+    to reflect upon any one, I am but too well aware of my own
+    multitudinous imperfections and follies.” {320}
+
+There is nothing more mysterious in Borrow’s life than his years of
+friendship with Mrs Clarke.  He was never a woman’s man, but Mary Clarke
+seems to have awakened in him a very sincere regard.  The ménage at
+Seville was a curious one, and both Borrow and Mrs Clarke should have
+seen that it was calculated to make people talk.  There may have been a
+tacit understanding between them.  Everything connected with their
+relations and courtship is very mysterious.  Dr Knapp is scarcely just to
+Borrow or gracious to the woman he married, when he implies that it was
+merely a business arrangement on both sides.  Mrs Clarke’s affairs
+required a man’s hand to administer them, and Borrow was prepared to give
+the man’s hand in exchange for an income.  The engagement could scarcely
+have taken place in the middle of November 1839, as Dr Knapp states, for
+on the day of his arrest at Seville (24th Nov.) Borrow wrote:—
+
+    MY DEAR MRS CLARKE,—Do not be alarmed, but I am at present in the
+    prison, to which place the _Alcalde_ del Barrio conducted me when I
+    asked him to sign the Passport.  If Phelipe is not already gone to
+    the Consul, let Henrietta go now and show him this letter.  When I
+    asked the fellow his motives for not signing the Passport, he said if
+    I did not go away he would carry me to prison.  I dared him to do so,
+    as I had done nothing; whereupon he led me here.—Yours truly,
+
+                                                            GEORGE BORROW.
+
+This is obviously not the letter of a man recently engaged to the woman
+who is to become his wife.  On the other hand, Borrow may have been
+writing merely for the Consul’s eye.
+
+On hearing the news of the engagement old Mrs Borrow wrote:—
+
+    “I am not surprised, my dear Mrs Clarke, at what you tell me, though
+    I knew nothing of it.  It put me in mind of the Revd. Flethers; you
+    know they took time to consider.  So far all is well.  I shall now
+    resign him to your care, and may you love and cherish him as much as
+    I have done.  I hope and trust that each will try to make the other
+    happy.  You will always have my prayers and best wishes.  Give my
+    kind love to dear George and tell him he is never out of my thoughts.
+    I have much to say, but I cannot write.  I shall be glad to see you
+    all safe and well.  Give my love to Henrietta; tell her _I_ can sing
+    ‘Gaily the Troubadour’; I only want the ‘guitar.’ {321} God bless you
+    all.”
+
+There is no doubt that a very strong friendship had existed between Mrs
+Clarke and Borrow during the whole time that he had been associated with
+the Bible Society.  She it was who had been indirectly responsible for
+his introduction to Earl Street.  It is idle to speculate what it was
+that led Mrs Clarke to select Seville as the place to which to fly from
+her enemies.  There is, however, a marked significance in old Mrs
+Borrow’s words, “I am not surprised, my dear Mrs Clarke, at what you tell
+me.”  Whatever his mother may have seen, there appears to have been no
+thought of marriage in Borrow’s mind when, on 29th September 1839, he
+wrote to Mr Brandram telling him of his wish to visit “China or
+particular parts of Africa.”
+
+Borrow paid many tributes to his wife, not only in his letters, but in
+print, every one of which she seems thoroughly to have merited.  “Of my
+wife,” he writes, {322}  “I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon
+of wives—can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best
+woman of business in East Anglia.”  On another occasion he praises her
+for more general qualities, when he compares her to the good wife of the
+Triad, the perfect woman endowed with all the feminine virtues.  His wife
+and “old Hen.” (Henrietta) were his “two loved ones,” and he subsequently
+shows in a score of ways how much they had become part of his life.
+
+After his return to Seville, early in January, Borrow proceeded to get
+his “papers into some order.”  There seems no doubt that this meant
+preparing _The Zincali_ for publication.  In the excitement and
+enthusiasm of authorship, and the pleasant company of Mrs and Miss
+Clarke, he seems to have been divinely unconscious that he was under
+orders to proceed home.  Week after week passed without news of their
+Agent in Spain reaching Earl Street, and the Officials and Committee of
+the Bible Society became troubled to account for his non-appearance.  The
+last letter from him had been received on 13th January.  Early in March
+Mr Jackson wrote to Mr Brackenbury asking for news of him.  A letter to
+Mr Williams at Seville was enclosed, which Mr Brackenbury had
+discretionary powers to withhold if he were able to supply the
+information himself.  Two letters that Borrow had addressed to the
+Society it appears had gone astray, and as “one steamer . . . arrived
+after another and yet no news from Mr Borrow,” some apprehension began to
+manifest itself lest misfortune had befallen him.  On the other hand,
+Borrow had heard nothing from the Society for five months, the long
+silence making him “very, very unhappy.”
+
+In reply to Mr Brandram’s letter Borrow wrote:—
+
+    “I did not return to England immediately after my departure from
+    Madrid for several reasons.  First, there was my affair with the
+    _Alcalde_ still pending; second, I wished to get my papers into some
+    order; third, I wished to effect a little more in the cause, though
+    not in the way of distribution, as I have no books: moreover the
+    house in which I resided was paid for and I was unwilling altogether
+    to lose the money; I likewise dreaded an English winter, for I have
+    lately been subjected to attacks, whether of gout or rheumatism I
+    know not, which I believe were brought on by sitting, standing and
+    sleeping in damp places during my wanderings in Spain.  The _Alcalde_
+    has lately been turned out of his situation, but I believe more on
+    account of his being a Carlist than for his behaviour to me; that,
+    however, is of little consequence, as I have long forgotten the
+    affair.” {323a}
+
+There was no longer any reason for delay; the English winter was over, he
+had one book nearly ready for publication and two others in a state of
+forwardness.
+
+    “I embark on the third of next month [April],” he continued, “and you
+    will probably see me by the 16th.  I wish very much to spend the
+    remaining years of my life in the northern parts of China, as I think
+    I have a call for those regions, and shall endeavour by every
+    honourable means to effect my purpose.” {323b}
+
+These words would seem to imply that his marriage with Mrs Clarke was by
+no means decided upon at the date he wrote, although during the previous
+month he had been in correspondence with Mr Brackenbury regarding
+Protestants in Spain being debarred from marrying.  It is inconceivable
+that Mrs Clarke and her daughter contemplated living in the North of
+China; and equally unlikely that Mrs Clarke would marry a potential
+“absentee landlord,” or one who frankly confessed “I hope yet to die in
+the cause of my Redeemer.”
+
+Sidi Habismilk had at first presented a grave problem; but Mr
+Brackenbury, who secured the passages on the steamer, arranged also for
+the Arab to be slung aboard the Steam-Packet.  On 3rd April the whole
+party, including Hayim Ben Attar and Sidi Habismilk, boarded the _Royal
+Adelaide_ bound for London.
+
+Borrow never forgave Spain for its treatment of him, although some of the
+happiest years of his life had been spent there.  “The Spaniards are a
+stupid, ungrateful set of ruffians,” he afterwards wrote, “and are
+utterly incapable of appreciating generosity or forbearance.”  He piled
+up invective upon the unfortunate country.  It was “the chosen land of
+the two fiends—assassination and murder,” where avarice and envy were the
+prevailing passions.  It was the “country of error”; yet at the same time
+“the land of extraordinary characters.”  As he saw its shores sinking
+beneath the horizon, he was mercifully denied the knowledge that never
+again was he to be so happily occupied as during the five years he had
+spent upon its soil distributing the Scriptures, and using a British
+Minister as a two-edged sword.
+
+The party arrived in London on 16th April and put up at the Spread Eagle
+in Gracechurch Street.  On 23rd April, at St Peter’s Church in Cornhill,
+the wedding took place.  There were present as witnesses only Henrietta
+Clarke and John Pilgrim, the Norwich solicitor.  In the Register the
+names appear as:—
+
+    “George Henry Borrow—of full age—bachelor—gentleman—of the City of
+    Norwich—son of Thomas Borrow—Captain in the Army.
+
+    “Mary Clarke—of full age—widow—of Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch
+    Street—daughter of Edmund Skepper—Esquire.”
+
+On 2nd May an announcement of the marriage appeared in _The Norfolk
+Chronicle_.  A few days later the party left for Oulton Cottage, and
+Borrow became a landed proprietor on a small scale in his much-loved East
+Anglia.
+
+On 21st April Mr Brandram had written to Borrow the following letter:—
+
+    MY DEAR FRIEND,—Your later communications have been referred to our
+    Sub-Committee for General Purposes.  After what you said yesterday in
+    the Committee, I am hardly aware that anything can arise out of them.
+    The door seems shut.  The Sub-Committee meet on Friday.  Will you
+    wish to make any communications to them as to any ulterior views that
+    may have occurred to yourself?  I do not myself at present see any
+    sphere open to which your services in connection with our Society can
+    be transferred. . . . With best wishes—Believe me—Yours truly,
+
+                                                              A. BRANDRAM.
+
+On 24th April, the day after Borrow’s wedding, the Sub-Committee duly met
+and
+
+    “Resolved that, upon mature consideration, it does not appear to this
+    Sub-Committee that there is, at present, any opening for employing Mr
+    Borrow beneficially as an Agent of the Society . . . and that it be
+    recommended to the General Committee that the salary of Mr Borrow be
+    paid up to the 10th June next.”
+
+The Bible Society’s valediction, which appeared in the Thirty-Sixth
+Annual Report, read:—
+
+    “G. Borrow, Esq., one of the gentlemen referred to in former Reports
+    as having so zealously exerted themselves on behalf of Spain, has
+    just returned home, hopeless of further attempts at present to
+    distribute the Scriptures in that country.  Mr B. has succeeded, by
+    almost incredible pains, and at no small cost and hazard, in selling
+    during his last visit a few hundred copies of the Bible, and most
+    that remained of the edition of the New Testament printed in Madrid.”
+
+Thus ended George Borrow’s activities on behalf of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, and incidentally the seven happiest and most
+active years of his life.  On the whole the association had been
+honourable to all concerned.  There had been moments of irritation and
+mistakes on both sides.  It would be foolish to accuse the Society of
+deliberately planting obstacles in the path of its own agent; but the
+unfortunate championing of Lieutenant Graydon was the result of a very
+grave error of judgment.  Borrow had no personal friends among the
+Committee, to whom the impetuous zeal of Graydon was more picturesque
+than the grave and deliberate caution of Borrow.  The Officials and
+Committee alike saw in Graydon the ideal Reformer, rushing precipitately
+towards martyrdom, exposing Anti-Christ as he ran.  Had Borrow been
+content to allow others to plead his cause, the history of his relations
+with the Bible Society would, in all probability, have been different.
+He felt himself a grievously injured man, who had suffered from what he
+considered to be the insane antics of another, and he was determined that
+Earl Street should know it.  On the other hand, Mr Brandram does not
+appear to have understood Borrow.  He made no attempt to humour him, to
+praise him for what he had done and the way in which he had done it.
+Praise was meat and drink to Borrow; it compensated him for what he had
+endured and encouraged him to further effort.  He hungered for it, and
+when it did not come he grew discouraged and thought that those who
+employed him were not conscious of what he was suffering.  Hence the long
+accounts of what he had undergone for the Gospel’s sake.
+
+During his six years in Spain he had distributed nearly 5000 copies of
+the New Testament and 500 Bibles, also some hundreds of the Basque and
+Gypsy Gospel of St Luke.  These figures seem insignificant beside those
+of Lieut. Graydon, who, on one occasion, sold as many as 1082 volumes in
+fourteen days, and in two years printed 13,000 Testaments and 3000
+Bibles, distributing the larger part of them.  During the year 1837 he
+circulated altogether between five and six thousand books.  But there was
+no comparison between the work of the two men.  Graydon had kept to the
+towns and cities on the south coast; Borrow’s methods were different.  He
+circulated his books largely among villages and hamlets, where the
+population was sparse and the opportunities of distribution small.  He
+had gone out into the highways, risking his life at every turn,
+penetrating into bandit-infested provinces in the throes of civil war,
+suffering incredible hardships and fatigues and, never sparing himself.
+Both men were earnest and eager; but the Bible Society favoured the wrong
+man—at least for its purposes.  But for Lieut. Graydon, Borrow would in
+all probability have gone to China, and what a book he would have
+written, at least what letters, about the sealed East!
+
+Borrow, however, had nothing to complain of.  He had found occupation
+when he badly needed it, which indirectly was to bring him fame.  He had
+been well paid for his services (during the seven years of his employment
+he drew some £2300 in salary and expenses), his £200 a year and expenses
+(in Spain) comparing very favourably with Mr Brandram’s £300 a year.
+
+He was loyal to the Bible Society, both in word and thought.  He
+honourably kept to himself the story of the Graydon dispute.  He spoke of
+the Society with enthusiasm, exclaiming, “Oh! the blood glows in his
+veins! oh! the marrow awakes in his old bones when he thinks of what he
+accomplished in Spain in the cause of religion and civilisation with the
+colours of that society in his hat.” {328a}  In spite of the
+misunderstandings and the rebukes he could write fourteen years later
+that he “bade it adieu with feelings of love and admiration.” {328b}  He
+“had done with Spain for ever, after doing for her all that lay in the
+power of a lone man, who had never in this world anything to depend upon,
+but God and his own slight strength.” {328c}  In the preface to _The
+Bible in Spain_ he pays a handsome tribute to both Rule and Graydon, thus
+showing that although he was a good hater, he could be magnanimous.
+
+It has been stated that, during a portion of his association with the
+Bible Society, Borrow acted as a foreign correspondent for _The Morning
+Herald_.  Dr Knapp has very satisfactorily disproved the statement, which
+the Rev. Wentworth Webster received from the Marqués de Santa Coloma.
+Either the Marqués or Mr Webster is responsible for the statement that
+Borrow was wrecked, instead of nearly wrecked, off Cape Finisterre.  As
+the Marqués was a passenger on the boat, the mistake must be ascribed to
+Mr Webster.  The further statement that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona
+by Quesada is scarcely more credible than that about the wreck.  His
+imprisonment could not very well have taken place, as stated, in 1837–9,
+because General Quesada was killed in 1836.  Mention is made of this
+foreign correspondent rumour only because it has been printed and
+reprinted.  It may be that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona during the
+“Veiled Period”; there is certainly one imprisonment (according to his
+own statement) unaccounted for.  It is curious how the fact first became
+impressed upon the Marqués’ mind, unless he had heard it from Borrow.  It
+is quite likely that he confused the date.
+
+It would be interesting to identify the two men whom Borrow describes in
+_Lavengro_ as being at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl Street,
+when he sought to exchange for a Bible the old Apple-woman’s copy of
+_Moll Flanders_.  “One was dressed in brown,” he writes, “and the other
+was dressed in black; both were tall men—he who was dressed in brown was
+thin, and had a particularly ill-natured countenance; the man dressed in
+black was bulky, his features were noble, but they were those of a lion.”
+{329a}  Again, in _The Romany Rye_, he makes the man in black say with
+reference to the Bible Society:—“There is one fellow amongst them for
+whom we entertain a particular aversion: a big, burly parson, with the
+face of a lion, the voice of a buffalo, and a fist like a sledge-hammer.”
+{329b}  Who these two worthies were it is impossible to say with any
+degree of certainty.  Caroline Fox describes Andrew Brandram no further
+than that he “appeared before us once more with his shaggy eyebrows.”
+{329c}  Mr Brandram was not thin and his countenance was not ill-natured.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+MAY 1840–MARCH 1841
+
+
+EARLY in May, Borrow, his wife and step-daughter left London to take up
+their residence at Oulton, in Suffolk.  After years of wandering and
+vagabondage he was to settle down as a landed proprietor.  His income, or
+rather his wife’s, amounted to £450 per annum, and he must have saved a
+considerable sum out of the £2300 he had drawn from the Bible Society, as
+his mother appears to have regarded the amounts he had sent to her as
+held in trust.  He was therefore able to instal himself, Sidi Habismilk
+and the Jew of Fez upon his wife’s small estate, with every prospect of
+enjoying a period of comfort and rest after his many years of wandering
+and adventure.
+
+         [Picture: Oulton Cottage.  Photo. C. Wilson, Lowestroft]
+
+Oulton Cottage was ideally situated on the margin of the Broad.  It was a
+one-storied building, with a dormer-attic above, hanging “over a lonely
+lake covered with wild fowl, and girt with dark firs, through which the
+wind sighs sadly. {330a}  A regular Patmos, an _ultima Thule_; placed in
+an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the-way portion of England.”
+{330b}  A few yards from the water’s edge stood the famous octagonal
+Summer-house that Borrow made his study.  Here he kept his books, a
+veritable “polyglot gentleman’s” library, consisting of such literary
+“tools” as a Lav-engro might be expected to possess.  There were also
+books of travel and adventure, some chairs, a lounge and a table; whilst
+behind the door hung the sword and regimental coat of the sleeping
+warrior to whom his younger son had been an affliction of the spirit,
+because his mind pursued paths that appeared so strangely perilous.
+
+Here in this Summer-house Borrow wrote his books.  Here when “sickness
+was in the land, and the face of nature was overcast—heavy rain-clouds
+swam in the heavens—the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround
+the lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so
+quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated,” Borrow shouted,
+“‘Bring lights hither, O Hayim Ben Attar, son of the miracle!’  And the
+Jew of Fez brought in the lights,” {331a} and his master commenced
+writing a book that was to make him famous.  When tired of writing, he
+would sometimes sing “strange words in a stentorian voice, while
+passers-by on the lake would stop to listen with astonishment and
+curiosity to the singular sounds.” {331b}
+
+Life at Oulton Cottage was delightfully simple.  Borrow was a good host.
+“I am rather hospitable than otherwise,” {331c} he wrote, and thoroughly
+disliked anything in the nature of meanness.  There was always a bottle
+of wine of a rare vintage for the honoured guest.  Sometimes the host
+himself would hasten away to the little Summer-house by the side of the
+Broad to muse, his eyes fixed upon the military coat and sword, or to
+scribble upon scraps of paper that, later, were to be transcribed by Mrs
+Borrow.  Borrow would spend his evenings with his wife and Henrietta,
+generally in reading until bedtime.
+
+In the Norwich days Borrow had formed an acquaintance with another
+articled-clerk named Harvey (probably one of his colleagues at Tuck’s
+Court).  They had kindred tastes, in particular a love of the open air
+and vigorous exercise.  After settling at Oulton, the Borrows and the
+Harveys (then living at Bury St Edmunds) became very intimate, and
+frequently visited each other.  Elizabeth Harvey, the daughter of
+Borrow’s contemporary, has given an extremely interesting account of the
+home life of the Borrows.  She has described how sometimes Borrow would
+sing one of his Romany songs, “shake his fist at me and look quite wild.
+Then he would ask: ‘Aren’t you afraid of me?’  ‘No, not at all,’ I would
+say.  Then he would look just as gentle and kind, and say, ‘God bless
+you, I would not hurt a hair of your head.’” {332a}
+
+Miss Harvey has also given us many glimpses into Borrow’s character.  “He
+was very fond of ghost stories,” she writes, “and believed in the
+supernatural.” {332b}  He enjoyed music of a lively description, one of
+his favourite compositions being the well-known “Redowa” polka, which he
+would frequently ask to have played to him again.
+
+As an eater Borrow was very moderate, he “took very little breakfast but
+ate a very great quantity of dinner, and then had only a draught of cold
+water before going to bed . . .  He was very temperate and would eat what
+was set before him, often not thinking of what he was doing, and he never
+refused what was offered him.” {332c}  On one occasion when he was dining
+with the Harveys, young Harvey, seeing Borrow engrossed in telling of his
+travels, handed him dish after dish in rapid succession, from all of
+which he helped himself, entirely unconscious of what he was doing.
+Finally his plate was full to overflowing, perceiving which he became
+very angry, and it was some time before he could be appeased.  A
+practical joke made no appeal to him. {332d}
+
+Elizabeth Harvey also tells how, when a cousin of hers was staying at
+Cromer, the landlady went to her one day and said, “O, Miss, there’s such
+a curious gentleman been.  I don’t know what to think of him, I asked him
+what he would like for dinner, and he said, ‘Give me a piece of flesh.’”
+“What sort of gentleman was it?” enquired the cousin, and on hearing the
+description recognised George Borrow, and explained that the strange
+visitor merely wanted a rump-steak, a favourite dish with him.
+
+As he did not shoot or hunt, he obtained exercise either by riding or
+walking.  At times “he suffered from sleeplessness, when he would get up
+and walk to Norwich (25 miles) and return the next night recovered”
+{333a} yet Borrow has said that “he always had the health of an
+elephant.”
+
+He was proud of the Church and took great pleasure in showing to his
+friends the brasses it contained, including one bearing an effigy of Sir
+John Fastolf, whom he considered to be the original of Falstaff.  He was
+also “very fond of his trees.  He quite fretted if by some mischance he
+lost one.” {333b}
+
+His methods with the country people round Oulton were calculated to earn
+for him a reputation for queerness.  “Curiosity is the leading feature of
+my character” {333c} he confessed, and the East Anglian looks upon
+curiosity in others with marked suspicion.  It was impossible for Borrow
+to walk far without getting into conversation with someone or other.  He
+delighted in getting people to tell their histories and experiences;
+“when they used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or Suffolk) country men,
+he would say ‘Why, that’s a Danish word.’  By and bye the man would use
+another peculiar expression, ‘Why, that’s Saxon’; a little further on
+another, ‘Why, that’s French.’  And he would add, ‘Why, what a wonderful
+man you are to speak so many languages.’  One man got very angry, but Mr
+Borrow was quite unconscious that he had given any offence.” {334a}
+
+He took pleasure in puzzling people about languages.  Elizabeth Harvey
+tells {334b} how he once put a book before her telling her to read it,
+and on her saying she could not, he replied, “You ought; it’s your own
+language.”  The volume was written in Saxon.  Yet for all this he hated
+to hear foreign words introduced into conversation.  When he heard such
+adulterations of the English language he would exclaim jocosely, “What’s
+that, trying to come over me with strange languages?” {334c}
+
+Borrow’s first thoughts on settling down were of literature.  He had
+material for several books, as he had informed Mr Brandram.  Putting
+aside, at least for the present, the translations of the ballads and
+songs, he devoted himself to preparing for the press a book upon the
+Spanish Gypsies.  During the five years spent in Spain he had gathered
+together much material.  He had made notes in queer places under strange
+and curious conditions, “in moments snatched from more important
+pursuits—chiefly in _ventas_ and _posadás_” {334d}—whilst engaged in
+distributing the Gospel.  It was a book of facts that he meant to write,
+not theories, and if he sometimes fostered error, it was because at the
+moment it was his conception of truth.  Very little remained to do to the
+manuscript.  Mrs. Borrow had performed her share of the work in making a
+fair copy for the printer.  Borrow’s subsequent remark that the
+manuscript “was written by a country amanuensis and probably contains
+many ridiculous errata,” was scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to
+have comprehended so well the first principle of wifely duty to an
+illustrious and, it must be admitted, autocratic genius—viz.,
+self-extinction.
+
+“No man could endure a clever wife,” Borrow once confided to the
+unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he had married one
+nevertheless.  No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of
+inspiration could have lived in intimate association with so capricious
+and masterful a man as George Borrow.  John Hasfeldt, in sending his
+congratulations, had seemed to suggest that Borrow was one of those
+abstruse works of nature that require close and constant study.  “When
+your wife thoroughly knows you,” he wrote, “she will smooth the wrinkles
+on your brow and you will be so cheerful and happy that your grey hair
+will turn black again.”
+
+“In November 1840 a tall athletic gentleman in black called upon Mr
+Murray, offering a manuscript for perusal and publication.” {335a}
+Fifteen years before, the same “tall athletic gentleman” had called a
+dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of Northern and
+Welsh ballads, but “never could see Glorious John.”  Borrow had
+determined to make another attempt to see John Murray, and this time he
+was successful.  He submitted the manuscript of _The Zincali_, which
+Murray sent to Richard Ford {335b} that he might pronounce upon it and
+its possibilities.  “I have made acquaintance,” Ford wrote to H. U.
+Addington, 14th Jan. 1841, “with an extraordinary fellow, _George
+Borrow_, who went out to Spain to convert the _gypsies_.  He is about to
+publish his failure, and a curious book it will be.  It was submitted to
+my perusal by the hesitating Murray.” {335c}  On Ford’s advice the book
+was accepted for publication, it being arranged that author and publisher
+should share the profits equally between them.
+
+On 17th April 1841 there appeared in two volumes _The Zincali_; {336a}
+_or_, _An Account of the Gypsies in Spain_.  _With an original Collection
+of their Songs and Poetry_, _and a copious Dictionary of their Language_.
+By George Borrow, late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in
+Spain.  It was dedicated to the Earl of Clarendon, G.C.B. (Sir George
+Villiers), in “remembrance of the many obligations under which your
+Lordship has placed me, by your energetic and effectual interference in
+time of need.”  The first edition of 750 copies sufficed to meet the
+demand of two years.  Ford, however, wrote to Murray: “The book has
+created a great sensation far and wide.  I was sure it would, and I hope
+you think that when I read the MS. my opinion and advice were sound.”
+{336b}
+
+     [Picture: Richard Ford.  From the painting by Antonio Chatelain]
+
+_The Zincali_ had been begun at Badajos with the Romany songs or rhymes
+copied down as recited by his gypsy friends.  To these he had
+subsequently added, being assisted by a French courier, Juan Antonio
+Bailly, who translated the songs into Spanish.  These translations were
+originally intended to be published in a separate work, as was the
+Vocabulary, which forms part of _The Zincali_.  Had Borrow sought to make
+two separate works of the “Songs” and “Vocabulary,” there is very
+considerable doubt if they would have fared any better than the
+everlasting Ab Gwilym; but either with inspiration, or acting on some
+one’s wise counsel, he determined to subordinate them to an account of
+the Spanish Gypsies.
+
+As a piece of bookmaking _The Zincali_ is by no means notable.  Borrow
+himself refers to it (page 354) as “this strange wandering book of mine.”
+In construction it savours rather of the method by which it was
+originally inspired; but for all that it is fascinating reading,
+saturated with the atmosphere of vagabondage and the gypsy encampment.
+It was not necessarily a book for the scholar and the philologist, many
+of whom scorned it on account of its rather obvious carelessnesses and
+inaccuracies.  Borrow was not a writer of academic books.  He lacked the
+instinct for research which alone insures accuracy.
+
+It was particularly appropriate that Borrow’s first book should be about
+the Gypsies, who had always exercised so strange an attraction for him
+that he could not remember the time “when the very name of Gypsy did not
+awaken within me feelings hard to be described.” {337a}  His was not
+merely an interest in their strange language, their traditions, their
+folk-lore; it was something nearer and closer to the people themselves.
+They excited his curiosity, he envied their mode of life, admired their
+clannishness, delighted in their primitive customs.  Their persistence in
+warring against the gentile appealed strongly to his instinctive hatred
+of “gentility nonsense”; and perhaps more than anything else, he envied
+them the stars and the sun and the wind on the heath.
+
+“Romany matters have always had a peculiar interest for me,” {337b} he
+affirms over and over again in different words, and he never lost an
+opportunity of joining a party of gypsies round their camp-fire.  His
+knowledge of the Romany people was not acquired from books.  Apparently
+he had read very few of the many works dealing with the mysterious race
+he had singled out for his particular attention.  With characteristic
+assurance he makes the sweeping assertion that “all the books which have
+been published concerning them [the Gypsies] have been written by those
+who have introduced themselves into their society for a few hours, and
+from what they have seen or heard consider themselves competent to give
+the world an idea of the manners and customs of the mysterious Romany.”
+{338a}
+
+His attitude towards the race is curious.  He recognised the Gypsies as
+liars, rogues, cheats, vagabonds, in short as the incarnation of all the
+vices; yet their fascination for him in no way diminished.  He could mix
+with them, as with other vagabonds, and not become harmed by their broad
+views upon personal property, or their hundred and one tricks and
+dishonesties.  He was a changed man when in their company, losing all
+that constraint that marked his intercourse with people of his own class.
+
+He had laboured hard to bring the light of the Gospel into their lives.
+He made them translate for him the Scriptures into their tongue; but it
+was the novelty of the situation, aided by the glass of Malaga wine he
+gave them, not the beauty of the Gospel of St Luke, that aroused their
+interest and enthusiasm.  To this, Borrow’s own eyes were open.  “They
+listened with admiration,” he says; “but, alas! not of the truths, the
+eternal truths, I was telling them, but to find that their broken jargon
+could be written and read.” {338b}
+
+On one occasion, having refused to one of his congregation the loan of
+two _barias_ (ounces of gold), he proceeded to read to the whole assembly
+instead the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed in Romany.  Happening
+to glance up, he found not a gypsy in the room, but squinted, “the Gypsy
+fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted worst of all.  Such are
+Gypsies.” {338c}
+
+[Picture: John Murray the Second.  The “Glorious John” of Lavengro.  From
+ a portrait by H. W. Pickersgill, R.A., in the possession of Mr. Murray]
+
+It was indeed the novelty that appealed to them.  They greeted with a
+shout of exultation the reading aloud a translation that they themselves
+had dictated; but they remained unmoved by the Christian teaching it
+contained.  For all these discouragements Borrow persisted, and perhaps
+none of his efforts in Spain produced less result than this “attempt to
+enlighten the minds of the Gitanos on the subject of religion.” {339}
+
+If the Gypsies were all that is evil, judged by conventional standards,
+they at least loyally stood by each other in the face of a common foe.
+Borrow knew Ambrose Petulengro to be a liar, a thief, in fact most things
+that it is desirable a man should not be; yet he was equally sure that
+under no circumstances would he forsake a friend to whom he stood
+pledged.  There seems to be little doubt that Borrow’s fame with the
+Gypsies spread throughout England and the Continent.  “Everybody as ever
+see’d the white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him.”
+
+Borrow was by no means the first Romany Rye.  From Andrew Boorde
+(15th-16th Century) down the centuries they are to be found, even to our
+day, in the persons of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton and Mr John Sampson; but
+Borrow was the first to bring the cult of Gypsyism into popularity.
+Before he wrote, the general view of Gypsies was that they were
+uncomfortable people who robbed the clothes-lines and hen-roosts, told
+fortunes and incidentally intimidated the housewife if unprotected by man
+or dog.  Borrow changed all this.  The suspicion remained, so strongly in
+fact that he himself was looked at askance for consorting with such
+vagabonds; but with the suspicion was more than a spice of interest, and
+the Gypsies became epitomised and immortalised in the person of Jasper
+Petulengro.  Borrow’s Gypsyism was as unscientific as his “philology.”
+Their language, their origin he commented on without first acquainting
+himself with the literature that had gathered round their name.  Francis
+Hindes Groome, “that perfect scholar-gypsy and gypsy-scholar,” wrote:—
+
+    “The meagreness of his knowledge of the Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out
+    in his _Word Book of the Romany_ (1874); there must have been over a
+    dozen Englishmen who have known it far better than he.  For his
+    Spanish-Gypsy vocabulary in _The Zincali_ he certainly drew largely
+    either on Richard Bright’s _Travels through Lower Hungary_ or on
+    Bright’s Spanish authority, whatever that may have been.  His
+    knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary,
+    of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically
+    _nil_.  And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on
+    the Gypsies.  In _Lavengro_ and, to a less degree, in its sequel,
+    _The Romany Rye_, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that
+    is totally wanting in the works—mainly philological—of Pott, Liebich,
+    Paspati, Miklosich, and their confrères.” {340a}
+
+Groome was by no means partial to Borrow, as a matter of fact he openly
+taxed him {340b} with drawing upon Bright’s _Travels in Hungary_
+(Edinburgh 1819) for the Spanish-Romany Vocabulary, and was strong in his
+denunciation of him as a _poseur_.
+
+Borrow scorned book-learning.  Writing to John Murray, Junr. (21st Jan.
+1843), about _The Bible in Spain_, he says, “I was conscious that there
+was vitality in the book and knew that it must sell.  I read nothing and
+drew entirely from my own well.  I have long been tired of books; I have
+had enough of them,” {340c} he wrote later, and this, taken in
+conjunction with another sentence, viz., “My favourite, I might say my
+only study, is man,” {340d} explains not only Borrow’s Gypsyism, but also
+his casual philology.  Languages he mostly learned that he might know
+men.  In youth he read—he had to do something during the long office
+hours, and he read Danish and Welsh literature; but he did not trouble
+himself much with the literary wealth of other countries, beyond dipping
+into it.  He had a brain of his own, and preferred to form theories from
+the knowledge he had acquired first hand, a most excellent thing for a
+man of the nature of George Borrow, but scarcely calculated to advance
+learning.  He hated anything academic.
+
+    “I cannot help thinking,” he wrote, “that it was fortunate for
+    myself, who am, to a certain extent, a philologist, that with me the
+    pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of horses .
+    . .  I might, otherwise, have become a mere philologist; one of those
+    beings who toil night and day in culling useless words for some _opus
+    magnum_ which Murray will never publish and nobody ever read—beings
+    without enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a generous steed,
+    cannot detect a good point in Pegasus himself.” {341}
+
+This quotation clearly explains Borrow’s attitude towards philology.  As
+he told the _émigré_ priest, he hoped to become something more than a
+philologist.
+
+There was nothing in the sale of _The Zincali_ to encourage Borrow to
+proceed with the other books he had partially prepared.  Nearly seven
+weeks after publication, scarcely three hundred copies had been sold.  In
+the spring of the following year (18th March) John Murray wrote: “The
+sale of the book has not amounted to much since the first publication;
+but in recompense for this the Yankees have printed two editions, one for
+twenty pence _complete_.”  As Borrow did not benefit from the sale of
+American editions, the news was not quite so comforting as it would have
+been had it referred to the English issue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+APRIL 1841–MARCH 1844
+
+
+DURING his wanderings in Portugal and Spain Borrow had carried out his
+intention of keeping a journal, from which on several occasions he sent
+transcriptions to Earl Street instead of recapitulating in his letters
+the adventures that befell him.  Many of his letters went astray, which
+is not strange considering the state of the country.  The letters and
+reports that Borrow wrote to the Bible Society, which still exist, may be
+roughly divided as follows:—
+
+From his introduction until the end of the Russian               17.50
+expedition
+Used for _The Bible in Spain_                                    30.00
+Others written during the Spanish and Portuguese periods         52.50
+and not used for _The Bible in Spain_
+                                                                100.00
+
+Thirty per cent, of the whole number of the letters was all that Borrow
+used for _The Bible in Spain_.  In addition he had his Journal, and from
+these two sources he obtained all the material he required for the book
+that was to electrify the religious reading-public and make famous its
+writer.
+
+Between Borrow and Ford a warm friendship had sprung up, and many letters
+passed between them.  Ford, who was busily engaged upon his Hand-Book,
+sought Borrow’s advice upon a number of points, in particular about Gypsy
+matters.  There was something of the same atmosphere in his letters as in
+those of John Hasfeldt: a frank, affectionate interest in Borrow and what
+affected him that it was impossible to resent.  “How I wish you had given
+us more about yourself,” he wrote to Borrow _apropos_ of _The Zincali_,
+“instead of the extracts from those blunder-headed old Spaniards, who
+knew nothing about Gypsies!  I shall give you . . . a hint to publish
+your whole adventures for the last twenty years.”  But Hayim Ben-Attar,
+son of the miracle, had already brought lights, and _The Bible in Spain_
+had been begun.
+
+Ford’s counsel was invariably sound and sane.  He advised _El Gitano_, as
+he sometimes called Borrow, “to avoid Spanish historians and _poetry_
+like Prussic acid; to stick to himself, his biography and queer
+adventures,” {343} to all of which Borrow promised obedience.  Ford wrote
+to Borrow (Feb. 1841) suggesting that _The Bible in Spain_ should be what
+it actually was.  “I am delighted to hear,” he wrote, “that you meditate
+giving us your travels in Spain.  The more odd personal adventures the
+better, and still more so if _dramatic_; that is, giving the exact
+conversations.”
+
+In June 1841 Borrow received from Earl Street the originals of his
+letters to the Bible Society, and when he was eventually called upon to
+return them he retained a number, either through carelessness or by
+design.  It was evidently understood that there should be no reference to
+any contentious matters.  Borrow set to work with the aid of his “Country
+Amanuensis” to transcribe such portions of the correspondence as he
+required.  The work proceeded slowly.
+
+    “I still scribble occasionally for want of something better to do,”
+    he informs John Murray, Junr. (23rd Aug. 1841), and continues: “ . .
+    . A queer book will be this same _Bible in Spain_, containing all my
+    queer adventures in that queer country whilst engaged in distributing
+    the Gospel, but neither learning, nor disquisitions, fine writing, or
+    poetry.  A book with such a title and of this description can
+    scarcely fail of success.”
+
+Through a dreary summer and autumn he wrote on complaining that there was
+“scarcely a gleam of sunshine.”  Remote from the world “with not the
+least idea of what is going on save in my immediate neighbourhood,” he
+wrote merely to kill time.  Such an existence was, to the last degree,
+uncongenial to a man who for years had been accustomed to sunshine and a
+life full of incident and adventure.
+
+He grew restless and ill-content.  He had been as free as the wind, with
+occupation for brain and body.  He was now, like Achilles, brooding in
+his tent, and over his mind there fell a shadow of unrest.  As early as
+July 1841 he had thought of settling in Berlin and devoting himself to
+study.  Hasfeldt suggested Denmark, the land of the Sagas.  Later in the
+same year Africa had presented itself to Borrow as a possible retreat,
+but Ford advised him against it as “the land from which few travellers
+return,” and told him that he had much better go to Seville.  Still later
+Constantinople was considered and then the coast of Barbary.  Into his
+letters there crept a note of querulous complaint.  John Hasfeldt
+besought him to remember how much he had travelled and he would find that
+he had wandered enough, and then he would accustom himself to rest.
+
+The manuscript of _The Bible in Spain_ was completed early in January
+(1842) and despatched to John Murray, who sent it to Richard Ford.  From
+the “reader’s report” it is to be gathered that in addition to the
+manuscript Borrow sent also the letters that he had borrowed from the
+Bible Society.  Ford refers to the story of the man stung to death by
+vipers {344} “in the letter of the 16th August 1837,” and advises that
+“Mr Borrow should introduce it into his narrative.”  He further
+recommends him “to go carefully over the whole of his Letters, as it is
+very probable that other points of interest which they contain may have
+been omitted in the narrative.  Some of the most interesting letters
+relate to journies not given in the MS.”
+
+The work when it reached Ford was apparently in a very rough state.  In
+addition to many mistakes in spelling and grammar, a number of words were
+left blank.  In a vast number of instances short sentences were run
+together.  Mrs Borrow does not appear to have been a very successful
+amanuensis at this period.  Perhaps the most interesting indication of
+how much the manuscript, as first submitted, differed from the published
+work is shown by one of Ford’s criticisms:—
+
+    “In the narrative there are at present two breaks—one from about
+    March 1836 to June 1837 [Chapters XIII.–XX.],—and the other from
+    November 1837 to July 1839 [Chapters XXXVI.–XLIX.]”
+
+This represents a third of the book as finally printed.  Ford objected to
+the sudden ending; but Borrow made no alteration in this respect.  There
+were a number of other suggestions of lesser importance in this admirable
+piece of technical criticism.  Ford disliked Borrow’s striving to create
+an air of mystery as “taking an unwarrantable liberty with the reader”;
+he suggested a map and a short biographical sketch of the author, and
+especially the nature of his connection with the Bible Society.  Finally
+he gives it as his opinion that it is neither necessary nor advisable to
+insert any of his letters to the Bible Society, either in the body of the
+book or as an Appendix.
+
+    “The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of the book,” Ford wrote;
+    “but in several of them the tone of the speakers, of those especially
+    who are in humble life, is too correct and elevated, and therefore
+    out of character.  This takes away from their effect.  I think it
+    would be very advisable that Mr Borrow should go over them with
+    reference to this point, simplifying a few of the turns of expression
+    and introducing a few contractions—_don’ts_, _can’ts_, etc.  This
+    would improve them greatly.”
+
+This criticism applies to all Borrow’s books, in particular to the
+passages dealing with the Gypsies, who, in spite of their love of
+high-sounding words, which they frequently misuse, do not speak with the
+academic precision of Borrow’s works any more than do peers or princes or
+even pedagogues.  Borrow met Ford’s criticism with the assurance that
+“the lower classes in Spain are generally elevated in their style and
+scarcely ever descend to vulgarity.”
+
+Borrow’s first impulse appears to have been to disregard the suggestion
+that the two breaks should be filled in.  On 13th Jan. he wrote to John
+Murray, Junr.:
+
+    “I have received the MS. and likewise your kind letter . . . Pray
+    thank the Gentleman who perused the MS. in my name for his
+    suggestions, which I will attend to.  [By this it is clear that
+    Borrow was not told that Ford was ‘the Gentleman.’]  I find that the
+    MS. was full of trifling mistakes, the fault of my amanuensis; but I
+    am going through it, and within three days shall have made all the
+    necessary corrections.”
+
+No man, of however sanguine a temperament, could seriously contemplate
+the mere transcription of some eighty thousand words, in addition to the
+correction of twice that amount of manuscript, within three days.  Nine
+days later Borrow wrote again to John Murray, Junr.  “We are losing time;
+I have corrected seven hundred _consecutive_ pages of MS., and the
+remaining two hundred will be ready in a fortnight.”  That he had taken
+so long was due to the fact that the greater part of the preceding week
+had been occupied with other and more exciting matters than correcting
+manuscript.
+
+    “During the last week,” he continues, “I have been chiefly engaged in
+    horse-breaking.  A most magnificent animal has found his way to this
+    neighbourhood—a half-bred Arabian—he is at present in the hands of a
+    low horse-dealer; he can be bought for eight pounds, but no person
+    will have him; it is said that he kills everybody who mounts him.  I
+    have been _charming_ him, and have so far succeeded that at present
+    he does not fling me more than once in five minutes.  What a
+    contemptible trade is the Author’s compared to that of the jockey.”
+
+It was not until towards the end of February that the corrected
+manuscript of the first volume of _The Bible in Spain_ reached Albemarle
+Street.  Later and better counsels had apparently prevailed, and Borrow
+had become reconciled to filling up the breaks.
+
+Borrow had other occupations than preparing his manuscript for the
+printer’s hands.  He was ill and overwrought, and small things became
+magnified out of all proportion to their actual importance.  There had
+been a dispute between Borrow’s dog and that of the rector of Oulton, the
+Rev. E. P. Denniss, and as the place was small, the dogs met frequently
+and renewed their feud.  Finally the masters of the animals became
+involved, and an interchange of frigid notes ensued.  It appears that
+Borrow threatened to appeal to the Law and to the Bishop of the Diocese,
+and further seems to have suggested that in the interests of peace, the
+rector might do away with his own dog.  The tone of the correspondence
+may be gathered from the following notes:—{347}
+
+    “Mr Denniss begs to acknowledge Mr Borrow’s note, and is sorry to
+    hear that his dog and Mr Borrow’s have again fallen out.  Mr Denniss
+    learns from his servant that Mr D’s dog was no more in fault than Mr
+    B’s, which latter is of a very quarrelsome and savage disposition, as
+    Mr Denniss can himself testify, as well as many other people.  Mr
+    Denniss regrets that these two animals cannot agree when they meet,
+    but he must decline acceding to Mr Borrow’s somewhat arbitrary
+    demand, conceiving he has as much right to retain a favourite, and in
+    reality very harmless, animal, as Mr Borrow has to keep a dog which
+    has once bitten Mr Denniss himself, and oftentimes attacked him and
+    his family.  Mr Borrow is at perfect liberty to take any measure he
+    may deem advisable, either before the magistrates or the Bishop of
+    the Diocese, as Mr Denniss is quite prepared to meet them.”
+
+    “OULTON RECTORY, 22_nd_ _April_ 1842.”
+
+Borrow’s reply (in the rough draft found among his papers after his
+death) ran:
+
+    “Mr Borrow has received Mr Denniss’ answer to his note.  With respect
+    to Mr Denniss’ recrimination on the quarrelsome disposition of his
+    harmless house-dog, Mr Borrow declines to say anything further.  No
+    one knows better than Mr Denniss the value of his own assertions . .
+    . Circumstances over which Mr Borrow has at present no control will
+    occasionally bring him and his family under the same roof with Mr
+    Denniss; that roof, however, is the roof of the House of God, and the
+    prayers of the Church of England are wholesome from whatever mouth
+    they may proceed.”
+
+Borrow’s most partisan admirer could not excuse the outrage to all
+decency contained in the last paragraph of his note, if indeed it were
+ever sent, in any other way than to plead the writer’s ill-health.
+
+It had been arranged that _The Bible in Spain_ should make its appearance
+in May.  In July Borrow wrote showing some impatience and urging greater
+expedition.
+
+    “What are your intentions with respect to the _Bible in Spain_?” he
+    enquires of John Murray.  “I am a frank man, and frankness never
+    offends me.  Has anybody put you out of conceit with the book? . . .
+    Tell me frankly and I will drink your health in Romany.  Or would the
+    appearance of the _Bible_ on the first of October interfere with the
+    avatar, first or second, of some very wonderful lion or Divinity, to
+    whom George Borrow, who is _neither_, must of course give place?  Be
+    frank with me, my dear Sir, and I will drink your health in Romany
+    and Madeira.”
+
+He goes on to offer to release John Murray from his “share in the
+agreement” and complete the book himself remitting to the printer “the
+necessary money for the purchase of paper.”
+
+To Ford, who had acted as a sort of godfather to _The Bible in Spain_, it
+was “a rum, very rum, mixture of gypsyism, Judaism, and missionary
+adventure,” as he informed John Murray.  He read it “with great delight,”
+and its publisher may “depend upon it that the book will sell, which,
+after all, is the rub.”  He liked the sincerity, the style, the effect of
+incident piling on incident.  It reminded him of _Gil Blas_ with a touch
+of Bunyan.  Borrow is “such a _trump_ . . . as full of meat as an egg,
+and a fresh-laid one.”  All this he tells John Murray, and concludes with
+the assurance, “Borrow will lay you golden eggs, and hatch them after the
+ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and secure him in your coop, and
+beware how any poacher coaxes him with ‘raisins’ or reasons out of the
+Albemarle preserve.” {349}
+
+Ford was never tired of applying new adjectives to Borrow and his work.
+He was “an extraordinary fellow,” “this wild missionary,” “a queer chap.”
+Borrow, on the other hand, cherished a sincere regard for the man who had
+shown such enthusiasm for his work.  To John Murray, Junr., he wrote (4th
+April 1843): “Pray remember me to Ford, who is no humbug and is one of
+the few beings that I care something about.”
+
+Throughout his correspondence with Borrow, Richard Ford showed a judgment
+and an appreciation of what the public would be likely to welcome that
+stamped him as a publishers’ “reader” by instinct.  Such advice as he
+gave to Borrow in the following letter set up a standard of what a book,
+such as Borrow had it in his power to write, actually should be.  It
+unquestionably influenced Borrow:—
+
+                                                       10_th_ _June_ 1842.
+
+    “My advice again and again is to avoid all fine writing, all
+    descriptions of mere scenery and trivial events.  What the world
+    wants are racy, real, genuine scenes, and the more out of the way the
+    better.  Poetry is utterly to be avoided.  If Apollo were to come
+    down from Heaven, John Murray would not take his best manuscript as a
+    gift.  Stick to yourself, to what you have seen, and the people you
+    have mixed with.  The more you give us of odd Jewish people the
+    better . . .  Avoid words, stick to deeds.  Never think of how you
+    express yourself; for good matter must tell, and no fine writing will
+    make bad matter good.  Don’t be afraid that what you may not think
+    good will not be thought so by others.  It often happens just the
+    reverse . . . New facts seen in new and strange countries will please
+    everybody; but old scenery, even Cintra, will not.  We know all about
+    that, and want something that we do not know . . . The grand thing is
+    to be bold and to avoid the common track of the silver paper, silver
+    fork, blue-stocking.  Give us adventure, wild adventure, journals,
+    thirty language book, sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, rambles, and the
+    interior of Spanish prisons—the way you get in, the way you get out.
+    No author has yet given us a Spanish prison.  Enter into the
+    iniquities, the fees, the slang, etc.  It will be a little à la
+    Thurtell, but you see the people like to have it so.  Avoid rant and
+    cant.  Dialogues always tell; they are dramatic and give an air of
+    reality.”
+
+_The Bible in Spain_ was published 10th December, and one of the first
+copies that reached him was inscribed by the author to “Ann Borrow.  With
+her son’s best love, 13th Decr. 1842.”
+
+From the critics there was praise and scarcely anything but praise.  It
+was received as a work bearing the unmistakable stamp of genius.
+Lockhart himself reviewed it in _The Quarterly Review_, confessing the
+shame he felt at not having reviewed _The Zincali_.  “Very good—very
+clever—very neatly done.  Only one fault to find—too laudatory,” was
+Borrow’s comment upon this notice.
+
+And through the clamour and din of it all, old Mrs Borrow wrote to her
+daughter-in-law telling her of the call of an old friend, whom she had
+not seen for twenty-eight years, and who had come to talk with her of the
+fame of her son, “the most remarkable man that Dereham ever produced.
+Capt. Girling is a man of few words, but when he _do_ speak it is to some
+purpose.”  Ford wrote also (he was always writing impulsive, boyish
+letters) telling how Borrow’s name would “fill the trump of fame,” and
+that “Murray is in high bone” about the book.  Hasfeldt wrote, too,
+saying that he saw his “friend ‘tall George,’ wandering over the
+mountains until I ached in every joint with the vividness of his
+descriptions.”
+
+In all this chorus of praise there was the complaint of the _Dublin
+Review_ that “Borrow was a missionary sent out by a gang of conspirators
+against Christianity.”  Borrow’s comment upon this notice was that “It is
+easier to call names and misquote passages in a dirty Review than to
+write _The Bible in Spain_.”
+
+A second edition of _The Bible in Spain_ was issued in January, to which
+the author contributed a preface, “very funny, but wild,” he assured John
+Murray, Junr., and he promised “yet another preface for the third
+edition, should one be called for.”  The third edition appeared in March,
+the fourth in June, and the fifth in July.  When the Fourth Edition was
+nearing completion Borrow wrote to Murray: “Would it be as well to write
+a preface to this _fourth_ edition with a tirade or two against the Pope,
+and allusions to the Great North Road?”  To which Murray replied, “With
+due submission to you as author, I would suggest that you should not
+abuse the Pope in the new preface.”
+
+In the flush of his success Borrow could afford to laugh at the few
+cavilling critics.
+
+    “Let them call me a nonentity if they will,” he wrote to John Murray,
+    Junr. (13th March).  “I believe that some of those, who say I am a
+    phantom, would alter their tone provided they were to ask me to a
+    good dinner; bottles emptied and fowls devoured are not exactly the
+    feats of a phantom.  No!  I partake more of the nature of a Brownie
+    or Robin Goodfellow, goblins, ’tis true, but full of merriment and
+    fun, and fond of good eating and drinking.”
+
+America echoed back the praise and bought the book in thousands.
+Publishers issued editions in Philadelphia and New York; but Borrow did
+not participate in the profits, as there was then no copyright protection
+for English books in the United States of America.  The _Athenæum_
+reported (27th May 1843) that 30,000 copies had been sold in America.  “I
+really never heard of anything so infamous,” wrote Borrow to his wife.
+The only thing that America gave him was praise and (in common with other
+countries) a place in its biographical dictionaries and encyclopædias.
+_The Bible in Spain_ was translated into French and German and
+subsequently (abridged) into Russian.
+
+What appeared to please Borrow most was Sir Robert Peel’s reference to
+him in the House of Commons, although he regretted the scanty report of
+the speech given in the newspapers.  Replying to Dr Bowring’s (at that
+time Borrow’s friend) motion “for copies of the correspondence of the
+British Government with the Porte on the subject of the Bishop of
+Jerusalem,” Sir Robert remarked: “If Mr Borrow had been deterred by
+trifling obstacles, the circulation of the Bible in Spain would never
+have been advanced to the extent which it had happily attained.  If he
+had not persevered he would not have been the agent of so much
+enlightment.” {352}
+
+There were many things that contributed to the instantaneous success of
+_The Bible in Spain_.  Apart from the vivid picture that it gave of the
+indomitable courage and iron determination of a man commanding success,
+its literary qualities, and enthralling interest, its greatest commercial
+asset lay in its appeal to the Religious Public.  Never, perhaps, had
+they been invited to read such a book, because never had the Bible been
+distributed by so amazing a missionary as George Borrow.  _Gil Blas_ with
+a touch of Bunyan, as Ford delightfully phrased it, and not too much
+Bunyan.  Thieves, murderers, gypsies, bandits, prisons, wars—all knit
+together by the missionary work of a man who was _persona grata_ with
+every lawless ruffian he encountered, and yet a sower of the seed.  The
+Religious Public did not pause to ponder over the strangeness of the
+situation.  They had fallen among thieves, and with breathless eagerness
+were prepared to enjoy to the full the novel experience.
+
+Here was a religious book full of the most exquisite material thrills
+without a suggestion of a spiritual moral.  Criminals were encountered,
+their deeds rehearsed and the customary sermon upon the evils arising
+from wickedness absent.  It was a stimulating drink to unaccustomed
+palates.  _The Bible in Spain_ sold in its thousands.
+
+The accuracy of the book has never been questioned; if it had, Borrow’s
+letters to the Bible Society would immediately settle any doubt that
+might arise.  If there be one incident in the work that appears invented,
+it is the story of Benedict Moll, the treasure-hunter; yet even that is
+authentic.  In the following letter, dated 22nd June 1839, Rey Roméro,
+the bookseller of Santiago, refers to the unfortunate Benedict Moll:—
+
+    “The German of the _Treasure_,” he writes, “came here last year
+    bearing letters from the Government for the purpose of discovering
+    it.  But, a few days after his arrival, they threw him into prison;
+    from thence he wrote me, making himself known as the one you
+    introduced to me; wherefore my son went to see him in prison.  He
+    told my son that you also had been arrested, but I could not credit
+    it.  A short time after, they took him off to Coruña; then they
+    brought him back here again, and I do not know what has become of him
+    since.” {353}
+
+Borrow now became the lion of the hour.  He was fêted and feasted in
+London, and everybody wanted to meet the wonderful white-haired author of
+_The Bible in Spain_.  One day he is breakfasting with the Prussian
+Ambassador, “with princes and members of Parliament, I was the star of
+the morning,” he writes to his wife.  “I thought to myself ‘what a
+difference!’”  Later he was present at a grand _soirée_, “and the people
+came in throngs to be introduced to me.  To-night,” he continues, “I am
+going to the Bishop of Norwich, to-morrow to another place, and so on.”
+{354}
+
+Borrow had been much touched by the news of the death of Allan Cunningham
+(1785–1842).
+
+    “Only think, poor Allan Cunningham dead!” he wrote to John Murray,
+    Junr. (25th Nov. 1842).  “A young man—only fifty-eight—strong and
+    tall as a giant; might have lived to a hundred and one, but he
+    bothered himself about the affairs of this world far too much.  That
+    statue shop was his bane; took to book making likewise, in a word too
+    fond of Mammon—awful death—no preparation—came literally upon him
+    like a thief in the dark.  Am thinking of writing a short life of
+    him; old friend—twenty years’ standing, knew a good deal about him;
+    _Traditional Tales_ his best work . . .
+
+    “Pray send Dr Bowring a copy of Bible.  Lives No. 1, Queen Square,
+    Westminster, another old friend.  Send one to Ford—capital fellow.
+    Respects to Mr M.  God bless you.  Feel quite melancholy, Ever
+    yours.”
+
+In these Jinglelike periods Borrow pays tribute to the man who praised
+his Romantic Ballads and contributed a prefatory poem.  He returned to
+the subject ten days later in another letter to John Murray, Junr.  “I
+can’t get poor Allan out of my head,” he wrote.  “When I come up I intend
+to go and see his wife.  What a woman!”
+
+Fame did not dispel from Borrow’s mind the old restlessness, the desire
+for action.  He was still unwell, worried at the sight of “Popery . . .
+springing up in every direction . . . _There’s no peace in this world_.”
+{355a}  A cold contracted by his wife distressed him to the point of
+complaining that “there is little but trouble in this world; I am nearly
+tired of it.” {355b}  Exercise failed to benefit him.  He was suffering
+from languor and nervousness.  And through it all that Spartan woman who
+had committed the gravest of matrimonial errors, that of marrying a
+genius, soothed and comforted the sick lion, tired even of victory.
+
+Small things troubled him and honours awakened in him no enthusiasm.  The
+_Times_ in reviewing _The Bible in Spain_ had inferred that he was not a
+member of the Church of England, {355c} and the statement “must be
+contradicted.”  The Royal Institution was prepared to confer an honour
+upon him, and he could not make up his mind whether or not to accept it.
+
+    “What would the Institute expect me to write?” he enquires of John
+    Murray, Junr., 25th Feb. 1843.  “(I have exhausted Spain and the
+    Gypsies.)  Would an essay on the Welsh language and literature suit,
+    with an account of the Celtic tongues?  Or would something about the
+    ancient North and its literature be more acceptable? . . . Had it
+    been the Royal Academy, I should have consented at once, and do
+    hereby empower you to accept in my name any offer which may be made
+    from that quarter.  I should very much like to become an Academician,
+    the thing would just suit me, more especially as ‘they do not want
+    _clever_ men, but _safe_ men.’  Now I am safe enough, ask the Bible
+    Society, whose secrets I have kept so much to their satisfaction,
+    that they have just accepted at my hands an English Gypsy Gospel
+    _gratis_.” {356}
+
+He declined an invitation to join the Ethnological Society.
+
+    “Who are they?” he enquires in the same letter.  “At present I am in
+    great demand.  A Bishop has just requested me to visit him.  The
+    worst of these Bishops is that they are all skinflints, saving for
+    their families; their _cuisine_ is bad and their Port-wine execrable,
+    and as for their cigars—. . . ”
+
+Borrow strove to quiet his spirit by touring about Norfolk, “putting up
+at dead of night in country towns and small villages.”  He returned to
+Oulton at the end of a fortnight, having tired himself and knocked up his
+horse.  Even the news that a new edition of _The Bible in Spain_ was
+required could not awaken in him any enthusiasm.  He was glad the book
+had sold, as he knew it would, and he would like a rough estimate of the
+profits.  A few days later he writes to John Murray, Junr., with
+reference to a new edition of _The Zincali_, saying that he finds “that
+there is far more connection between the first and second volumes than he
+had imagined,” and begging that the reprint may be the same as the first.
+“It would take nearly a month to refashion the book,” he continues, “and
+I believe a month’s mental labour at the present time would do me up.”
+The weather in particular affected, him.  For years he had been
+accustomed to sun-warmed Spain, and the gloom and greyness of England
+depressed him.
+
+    “Strange weather this,” he had written to John Murray (31st Dec.
+    1842)—“very unwholesome I believe both for man and beast.  Several
+    people dead and great mortality amongst the cattle.  Am intolerably
+    well myself, but get but little rest—disagreeable dreams—digestion
+    not quite so good as I could wish—been on the water system—won’t
+    do—have left it off, and am now taking lessons in singing.”
+
+Many men have earned the reputation of madness for less eccentric actions
+than taking lessons in singing as a cure for indigestion, after the
+failure of the water cure.
+
+Although he was receiving complimentary letters from all quarters and
+from people he had never even heard of, he seemed acutely unhappy.
+
+    “I did wrong,” he writes to his wife from London (29th May 1843),
+    “not to bring you when I came, for without you I cannot get on at
+    all.  Left to myself, a gloom comes upon me which I cannot describe.
+    I will endeavour to be home on Thursday, as I wish so much to be with
+    you, without whom there is no joy for me nor rest.  You tell me to
+    ask for _situations_, etc.  I am not at all suited for them.  My
+    place seems to be in our own dear cottage, where, with your help, I
+    hope to prepare for a better world . . . I dare say I shall be home
+    on Thursday, perhaps earlier, if I am unwell; for the poor bird when
+    in trouble has no one to fly to but his mate.”  And a few days later:
+    “I wish I had not left home.  Take care of yourself.  Kiss poor Hen.”
+
+During his stay in London, Borrow sat to Henry Wyndham Phillips, R.A.,
+for his portrait. {357}  On 21st June John Murray wrote: “I have seen
+your portrait.  Phillips is going to saw off a bit of the panel, which
+will give you your proper and characteristic height.  Next year you will
+doubtless cut a great figure in the Exhibition.  It is the best thing
+young Phillips has done.”  The painting was exhibited at the Royal
+Academy in 1844 as “George Borrow, Esq., author of _The Bible in Spain_,”
+and is now in the possession of Mr John Murray.
+
+There is a story told in connection with the painting of this portrait.
+Borrow was a bad sitter, and visibly chafed at remaining indoors doing
+nothing.  To overcome this restlessness the painter had recourse to a
+clever stratagem.  He enquired of his sitter if Persian were really a
+fine language, as he had heard; Borrow assured him that it was, and at
+Phillips’ request, started declaiming at the top of his voice, his eyes
+flashing with enthusiasm.  When he ceased, the wily painter mentioned
+other tongues, Turkish, Armenian, etc., in each instance with the same
+result, and the painting of the portrait became an easy matter.
+
+On 23rd June John Murray (the Second) died, at the age of sixty-five, and
+was succeeded by his son.  “Poor old Murray!” Ford wrote to Borrow, “We
+shall never see his like again.  He . . . was a fine fellow in every
+respect.”  In another letter he refers to him as “that Prince of
+Bibliophiles, poor, dear, old Murray.”  Borrow’s own relations with John
+Murray had always been most cordial.  On one occasion, when writing to
+his son, he says: “I shall be most happy to see you and still more your
+father, whose jokes do one good.  I wish all the world were as gay as
+he.”  Then without a break, he goes on to deplore the fact that “a
+gentleman drowned himself last week on my property.  I wish he had gone
+somewhere else.”  Such was George Borrow.
+
+  [Picture: John Murray the Third.  From a photograph by Maull and Fox]
+
+For some time past Borrow’s thoughts had been directed towards obtaining
+a Government post abroad.  The sentence, “You tell me to ask for
+situations, etc.,” in a letter to his wife had reference to this
+ambition.  He had previously (21st June 1841) written to Lord Clarendon
+suggesting for himself a consulship; but the reply had not been
+encouraging.  It was “quite hopeless to expect a consulship from Lord
+Palmerston, the applicants were too many and the appointments too few.”
+
+Borrow recognised the stagnation of his present life.
+
+    “I wish the Government would give me some command in Ireland which
+    would call forth my energies,” he wrote to John Murray (25th Oct.
+    1843).  “If there be an outbreak there I shall apply to them at once,
+    for my heart is with them in the present matter: I hope they will be
+    firm, and they have nothing to fear; I am sure that the English
+    nation will back them, for the insolence and ingratitude of the
+    Irish, and the cowardice of their humbug chief, have caused universal
+    disgust.”  Later he wrote, also to John Murray, with reference to
+    that “trumpery fellow O’Connell . . . I wish I were acquainted with
+    Sir Robert Peel.  I could give him many a useful hint with respect to
+    Ireland and the Irish.  I know both tolerably well.  Whenever there’s
+    a row I intend to go over with Sidi Habismilk and put myself at the
+    head of a body of volunteers.”
+
+He had previously written “the old Duke [Wellington] will at last give
+salt eel to that cowardly, bawling vagabond O’Connell.”  Borrow detested
+O’Connell as a “Dublin bully . . . a humbug, without courage or one
+particle of manly feeling.”  Again (17th June) he had written: “Horrible
+news from Ireland.  I wish sincerely the blackguards would break out at
+once; they will never be quiet until they have got a sound licking, and
+the sooner the better.”
+
+The finer side of Borrow’s character was shown in his eagerness to obtain
+employment.  There is a touch of pathos in the sight of this knight,
+armed and ready to fight anything for anybody, wasting his strength and
+his talents in feuds with his neighbours.
+
+In the profits on the old and the preparation of new editions of _The
+Bible in Spain_, Borrow took a keen interest.  The money he was making
+enabled him to assist his wife in disembarrassing her estate.  “I begin
+to take considerable pleasure in making money,” he wrote to his
+publisher, “which I hope is a good sign; for what is life unless we take
+pleasure in something?”  Again he enquires, “Why does not the public call
+for another edition of them [_The Gypsies of Spain_].  You see what an
+unconscionable rascal I am becoming.”  During his lifetime Borrow
+received from the firm of Murray, £3437, 19s., most of which was on
+account of _The Bible in Spain_ and, consequently, was paid to him during
+the first years of his association with Albemarle Street.
+
+Caroline Fox gives an interesting picture of Borrow at this period as he
+appeared to her:—
+
+                                                      “25_th_ _Oct._ 1843.
+
+    “Catherine Gurney gave us a note to George Borrow, so on him we
+    called,—a tall, ungainly, uncouth man, with great physical strength,
+    a quick penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable tone
+    and pronunciation.  He was sitting on one side of the fire, and his
+    old mother on the other.  His spirits always sink in wet weather, and
+    to-day was very rainy, but he was courteous and not displeased to be
+    a little lionised, for his delicacy is not of the most susceptible.
+    He talked about Spain and the Spaniards; the lowest classes of whom,
+    he says, are the only ones worth investigating, the upper and middle
+    class being (with exceptions, of course) mean, selfish, and proud
+    beyond description.  They care little for Roman Catholicism, and bear
+    faint allegiance to the Pope.  They generally lead profligate lives,
+    until they lose all energy and then become slavishly superstitious.
+    He said a curious thing of the Esquimaux, namely, that their language
+    is a most complex and highly artificial one, calculated to express
+    the most delicate metaphysical subtleties, yet they have no
+    literature, nor are there any traces of their ever having had one—a
+    most curious anomaly; hence he simply argues that you can ill judge
+    of a people by their language.” {360a}
+
+One of the strangest things about Borrow’s personality was that it almost
+invariably struck women unfavourably.  That he himself was not
+indifferent to women is shown by the impression made upon him by the
+black eyes of one of the Misses Mills of Saxham Hall, where he was taken
+to dinner by Dr Hake, who states that “long afterwards, his inquiries
+after the black eyes were unfailing.” {360b}  He was also very kind and
+considerate to women.  “He was very polite and gentlemanly in ladies’
+society, and we all liked him,” wrote one woman friend {360c} who
+frequently accompanied him on his walks.  She has described him as
+walking along “singing to himself or quite silent, quite forgetting me
+until he came to a high hill, when he would turn round, seize my hand,
+and drag me up.  Then he would sit down and enjoy the prospect.” {360d}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+MARCH 1844–1848
+
+
+IN March 1844 Borrow, unable longer to control the _Wanderlust_ within
+him, gave up the struggle, and determined to make a journey to the East.
+He was in London on the 20th, as Lady Eastlake (then Miss Elizabeth
+Rigby) testifies in her Journal.  “Borrow came in the evening,” she
+writes: “now a fine man, but a most disagreeable one; a kind of character
+that would be most dangerous in rebellious times—one that would suffer or
+persecute to the utmost.  His face is expressive of wrong-headed
+determination.” {361}
+
+He left London towards the end of April for Paris, from which he wrote to
+John Murray, 1st May:—
+
+    “Vidocq wishes very much to have a copy of my _Gypsies of Spain_, and
+    likewise one of the Romany Gospels.  On the other side you will find
+    an order on the Bible Society for the latter, and perhaps you will be
+    so kind as to let one of your people go to Earl Street to procure it.
+    You would oblige me by forwarding it to your agent in Paris, the
+    address is Monsr. Vidocq, Galerie Vivienne, No. 13 . . . V. is a
+    strange fellow, and amongst other things dabbles in literature.  He
+    is meditating a work upon _Les Bohemiens_, about whom I see he knows
+    nothing at all.  I have no doubt that the _Zincali_, were it to fall
+    into his hands, would be preciously gutted, and the best part of the
+    contents pirated.  By the way, could you not persuade some of the
+    French publishers to cause it to be translated, in which event there
+    would be no fear.  Such a work would be sure to sell.  I wish Vidocq
+    to have a copy of the book, but I confess I have my suspicions; he is
+    so extraordinarily civil.”
+
+From Paris he proceeded to Vienna, and thence into Hungary and
+Transylvania, where he remained for some months.  He is known to have
+been “in the steppe of Debreczin,” {362a} to Koloszvar, through
+Nagy-Szeben, or Hermannstadt, on his journey through Roumania to
+Bucharest.  He visited Wallachia “for the express purpose of discoursing
+with the Gypsies, many of whom I found wandering about.” {362b}
+
+So little is known of Borrow’s Eastern Journey that the following
+account, given by an American, has a peculiar interest:—
+
+    “My companions, as we rode along, related some marvellous stories of
+    a certain English traveller who had been here [near Grosswardein] and
+    of his influence over the Gypsies.  One of them said that he was
+    walking out with him one day, when they met a poor gypsy woman.  The
+    Englishman addressed her in Hungarian, and she answered in the usual
+    disdainful way.  He changed his language, however, and spoke a word
+    or two in an unknown tongue.  The woman’s face lighted up in an
+    instant, and she replied in the most passionate, eager way, and after
+    some conversation dragged him away almost with her.  After this the
+    English gentleman visited a number of their most private gatherings
+    and was received everywhere as one of them.  He did more good among
+    them, all said, than all the laws over them, or the benevolent
+    efforts for them, of the last half century.  They described his
+    appearance—his tall, lank, muscular form, and mentioned that he had
+    been much in Spain, and I saw that it must be that most ubiquitous of
+    travellers, Mr Borrow.” {362c}
+
+This was the fame most congenial to Borrow’s strange nature.  Dinners,
+receptions, and the like caused him to despise those who found pleasure
+in such “crazy admiration for what they called gentility.”  It was his
+foible, as much as “gentility nonsense” was theirs, to find pleasure in
+the _rôle_ of the mysterious stranger, who by a word could change a
+disdainful gypsy into a fawning, awe-stricken slave.  Fame to satisfy
+George Borrow must carry with it something of the greatness of Olympus.
+
+A glimpse of Borrow during his Eastern tour is obtained from Mrs Borrow’s
+letters to John Murray.  After telling him that she possesses a privilege
+which many wives do not (viz.), permission to open her Husband’s letters
+during his absence, she proceeds:—
+
+    “The accounts from him are, I am thankful to say, very satisfactory.
+    It is extraordinary with what marks of kindness even Catholics of
+    distinction treat him when they know who he is, but it is clearly his
+    gift of tongues which causes him to meet with so many adventures,
+    several of which he has recorded of a most singular nature.” {363}
+
+At Vienna Borrow had arranged to wait until he should receive a letter
+from his wife, “being very anxious to know of his family,” as Mrs Borrow
+informed John Murray (24th July).
+
+    “Thus far,” she continues, “thanks be to God, he has prospered in his
+    journey.  Many and wonderful are the adventures he has met with,
+    which I hope at no distant period may be related to his friends.
+    Doctor Bowring was very kind in sending me flattering tidings of my
+    Husband.”
+
+Borrow was at Constantinople on 17th Sept. when he drew on his letter of
+credit.  Leland tells an anecdote about Borrow at Constantinople; but it
+must be remembered that it was written when he regarded Borrow with
+anything but friendly feelings:—
+
+    “Sir Patrick Colquhoun told me that once when he was at
+    Constantinople, Mr Borrow came there, and gave it out that he was a
+    marvellous Oriental scholar.  But there was great scepticism on this
+    subject at the Legation, and one day at the _table d’hôte_, where the
+    great writer and divers young diplomatists dined, two who were seated
+    on either side of Borrow began to talk Arabic, speaking to him, the
+    result being that he was obliged to confess that he not only did not
+    understand what they were saying, but did not even know what the
+    language was.  Then he was tried in Modern Greek, with the same
+    result.” {364}
+
+The story is obviously untrue.  Had Borrow been ignorant of Arabic he
+would not have risked writing to Dr Bowring (11th Sept. 1831; see _ante_,
+page 85) expressing his enthusiasm for that language.  Arabic had,
+apparently, formed one of the subjects of his preliminary examination at
+Earl Street.  With regard to Modern Greek he confessed in a letter to Mr
+Brandram (12th June 1839), “though I speak it very ill, I can make myself
+understood.”
+
+Having obtained a Turkish passport, and after being presented to Abdûl
+Medjîd, the Sultan, Borrow proceeded to Salonika and, crossing Thessaly
+to Albania, visited Janina and Prevesa.  He passed over to Corfù, and saw
+Venice and Rome, returning to England by way of Marseilles, Paris and
+Havre.  He arrived in London on 16th November, after nearly seven months’
+absence, to find his “home particularly dear to me . . . after my long
+wanderings.”
+
+It is curious that he should have left no record of this expedition; but
+if he made notes he evidently destroyed them, as, with the exception of a
+few letters, nothing was found among his papers relating to the Eastern
+tour.  There is evidence that he was occupied with his pen during this
+journey, in the existence at the British Museum of his _Vocabulary of the
+Gypsy Language as spoken in Hungary and Transylvania_, _compiled during
+an intercourse of some months with the Gypsies in those parts in the
+year_ 1844, _by George Borrow_.  In all probability he prepared his
+_Bohemian Grammar_ at the same time. {365a}
+
+From the time that he became acquainted with Borrow, Richard Ford had
+constituted himself the genius of _La Mezquita_ (the Mosque), as he
+states the little octagonal Summer-house was called.  He was for ever
+urging in impulsive, polyglot letters that the curtain to be lifted.
+“Publish your _whole_ adventures for the last twenty years,” he had
+written. {365b}  Ford saw that a man of Borrow’s nature must have had
+astonishing adventures, and with _his_ pen would be able to tell them in
+an astonishing manner.
+
+As early as the summer of 1841 Borrow appears to have contemplated
+writing his _Autobiography_.  On the eve of the appearance of _The Bible
+in Spain_ (17th Dec.) he wrote to John Murray: “I hope our book will be
+successful; if so, I shall put another on the stocks.  Capital subject:
+early life; studies and adventures; some account of my father, William
+Taylor, Whiter, Big Ben, etc. etc.”
+
+The first draft of notes for _Lavengro_, _an Autobiography_, as the book
+was originally advertised in the announcement, is extremely interesting.
+It runs:—
+
+    “Reasons for studying languages: French, Italian, D’Eterville.
+
+    Southern tongues.  Dante.
+
+    Walks.  The Quaker’s Home, Mousehold.  Petulengro.
+
+    The Gypsies.
+
+    The Office.  Welsh.  Lhuyd.
+
+    German.  Levy.  Billy Taylor.
+
+    Danish.  Kœmpe Viser.  Billy Taylor.  Dinner.
+
+    Bowring.
+
+    Hebrew.  The Jew.
+
+    Philosophy.  Radicalism.  Ranters.
+
+    Thurtell.  Boxers.  Petulengres.” {365c}
+
+_Lavengro_ was planned in 1842 and the greater part written before the
+end of the following year, although the work was not actually completed
+until 1846.  There are numerous references in Borrow’s letters of this
+period to the book on which he was then engaged, and he invariably refers
+to it as his _Life_.  On 21st January 1843 he writes to John Murray,
+Junr.: “I meditate shortly a return to Barbary in quest of the _Witch
+Hamlet_, and my adventures in the land of wonders will serve capitally to
+fill the thin volume of _My Life_, _a Drama_, By G. B.”  Again and again
+Borrow refers to _My Life_.  Hasfeldt and Ford also wrote of it as the
+“wonderful life” and “the _Biography_.”
+
+In his letters to John Murray, Borrow not only refers to the book as his
+_Life_, but from time to time gives crumbs of information concerning its
+progress.  The Secretary of the Bible Society has just lent him his
+letters from Russia, “which will be of great assistance in the Life, as I
+shall work them up as I did those relating to Spain.  The first volume,”
+he continues, “will be devoted to England entirely, and my pursuits and
+adventures in early life.”  He recognises that he must be careful of the
+reputation that he has earned.  His new book is to be original, as would
+be seen when it at last appears; but he confesses that occasionally he
+feels “tremendously lazy.”  On another occasion (27th March 1843) he
+writes to John Murray, Junr.: “I hope by the end of next year that I
+shall have part of my life ready for the press in 3 vols.”  Six months
+later (2nd Oct. 1843) he writes to John Murray:—
+
+    “I wish I had another _Bible_ ready; but slow and sure is my maxim.
+    The book which I am at present about will consist, if I live to
+    finish it of a series of Rembrandt pictures interspersed here and
+    there with a Claude.  I shall tell the world of my parentage, my
+    early thoughts and habits; how I became a sap-engro, or
+    viper-catcher; my wanderings with the regiment in England, Scotland
+    and Ireland . . . Then a great deal about Norwich, Billy Taylor,
+    Thurtell, etc.; how I took to study and became a lav-engro.  What do
+    you think of this as a bill of fare for the _first_ Vol.?  The second
+    will consist of my adventures in London as an author in the year ’23
+    (_sic_), adventures on the Big North Road in ’24 (_sic_),
+    Constantinople, etc.  The third—but I shall tell you no more of my
+    secrets.”
+
+In a letter to John Murray (25th Oct. 8843), the title is referred to as
+_Lavengro_: _A Biography_.  It is to be “full of grave fun and solemn
+laughter like the _Bible_.”  On 6th December he again writes:—
+
+    “I do not wish for my next book to be advertised yet; I have a
+    particular reason.  The Americans are up to everything which affords
+    a prospect of gain, and I should not wonder that, provided I were to
+    announce my title, and the book did not appear forthwith, they would
+    write one for me and send forth their trash into the world under my
+    name.  For my own part I am in no hurry,” he proceeds.  “I am writing
+    to please myself, and am quite sure that if I can contrive to please
+    myself, I shall please the public also.  Had I written a book less
+    popular than the _Bible_, I should be less cautious; but I know how
+    much is expected from me, and also know what a roar of exultation
+    would be raised by my enemies (and I have plenty) were I to produce
+    anything that was not first rate.”
+
+Time after time he insists upon his determination to publish nothing that
+is not “as good as the last.”  “I shall go on with my _Life_,” he writes,
+to Ford (9th Feb. 1844), “but slowly and lazily.  What I write, however,
+is _good_.  I feel it is good, strange and wild as it is.” {367}
+
+From 24th–27th Jan. 1844 that “most astonishing fellow” Richard Ford
+visited Borrow at Oulton, urging again in person, most likely, the
+lifting of the veil that obscured those seven mysterious years.  Ford has
+himself described this visit to Borrow in a letter written from Oulton
+Hall.
+
+    “I am here on a visit to _El Gitano_;” he writes, “two ‘rum’ coves,
+    in a queer country . . . we defy the elements, and chat over _las
+    cosas de España_, and he tells me portions of his life, more strange
+    even than his book.  We scamper by day over the country in a sort of
+    gig, which reminds me of Mr Weare on his trip with Mr THURTELL
+    [Borrow’s old preceptor]; ‘Sidi Habismilk’ is in the stable and a
+    Zamarra [sheepskin coat] now before me, writing as I am in a sort of
+    summer-house called _La Mezquita_, in which _El Gitano_ concocts his
+    lucubrations, and _paints_ his pictures, for his object is to colour
+    up and poetise his adventures.”
+
+By this last sentence Ford showed how thoroughly he understood Borrow’s
+literary methods.  A fortnight later Borrow writes to Ford:—
+
+    “You can’t think how I miss you and our chats by the fireside.  The
+    wine, now I am alone, has lost its flavour, and the cigars make me
+    ill.  I am frequently in my valley of the shadows, and had I not my
+    summer jaunt [the Eastern Tour] to look forward to, I am afraid it
+    would be all up with your friend and _Batushka_.”
+
+The Eastern Tour considerably interfered with the writing of _Lavengro_.
+There was a seven months’ break; but Borrow settled down to work on it
+again, still determined to take his time and produce a book that should
+be better than _The Bible in Spain_.
+
+Ford’s _Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home_ appeared
+in 1845, a work that had cost its author upwards of sixteen years of
+labour.  In a letter to Borrow he characterised it as “a _rum_ book and
+has queer stuff in it, although much expurgated for the sake of Spain.”
+Ford was very anxious that Borrow should keep the promise that he had
+given two years previously to review the _Hand-Book_ when it appeared.
+“You will do it _magnificently_.  ‘Thou art the man,’” Ford had written
+with the greatest enthusiasm.  On 2nd June an article of thirty-seven
+folio pages was despatched by Borrow to John Murray for _The Quarterly
+Review_, with the following from Mrs Borrow:—
+
+    “With regard to the article, it must not be received as a specimen of
+    what Mr Borrow would have produced had he been well, but he
+    considered his promise to Mr Ford sacred—and it is only to be wished
+    that it had been written under more favourable circumstances.”
+    Borrow was ill at the time, having been “very unwell for the last
+    month,” as Mrs Borrow explains, “and particularly so lately.
+    Shivering fits have been succeeded by burning fever, till his
+    strength was much reduced; and he at present remains in a low, and
+    weak state, and what is worse, we are by no means sure that the
+    disease is subdued.”
+
+Ford saw in Borrow “a crack reviewer.”  “ . . . You have,” he assured him
+in 1843, “only to write a _long letter_, having read the book carefully
+and thought over the subject.”  Ford also wrote to Borrow (26th Oct.
+1843): “I have written several letters to Murray recommending them to
+_bag_ you forthwith, unless they are demented.”  There was no doubt in
+his, Ford’s, mind as to the acceptance of Borrow’s article.
+
+    “If insanity does not rule the _Q. R._ camp, they will embrace the
+    offer with open arms in their present Erebus state of dullness,” he
+    tells Borrow, then, with a burst of confidence continues, “But,
+    barring politics, I confidentially tell you that the _Ed_[_inburgh_]
+    _Rev._ does business in a more liberal and more business-like manner
+    than the _Q_[_uarterly_] _Rev._  I am always dunning this into
+    Murray’s head.  More flies are caught with honey than vinegar.  Soft
+    sawder, especially if plenty of _gold_ goes into the composition,
+    cements a party and keeps earnest pens together.  I grieve, for my
+    heart is entirely with the _Q. R._, its views and objects.”
+
+The article turned out to be, not a review of the _Hand-Book_, but a
+bitter attack on Spain and her rulers.  The second part was to some
+extent germane to the subject, but it appears to have been more concerned
+with Borrow’s view of Spain and things Spanish than with Ford’s book.
+Lockhart saw that it would not do.  In a letter to John Murray he
+explains very clearly and very justly the objections to using the article
+as it stood.
+
+    “I am very sorry,” he writes (13th June), “after Borrow has so kindly
+    exerted himself during illness, that I must return his paper.  I read
+    the MS. with much pleasure; but clever and brilliant as he is sure
+    always to be, it was very evident that he had not done such an
+    article as Ford’s merits required; and I therefore intended to adopt
+    Mr Borrow’s lively diatribe, but interweave with his matter and add
+    to it, such observations and extracts as might, I thought, complete
+    the paper in a _review sense_.
+
+    “But it appears that Mr B. won’t allow anybody to tamper with his
+    paper; therefore here it is.  It will be highly ornamental as it
+    stands to any _Magazine_, and I have no doubt either _Blackwood_ or
+    _Fraser_ or _Colburn_ will be [only] too happy to insert it next
+    month, if applied to now.
+
+    “Mr Borrow would not have liked that, when his _Bible in Spain_ came
+    out, we should have printed a brilliant essay by Ford on some point
+    of Spanish interest, but including hardly anything calculated to make
+    the public feel that a new author of high consequence had made his
+    appearance among us—one bearing the name, not of Richard Ford, but of
+    George Borrow.”
+
+Lockhart was right and Borrow was wrong.  There is no room for
+equivocation.  Borrow should have sunk his pride in favour of his
+friendship for Ford, who had, even if occasionally a little tedious in
+his epistolary enthusiasm, always been a loyal friend; but Borrow was ill
+and excuses must be made for him.  Lockhart wrote also to Ford describing
+Borrow’s paper as “just another capital chapter of his _Bible in Spain_,”
+which he had read with delight, but there was “hardly a word of _review_,
+and no extract giving the least notion of the peculiar merits and style
+especially, of the _Hand-Book_.”  “He is unwell,” continued Lockhart, “I
+should be very sorry to bother him more at present; and, moreover, from
+the little he has said of your _style_, I am forced to infer that a
+_review_ of your book by him would never be what I could feel authorised
+to publish in the _Q. R._”  The letter concludes with a word of
+condolence that the _Hand-Book_ will have to be committed to other hands.
+
+Ford realised the difficulty of the situation in which he was placed, and
+strove to wriggle out of it by telling Borrow that his wife had said all
+along that
+
+    “‘Borrow can’t write anything dull enough for your set; I wonder how
+    I ever married one of them,’—I hope and trust you will not cancel the
+    paper, for we can’t afford to lose a scrap of your queer sparkle and
+    ‘thousand bright daughters circumvolving.’  I have recommended its
+    insertion in _Blackwood_, _Fraser_, or some of those clever
+    Magazines, who will be overjoyed to get such a hand as yours, and I
+    will bet any man £5 that your paper will be the most popular of all
+    they print.”
+
+It is evident that Ford was genuinely distressed, and in his anxiety to
+be loyal to his friend rather overdid it.  His letter has an air of
+patronage that the writer certainly never intended.  The outstanding
+feature is its absolute selflessness.  Ford never seems to think of
+himself, or that Borrow might have made a concession to their friendship.
+Happy Ford!  The unfortunate episode estranged Borrow from Ford.  Letters
+between them became less and less frequent and finally ceased altogether,
+although Borrow did not forget to send to his old friend a copy of
+_Lavengro_ when it appeared.
+
+Worries seemed to rain down upon Borrow’s head about this time.  Samuel
+Morton Peto (afterwards Sir Samuel) had decided to enrich Lowestoft by
+improving the harbour and building a railway to Reedham, about half-way
+between Yarmouth and Norwich.  He was authorised by Parliament and duly
+constructed his line, which not even Borrow’s anger could prevent from
+passing through the Oulton Estate, between the Hall and the Cottage.
+Borrow could not fight an Act of Parliament, which forced him to cross a
+railway bridge on his way to church; but he never forgave the man who had
+contrived it, or his millions.  His first thought had been to fly before
+the invader.  All quiet would be gone from the place.  “Sell and be off,”
+advised Ford; “I hope you will make the railway pay dear for its
+whistle,” quietly observed John Murray.  At first Borrow was inclined to
+take Ford’s advice and settle abroad; but subsequently relinquished the
+idea.
+
+He was not, however, the man quietly to sit down before what he conceived
+to be an unjustifiable outrage to his right to be quiet.  He never
+forgave railways, although forced sometimes to make use of them.  Samuel
+Morton Peto became to him the embodiment of evil, and as “Mr Flamson
+flaming in his coach with a million” he is immortalised in _The Romany
+Rye_.
+
+It is said that Sir Samuel boasted that he had made more than the price
+he had paid for Borrow’s land out of the gravel he had taken from off it.
+On one occasion, after he had bought Somerleyton Hall, happening to meet
+Borrow, he remarked that he never called upon him, and Borrow remembering
+the boast replied, “I call on you!  Do you think I don’t read my
+Shakespeare?  Do you think I don’t know all about those highwaymen
+Bardolph and Peto?” {372}
+
+The neighbourhood of Oulton appears to have been infested with thieves,
+and poachers found admirable “cover” in the surrounding plantations, or
+small woods.  On several occasions Borrow himself had been attacked at
+night on the highway between Lowestoft and Oulton.  Once he had even been
+shot at and nearly overpowered.  John Murray (the Second) on hearing of
+one of these assaults had written (1841) artfully enquiring, “Were your
+wood thieves Gypsies, and have the _Calés_ got notice of your publication
+[_The Zincali_]?”
+
+Borrow had written to John Murray, Junr. (10th May 1842):—
+
+    “I have been dreadfully unwell since I last heard from you—a regular
+    nervous attack.  At present I have a bad cough, caught by getting up
+    at night in pursuit of poachers and thieves.  A horrible
+    neighbourhood this—not a magistrate dares do his duty.”  On 18th
+    September 1843 he again wrote to John Murray: “One of the Magistrates
+    in this district is just dead.  Present my compliments to Mr
+    Gladstone and tell him that the _The Bible in Spain_ would have no
+    objection to become ‘a great unpaid!’”
+
+Gladstone is said greatly to have admired _The Bible in Spain_, even to
+the extent of writing to John Murray counselling him to have amended a
+passage that he considered ill-advised.  Gladstone’s letter was sent on
+to Borrow, and he acknowledges its receipt (6th November 1843) in the
+following terms:—
+
+    “Many thanks for the perusal of Mr Gladstone’s letter.  I esteem it a
+    high honour that so distinguished a man should take sufficient
+    interest in a work of mine as to suggest any thing in emendation.  I
+    can have no possible objection to modify the passage alluded to.  It
+    contains some strong language, particularly the sentence about the
+    scarlet Lady, which it would be perhaps as well to omit.”
+
+The offending passage was that in which Borrow says, when describing the
+interior of the Mosque at Tangier: “I looked around for the abominable
+thing, and found it not; no scarlet strumpet with a crown of false gold
+sat nursing an ugly changeling in a niche.”  In later editions the words
+“no scarlet strumpet,” etc., were changed to “the besetting sin of the
+pseudo-Christian Church did not stare me in the face in every corner.”
+
+The amendment was little likely to please a Churchman of Gladstone’s
+calibre, or procure for the writer the magistracy he coveted, even if it
+had been made less grudgingly.  “We must not make any further alterations
+here,” Borrow wrote to Murray a few days later, “otherwise the whole
+soliloquy, which is full of vigor and poetry, and moreover of _truth_,
+would be entirely spoiled.  As it is, I cannot help feeling that [it] is
+considerably damaged.”  There seems very little doubt that this passage
+was referred to in the letter that John Murray encloses in his of 10th
+July 1843 {374} with this reference: “(The writer of the enclosed note is
+a worthy canon of St Paul’s, and has evidently seen only the 1st
+edition).”  Borrow replied:—
+
+    “Pray present my best respects to the Canon of St Paul’s and tell him
+    from me that he is a _burro_, which meaneth Jackass, and that I wish
+    he would mind his own business, which he might easily do by attending
+    a little more to the accommodation of the public in his ugly
+    Cathedral.”
+
+Borrow appears to have set his mind on becoming a magistrate.  He had
+written to Lockhart (November 1843) enquiring how he had best proceed to
+obtain such an appointment.  Lockhart was not able to give him any very
+definite information, his knowledge of such things, as he confessed,
+“being Scotch.”  For the time being the matter was allowed to drop, to be
+revived in 1847 by a direct application from Borrow to Lord Clarendon to
+support his application with the Lord Chancellor.  His claims were based
+upon (1) his being a large landed-proprietor in the district (Mrs Borrow
+had become the owner of the Oulton Hall Estate during the previous year);
+(2) the fact that the neighbourhood was over-run with thieves and
+undesirable characters; (3) that there was no magistrate residing in the
+district.  Lord Clarendon promised his good offices, but suggested that
+as all such appointments were made through the Lord-Lieutenant of the
+County, the Earl of Stradbroke had better be acquainted with what was
+taking place.  This was done through the Hon. Wm. Rufus Rous, Lord
+Stradbroke’s brother, whose interest was obtained by some of Borrow’s
+friends.
+
+After a delay of two months, Lord Stradbroke wrote to Lord Clarendon that
+he was quite satisfied with “the number and efficiency of the
+Magistrates” and also with the way in which the Petty Sessions were
+attended.  He could hear of no complaint, and when the time came to
+increase the number of J.P.’s, he would be pleased to add Borrow’s name
+to the list, provided he were advised to do so by “those gentlemen
+residing in the neighbourhood, who, living on terms of intimacy with them
+[the Magistrates], will be able to maintain that union of good feeling
+which . . . exists in all our benches of Petty Sessions.”
+
+Borrow would have made a good magistrate, provided the offender were not
+a gypsy.  He would have caused the wrong-doer more fear the instrument of
+the law rather than the law itself, and some of his sentences might
+possibly have been as summary as those of Judge Lynch.
+
+    “It was a fine thing,” writes a contemporary, “to see the great man
+    tackle a tramp.  Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down
+    on the enemy with a quivering nostril.  If the nomad happened to be a
+    gypsy he was courteously addressed.  But were he a mere native
+    tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow’s coat was off in a
+    moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better
+    man flung forth.  I have never seen such challenges accepted, for
+    Borrow was robust and towering.” {375}
+
+It is not strange that Borrow’s application failed; for he never refused
+leave to the gypsies to camp upon his land, and would sometimes join them
+beside their campfires.  Once he took a guest with him after dinner to
+where the gypsies were encamped.  They received Borrow with every mark of
+respect.  Presently he “began to intone to them a song, written by him in
+Romany, which recounted all their tricks and evil deeds.  The gypsies
+soon became excited; then they began to kick their property about, such
+as barrels and tin cans; then the men began to fight and the women to
+part them; an uproar of shouts and recriminations set in, and the quarrel
+became so serious that it was thought prudent to quit the scene.” {376a}
+“In nothing can the character of a people be read with greater certainty
+and exactness than in its songs,” {376b} Borrow had written. {376c}
+
+These disappointments tended to embitter Borrow, who saw in them only a
+conspiracy against him.  There is little doubt that Lord Stradbroke’s
+enquiries had revealed some curious gossip concerning the Master of
+Oulton Hall, possibly the dispute with his rector over the inability of
+their respective dogs to live in harmony; perhaps even the would-be
+magistrate’s predilection for the society of gypsies, and his profound
+admiration for “the Fancy” had reached the Lord-Lieutenant’s ears.
+
+The unfortunate and somewhat mysterious dispute with Dr Bowring was
+another anxiety that Borrow had to face.  He had once remarked, “It’s
+very odd, Bowring, that you and I have never had a quarrel.” {376d}  In
+the summer of 1842 he and Bowring seem to have been on excellent terms.
+Borrow wrote asking for the return of the papers and manuscripts that had
+remained in Bowring’s hands since 1829, when the _Songs of Scandinavia_
+was projected, as Borrow hoped to bring out during the ensuing year a
+volume entitled _Songs of Denmark_.  The cordiality of the letter may
+best be judged by the fact that in it he announces his intention of
+having a copy of the forthcoming _Bible in Spain_ sent “to my oldest, I
+may say my _only_ friend.”
+
+In 1847 Bowring wrote to Borrow enquiring as to the Russian route through
+Kiakhta, and asking if he could put him in the way of obtaining the
+information for the use of a Parliamentary Committee then enquiring into
+England’s commercial relations with China.  Borrow’s reply is apparently
+no longer in existence; but it drew from Bowring another letter raising a
+question as to whether “‘two hundred merchants are allowed to visit Pekin
+every three years.’  Are you certain this is in practice now?  Have you
+ever been to Kiakhta?”  It would appear from Bowring’s “if summoned, your
+expenses must be paid by the public,” that Borrow had suggested giving
+evidence before the Committee, hence Bowring’s question as to whether
+Borrow could speak from personal knowledge of Kiakhta.
+
+Borrow’s claim against Bowring is that after promising to use all his
+influence to get him appointed Consul at Canton, he obtained the post for
+himself, passing off as his own the Manchu-Tartar New Testament that
+Borrow had edited in St Petersburg.  There is absolutely no other
+evidence than that contained in Borrow’s Appendix to _The Romany Rye_.
+There is very little doubt that Bowring was a man who had no hesitation
+in seizing everything that presented itself and turning it, as far as
+possible, to his own uses.  In this he was doing what most successful men
+have done and will continue to do.  He had been kind to Borrow, and had
+helped him as far as lay in his power.  He no doubt obtained all the
+information he could from Borrow, as he would have done from anyone else;
+but he never withheld his help.  It has been suggested that he really did
+mention Borrow as a candidate for the Consulship and later, when in
+financial straits and finding that Borrow had no chance of obtaining it,
+accepted Lord Palmerston’s offer of the post for himself.  It is,
+however, idle to speculate what actually happened.  What resulted was
+that Bowring as the “Old Radical” took premier place in the
+Appendix-inferno that closed _The Romany Rye_. {378a}
+
+Fate seemed to conspire to cause Borrow chagrin.  Early in 1847 it came
+to his knowledge that there were in existence some valuable Codices in
+certain churches and convents in the Levant.  In particular there was
+said to be an original of the Greek New Testament, supposed to date from
+the fourth century, which had been presented to the convent on Mount
+Sinai by the Emperor Justinian.  Borrow received information of the
+existence of the treasure, and also a hint that with a little address,
+some of these priceless manuscripts might be secured to the British
+Nation.  It was even suggested that application might be made to the
+Government by the Trustees of the British Museum. {378b}  Borrow’s reply
+to this was an intimation that if requested to do so he would willingly
+undertake the mission.  Nothing, however, came of the project, and the
+remainder of the manuscript of the Greek Testament (part of it had been
+acquired in 1843 by Tischendorf) was presented by the monks to Alexander
+II. and it is now in the Imperial Library at St Petersburg.
+
+The information as to the existence of the manuscripts, it is alleged,
+was given to the Museum Trustees by the Hon. Robert Curzon, who had
+travelled much in Egypt and the Holy Land.  It was certainly no fault of
+his that the mission was not sent out, and Borrow’s subsequent antagonism
+to him and his family is difficult to understand and impossible to
+explain.
+
+Borrow had achieved literary success: before the year 1847 _The Zincali_
+was in its Fourth Edition (nearly 10,000 copies having been printed) and
+_The Bible in Spain_ had reached its Eighth Edition (nearly 20,000 copies
+having been printed).  He was an unqualified success; yet he had been far
+happier when distributing Testaments in Spain.  The greyness and inaction
+of domestic life, even when relieved by occasional excursions with Sidi
+Habismilk and the Son of the Miracle, were irksome to his temperament,
+ever eager for occupation and change of scene.  He was like a war-horse
+champing his bit during times of peace.
+
+    “Why did you send me down six copies [of _The Zincali_]?” he bursts
+    out in a letter to John Murray (29th Jan. 1846).  “Whom should I send
+    them to?  Do you think I have six friends in the world?  Two I have
+    presented to my wife and daughter (in law).  I shall return three to
+    you by the first opportunity.”
+
+In 1847, through the Harveys, he became acquainted with Dr Thomas Gordon
+Hake, who was in practice at Brighton 1832–37 and at Bury St Edmunds
+1839–53, and who was also a poet.  The two families visited each other,
+and Dr Hake has left behind him some interesting stories about, and
+valuable impressions of, Borrow.  Dr Hake shows clearly that he did not
+allow his friendship to influence his judgment when in his _Memoirs_ he
+described Borrow as
+
+    “one of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily frame
+    is yet stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a
+    literary career, in an age of intellectual predominance.  His temper
+    was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his
+    vanity in being negative, was one of the most positive kind.  He was
+    reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that made
+    trifles significant.” {379}
+
+This rather laboured series of paradoxes quite fails to give a convincing
+impression of the man.  A much better idea of Borrow is to be found in a
+letter (1847) by a fellow-guest at a breakfast given by the Prussian
+Ambassador.  He writes that there was present
+
+    “the amusing author of _The Bible in Spain_, a man who is remarkable
+    for his extraordinary powers as a linguist, and for the originality
+    of his character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he
+    narrates, and the ease and facility with which he tells them.  He
+    kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his
+    remarks, as well as the positiveness of his assertions, often rather
+    startling, and like his books partaking of the marvellous.” {380a}
+
+Abandoning paradox, Dr Hake is more successful in his description of
+Borrow’s person.
+
+    “His figure was tall,” he tells us, “and his bearing very noble; he
+    had a finely moulded head, and thick white hair—white from his youth;
+    his brown eyes were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of the
+    ‘semitic’ type, which gave his face the cast of the young Memnon.
+    His mouth had a generous curve; and his features, for beauty and true
+    power, were such as can have no parallel in our portrait gallery.”
+    {380b}
+
+When not occupied in writing, Borrow would walk about the estate with his
+animals, between whom and their master a perfect understanding existed.
+Sidi Habismilk would come to a whistle and would follow him about, and
+his two dogs and cat would do the same.  When he went for a walk the dogs
+and cat would set out with him; but the cat would turn back after
+accompanying him for about a quarter of a mile. {381a}
+
+The two young undergraduates who drove in a gig from Cambridge to Oulton
+to pay their respects to Borrow (_circa_ 1846) described him as employed
+
+    “in training some young horses to follow him about like dogs and come
+    at the call of his whistle.  As my two friends {381b} were talking
+    with him, Borrow sounded his whistle in a paddock near the house,
+    which, if I remember rightly, was surrounded by a low wall.
+    Immediately two beautiful horses came bounding over the fence and
+    trotted up to their master.  One put his nose into Borrow’s
+    outstretched hand and the other kept snuffing at his pockets in
+    expectation of the usual bribe for confidence and good behaviour.”
+
+Borrow’s love of animals was almost feminine.  The screams of a hare
+pursued by greyhounds would spoil his appetite for dinner, and he
+confessed himself as “silly enough to feel disgust and horror at the
+squeals of a rat in the fangs of a terrier.” {381c}  When a favourite cat
+was so ill that it crawled away to die in solitude, Borrow went in search
+of it and, discovering the poor creature in the garden-hedge, carried it
+back into the house, laid it in a comfortable place and watched over it
+until it died.  His care of the much persecuted “Church of England cat”
+at Llangollen {381d} is another instance of his tender-heartedness with
+regard to animals.
+
+Borrow had ample evidence that he was still a celebrity.  “He was much
+courted . . . by his neighbours and by visitors to the sea-side,” Dr Hake
+relates; but unfortunately he allowed himself to become a prey to moods
+at rather inappropriate moments.  As a lion, Borrow accompanied Dr Hake
+to some in the great houses of the neighbourhood.  On one occasion they
+went to dine at Hardwick Hall, the residence of Sir Thomas and Lady
+Cullum.  The last-named subsequently became a firm friend of Borrow’s
+during many years.
+
+    “The party consisted of Lord Bristol; Lady Augusta Seymour, his
+    daughter; Lord and Lady Arthur Hervey; Sir Fitzroy Kelly; Mr
+    Thackeray, and ourselves.  At that date, Thackeray had made money by
+    lectures on _The Satirists_, and was in good swing; but he never
+    could realise the independent feelings of those who happen to be born
+    to fortune—a thing which a man of genius should be able to do with
+    ease.  He told Lady Cullum, which she repeated to me, that no one
+    could conceive how it mortified him to be making a provision for his
+    daughters by delivering lectures; and I thought she rather
+    sympathised with him in this degradation.  He approached Borrow, who,
+    however, received him very dryly.  As a last attempt to get up a
+    conversation with him, he said, ‘Have you read my Snob Papers in
+    _Punch_?’”
+
+    “‘In _Punch_?’ asked Borrow.  ‘It is a periodical I never look at!’
+
+    “It was a very fine dinner.  The plates at dessert were of gold; they
+    once belonged to the Emperor of the French, and were marked with his
+    “N” and his Eagle.
+
+    “Thackeray, as if under the impression that the party was invited to
+    look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure, and absorb
+    attention during the dessert, by telling stories and more than half
+    acting them; the aristocratic party listening, but appearing little
+    amused.  Borrow knew better how to behave in good company, and kept
+    quiet; though, doubtless he felt his mane.” {382}
+
+There were other moments when Borrow caused acute embarrassment by his
+rudeness.  Once his hostess, a simple unpretending woman desirous only of
+pleasing her distinguished guest, said, “Oh, Mr Borrow, I have read your
+books with so much pleasure!”  “Pray, what books do you mean, madam?  Do
+you mean my account books?” was the ungracious retort.  He then rose from
+the table, fretting and fuming and walked up and down the dining-room
+among the servants “during the whole of the dinner, and afterwards
+wandered about the rooms and passage, till the carriage could be ordered
+for our return home.” {383a}  The reason for this unpardonable behaviour
+appears to have been ill-judged loyalty to a friend.  His host was a
+well-known Suffolk banker who, having advanced a large sum of money to a
+friend of Borrow’s, the heir to a considerable estate, who was in
+temporary difficulties, then “struck the docket” in order to secure
+payment.  Borrow confided to another friend that he yearned “to cane the
+banker.”  His loyalty to his friend excuses his wrath; it was his
+judgment that was at fault.  He should undoubtedly have caned the banker,
+in preference to going to his house as a guest and revenging his friend
+upon the gentle and amiable woman who could not be held responsible for
+her husband’s business transgressions.
+
+Unfortunate remarks seemed to have a habit of bursting from Borrow’s
+lips.  When Dr Bowring introduced to him his son, Mr F. J. Bowring, and
+with pardonable pride added that he had just become a Fellow of Trinity,
+Borrow remarked, “Ah!  Fellows of Trinity always marry their bed-makers.”
+Agnes Strickland was another victim.  Being desirous of meeting him and,
+in spite of Borrow’s unwillingness, achieving her object, she expressed
+in rapturous terms her admiration of his works, and concluded by asking
+permission to send him a copy of _The Queens of England_, to which he
+ungraciously replied, “For God’s sake, don’t, madam; I should not know
+where to put them or what to do with them.”  “What a damned fool that
+woman is!” he remarked to W. B. Donne, who was standing by. {383b}
+
+There is a world of meaning in a paragraph from one of John Murray’s (the
+Second) letters (21st June 1843) to Borrow in which he enquires, “Did you
+receive a note from Mme. Simpkinson which I forwarded ten days ago?  I
+have not seen her since your abrupt departure from her house.”
+
+It is rather regrettable that the one side of Borrow’s character has to
+be so emphasised.  He could be just and gracious, even to the point of
+sternly rebuking one who represented his own religious convictions and
+supporting a dissenter.  After a Bible Society’s meeting at Mutford
+Bridge (the nearest village to Oulton Hall), the speakers repaired to the
+Hall to supper.  One of the guests, an independent minister, became
+involved in a heated argument with a Church of England clergyman, who
+reproached him for holding Calvinistic views.  The nonconformist replied
+that the clergy of the Established Church were equally liable to attack
+on the same ground, because the Articles of their Church were
+Calvinistic, and to these they had all sworn assent.  The reply was that
+the words were not necessarily to be taken in their literal sense.  At
+this Borrow interposed, attacking the clergyman in a most vigorous
+fashion for his sophistry, and finally reducing him to silence.  The
+Independent minister afterwards confessed that he had never heard “one
+man give another such a dressing down as on that occasion.” {384a}
+
+Borrow was capable of very deep feeling, which is nowhere better shown
+than in his retort to Richard Latham whom he met at Dr Hake’s table.
+Well warmed by the generous wine, Latham stated that he should never do
+anything so low as dine with his publisher.  “You do not dine with John
+Murray, I presume?” he added.  “Indeed I do,” Borrow responded with deep
+emotion.  “He is a most kind friend.  When I have had sickness in the
+house he has been unfailing in his goodness towards me.  There is no man
+I more value.” {384b}
+
+Borrow was a frequent visitor to the Hakes at Bury St Edmunds.  W. B.
+Donne gives a glimpse to him in a letter to Bernard Barton (12th Sept.
+1848).
+
+    “We have had a great man here—and I have been walking with him and
+    aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port—George Borrow—and
+    what is more we fell in with some gypsies and I heard his speech of
+    Egypt, which sounded wondrously like a medley of broken Spanish and
+    dog Latin.  Borrow’s face lighted by the red turf fire of the tent
+    was worth looking at.  He is ashy-white now—but twenty years ago,
+    when his hair was like a raven’s wing, he must have been hard to
+    discriminate from a born Bohemian.  Borrow is best on the tramp: if
+    you can walk 4.5 miles per hour, as I can with ease and do by choice,
+    and can walk 15 of them at a stretch—which I can compass also—then he
+    will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones.  He
+    cannot abide those Amateur Pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair
+    he is given to groan and be contradictory.  But on Newmarket-heath,
+    in Rougham Woods he is at home, and specially when he meets with a
+    thorough vagabond like your present correspondent.” {385a}
+
+The present Mr John Murray recollects Borrow very clearly as
+
+    “tall, broad, muscular, with very heavy shoulders” and of course the
+    white hair.  “He was,” continues Mr Murray, “a figure which no one
+    who has seen it is likely to forget.  I never remember to have seen
+    him dressed in anything but black broad cloth, and white cotton socks
+    were generally distinctly visible above his low shoes.  I think that
+    with Borrow the desire to attract attention to himself, to inspire a
+    feeling of awe and mystery, must have been a ruling passion.”
+
+Borrow was frequently the guest of his publisher at Albemarle Street, in
+times well within the memory of Mr Murray, who relates how on one
+occasion
+
+    “Borrow was at a dinner-party in company with Whewell {385b} [who by
+    the way it has been said was the original of the Flaming Tinman,
+    although there is very little to support the statement except the
+    fact that Dr Whewell was a proper man with his hands] both of them
+    powerful men, and both of them, if report be true, having more than a
+    superficial knowledge of the art of self-defence.  A controversy
+    began, and waxed so warm that Mrs Whewell, believing a personal
+    encounter to be imminent, fainted, and had to be carried out of the
+    room.  Once when Borrow was dining with my father he disappeared into
+    a small back room after dinner, and could not be found.  At last he
+    was discovered by a lady member of the family, stretched on a sofa
+    and groaning.  On being spoken to and asked to join the other guests,
+    he suddenly said: Go away! go away!  I am not fit company for
+    respectable people.  There was no apparent cause for this strange
+    conduct, unless it were due to one of those unaccountable fits to
+    which men of genius (and this description will be allowed him by
+    many) are often subject.
+
+    “On another occasion, when dining with my father at Wimbledon, he was
+    regaled with a ‘haggis,’ a dish which was new to him, and of which he
+    partook to an extent which would have astonished many a hardy
+    Scotsman.  One summers day, several years later, he again came to
+    dinner, and having come on foot, entered the house by a garden door,
+    his first words—without any previous greetings—were: ‘Is there a
+    haggis to-day?’” {386}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+LAVENGRO—1843–1851
+
+
+DURING all these years _Lavengro_ had been making progress towards
+completion, irregular and spasmodic it would appear; but still each year
+brought it nearer to the printer.  “I cannot get out of my old habits,”
+Borrow wrote to Dawson Turner (15th January 1844), “I find I am writing
+the work . . . in precisely the same manner as _The Bible in Spain_,
+viz., on blank sheets of old account books, backs of letters, etc.  In
+slovenliness of manuscript I almost rival Mahomet, who, it is said, wrote
+his _Coran_ on mutton spade bones.”  “His [Borrow’s] biography will be
+passing strange if he tells the _whole_ truth,” Ford writes to a friend
+(27th February 1843).  “He is now writing it by my advice.  I go on . . .
+scribbling away, though with a palpitating heart,” Borrow informs John
+Murray (5th February 1844), “and have already plenty of scenes and
+dialogues connected with my life, quite equal to anything in _The Bible
+in Spain_.  The great difficulty, however, is to blend them all into a
+symmetrical whole.”  On 17th September 1846 he writes again to his
+publisher:
+
+    “I have of late been very lazy, and am become more addicted to sleep
+    than usual, am seriously afraid of apoplexy.  To rouse myself, I rode
+    a little time ago to Newmarket.  I felt all the better for it for a
+    few days.  I have at present a first rate trotting horse who affords
+    me plenty of exercise.  On my return from Newmarket, I rode him
+    nineteen miles before breakfast.”
+
+Another cause of delay was the “shadows” that were constantly descending
+upon him.  His determination to give only the best of which he was
+capable, is almost tragic in the light of later events.  To his wife, he
+wrote from London (February 1847): “Saw M[urray] who is in a hurry for me
+to begin [the printing].  I will not be hurried though for anyone.”
+
+In the _Quarterly Review_, July 1848, under the heading of Mr Murray’s
+List of New Works in Preparation, there appeared the first announcement
+of _Lavengro_, _an Autobiography_, by George Borrow, Author of _The Bible
+in Spain_, etc., 4 vols. post 8vo.  This was repeated in October.  During
+the next two months the book was advertised as _Life_; _A Drama_, in _The
+Athenæum_ and _The Quarterly Review_, and the first title-page (1849) was
+so printed.  On 7th October John Murray wrote asking Borrow to send the
+manuscript to the printer.  This was accordingly done, and about
+two-thirds of it composed.  Then Borrow appears to have fallen ill.  On
+5th January 1849 John Murray wrote to Mrs Borrow:
+
+    “I trust Mr Borrow is now restored to health and tranquillity of
+    mind, and that he will soon be able to resume his pen.  I desire this
+    on his own account and for the sake of poor Woodfall [the printer],
+    who is of course inconvenienced by having his press arrested after
+    the commencement of the printing.”
+
+Writing on 27th November 1849, John Murray refers to the work having been
+“first sent to press—now nearly eighteen months.”  This is clearly a
+mistake, as on 7th October 1848, thirteen and a half months previously,
+he asks Borrow to send the manuscript to the printer that he may begin
+the composition.  John Murray was getting anxious and urges Borrow to
+complete the work, which a year ago had been offered to the booksellers
+at the annual trade-dinner.
+
+“I know that you are fastidious, and that you desire to produce a work of
+distinguished excellence.  I see the result of this labour in the sheets
+as they come from the press, and I think when it does appear it will make
+a sensation,” wrote the tactful publisher.  “Think not, my dear friend,”
+replied Borrow, “that I am idle.  I am finishing up the concluding part.
+I should be sorry to hurry the work towards the last.  I dare say it will
+be ready by the middle of February.”  The correspondence grew more and
+more tense.  Mrs Borrow wrote to the printer urging him to send to her
+husband, who has been overworked to the point of complaint, “one of your
+kind encouraging notes.”  Later Borrow went to Yarmouth, where
+sea-bathing produced a good effect upon his health; but still the
+manuscript was not sent to the despairing printer.  “I do not, God knows!
+wish you to overtask yourself,” wrote the unhappy Woodfall; “but after
+what you last said, I thought I might fully calculate on your taking up,
+without further delay, the fragmentary portions of your 1st and 2nd
+volumes and let us get them out of hand.”
+
+Letters continued to pass to and fro, but the balance of manuscript was
+not forthcoming until November 1850, when Mrs Borrow herself took it to
+London.  Another trade-dinner was at hand, and John Murray had written to
+Mrs Borrow, “If I cannot show the book then—I must throw it up.”  To Mrs
+Borrow this meant tragedy.  The poor woman was distracted, and from time
+to time she begs for encouraging letters.  In response to one of these
+appeals, John Murray wrote with rare insight into Borrow’s character, and
+knowledge of what is most likely to please him: “There are passages in
+your book equal to De Foe.”
+
+The preface when eventually submitted to John Murray disturbed him
+somewhat.  “It is quaint,” he writes to Mrs Borrow, “but so is everything
+that Mr Borrow writes.”  He goes on to suggest that the latter portion
+looks too much as if it had been got up in the interests of “Papal
+aggression,” and he calls attention to the oft-repeated “Damnation cry”.
+There appears to have been some modification, a few “Damnation Cries”
+omitted, the last sheet passed for press, and on 7th February 1851
+_Lavengro_ was published in an edition of three thousand copies, which
+lasted for twenty-one years.
+
+The appearance of _Lavengro_ was indeed sensational: but not quite in the
+way its publisher had anticipated.  Almost without exception the verdict
+was unfavourable.  The book was attacked vigorously.  The keynote of the
+critics was disappointment.  Some reviews were purely critical, others
+personal and abusive, but nearly all were disapproving.  “Great is our
+disappointment” said the _Athenæum_.  “We are disappointed,” echoed
+_Blackwood_.  Among the few friendly notices was that of Dr Hake, in
+which he prophesied that “_Lavengro’s_ roots will strike deep into the
+soil of English letters.”  Even Ford wrote (8th March):
+
+    “I frankly own that I am somewhat disappointed with the very _little_
+    you have told us about _yourself_.  I was in hopes to have a full,
+    true, and particular account of your marvellously varied and
+    interesting biography.  I do hope that some day you will give it to
+    us.”
+
+In this chorus of dispraise Borrow saw a conspiracy.  “If ever a book
+experienced infamous and undeserved treatment,” he wrote, {390} “it was
+that book.  I was attacked in every form that envy and malice could
+suggest.”  In _The Romany Rye_ he has done full justice to the subject,
+exhibiting the critics with blood and foam streaming from their jaws.  In
+the original draft of the Advertisement to the same work he expresses
+himself as “proud of a book which has had the honour of being rancorously
+abused and execrated by every unmanly scoundrel, every sycophantic
+lacquey, and _every political and religious renegade_ in Britain.”  A few
+years previously, Borrow had written to John Murray, “I have always
+myself.  If you wish to please the public leave the matter [the revision
+of _The Zincali_] to me.” {391a}  From this it is evident that Borrow was
+unprepared for anything but commendation from critics and readers.
+
+Dr Bowring had some time previously requested the editor of _The
+Edinburgh Review_ to allow him to review _Lavengro_; but no notice ever
+appeared.  In all probability he realised the impossibility of writing
+about a book in which he and his family appeared in such an unpleasant
+light.  It is unlikely that he asked for the book in order to prevent a
+review appearing in _The Edinburgh_, as has been suggested.
+
+In the Preface, _Lavengro_ is described as a dream; yet there can be not
+a vestage of doubt that Borrow’s original intention had been to
+acknowledge it as an autobiography.  This work is a kind of biography in
+the Robinson Crusoe style, he had written in 1844.  This he contradicted
+in the Appendix to _The Romany Rye_; yet in his manuscript autobiography
+{391b} (13th Oct. 1862) he says: “In 1851 he published _Lavengro_, a work
+in which he gives an account of his early life.”  Why had Borrow changed
+his mind?
+
+When _Lavengro_ was begun, as a result of Ford’s persistent appeals,
+Borrow was on the crest of the wave of success.  He saw himself the
+literary hero of the hour.  _The Bible in Spain_ was selling in its
+thousands.  The press had proclaimed it a masterpiece.  He had seen
+himself a great man.  The writer of a great book, however, does not
+occupy a position so kinglike in its loneliness as does gentleman a
+gypsy, round whom flock the _gitanos_ to kiss his hand and garments as if
+he were a god or a hero.  The literary and social worlds that _The Bible
+in Spain_ opened to Borrow were not to be awed by his mystery, or,
+disciplined into abject hero-worship by one of those steady penetrating
+gazes, which cowed jockeys and _alguacils_.  They claimed intellectual
+kinship and equality, the very things that Borrow had no intention of
+conceding them.  He would have tolerated their “gentility nonsense” if
+they would have acknowledged his paramountcy.  He found that to be a
+social or a literary lion was to be a tame lion, and he was too big for
+that.  His conception of genius was that it had its moods, and mediocrity
+must suffer them.
+
+Borrow would rush precipitately from the house where he was a guest; he
+would be unpardonably rude to some inoffensive and well-meaning woman who
+thought to please him by admiring his books; he would magnify a fight
+between their respective dogs into a deadly feud between himself and the
+rector of his parish: thus he made enemies by the dozen and,
+incidentally, earned for himself an extremely unenviable reputation.  A
+hero with a lovable nature is twice a hero, because he is possessed of
+those qualities that commend themselves to the greater number.
+Wellington could never be a serious rival in a nation’s heart to dear,
+weak, sensitive, noble Nelson, who lived for praise and frankly owned to
+it.
+
+Borrow’s lovable qualities were never permitted to show themselves in
+public, they were kept for the dingle, the fireside, or the inn-parlour.
+That he had a sweeter side to his nature there can be no doubt, and those
+who saw it were his wife, his step-daughter, and his friends, in
+particular those who, like Mr Watts-Dunton and Mr A. Egmont Hake, have
+striven for years to emphasise the more attractive part of his strange
+nature.
+
+Borrow’s attitude towards literature in itself was not calculated to gain
+friends for him.  He was uncompromisingly and caustically severe upon
+some of the literary idols of his day, men who have survived that
+terrible handicap, contemporary recognition and appreciation.
+
+He was not a deep reader, hardly a reader at all in the accepted meaning
+of the word.  He frankly confessed that books were to him of secondary
+importance to man as a subject for study.  In his criticisms of
+literature, he was apt to confuse the man with his works.  His hatred of
+Scott is notorious; it was not the artist he so cordially disliked, but
+the politician; he admitted that Scott “wrote splendid novels about the
+Stuarts.” {393a}  He hailed him as “greater than Homer;” {393b} but the
+House of Stuart he held in utter detestation, and when writing or
+speaking of Scott he forgot to make a rather necessary distinction.  He
+wrote:
+
+    “He admires his talents both as a prose writer and a poet; as a poet
+    especially. {393c} . . .  As a prose writer he admires him less, it
+    is true, but his admiration for him in that capacity is very high,
+    and he only laments that he prostituted his talents to the cause of
+    the Stuarts and gentility . . . in conclusion, he will say, in order
+    to show the opinion which he entertains of the power of Scott as a
+    writer, that he did for the spectre of the wretched Pretender what
+    all the kings of Europe could not do for his body—placed it on the
+    throne of these realms.” {393d}
+
+In later years Borrow paid a graceful tribute to Scott’s memory.  When at
+Kelso, in spite of the rain and mist, he “trudged away to Dryburgh to pay
+my respects to the tomb of Walter Scott, a man with whose principles I
+have no sympathy, but for whose genius I have always entertained the most
+intense admiration.” {393e}  It was just the same with Byron, “for whose
+writings I really entertained considerable admiration, though I had no
+particular esteem for the man himself.” {393f}
+
+With Wordsworth it was different, and it was his cordial dislike of his
+poetry that prompted Borrow to introduce into _The Romany Rye_ that
+ineffectual episode of the man who was sent to sleep by reading him.
+Tennyson he dismissed as a writer of “duncie books.”
+
+For Dickens he had an enthusiastic admiration as “a second Fielding, a
+young writer who . . . has evinced such talent, such humour, variety and
+profound knowledge of character, that he charms his readers, at least
+those who have the capacity to comprehend him.” {394a}  He was delighted
+with _The Pickwick Papers_ and _Oliver Twist_.
+
+His reading was anything but thorough, in fact he occasionally showed a
+remarkable ignorance of contemporary writers.  Mr A. Egmont Hake tells
+how:
+
+    “His conversation would sometimes turn on modern literature, with
+    which his acquaintance was very slight.  He seemed to avoid reading
+    the products of modern thought lest his own strong opinions should
+    undergo dilution.  We were once talking of Keats whose fame had been
+    constantly increasing, but of whose poetry Borrow’s knowledge was of
+    a shadowy kind, when suddenly he put a stop to the conversation by
+    ludicrously asking, in his strong voice, ‘Have they not been trying
+    to resuscitate him?’” {394b}
+
+By the time that _Lavengro_ appeared, Borrow was estranged from his
+generation.  The years that intervened between the success of _The Bible
+in Spain_ and the publication of _Lavengro_ had been spent by him in war;
+he had come to hate his contemporaries with a wholesome, vigorous hatred.
+He would give them his book; but they should have it as a stray cur has a
+bone—thrown at them.  Above all, they should not for a moment be allowed
+to think that it contained an intimate account of the life of the supreme
+hater who had written it.  When there had been sympathy between them,
+Borrow was prepared to allow his public to peer into the sacred recesses
+of his early life.  Now that there was none, he denied that _Lavengro_
+was more than “a dream”, forgetting that he had so often written of it as
+an autobiography, had even seen it advertised as such, and insisted that
+it was fiction.
+
+When _Lavengro_ was published Borrow was an unhappy and disappointed man.
+He had found what many other travellers have found when they come home,
+that in the wilds he had left his taste and toleration for conventional
+life and ideas.  The life in the Peninsula had been thoroughly congenial
+to a man of Borrow’s temperament: hardships, dangers, imprisonments,—they
+were his common food.  He who had defied the whole power of Spain, found
+himself powerless to prevent his Rector from keeping a dog, or a railway
+line from being cut through his own estate and his peace of mind
+disturbed by the rumble of trains and the shriek of locomotive-whistles.
+He had beaten the Flaming Tinman and Count Ofalia, but Samuel Morton Peto
+had vanquished and put him to flight by virtue of an Act of Parliament,
+in all probability without being conscious of having achieved a signal
+victory.  Borrow’s life had been built up upon a wrong hypothesis: he
+strove to adapt, not himself to the Universe; but the Universe to
+himself.
+
+It is easy to see that a man with this attitude of mind would regard as
+sheer vindictiveness the adverse criticism of a book that he had written
+with such care, and so earnest an endeavour to maintain if not improve
+upon the standard created in a former work.  It never for a moment struck
+him that the men who had once hailed him “great”, should now admonish him
+as a result of the honest exercise of their critical faculties.  No;
+there was conspiracy against him, and he tortured himself into a pitiable
+state of wrath and melancholy.  A later generation has been less harsh in
+its judgment.  The controversial parts of _Lavengro_ have become less
+controversial and the magnificent parts have become more magnificent, and
+it has taken its place as a star of the second magnitude.
+
+The question of what is actual autobiography and what is so coloured as
+to become practically fiction, must always be a matter of opinion.  The
+early portion seems convincing, even the first meeting with the gypsies
+in the lane at Norman Cross.  It has been asked by an eminent gypsy
+scholar how Borrow knew the meaning of the word “sap”, or why he
+addressed the gypsy woman as “my mother”.  When the Gypsy refers to the
+“Sap there”, the child replies, “what, the snake”?  The employment of the
+other phrase is obviously an inadvertent use of knowledge he gained
+later.
+
+In writing to Mrs George Borrow (24th March 1851) to tell her that W. B.
+Donne had been unable to obtain _Lavengro_ for _The Edinburgh Review_ as
+it had been bespoken a year previously by Dr Bowring, Dr Hake adds that
+Donne had written “putting the editor in possession of his view of
+_Lavengro_, as regards verisimilitude, vouching for the
+Daguerreotype-like fidelity of the picture in the first volume, etc.,
+etc., in order to prevent him from being _taken in by_ a spiteful
+article.”  This passage is very significant as being written by one of
+Borrow’s most intimate friends, with the sure knowledge that its contents
+would reach him.  It leaves no room for doubt that, although Borrow
+denied publicly the autobiographical nature of _Lavengro_, in his own
+circle it was freely admitted and referred to as a life.
+
+“What is an autobiography?” Borrow once asked Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton
+(who had called his attention to several bold coincidences in
+_Lavengro_).  “Is it the mere record of the incidents of a man’s life? or
+is it a picture of the man himself—his character, his soul?” {396}  Mr
+Watts-Dunton confirms Borrow’s letters when he says “That he [Borrow] sat
+down to write his own life in _Lavengro_ I know.  He had no idea then of
+departing from the strict line of fact.”
+
+At times Borrow seemed to find his pictures flat, and heightened the
+colour in places, as a painter might heighten the tone of a drapery, a
+roof or some other object, not because the individual spot required it,
+but rather because the general effect he was aiming at rendered it
+necessary.  He did this just as an actor rouges his face, darkens his
+eyebrows and round his eyes, that he may appear to his audience a living
+man and not an animated corpse.
+
+Borrow was drawing himself, striving to be as faithful to the original as
+Boswell to Johnson.  Incidents! what were they? the straw with which the
+bricks of personality are made.  A comparison of _Lavengro_ with Borrow’s
+letters to the Bible Society is instructive; it is the same Borrow that
+appears in both, with the sole difference that in the Letters he is less
+mysterious, less in the limelight than in _Lavengro_.
+
+Mr Watts-Dunton, with inspiration, has asked whether or not _Lavengro_
+and _The Romany Rye_ form a spiritual autobiography; and if they do,
+whether that autobiography does or does not surpass every other for
+absolute truth of spiritual representation.  Borrow certainly did colour
+his narrative in places.  Who could write the story of his early life
+with absolute accuracy? without dwelling on and elaborating certain
+episodes, perhaps even adjusting them somewhat?  That would not
+necessarily prove them untrue.
+
+There are, unquestionably, inconsistencies in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany
+Rye_—they are admitted, they have been pointed out.  There are many
+inaccuracies, it must be confessed; but because a man makes a mistake in
+the date of his birth or even the year, it does not prove that he was not
+born at all.  Borrow was for ever making the most inaccurate statements
+about his age.
+
+In the main _Lavengro_ would appear to be autobiographical up to the
+period of Borrow’s coming to London.  After this he begins to indulge
+somewhat in the dramatic.  The meeting with the pickpocket as a
+thimble-rigger at Greenwich might pass muster were it not for the
+_rencontre_ with the apple-woman’s son near Salisbury.  The Dingle
+episode may be accepted, for Mr John Sampson has verified even the famous
+thunder-storm by means of the local press.  Isopel Berners is not so easy
+to settle; yet the picture of her is so convincing, and Borrow was unable
+to do more than colour his narrative, that she too must have existed.
+
+The failure of _Lavengro_ is easily accounted for.  Borrow wrote of
+vagabonds and vagabondage; it did not mitigate his offence in the eyes of
+the critics or the public that he wrote well about them.  His crime lay
+in his subject.  To Borrow, a man must be ready and able to knock another
+man down if necessity arise.  When nearing sixty he lamented his
+childless state and said very mournfully: “I shall soon not be able to
+knock a man down, and I have no son to do it for me.” {398}  He glorified
+the bruisers of England, in the face of horrified public opinion.
+England had become ashamed of its bruisers long before _Lavengro_ was
+written, and this flaunting in its face of creatures that it considered
+too low to be mentioned, gave mortal offence.  That in _Lavengro_ was the
+best descriptions of a fight in the language, only made the matter worse.
+Borrow’s was an age of gentility and refinement, and he outraged it,
+first by glorifying vagabondage, secondly by decrying and sneering at
+gentility.
+
+    “Qui n’ a pas l’esprit de son âge,
+    De son âge a tout le malheur.”
+
+And Borrow proved Voltaire’s words.
+
+It is not difficult to understand that an age in which prize-fighting is
+anathema should not tolerate a book glorifying the ring; but it is
+strange that Borrow’s simple paganism and nature-worship should not have
+aroused sympathetic recognition.  Poetry is ageless, and such passages as
+the description of the sunrise over Stonehenge should have found some, at
+least, to welcome them, even when found in juxtaposition with bruisers
+and gypsies.
+
+Borrow loved to mystify, but in _Lavengro_ he had overreached himself.
+“Are you really in existence?” wrote one correspondent who was unknown to
+Borrow, “for I also have occasionally doubted whether things exist, as
+you describe your own feelings in former days.”
+
+John Murray wrote (8th Nov. 1851):—
+
+    “I was reminded of you the other day by an enquiry after _Lavengro_
+    and its author, made by the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker.
+    {399a}  Knowing how fastidious and severe a critic he is, I was
+    particularly glad to find him expressing a favourable opinion of it;
+    and thinking well of it his curiosity was piqued about you.  Like all
+    the rest of the world, he is mystified by it.  He knew not whether to
+    regard it as truth or fiction.  How can you remedy this defect?  I
+    call it a defect, because it really impedes your popularity.  People
+    say of a chapter or of a character: ‘This is very wonderful, _if
+    true_; but if fiction it is pointless.’—Will your new volumes explain
+    this and dissolve the mystery?  If so, pray make haste and get on
+    with them.  I hope you have employed the summer in giving them the
+    finishing touches.”
+
+“There are,” says a distinguished critic, {399b} “passages in _Lavengro_
+which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of England—unsurpassed, I
+mean, for mere perfection of style—for blending of strength and graphic
+power with limpidity and music of flow.”  Borrow’s own generation would
+have laughed at such a value being put upon anything in _Lavengro_.
+
+Another thing against the books success was its style.  It lacked what
+has been described as the poetic ecstacy or sentimental verdure of the
+age.  Trope, imagery, mawkishness, were all absent, for Borrow had gone
+back to his masters, at whose head stood the glorious Defoe.  Borrow’s
+style was as individual as the man himself.  By a curious contradiction,
+the tendency is to overlook literary lapses in the very man towards whom
+so little latitude was allowed in other directions.  Many Borrovians have
+groaned in anguish over his misuse of that wretched word “Individual.”  A
+distinguished man of letters {400a} has written:—“I would as lief read a
+chapter of _The Bible in Spain_ as I would _Gil Blas_; nay, I positively
+would give the preference to Señor Giorgio.”  Another critic, and a
+severe one, has written:—
+
+    “It is not as philologist, or traveller, or wild missionary, or
+    folk-lorist, or antiquary, that Borrow lives and will live.  It is as
+    the master of splendid, strong, simple English, the prose Morland of
+    a vanished road-side life, the realist who, Defoe-like, could make
+    fiction seem truer than fact.  To have written the finest fight in
+    the whole world’s literature, the fight with the Flaming Tinman, is
+    surely something of an achievement.” {400b}
+
+It is Borrow’s personality that looms out from his pages.  His mastery
+over the imagination of his reader, his subtle instinct of how to throw
+his own magnetism over everything he relates, although he may be standing
+aside as regards the actual events with which he is dealing, is worthy of
+Defoe himself.  It is this magnetism that carries his readers safely over
+the difficult places, where, but for the author’s grip upon them, they
+would give up in despair; it is this magnetism that prompts them to pass
+by only with a slight shudder, such references as the feathered tribe,
+fast in the arms of Morpheus, and, above all, those terrible puns that
+crop up from time to time.  There is always the strong, masterful man
+behind the words who, like a great general, can turn a reverse to his own
+advantage.
+
+In his style perhaps, after all, lay the secret of Borrow’s unsuccess.
+He was writing for another generation; speaking in a voice too strong to
+be heard other than as a strange noise by those near to him.  It may be
+urged that _The Bible in Spain_ disproves these conclusions; but _The
+Bible in Spain_ was a peculiar book.  It was a chronicle of Christian
+enterprise served up with _sauce picaresque_.  It pleased and astonished
+everyone, especially those who had grown a little weary of godly
+missioners.  It had the advantage of being spontaneous, having been
+largely written on the spot, whereas _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ were
+worked on and laboured at for years.  Above all, it had the inestimable
+virtue of being known to be True.  To the imaginative intellectual, Truth
+or Fiction are matters of small importance, he judges by Art; but to the
+general public of limited intellectual capacity, Truth is appreciated out
+of all proportion to its artistic importance.  If Borrow had published
+_The Bible in Spain_ after the failure of _Lavengro_, it would in all
+probability have been as successful as it was appearing before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+SEPTEMBER 1849–FEBRUARY 1854
+
+
+ONE of the finest traits in Borrow’s character was his devotion to his
+mother.  He was always thoughtful for her comfort, even when fighting
+that almost hopeless battle in Russia, and later in the midst of bandits
+and bloody patriots in Spain.  She was now, in 1849, an old woman, too
+feeble to live alone, and it was decided to transfer her to Oulton.  An
+addition to the Hall was constructed for her accommodation, and she was
+to be given an attendant-companion in the person of the daughter of a
+local farmer.
+
+For thirty-three years she had lived in the little house in Willow Lane;
+yet it was not she, but Borrow, who felt the parting from old
+associations.  “I wish,” she writes to her daughter-in-law on 16th
+September 1849, “my dear George would not have such fancies about _the
+old house_; it is a mercy it has not fallen on my head before this.”  The
+old lady was anxious to get away.  It would not be safe, she thought, for
+her to be shut up alone, as the old woman who had looked after her could,
+for some reason or other, do so no longer.  She urges her daughter-in-law
+to represent this to Borrow.
+
+    “There is a low, noisy set close to me,” she continues.  “I shall not
+    die one day sooner, or live one day longer.  If I stop here and die
+    on a sudden, half the things might be lost or stolen, therefore it
+    seems as if the Lord would provide me a _safer home_.  I have made up
+    my mind to the change and only pray that I may be able to get through
+    the trouble.”
+
+It would appear that the move, which took place at the end of September,
+was brought about by the old lady’s appeals and insistence, and that
+Borrow himself was not anxious for it.  He felt a sentimental attachment
+to the old place, which for so many years had been a home to him.
+
+In 1853 Borrow removed to Great Yarmouth.  During the summer of that
+year, Dr Hake had peremptorily ordered Mrs George Borrow not to spend the
+ensuing winter and spring at Oulton, and the move was made in August.
+The change was found to be beneficial to Mrs Borrow and agreeable to all,
+and for the next seven years (Aug. 1853–June 1860) Borrow’s headquarters
+were to be at Great Yarmouth, where he and his family occupied various
+lodgings.
+
+Shortly before leaving Oulton, Borrow had received the following
+interesting letter from FitzGerald:—
+
+                                     BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, 22nd _July_ 1853.
+
+    MY DEAR SIR,—I take the liberty of sending you a book [Six Dramas
+    from Calderon], of which the title-page and advertisement will
+    sufficiently explain the import.  I am afraid that I shall in general
+    be set down at once as an impudent fellow in making so free with a
+    Great Man; but, as usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like
+    yourself, who both do fine things in your own language and are deep
+    read in those of others.  I mean, that whether you like or not what I
+    send you, you will do so from knowledge and in the candour which
+    knowledge brings.
+
+    I had even a mind to ask you to look at these plays before they were
+    printed, relying on our common friend Donne for a mediator; but I
+    know how wearisome all MS. inspection is; and, after all, the whole
+    affair was not worth giving you such a trouble.  You must pardon all
+    this, and believe me,—Yours very faithfully,
+
+    EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+Soon after his arrival by the sea, Borrow performed an act of bravery of
+which _The Bury Post_ (17th Sept. 1852) gave the following account, most
+likely written by Dr Hake:—
+
+    “INTREPIDITY.—Yarmouth jetty presented an extra-ordinary and
+    thrilling spectacle on Thursday, the 8th inst., about one o’clock.
+    The sea raged frantically, and a ship’s boat, endeavouring to land
+    for water, was upset, and the men were engulfed in a wave some thirty
+    feet high, and struggling with it in vain.  The moment was an awful
+    one, when George Borrow, the well-known author _of Lavengro_, and
+    _The Bible in Spain_, dashed into the surf and saved one life, and
+    through his instrumentality the others were saved.  We ourselves have
+    known this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring as was this
+    deed we have known him more than once to risk his life for others.
+    We are happy to add that he has sustained no material injury.”
+
+Borrow was a splendid swimmer. {404a}  In the course of one of his
+country walks with Robert Cooke (John Murray’s partner), with whom he was
+on very friendly terms,
+
+    “he suggested a bathe in the river along which they were walking.  Mr
+    Cooke told me that Borrow, having stripped, took a header into the
+    water and disappeared.  More than a minute had elapsed, and as there
+    were no signs of his whereabouts, Mr Cooke was becoming alarmed, lest
+    he had struck his head or been entangled in the weeds, when Borrow
+    suddenly reappeared a considerable distance off, under the opposite
+    bank of the stream, and called out ‘What do you think of that?’”
+    {404b}
+
+Elizabeth Harvey, in telling the same story, says that on coming up he
+exclaimed: “There, if that had been written in one of my books, they
+would have said it was a lie, wouldn’t they?” {404c}
+
+The paragraph about Borrow’s courage was printed in various newspapers
+throughout the country, amongst others in the _Plymouth Mail_ under the
+heading of “Gallant Conduct of Mr G. Borrow,” and was read by Borrow’s
+Cornish kinsmen, who for years had heard nothing of Thomas Borrow.
+Apparently quite convinced that George was his son, they deputed Robert
+Taylor, a farmer of Penquite Farm (who had married Anne Borrow,
+granddaughter of Henry Borrow), to write to Borrow and invite him to
+visit Trethinnick.  The letter was dated 10th October and directed to
+“George Borrow, Yarmouth.”  Borrow replied as follows:—
+
+                                           YARMOUTH, 14_th_ _Octr._, 1853.
+
+    MY DEAR SIR,—I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of
+    the 10th inst. in which you inform me of the kind desire of my
+    Cornish relatives to see me at Trethinnock (sic).  Please to inform
+    them that I shall be proud and happy to avail myself of their
+    kindness and to make the acquaintance of “one and all” {405} of them.
+    My engagements will prevent my visiting them at present, but I will
+    appear amongst them on the first opportunity.  I am delighted to
+    learn that there are still some living at Trethinnock who remember my
+    honoured father, who had as true a Cornish heart as ever beat.
+
+    I am at present at Yarmouth, to which place I have brought my wife
+    for the benefit of her health; but my residence is Oulton Hall,
+    Lowestoft, Suffolk.  With kind greetings to my Cornish kindred, in
+    which my wife and my mother join,—I remain, my dear Sir, ever
+    sincerely yours,—
+
+                                                            GEORGE BORROW.
+
+Borrow was not free to visit his kinsfolk until the following Christmas.
+First advising Robert Taylor of his intention, and receiving his approval
+and instructions for the journey, Borrow set out from Great Yarmouth on
+23rd December.  He spent the night at Plymouth.  Next morning on finding
+the Liskeard coach full, he decided to walk.  Leaving his carpet-bag to
+be sent on by the mail, and throwing over his arm the cloak that had seen
+many years of service, he set out upon his eighteen-mile tramp.  He
+arrived at Liskeard in the afternoon, and was met by his cousin Henry
+Borrow and Robert Taylor, as well as by several local celebrities.
+
+After tea Borrow, accompanied by Robert Taylor, rode to Penquite, four
+miles away.  “Ride by night to Penquite, Borrow records in his _Journal_.
+House of stone and slate on side of a hill.  Mrs Taylor.  Hospitable
+reception.  Christmas Eve.  Log on fire.”  He found alive of his own
+generation, Henry, William, Thomas, Elizabeth (who lived to be 94 years
+of age) and Nicholas, the children of Henry Borrow, Captain Borrow’s
+eldest brother.  Also Anne, daughter of Henry, who married Robert Taylor,
+and their daughter, likewise named Anne, and William Henry, son of
+Nicholas.
+
+In the Cornish Note Books there appears under the date of 3rd January the
+following entry: “Rain and snow.  Rode with Mr Taylor to dine at
+Trethinnick.  House dilapidated.  A family party.  Hospitable people.”
+On first entering his father’s old home tears had sprung to Borrow’s
+eyes, and he was much affected.  There was present at the dinner the
+vicar of St Cleer, the Rev. J. R. P. Berkeley, a pleasant Irish clergyman
+who, years later, was able to give to Dr Knapp an account of what took
+place.  He noticed the “vast difference in appearance and manners between
+the simple yet shrewd Cornish farmers and the betravelled gentleman their
+kinsman;” yet for all this there were shades of resemblance—in a look,
+some turn of thought or tone of voice.  George Borrow was not at his best
+that evening, Mr Berkeley relates of the dinner at Trethinnick:
+
+    “his feelings were too much excited.  He was thinking of the time
+    when his father’s footsteps and his father’s voice re-echoed in the
+    room in which we were sitting.  His eyes wandered from point to
+    point, and at times, if I was not mistaken, a tear could be seen
+    trembling in them.  At length he could no longer control his
+    feelings.  He left the hall suddenly, and in a few moments, but for
+    God’s providential care, the career of George Borrow would have been
+    ended.  There was within a few feet of the house a low wall with a
+    drop of some feet into a paved yard.  He walked rapidly out, and, it
+    being nearly dark, he stepped one side of the gate and fell over the
+    wall.  He did not mention the accident, although he bruised himself a
+    good deal, and it was some days before I heard of it.  His words to
+    me that evening, when bidding me good-bye, were: ‘Well, we have
+    shared the old-fashioned hospitality of old-fashioned people in an
+    old-fashioned house.’” {407a}
+
+Borrow created something of a sensation in the neighbourhood.  As a
+celebrity his autograph was much sought after; but he would gratify
+nobody.  His hosts experienced many little surprises from their guest’s
+strange ways.  He would plunge into a moorland pool to fetch a bird that
+had fallen to his gun, or, round the family fireside, he would shout his
+ballads of the North, at one time alarming his audience by seizing a
+carving-knife and brandishing it about in the air to emphasize the
+passionate nature of his song.  When a card-party proved too dull he
+slipped off and found his way into some slums, picking up all the
+disreputable characters he could find, working off his knowledge of cant
+on them, and getting out of them what he could. {407b}
+
+On one occasion when dining at the house of a local celebrity he was
+suddenly missed from table during dessert.
+
+    “A search revealed him in a remote room surrounded by the children of
+    the house, whom he was amusing by his stories and catechising in the
+    subject of their studies and pursuits.  He excused his absence by
+    saying that he had been fascinated by the intelligence of the
+    children, and had forgotten about the dinner.” {407c}
+
+His hatred of gentility led him into some actions that can only be
+characterised as childish.  Even in Cornwall he was on the lookout for
+his fetish.  On one occasion when dining with the ex-Mayor of Liskeard,
+he pulled out of his pocket and used instead of a handkerchief, a dirty
+old grease-stained rag with which he was wont to clean his gun. {408}
+This was done as a protest against something or other that seemed to him
+to suggest mock refinement.
+
+When at Wolsdon as the guest of the Pollards there arrived a lady and
+gentleman of the name of Hambly, according to the Note Books.  In spite
+of this brief reference, Borrow immediately recognised a hated name.
+Never was one of the name good, he informed Mr Berkeley.  He may even
+have been informed that they were descendants of the Headborough whom his
+father had knocked down.  He showed his detestation for the name by being
+as rude as he could to those who bore it.
+
+Borrow was as incapable of dissimulating his dislikes as he was of
+controlling his moods.  Even during his short stay at Penquite he was on
+one occasion, at least, plunged into a deep melancholy, sitting before a
+huge fire entirely oblivious to the presence of others in the room.  Mrs
+Berkeley, who, with the vicar himself, was a caller, thinking to produce
+some good effect upon the gloomy man, sat down at the piano and played
+some old Irish and Scottish airs.  After a time Borrow began to listen,
+then he raised his head, and finally “he suddenly sprang to his feet,
+clapped his hands several times, danced about the room, and struck up
+some joyous melody.  From that moment he was a different man.”  He told
+them “tales and side-splitting anecdotes,” he joined the party at supper,
+and when the vicar and his wife rose to take their leave he pressed Mrs
+Berkeley’s hands, and told her that her music had been as David’s harp to
+his soul.
+
+To the young man he met during this visit who informed him that he had
+left the Army as it was no place for a gentleman, Borrow replied that it
+was no place for a man who was not a gentleman, and that he was quite
+right in leaving it.  To speak against the Army to Borrow was to speak
+against his honoured father.
+
+How Borrow struck his Cornish kinsfolk is shown in a letter written by
+his hostess to a friend.  “I must tell you,” she writes, “a bit about our
+distinguished visitor.”  She gives one of the most valuable portraits of
+Borrow that exists.  He was to her:
+
+    “A fine tall man of about six feet three, well-proportioned and not
+    stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid
+    face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and
+    eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped
+    hands—altogether a person you would notice in a crowd.  His character
+    is not so easy to portray.  The more I see of him the less I know of
+    him.  He is very enthusiastic and eccentric, very proud and
+    unyielding.  He says very little of himself, and one cannot ask him
+    if inclined to . . . He is a marvel in himself.  There is no one here
+    to draw him out.  He has an astonishing memory as to dates when great
+    events have taken place, no matter in what part of the world.  He
+    seems to know everything.” {409}
+
+Borrow was gratified at the welcome he received, and was much pleased
+with the neighbourhood and its people.  “My relations are most excellent
+people,” he wrote to his wife, “but I could not understand more than half
+they said.”  He was puzzled to know why the head of a family, which was
+reputed to be worth seventy thousand pounds, should live in a house which
+could not boast of a single grate—“nothing but open chimneys.”
+
+He remained at Penquite for upwards of a fortnight, at one time galloping
+over snowy hills and dales with Anne Taylor, Junr., “as gallant a girl as
+ever rode,” at another, alert as ever for fragments of folk-lore or
+philology, jotting down the story of a pisky-child from the dictation of
+his cousin Elizabeth.
+
+On 9th January Borrow left Penquite on a tour to Truro, Penzance,
+Mousehole, and Land’s End, armed with the inevitable umbrella, grasped in
+the centre by the right hand, green, manifold and bulging, that so
+puzzled Mr Watts-Dunton and caused him on one occasion to ask Dr Hake,
+“Is he a genuine Child of the Open Air?”  It was one of the first things
+to which Borrow’s pedestrian friends had to accustom themselves.  With
+this “damning thing . . . gigantic and green,” Borrow set out upon his
+excursion, now examining some Celtic barrow, now enquiring his way or the
+name of a landmark, occasionally singing in that tremendous voice of his,
+“Look out, look out, Swayne Vonved!”
+
+At Mousehole he called upon a relative, H. D. Burney (who was, it would
+seem, in charge of the Coast Guard Station), to whom he had a letter of
+introduction from Robert Taylor.  Mr Burney entertained him with stories,
+showed him places and things of interest in the neighbourhood, and
+accompanied him on his visit to St Michael’s Mount.  Borrow returned to
+Penquite on the 25th with a considerable store of Cornish legends and
+Cornish words, and the knowledge that you can only see Cornwall or know
+anything about it by walking through it.
+
+The next excursion was to the North Coast, Pentire Point, Tintagel, King
+Arthur’s Castle, etc.  On the 1st of February he left Penquite, and slept
+the night at Trethinnick.  The next morning he set out on horseback
+accompanied by Nicholas Borrow.
+
+To the vicar of St Cleer and his family, Borrow was a very welcome
+visitor.  Mr Berkeley’s eldest son, a boy of ten years of age, on being
+introduced to the distinguished caller, gazed at him for some moments and
+then without a word left the room and, going straight to his mother in
+another apartment cried, “Well, mother, that _is_ a man.”  Borrow was
+delighted when he heard of the child’s enthusiasm.  Mr Berkeley give a
+picture of his distinguished visitor far more prepossessing than many
+that exist.  He was particularly struck, as was everybody, by the beauty
+of Borrow’s hands, and their owner’s vanity over them as the legacy of
+his Huguenot ancestors.  Mr Berkeley found Borrow’s countenance pleasing,
+betokening calm firmness, self-confidence and a mind under control,
+though capable of passion.  He could on occasion prove a delightful
+talker, and he gave to the vicar’s family a new maxim to implant upon
+their Christianity, the old prize-fighters receipt for a quiet life:
+“Learn to box, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”  He would often
+drop in at the vicarage in the evening, when he would
+
+    “sit in the centre of a group before the fire with his hands on his
+    knees—his favourite position—pouring forth tales of the scenes he had
+    witnessed in his wanderings. . . . Then he would suddenly spring from
+    his seat and walk to and fro the room in silence; anon he would clap
+    his hands and sing a Gypsy song, or perchance would chant forth a
+    translation of some Viking poem; after which he would sit down again
+    and chat about his father, whose memory he revered as he did his
+    mother’s; {411} and finally he would recount some tale of suffering
+    or sorrow with deep pathos—his voice being capable of expressing
+    triumphant joy or the profoundest sadness.”
+
+It was Borrow’s intention to write a book about his visit to Cornwall,
+and he even announced it at the end of _The Romany Rye_.  He was
+delighted with the Duchy, and evidently gave his relatives to understand
+that it was his intention to use the contents of his Note Books as the
+nucleus of a book.  “He will undoubtedly write a description of his
+visit,” Mrs Taylor wrote to her friend.  “I walked through the whole of
+Cornwall and saw everything,” Borrow wrote to his wife after his return
+to London.  “I kept a Journal of every day I was there, and it fills
+_two_ pocket books.”
+
+Borrow left Cornwall the second week in February and was in London on the
+10th, where he was to break his journey home in order to obtain some data
+at the British Museum for the Appendix of _The Romany Rye_. {412a}  On
+13th February he writes to his wife:—
+
+    “For three days I have been working hard at the Museum, I am at
+    present at Mr Webster’s, but not in the three guinea lodgings.  I am
+    in rooms above, for which I pay thirty shillings a week.  I live as
+    economically as I can; but when I am in London I am obliged to be at
+    certain expense.  I must be civil to certain friends who invite me
+    out and show me every kindness.  Please send me a five pound note by
+    return of post.”
+
+His wife appears to have been anxious for his return home, and on the
+17th he writes to her:—
+
+    “It is hardly worth while making me more melancholy than I am.  Come
+    home, come home! is the cry.  And what are my prospects when I get
+    home? though it is true that they are not much brighter here.  I have
+    nothing to look forward to.  Honourable employments are being given
+    to this and that trumpery fellow; while I, who am an honourable man,
+    must be excluded from everything.”
+
+Of literature he expressed himself as tired, there was little or nothing
+to be got out of it, save by writing humbug, which he refused to do.  “My
+spirits are very low,” he continues, “and your letters make them worse.
+I shall probably return by the end of next week; but I shall want more
+money.  I am sorry to spend money for it is our only friend, and God
+knows I use as little as possible, but I can’t travel without it.” {412b}
+A few days later there is another letter with farther reference to money,
+and protests that he is spending as little as possible.  “Perhaps you had
+better send another note,” he writes, “and I will bring it home
+unchanged, if I do not want any part of it.  I have lived very
+economically as far as I am concerned personally; I have bought nothing,
+and have been working hard at the Museum.” {413}
+
+These constant references to money seem to suggest either some difference
+between Borrow and his wife, or that he felt he was spending too much
+upon himself and was anticipating her thoughts by assuring her of how
+economically he was living.  He had an unquestioned right to spend, for
+he had added considerable sums to the exchequer from the profits of his
+first two books.
+
+Borrow returned to Yarmouth on 25th February.  _The Romany Rye_ was now
+rapidly nearing completion; but there was no encouragement to publish a
+new book.  He worked at _The Romany Rye_, not because he saw profit in
+it, not because he was anxious to give another book to an uneager public;
+but because of the sting in its tail, because of the thunderbolt Appendix
+in which he paid off old scores against the critics and his personal
+enemies.  _The Romany Rye_ was to him a work of hate; it was a bomb
+disguised as a book, which he intended to throw into the camp of his
+foes.  He was tired of literature, by which he meant that he was tired of
+producing his best for a public that neither wanted nor understood it.
+He forgot that the works of a great writer are sometimes printed in his
+own that they may be read in another generation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+MARCH 1854–MAY 1856
+
+
+DURING the months that followed Borrow’s return to Great Yarmouth, the
+question of the coming summer holiday was discussed.  From the first
+Borrow himself had been for Wales.  He was eager to pursue his Celtic
+researches further north.  “I should not wonder if he went into Wales
+before he returns,” Mrs Robert Taylor had written to her friend during
+Borrow’s stay in Cornwall.  His wife and Henrietta had “a hankering after
+what is fashionable,” and suggested Harrogate or Leamington.  To which
+Borrow replied that there was nothing he “so much hated as fashionable
+life.”  He, however, gave way, the two women followed suit, as he had
+intended they should, and Wales was decided upon.  For Borrow the
+literature of Wales had always exercised a great attraction.  Her bards
+were as no other bards.  Ab Gwilym was to him the superior of Chaucer,
+and Huw Morris “the greatest songster of the seventeenth century.”  It
+was, he confessed, a desire to put to practical use his knowledge of the
+Welsh tongue, “such as it was,” that first gave him the idea of going to
+Wales.
+
+The party left Great Yarmouth on 27th July 1854, spending one night at
+Peterborough and three at Chester.  They reached Llangollen, which was to
+be their head-quarters, on 1st August.  On 9th August Mrs George Borrow
+wrote to the old lady at Oulton, “We all much enjoy this wonderful and
+beautiful country.  We are in a lovely quiet spot.  Dear George goes out
+exploring the mountains, and when he finds remarkable views takes us of
+an evening to see them.”
+
+Borrow wanted to see Wales and get to know the people, and, above all, to
+speak with them in their own language, and on 27th August he started upon
+a walking tour to Bangor, where he was to meet his wife and Henrietta,
+who were to proceed thither by rail.  It was during this excursion that
+he encountered the delightful Papist-Orange fiddler, whose fortunes and
+fingers fluctuated between “Croppies Get Up” and “Croppies Lie Down.”
+
+From Bangor Borrow explored the surrounding places of interest.  He
+ascended Snowdon arm-in-arm with Henrietta, singing “at the stretch of my
+voice a celebrated Welsh stanza,” the boy-guide following wonderingly
+behind.  In spite of the fatigues of the climb, “the gallant girl”
+reached the summit and heard her stepfather declaim two stanzas of poetry
+in Welsh, to the grinning astonishment of a small group of English
+tourists and the great interest of a Welshman, who asked Borrow if he
+were _a Breton_.
+
+There is no question that Borrow was genuinely attached to Henrietta.  “I
+generally call her daughter,” he writes, “and with good reason, seeing
+that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she has all kinds
+of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of
+conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style,” {415a}
+not to speak of her ability to play on the Spanish guitar.  She was “the
+dear girl,” or “the gallant girl,” between whom and her stepfather
+existed a true spirit of comradeship.  In 1844 she wrote to him, “And
+then that _funny_ look {415b} would come into your eyes and you would
+call me ‘poor old Hen.’”  He seemed incapable of laughing, and one
+intimate friend states that she “never saw him even smiling, but there
+was a twinkle in his eyes which told you that he was enjoying himself
+just the same.” {416}
+
+About this time Mrs George Borrow wrote to old Mrs Borrow at Oulton Hall,
+saying that all was well with her son.
+
+    “He is very regular in his morning and evening devotions, so that we
+    all have abundant cause for thankfulness . . . As regards your dear
+    son and his peace and comfort, you have reason to praise and bless
+    God on his account . . . He is fully occupied.  He keeps a _daily_
+    Journal of all that goes on, so that he can make a most amusing book
+    in a month, whenever he wishes to do so.”
+
+The first sentence is very puzzling, and would seem to suggest that
+Borrow’s moods were somehow or other associated with outbursts against
+religion.  “Be sure you _burn_ this, or do not leave it about,” the old
+lady is admonished.
+
+On the day following the ascent of Snowdon, Mrs Borrow and Henrietta
+returned to Llangollen by train, leaving Borrow free to pursue his
+wanderings.  He eventually arrived at Llangollen on 6th September, by way
+of Carnarvon, Festiniog and Bala.  After remaining another twenty days at
+Llangollen, he despatched his wife and stepdaughter home by rail.  He
+then bought a small leather satchel, with a strap to sling it over his
+shoulder, packed in it a white linen shirt, a pair of worsted stockings,
+a razor and a prayer-book.  Having had his boots resoled and his umbrella
+repaired, he left Llangollen for South Wales, upon an excursion which was
+to occupy three weeks.  During the course of this expedition he was taken
+for many things, from a pork-jobber to Father Toban himself, as whom he
+pronounced “the best Latin blessing I could remember” over two or three
+dozen Irish reapers to their entire satisfaction.  Eventually he arrived
+at Chepstow, having learned a great deal about wild Wales.
+
+One of the excursions that Borrow made from Bangor was to Llanfair in
+search of Gronwy, the birthplace of Gronwy Owen.  He found in the long,
+low house an old woman and five children, descendants of the poet, who
+stared at him wonderingly.  To each he gave a trifle.  Asking whether
+they could read, he was told that the eldest could read anything, whether
+Welsh or English.  In _Wild Wales_ he gives an account of the interview.
+
+    “‘Can you write?’ said I to the child [the eldest], a little stubby
+    girl of about eight, with a broad flat red face and grey eyes,
+    dressed in a chintz gown, a little bonnet on her head, and looking
+    the image of notableness.
+
+    “The little maiden, who had never taken her eyes off of me for a
+    moment during the whole time I had been in the room, at first made no
+    answer; being, however, bid by her grandmother to speak, she at
+    length answered in a soft voice, ‘Medraf, I can.’
+
+    “‘Then write your name in this book,’ said I, taking out a
+    pocket-book and a pencil, ‘and write likewise that you are related to
+    Gronwy Owen—and be sure you write in Welsh.’
+
+    “The little maiden very demurely took the book and pencil, and
+    placing the former on the table wrote as follows:—
+
+    “‘Ellen Jones yn perthyn o bell i gronow owen.’ {417a}
+
+    “That is, ‘Ellen Jones belonging, from afar off to Gronwy Owen.’”
+    {417b}
+
+Ellen Jones is now Ellen Thomas, and she well remembers Borrow coming
+along the lane, where she was playing with some other children, and
+asking for the house of Gronwy Owen.  Later, when she entered the house,
+she found him talking to her grandmother, who was a little deaf as
+described in _Wild Wales_.  Mrs Thomas’ recollection of Borrow is that he
+had the appearance of possessing great strength.  He had “bright eyes and
+shabby dress, more like a merchant than a gentleman, or like a man come
+to buy cattle [others made the same mistake].  But, dear me! he did speak
+_funny_ Welsh,” she remarked to a student of Borrow who sought her out,
+“he could not pronounce the ‘ll’ [pronouncing the word “pell” as if it
+rhymed with tell, whereas it should be pronounced something like
+“pelth”], and his voice was very high; but perhaps that was because my
+grandmother was deaf.”  He had plenty of words, but bad pronunciation.
+William Thomas {418a} laughed many a time at him coming talking his funny
+Welsh to him, and said he was glad he knew a few words of Spanish to
+answer him with.  Borrow was, apparently, unconscious of any imperfection
+in his pronunciation of the “ll”.  He has written: “‘Had you much
+difficulty in acquiring the sound of the “ll”?’  I think I hear the
+reader inquire.  None whatever: the double l of the Welsh is by no means
+the terrible guttural which English people generally suppose it to be.”
+{418b}
+
+Mrs Thomas is now sixty-seven years of age (she was eleven and not eight
+at the time of Borrow’s visit) and still preserves carefully wrapped up
+the book from which she read to the white-haired stranger.  The episode
+was not thought much of at the time, except by the child, whom it much
+excited. {418c}
+
+It was in all probability during this, his first tour in Wales, that
+Borrow was lost on Cader Idris, and spent the whole of one night in
+wandering over the mountain vainly seeking a path.  The next morning he
+arrived at the inn utterly exhausted.  It was quite in keeping with
+Borrow’s nature to suppress from his book all mention of this unpleasant
+adventure. {419a}
+
+The Welsh holiday was unquestionably a success.  Borrow’s mind had been
+diverted from critics and his lost popularity.  He had forgotten that in
+official quarters he had been overlooked.  He was in the land of Ab
+Gwilym and Gronwy Owen.  “There never was such a place for poets,” he
+wrote; “you meet a poet, or the birthplace of a poet, everywhere.” {419b}
+He was delighted with the simplicity of the people, and in no way
+offended by their persistent suspicion of all things Saxon.  At least
+they knew their own poets; and he could not help comparing the Welsh
+labouring man who knew Huw Morris, with his Suffolk brother who had never
+heard of Beowulf or Chaucer.  He discoursed with many people about their
+bards, surprising them by his intimate knowledge of the poets and the
+poetry of Wales.  He found enthusiasm “never scoffed at by the noble
+simple-minded genuine Welsh, whatever treatment it may receive from the
+coarse-hearted, sensual, selfish Saxon.” {419c}  Sometimes he was
+reminded “of the substantial yoemen of Cornwall, particularly . . . of my
+friends at Penquite.” {419d}  Wherever he went he experienced nothing but
+kindness and hospitality, and it delighted him to be taken for a Cumro,
+as was frequently the case.
+
+What Borrow writes about his Welsh is rather contradictory.  Sometimes he
+represents himself as taken for a Welshman, at others as a foreigner
+speaking Welsh.  “Oh, what a blessing it is to be able to speak Welsh!”
+{420a} he exclaims.  He acknowledged that he could read Welsh with far
+more ease than he could speak it.  There is absolutely no posing or
+endeavour to depict himself a perfect Welsh scholar, whose accent could
+not be distinguished from that of a native.  The literary results of the
+Welsh holiday were four Note Books written in pencil, from which _Wild
+Wales_ was subsequently written.  Borrow was in Wales for nearly sixteen
+weeks (1st Aug.—16th November), of which about a third was devoted to
+expeditions on foot.
+
+In the annual consultations about holidays, Borrow’s was always the
+dominating voice.  For the year 1855 the Isle of Man was chosen, because
+it attracted him as a land of legend and quaint customs and speech.
+Accordingly during the early days of September Mrs Borrow and Henrietta
+were comfortably settled at Douglas, and Borrow began to make excursions
+to various parts of the island.  He explored every corner of it,
+conversing with the people in Manx, collecting ballads and old,
+smoke-stained _carvel_ {420b} (or carol) books, of which he was
+successful in securing two examples.  He discovered that the island
+possessed a veritable literature in these _carvels_, which were
+circulated in manuscript form among the neighbours of the writers.
+
+The old runic inscriptions that he found on the tombstones exercised a
+great fascination over Borrow.  He would spend hours, or even days (on
+one occasion as much as a week), in deciphering one of them.  Thirty
+years later he was remembered as an accurate, painstaking man.  His
+evenings were frequently occupied in translating into English the Manx
+poem _Illiam Dhoo_, or Brown William.  He discovered among the Manx
+traditions much about Finn Ma Coul, or M‘Coyle, who appears in _The
+Romany Rye_ as a notability of Ireland.  He ascended Snaefell, sought out
+the daughter of George Killey, the Manx poet, and had much talk with her,
+she taking him for a Manxman.  The people of the island he liked.
+
+    “In the whole world,” he wrote in his ‘Note Books,’ “there is not a
+    more honest, kindly race than the genuine Manx.  Towards strangers
+    they exert unbounded hospitality without the slightest idea of
+    receiving any compensation, and they are, whether men or women, at
+    any time willing to go two or three miles over mountain and bog to
+    put strangers into the right road.”
+
+During his stay in the Isle of Man, news reached Borrow of the death of a
+kinsman, William, son of Samuel Borrow, his cousin, a cooper at
+Devonport.  William Borrow had gone to America, where he had won a prize
+for a new and wonderful application of steam.  His death is said to have
+occurred as the result of mental fatigue.  In this Borrow saw cause for
+grave complaint against the wretched English Aristocracy that forced
+talent out of the country by denying it employment or honour, which were
+all for their “connections and lick-spittles.”
+
+The holiday in the Isle of Man had resulted in two quarto note books,
+aggregating ninety-six pages, closely written in pencil.  Again Borrow
+planned to write a book, just as he had done on the occasion of the
+Cornish visit.  Nothing, however, came of it.  Among his papers was found
+the following draft of a suggested title-page:—
+
+                                 BAYR JAIRGEY
+                                     AND
+                                  GLION DOO
+
+                      THE RED PATH AND THE BLACK VALLEY
+
+                    WANDERINGS IN QUEST OF MANX LITERATURE
+
+A curious feature of Mrs Borrow’s correspondence is her friendly
+conspiracies, sometimes with John Murray, sometimes with Woodfall, the
+printer, asking them to send encouraging letters that shall hearten
+Borrow to greater efforts.  On 26th November 1850 John Murray wrote to
+her: “I have determined on engraving [by W. Holl] Phillips’ portrait
+{422} . . . as a frontispiece to it [_Lavengro_].  I trust that this will
+not be disagreeable to you and the author—in fact I do it in confident
+expectation that it will meet with _your_ assent; I do not ask Mr
+Borrow’s leave, remember.”
+
+It must be borne in mind that Mrs Borrow had been in London a few days
+previously, in order to deliver to John Murray the manuscript of
+_Lavengro_.  Mrs Borrow’s reply to this letter is significant.  With
+regard to the engraving, she writes (28th November), “_I like the idea of
+it_, and when Mr Borrow remarked that he did not wish it (as we expected
+he would) I reminded him that _his_ leave _was_ not asked.”
+
+Again, on 30th October 1852, Mrs Borrow wrote to Robert Cooke asking that
+either he or John Murray would write to Borrow enquiring as to his
+health, and progress with _The Romany Rye_, and how long it would be
+before the manuscript were ready for the printer.  “Of course,” she adds,
+“all this is in perfect confidence to Mr Murray and yourself as you
+_both_ of you know my truly excellent Husband well enough to be aware how
+much he every now and then requires an impetus to cause the large wheel
+to move round at a quicker pace . . . Oblige me by committing this to the
+flames, and write to him just as you would have done, without hearing _a
+word from me_.”  On yet another occasion when she and Borrow were both in
+London, she writes to Cooke asking that either he “or Mr Murray will give
+my Husband a look, if it be only for a few minutes . . . He seems rather
+low.  Do, _not_ let this note remain on your table,” she concludes, “or
+_mention_ it.”
+
+If Borrow were a problem to his wife and to his publisher, he presented
+equal difficulties to the country folk about Oulton.  To one he was “a
+missionary out of work,” to another “a man who kep’ ’isself to ’isself”;
+but to none was he the tired lion weary of the chase.  “His great delight
+. . . was to plunge into the darkening mere at eventide, his great head
+and heavy shoulders ruddy in the rays of the sun.  Here he hissed and
+roared and spluttered, sometimes frightening the eel-catcher sailing home
+in the half-light, and remembering suddenly school legends of
+river-sprites and monsters of the deep.” {423a}
+
+In the spring following his return from the Isle of Man, Borrow made
+numerous excursions on foot through East Anglia.  He seemed too restless
+to remain long in one place.  During a tramp from Yarmouth to Ely by way
+of Cromer, Holt, Lynn and Wisbech, he called upon Anna Gurney. {423b}
+His reason for doing so was that she was one of the three celebrities of
+the world he desired to see.  The other two were Daniel O’Connell {423c}
+and Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus), Lord Berners winner of the
+Derby.  Two of the world’s notabilities had slipped through his fingers
+by reason of their deaths, but he was determined that Anna Gurney, who
+lived at North Repps, should not evade him.  He gave her notice of his
+intention to call, and found her ready to receive him.
+
+    “When, according to his account, {424} he had been but a very short
+    time in her presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her
+    hand to one of her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and
+    put it into his hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point,
+    which he tried to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him
+    continuously; when, said he, ‘I could not study the Arabic grammar
+    and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the book and ran
+    out of the room.’”
+
+It is said that Borrow ran until he reached Old Tucker’s Inn at Cromer,
+where he ate “five excellent sausages” and found calm.  He then went on
+to Sheringham and related the incident to the Upchers.
+
+These lonely walking tours soothed Borrow’s restless mind.  He had
+constant change of scene, and his thoughts were diverted by the
+adventures of the roadside.  He encountered many and interesting people,
+on one occasion an old man who remembered the fight between Painter and
+Oliver; at another time he saw a carter beating his horse which had
+fallen down.  “Give him a pint of ale, and I will pay for it,” counselled
+Borrow.  After the second pint the beast got up and proceeded, “pulling
+merrily . . . with the other horses.”
+
+Ale was Borrow’s sovereign remedy for the world’s ills and wrongs.  It
+was by ale that he had been cured when the “Horrors” were upon him in the
+dingle.  “Oh, genial and gladdening is the power of good ale, the true
+and proper drink of Englishmen,” he exclaims after having heartened Jack
+Slingsby and his family.  “He is not deserving of the name of
+Englishman,” he continues, “who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.”
+{425a}  To John Murray (the Third) he wrote in his letter of sympathy on
+the death of his father: “Pray keep up your spirits, and that you may be
+able to do so, take long walks and drink plenty of Scotch ale with your
+dinner . . .  God bless you.”
+
+He liked ale “with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as well may
+be—ale at least two years old.” {425b}  The period of its maturity
+changed with his mood.  In another place he gives nine or ten months as
+the ideal age. {425c}  He was all for an Act of Parliament to force
+people to brew good ale.  He not only drank good ale himself; but
+prescribed it as a universal elixir for man and beast.  Hearing from
+Elizabeth Harvey “of a lady who was attached to a gentleman,” Borrow
+demanded bluntly, “Well, did he make her an offer?”  “No,” was the
+response.  “Ah,” Borrow replied with conviction, “if she had given him
+some good ale he would.” {425d}
+
+He loved best old Burton, which, with ’37 port, were his favourites; yet
+he would drink whatever ale the roadside-inn provided, as if to
+discipline his stomach.  It has been said that he habitually drank
+“swipes,” a thin cheap ale, because that was the drink of his gypsy
+friends; but Borrow’s friendship certainly did not often involve him in
+anything so distasteful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+_THE ROMANY RYE_.  1854–1859
+
+
+BORROW was not a great correspondent, and he left behind him very few
+letters from distinguished men of his time.  Among those few were several
+from Edward FitzGerald, whose character contrasted so strangely with that
+of the tempestuous Borrow.  In 1856 FitzGerald wrote:—
+
+                                                 31 GREAT PORTLAND STREET,
+                                            LONDON, 27_th_ _October_ 1856.
+
+    MY DEAR SIR,—It is I who send you the new Turkish Dictionary
+    [Redhouse’s Turkish & English Dictionary] which ought to go by this
+    Post; my reasons being that I bought it really only for the purpose
+    of doing that little good to the spirited Publisher of the book (who
+    thought when he began it that the [Crimean] War was to last), and I
+    send it to you because I should be glad of your opinion, if you can
+    give it.  I am afraid that you will hardly condescend to _use_ it,
+    for you abide in the old Meninsky; but if you _will_ use it, I shall
+    be very glad.  I don’t think _I_ ever shall; and so what is to be
+    done with it now it is bought?
+
+    I don’t know what Kerrich told you of my being too _lazy_ to go over
+    to Yarmouth to see you a year ago.  No such thing as that.  I simply
+    had doubts as to whether you would not rather remain unlookt for.  I
+    know I enjoyed my evening with you a month ago.  I wanted to ask you
+    to read some of the _Northern Ballads_ too; but you shut the book.
+
+    I must tell you.  I am come up here on my way to Chichester to be
+    married! to Miss Barton (of Quaker memory) and our united ages amount
+    to 96!—a dangerous experiment on both sides.  She at least brings a
+    fine head and heart to the bargain—worthy of a better market.  But it
+    is to be, and I dare say you will honestly wish we may do well.
+
+    Keep the book as long as you will.  It is useless to me.  I shall be
+    to be heard of through Geldeston Hall, Beccles.  With compliments to
+    Mrs Borrow, believe me,
+
+                                 Yours truly,
+
+                                                        EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+    _P.S._—Donne is well, and wants to know about you.
+
+A few months later FitzGerald wrote again:
+
+                                                  ALBERT HOUSE, GORLESTON,
+                                                        6_th_ _July_ 1857.
+
+    DEAR BORROW,—Will you send me [The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam] by
+    bearer.  I only want to look at him, for that Frenchman {427} has
+    been misquoting him in a way that will make [Professor] E. Cowell [of
+    Cambridge] answerable for another’s blunder, which must not be.  You
+    shall have ’_Omar_ back directly, or whenever you want him, and I
+    should really like to make you a copy (taking my time) of the best
+    Quatrains.  I am now looking over the Calcutta MS. which has
+    500!—very many quite as good as those in the MS. you have; but very
+    many in _both_ MSS. are well omitted.
+
+    I have been for a fortnight to Geldeston where Kerrich is not very
+    well.  I shall look for you one day in my Yarmouth rounds, and you
+    know how entirely disengaged and glad to see you I am here.  I have
+    two fresh Nieces with me—and I find I gave you the _worst_ wine of
+    two samples Diver sent me.  I wish you would send word by bearer you
+    are better—this one word written will be enough you see.
+
+    My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or
+    something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon sink
+    into the village Churchsward.  Why, _our_ time seems coming.  Make
+    way, Gentlemen!—Yours very truly,
+
+                                                        EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+What effect the sweet gentleness of FitzGerald’s nature had upon that of
+Borrow is not known, for the replies have not been preserved.  FitzGerald
+was a man capable of soothing the angriest and most discontented mind,
+and it is a misfortune that he saw so little of Borrow.  In the early
+part of the following year (24th Jan. 1857) FitzGerald wrote to Professor
+E. B. Cowell of Cambridge:—
+
+    “I was with Borrow a week ago at Donne’s, and also at Yarmouth three
+    months ago: he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray.  He read me a
+    long Translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not
+    admire, and his Taste becomes stranger than ever.” {428a}
+
+From Wales Mrs George Borrow had written (Sept. 1854) to old Mrs Borrow:
+“He [Borrow] will, I expect at Christmas, publish his other work [_The
+Romany Rye_] together with his poetry in all the European languages.”
+{428b}  In November (1854) the manuscript of _The Romany Rye_ was
+delivered to John Murray, who appears to have taken his time in reading
+it; for it was not until 23rd December that he expressed his views in the
+following letter.  Even when the letter was written it was allowed to
+remain in John Murray’s desk for five weeks, not being sent until 27th
+January:—
+
+    MY DEAR BORROW,—I have read with care the MS. of _The Romany Rye_ and
+    have pondered anxiously over it; and in what I am about to write I
+    think I may fairly claim the privilege of a friend deeply interested
+    in you personally, as well as in your reputation as author, and by no
+    means insensible to the abilities displayed in your various works.
+    It is my firm conviction then, that you will incur the certainty of
+    failure and run the risque of injuring your literary fame by
+    publishing the MS. as it stands.  Very large omissions seem to me—and
+    in this, Elwin, {429} no mean judge, concurs—absolutely
+    indispensable.  That _Lavengro_ would have profited by curtailment, I
+    stated before its publication.  The result has verified my
+    anticipations, and in the present instance I feel compelled to make
+    it the condition of publication.  You can well imagine that it is not
+    my _interest_ to shorten a book from two volumes to one unless there
+    were really good cause.
+
+    _Lavengro_ clearly has not been successful.  Let us not then risque
+    the chance of another failure, but try to avoid the rock upon which
+    we then split.  You have so great store of interesting matter in your
+    mind and in your notes, that I cannot but feel it to be a pity that
+    you should harp always upon one string, as it were.  It seems to me
+    that you have dwelt too long on English ground in this new work, and
+    have resuscitated some characters of the former book (such as F.
+    Ardry) whom your readers would have been better pleased to have left
+    behind.  Why should you not introduce us rather to those novel scenes
+    of Moscovite and Hungarian life respecting which I have heard you
+    drop so many stimulating allusions.  Do not, I pray, take offence at
+    what I have written.  It is difficult and even painful for me to
+    assume the office of critic, and this is one of the reasons why this
+    note has lingered so long in my desk.  Fortunately, in the advice I
+    am tendering I am supported by others of better literary judgment
+    than myself, and who have also deep regard for you.  I will specify
+    below some of the passages which I would point out for omission.—With
+    best remembrances, I remain, my dear Borrow, Your faithful publisher
+    and sincere friend,
+
+                                                              JOHN MURRAY.
+
+                         _Suggestions for Omission_.
+
+    The Hungarian in No. 6.
+
+    The Jockey Story, terribly spun out, No. 7.
+
+    Visit to the Church, too long.
+
+    Interview with the Irishman, Do.
+
+    Learning Chinese, too much repetition in this part of a very
+    interesting chapter.
+
+    The Postilion and Highwayman.
+
+    Throughout the MS. condensation is indispensable.  Many of the
+    narratives are carried to a tedious length by details and repetition.
+
+    The dialogue with Ursula, the song, etc., border on the indelicate.
+    I like much Horncastle Fair, the Chinese scholar, except objection
+    noted above.
+
+    Grooming of the horse.
+
+    January 27, 1855.
+
+On 29th January, Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray a letter that was
+inspired by Borrow himself.  Dr Knapp discovered the original draft, some
+of which was in Borrow’s own hand.  It runs:—
+
+    DEAR MR MURRAY,—We have received your letters.  In the first place I
+    beg leave to say something on a very principal point.  You talk about
+    _conditions_ of publishing.  Mr Borrow has not the slightest wish to
+    publish the book.  The MS. was left with you because you wished to
+    see it, and when left, you were particularly requested not to let it
+    pass out of your own hands.  But it seems you have shown it to
+    various individuals whose opinions you repeat.  What those opinions
+    are worth may be gathered from the following fact.
+
+    The book is one of the most learned works ever written; yet in the
+    summary of the opinions which you give, not one single allusion is
+    made to the learning which pervades the book, no more than if it
+    contained none at all.  It is treated just as if all the philological
+    and historical facts were mere inventions, and the book a common
+    novel . . .
+
+    With regard to _Lavengro_ it is necessary to observe that if ever a
+    book experienced infamous and undeserved treatment it was that book.
+    It was attacked in every form that envy and malice could suggest, on
+    account of Mr Borrow’s acquirements and the success of _The Bible in
+    Spain_, and it was deserted by those whose duty it was, in some
+    degree to have protected it.  No attempt was ever made to refute the
+    vile calumny that it was a book got up against the Popish agitation
+    of ’51.  It was written years previous to that period—a fact of which
+    none is better aware than the Publisher.  Is that calumny to be still
+    permitted to go unanswered?
+
+    If these suggestions are attended to, well and good; if not, Mr
+    Borrow can bide his time.  He is independent of the public and of
+    everybody.  Say no more on that Russian Subject.  Mr Borrow has had
+    quite enough of the press.  If he wrote a book on Russia, it would be
+    said to be like _The Bible in Spain_, or it would be said to be
+    unlike _The Bible in Spain_, and would be blamed in either case.  He
+    has written a book in connection with England such as no other body
+    could have written, and he now rests from his labours.  He has found
+    England an ungrateful country.  It owes much to him, and he owes
+    nothing to it.  If he had been a low ignorant impostor, like a person
+    he could name, he would have been employed and honoured.—I remain,
+    Yours sincerely,
+
+                                                              MARY BORROW.
+
+On 5th April 1856 Mrs Borrow wrote again, requesting Murray to return the
+manuscript, but for what purpose she does not state.  Two days later it
+was despatched by rail from Albemarle Street.
+
+Some years before, Borrow had met Rev. Whitwell Elwin, Rector of Booton,
+somewhere about the time he (Elwin) came up to London to edit _The
+Quarterly Review_, viz., 1853. {431}  The first interview between the two
+men has been described as characteristic of both.
+
+    “Borrow was just then very sore with his slashing critics, and on
+    someone mentioning that Elwin was a ‘_Quartering_ reviewer,’ he said,
+    ‘Sir, I wish you a better employment.’  Then hastily changing the
+    subject, he called out, ‘What party are you in the Church—Tractarian,
+    Moderate, or Evangelical?  I am happy to say, _I_ am the old _High_.’
+    ‘I am happy to say I am _not_,’ was Elwin’s emphatic reply.  Borrow
+    boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he
+    endeavoured to speak as broadly as possible.  ‘I told him,’ said
+    Elwin, ‘that he had not cultivated it with his usual success.’  As
+    the conversation proceeded it became less disputatious, and the two
+    ended by becoming so cordial that they promised to visit each other.
+    Borrow fulfilled his promise in the following October, when he went
+    to Booton, and was ‘full of anecdote and reminiscence,’ and delighted
+    the rectory children by singing them songs in the gypsy tongue.
+    Elwin during this visit urged him to try his hand at an article for
+    the Review.  ‘Never,’ he said, ‘I have made a resolution never to
+    have anything to do with such a blackguard trade.’” {432a}
+
+Elwin became greatly interested in _The Romany Rye_.  He endeavoured to
+influence its composition, and even wrote to Borrow begging him “to give
+his sequel to _Lavengro_ more of an historical, and less of a romancing
+air.”  He was not happy about the book.  He wrote to John Murray in
+March:—
+
+    “‘It is not the statements themselves which provoke incredulity, but
+    the melodramatic effect which he tries to impart to all his
+    adventures.’  Instead of ‘roaring like a lion,’ in reply, as Elwin
+    had expected, he returned quite a ‘lamb-like’ note, which gave
+    promise of a greater success for his new work than its precursor.”
+    {432b}
+
+Borrow appears to have become tired of biding his time with regard to
+_The Romany Rye_, and on 27th Feb. 1857 he wrote to John Murray to say
+that “the work must go to press, and that unless the printing is
+forthwith commenced, I must come up to London and make arrangements
+myself.  Time is passing away.  It ought to have appeared many years ago.
+I can submit to no more delays.”  The work was accordingly proceeded
+with, and Elwin wrote a criticism of the work for _The Quarterly Review_
+from the proof-sheets:—
+
+    “When the review was almost finished, it was on the point of being
+    altogether withdrawn, owing to a passage in _Romany Rye_ which Elwin
+    said was clearly meant to be a reflection on his friend Ford, ‘to
+    avenge the presumed refusal of the latter to praise _Lavengro_ in
+    _The Quarterly Review_.’  ‘I am very anxious,’ he said, ‘to get
+    Borrow justice for rare merits which have been entirely overlooked,
+    but if he persists in publishing an attack of this kind I shall, I
+    fear, not be able to serve him.’  The objectionable paragraphs had
+    been written by Borrow under a misapprehension, and he cancelled them
+    as soon as he was convinced of his error.” {433}
+
+John Murray determined not to publish the book unless the offending
+passage were removed.  He wrote to Borrow the following letter:—
+
+                                                       8_th_ _April_ 1857.
+
+    MY DEAR BORROW,—When I have done anything towards you deserving of
+    apology I will not hesitate to offer one.  As it is, I have acted
+    loyally towards you, and with a view to maintain your interests.
+
+    I agreed to publish your present work solely with the object of
+    obliging you, and in a great degree at the strong recommendation of
+    Cooke.  I meant (as was my duty) to do my very best to promote its
+    success.  You on your side promised to listen to me in regard to any
+    necessary omissions; and on the faith of this, I pointed out one
+    omission, which I make the indispensable condition of my proceeding
+    further with the book.  I have asked nothing unfair nor
+    unreasonable—nay, a compliance with the request is essential for your
+    own character as an author and a man.
+
+    You are the last man that I should ever expect to “frighten or
+    bully”; and if a mild but firm remonstrance against an offensive
+    passage in your book is interpreted by you into such an application,
+    I submit that the grounds for the notion must exist nowhere but in
+    your own imagination.  The alternative offered to you is to omit or
+    publish elsewhere.  Nothing shall compel me to publish what you have
+    written.  Think calmly and dispassionately over this, and when you
+    have decided let me know.
+
+                            Yours very faithfully,
+
+                                                              JOHN MURRAY.
+
+The reference that had so offended Murray and Elwin had, in all
+probability been interpolated in proof form, otherwise it would have been
+discovered either when Murray read the manuscript or Elwin the proofs.
+By return of post came the following reply from Borrow, then at Great
+Yarmouth:—
+
+    DEAR SIR,—Yesterday I received your letter.  You had better ask your
+    cousin [Robert Cooke] to come down and talk about matters.  _After_
+    Monday I shall be disengaged and shall be most happy to see him.  And
+    now I must tell you that you are exceedingly injudicious.  You call a
+    chapter heavy, and I, not wishing to appear unaccommodating, remove
+    or alter two or three passages for which I do not particularly care,
+    whereupon you make most unnecessary comments, obtruding your private
+    judgment upon matters with which you have no business, and of which
+    it is impossible that you should have a competent knowledge.  If you
+    disliked the passages you might have said so, but you had no right to
+    say anything more.  I believe that you not only meant no harm, but
+    that your intentions were good; unfortunately, however, people with
+    the best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm.  In your
+    language you are frequently in the highest degree injudicious; for
+    example, in your last letter you talk of obliging me by publishing my
+    work.  Now is not that speaking very injudiciously?  Surely you
+    forget that I could return a most cutting answer were I disposed to
+    do so.
+
+    I believe, however, that your intentions are good, and that you are
+    disposed to be friendly.—Yours truly,
+
+                                                            GEORGE BORROW.
+
+The tone of this letter is strangely reminiscent of some of the Rev
+Andrew Brandram’s admonitions to Borrow himself, during his association
+with the Bible Society.  Borrow bowed to the wind, and the offending
+passage was deleted, and _The Romany Rye_ eventually appeared on 30th
+April 1857, in an edition of a thousand copies.  The public, or such part
+of it as had not forgotten Borrow, had been kept waiting six years to
+know what had happened on the morning after the storm.  _Lavengro_ had
+ended by the postilion concluding his story with “Young gentleman, I will
+now take a spell on your blanket—young lady, good-night,” and presumably
+the three, Borrow, Isopel Berners and their guest had lain down to sleep,
+and a great quiet fell upon the dingle, and the moon and the stars shone
+down upon it, and the red glow from the charcoal in the brazier paled and
+died away.
+
+_The Romany Rye_ is a puzzling book.  The latter portion, at least, seems
+to suggest “spiritual autobiography.”  It reveals the man, his
+atmosphere, his character, and nowhere better than among the jockeys at
+Horncastle.  It gives a better and more convincing picture of Borrow than
+the most accurate list of dates and occurrences, all vouched for upon
+unimpeachable authority.  It is impressionism applied to autobiography,
+which has always been considered as essentially a subject for
+photographic treatment.  Borrow thought otherwise, with the result that
+many people decline to believe that his picture is a portrait, because
+there is a question as to the dates.
+
+Among the reviews, which were on the whole unfriendly, was the remarkable
+notice in _The Quarterly Review_, by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin:—{435}
+
+    “Nobody,” he wrote, “sympathises with wounded vanity, and the world
+    only laughs when a man angrily informs it that it does not rate him
+    at his true value.  The public to whom he appeals must, after all, be
+    the judge of his pretensions.  Their verdict at first is frequently
+    wrong, but it is they themselves who must reverse it, and not the
+    author who is upon his trial before them.  The attacks of critics, if
+    they are unjust, invariably yield to the same remedy.  Though we do
+    not think that Mr Borrow is a good counsel in his own cause, we are
+    yet strongly of the opinion that Time in this case has some wrongs to
+    repair, and that _Lavengro_ has _not_ obtained the fame which was its
+    due.  It contains passages which in their way are not surpassed by
+    anything in English Literature.”
+
+The value of these prophetic words lies in the fine spirit of fatherly
+reproof in which the whole review was written.  It is the work of a
+critic who regarded literature as a thing to be approached, both by
+author and reviewer, with grave and deliberate ceremony, not with
+enthusiasm or prejudice.  From any other source the following words would
+not have possessed the significance they did, coming from a man of such
+sane ideas with the courage to express them:—
+
+    “Various portions of the history are known to be a faithful narrative
+    of Mr Borrow’s career, while we ourselves can testify, as to many
+    other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with
+    which he has described both men and things.  Far from his showing any
+    tendency to exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have
+    known, and they are not a few, are rather within the truth than
+    beyond it.  However picturesquely they may be drawn, the lines are
+    invariably those of nature.  Why under these circumstances he should
+    envelop the question in mystery is more than we can divine.  There
+    can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the
+    work is a narrative of actual occurrences.” {436}
+
+The Appendix itself, which had drawn from Elwin the grave declaration
+that “Mr Borrow is very angry with his critics,” is a fine piece of
+rhetorical denunciation.  It opens with the deliberate restraint of a man
+who feels the fury of his wrath surging up within him.  It tells again
+the story of _Lavengro_, pointing morals as it goes.  Then the studied
+calm is lost—Priestcraft, “Foreign Nonsense,” “Gentility Nonsense,”
+“Canting Nonsense,” “Pseudo-Critics,” “Pseudo-Radicals” he flogs and
+pillories mercilessly until, arriving at “The Old Radical,” he throws off
+all restraint and lunges out wildly, mad with hate and despair.  As a
+piece of literary folly, the Appendix to _The Romany Rye_ has probably
+never been surpassed.  It alienated from Borrow all but his personal
+friends, and it sealed his literary fate as far as his own generation was
+concerned.  In short, he had burnt his boats.
+
+Borrow had sent a copy of _The Romany Rye_ to FitzGerald, which is
+referred to by him in a letter written from Gorleston to Professor Cowell
+(5th June 1857):—
+
+    “Within hail almost lives George Borrow who has lately published, and
+    given me, two new Volumes of Lavengro called _Romany Rye_, with some
+    excellent things, and some very bad (as I have made bold to write to
+    him—how shall I face him!).  You would not like the Book at all, I
+    think.” {437a}
+
+Borrow was bitterly disappointed at the effect produced by _The Romany
+Rye_.  On someone once saying that it was the finest piece of literary
+invective since Swift, he replied, “Yes, I meant it to be; and what do
+you think the effect was?  No one took the least notice of it!” {437b}
+
+_The Romany Rye_ was not a success.  The thousand copies lasted a year.
+When it appeared likely that a second edition would be required, Borrow
+wrote to John Murray urging him not to send the book to the press again
+until he “was quite sure the demand for it will at least defray all
+attendant expenses.”  He saw that whatever profits had resulted from the
+publication of the first edition, were in danger of being swallowed up in
+the preparation of a second.  When this did eventually make its
+appearance in 1858, it was limited to 750 copies, which lasted until
+1872.
+
+Borrow’s own attitude with regard to the work and his wisdom in
+publishing it is summed up in a letter to John Murray (17th Sept. 1857):—
+
+    “I was very anxious to bring it out,” he writes; “and I bless God
+    that I had the courage and perseverance to do so.  It is of course
+    unpalatable to many; for it scorns to foster delusion, to cry ‘peace
+    where there is no peace,’ and denounces boldly the evils which are
+    hurrying the country to destruction, and which have kindled God’s
+    anger against it, namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty,
+    covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and above all the rage for
+    gentility, which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and
+    honourable feeling.”
+
+The writing of the Appendix had aroused in Borrow all his old enthusiasm,
+and he appears to have come to the determination to publish a number of
+works, including a veritable library of translations.  At the end of _The
+Romany Rye_ appeared a lengthy list of books in preparation. {438}
+
+In August 1857 Borrow paid a second visit to Wales, walking “upwards of
+four hundred miles.”  Starting from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, he
+visited Tenby, Pembroke, Milford Haven, Haverford, St David’s, Fishguard,
+Newport, Cardigan, Lampeter; passing into Brecknockshire, he eventually
+reached Mortimer’s Cross in Hereford and thence to Shrewsbury.  In
+October he was at Leighton, Donnington and Uppington, where he found
+traces of Gronwy Owen, the one-time curate and all-time poet.
+
+Throughout his life Borrow had shown by every action and word written
+about her, the great love he bore his mother.  When his wife wrote to her
+and he was too restless to do so himself, he would interpolate two or
+three lines to “My dear Mamma.”  She was always in his thoughts, and he
+never wavered in his love for her and devotion to her comfort; whilst she
+looked upon him as only a mother so good and so tender could look upon a
+son who had become her “only hope.”
+
+For many years of her life it had been ordained that this brave old lady
+should live alone. {439}  In the middle of August 1858 the news reached
+Borrow that his mother had been taken suddenly ill.  She was in her
+eighty-seventh year, and at such an age all illnesses are dangerous.
+Borrow hastened to Oulton, and arrived just in time to be with her at the
+last.
+
+Thus on 16th August 1858, of “pulmonary congestion,” died Anne Borrow,
+who had followed her husband about with his regiment, and had reared and
+educated her two boys under circumstances of great disadvantage.  She had
+lost one; but the other, her youngest born, whom she had so often
+shielded from his father’s reproaches, had been spared to her, and she
+had seen him famous.  Upon her grave in Oulton Churchyard the son caused
+to be inscribed the words, “She was a good wife and a good mother,” than
+which no woman can ask more. {440a}
+
+The death of his mother was a great shock to Borrow.  “He felt the blow
+keenly,” Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray, “and I advised a tour in
+Scotland to recruit his health and spirits.”  Accordingly he went North
+early in October, leaving his wife and Henrietta at Great Yarmouth.  He
+visited the Highlands, walking several hundred miles.  Mull struck him as
+“a very wild country, perhaps the wildest in Europe.”  Many of its
+place-names reminded him strongly of the Isle of Man.  At the end of
+November he finished up the tour at Lerwick in Shetland, where he bought
+presents for his “loved ones,” having seen Greenock, Glasgow, Perth,
+Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick, Thurso among other places.  His impressions
+were not altogether favourable to the Scotch.  “A queerer country I never
+saw in all my life,” he wrote later . . . “a queerer set of people than
+the Scotch you would scarcely see in a summer’s day.” {440b}
+
+In the following year (1859) an excursion was made to Ireland by Borrow
+and his family.  Making Dublin his headquarters, where he left his wife
+and Henrietta comfortably settled, he tramped to Connemara and the
+Giant’s Causeway, the expedition being full of adventure and affording
+him “much pleasure,” in spite of the fact that he was “frequently wet to
+the skin, and indifferently lodged.”
+
+Borrow had inherited from his mother some property at Mattishall Burgh,
+one and a half miles from his birth-place, consisting of some land, a
+thatched house and outbuildings, now demolished.  This was let to a
+small-holder named Henry Hill.  Borrow thought very highly of his tenant,
+and for hours together would tramp up and down beside him as he ploughed
+the land, asking questions, and hearing always something new from the
+amazing stores of nature knowledge that Henry Hill had acquired.  This
+Norfolk worthy appears to have been possessed of a genius for many
+things.  He was well versed in herbal lore, a self-taught ’cellist,
+playing each Sunday in the Congregational Chapel at Mattishall, and an
+equally self-taught watch-repairer; but his chief claim to fame was as a
+bee-keeper, local tradition crediting him with being the first man to
+keep bees under glass.  He would solemnly state that his bees, whom he
+looked upon as friends, talked to him.  On Sundays the country folk for
+miles round would walk over to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill’s
+bees, and hear him expound their lore.  It was perforce Sunday, there was
+no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who seemed
+always to live on the verge of starvation.  Borrow himself expressed
+regret to Henry Hill that it had not been possible to add the education
+of the academy to that of the land.  He saw that the combination would
+have produced an even more remarkable man.
+
+In Norfolk all strangers are regarded with suspicion.  Lifelong
+friendships are not contracted in a day.  The East Anglian is shrewd, and
+requires to know something about those whom he admits to the sacred inner
+circle of his friendship.  Borrow was well-known in the Mattishall
+district, and was looked upon with more than usual suspicion.  He was
+unquestionably a strange man, in speech, in appearance, in habits.  He
+could and would knock down any who offended him; but, worst of all, he
+was the intimate of gypsies, sat by their fires, spoke in their tongue.
+The population round about was entirely an agricultural one, and all
+united in hating the gypsies as their greatest enemies, because of their
+depredations.  Add to this the fact that Borrow was a frequenter of
+public-houses, of which there were _seven_ in the village, and was wont
+to boast that you could get at the true man only after he had been
+mellowed into speech by good English ale.  Then he would open his heart
+and unburden his mind of all the accumulated knowledge that he possessed,
+and add something to the epic of the soil.  Borrow’s overbearing manner
+made people shy of him.  On one occasion he told John, the son and
+successor of Henry Hill, that he ought to be responsible for the debt of
+his half-brother; the debt, it may be mentioned, was to Borrow.
+
+There is no better illustration of the suspicion with which Borrow was
+regarded locally, than an incident that occurred during one of his visits
+to Mattishall.  He called upon John Hill at Church Farm to collect his
+rent.  The evening was spent very agreeably.  Borrow recited some of his
+ballads, quoted Scripture and languages, and sang a song.  He was
+particularly interested on account of Mrs Hill being from London, where
+she knew many of his haunts.  He remained the whole evening with the
+family and partook of their meal; but was allowed to go to one of the
+seven public-houses for a bed, although there were spare bedrooms in the
+house that he might have occupied.  Such was the suspicion that Borrow’s
+habits created in the minds of his fellow East Anglians. {442}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+JULY 1859–JANUARY 1869
+
+
+AFTER his second tour in Wales, Borrow had submitted to John Murray the
+manuscript of his translation of _The Sleeping Bard_, which in 1830 had
+so alarmed the little Welsh bookseller of Smithfield.  “I really want
+something to do,” Borrow wrote, “and seeing the work passing through the
+press might amuse me.”  Murray, however, could not see his way to accept
+the offer, and the manuscript was returned.  Borrow decided to publish
+the book at his own expense, and accordingly commissioned a Yarmouth man
+to print him 250 copies, upon the title-page of which John Murray
+permitted his name to appear.
+
+In the note in which he tells of the Welsh bookseller’s doubts and fears,
+Borrow goes on to assure his readers that there is no harm in the book.
+
+    “It is true,” he says, “that the Author is any thing but mincing in
+    his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the
+    Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious.
+    There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope
+    however that there is not so much as there was.  Indeed can we doubt
+    that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in
+    ’60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which
+    Smithfield shrank from in ’30.”
+
+The edition was very speedily exhausted, largely on account of an article
+entitled, _The Welsh and Their Literature_, written years before, that
+Borrow adapted as a review of the book, and published anonymously in _The
+Quarterly Review_ (Jan. 1861).  _The Sleeping Bard_ was not reprinted.
+
+The next event of importance in Borrow’s life was his removal to London
+with Mrs Borrow and Henrietta.  Towards the end of the Irish holiday (4th
+Nov. 1859), Mrs Borrow had written to John Murray: “If all be well in the
+Spring, I shall wish to look around, and select a pleasant, healthy
+residence within from three to ten miles of London.”  Borrow may have
+felt more at liberty to make the change now that his mother was dead,
+although whilst she was at Oulton he was as little company for her at
+Great Yarmouth as he would have been in London.  Whatever led them to the
+decision to take up their residence in London, Borrow and his wife left
+Great Yarmouth at the end of June, and immediately proceeded to look
+about them for a suitable house.  Their choice eventually fell upon
+number 22 Hereford Square, Brompton, which had the misfortune to be only
+a few doors from number 26, where lived Frances Power Cobbe.  The rent
+was £65 per annum.  The Borrows entered upon their tenancy at the
+Michaelmas quarter, and were joined by Henrietta, who had remained behind
+at Great Yarmouth during the house-hunting.
+
+Miss Cobbe has given in her Autobiography a very unlovely picture of
+George Borrow during the period of his residence in Hereford Square.  No
+woman, except his relatives and dependants, will tolerate egoism in a
+man.  Borrow was an egoist.  If not permitted to lead the conversation,
+he frequently wrapped himself in a gloomy silence and waited for an
+opportunity to discomfit the usurper of the place he seemed to consider
+his own.  Among his papers were found after his death a large number of
+letters from poor men whom Borrow had assisted.  His friend the Rev.
+Francis Cunningham once wrote to him a letter protesting against his
+assisting Nonconformist schools.  He gave to Church and Chapel alike.
+This disproves misanthropy, and leaves egoism as the only explanation of
+his occasional lapses into bitterness or rudeness.  When in happy vein,
+however, “his conversation . . . was unlike that of any other man;
+whether he told a long story or only commented on some ordinary topic, he
+was always quaint, often humorous.” {445a}
+
+Miss Cobbe would not humour an egoist, because constitutionally women,
+especially clever women, dislike them, unless they wish to marry them.
+When she heard it said, as it very frequently was said, that Borrow was a
+gypsy by blood, she caustically remarked that if he were not he “_ought_
+to have been.”  Miss Cobbe had living with her a Miss Lloyd who, “amused
+by his quaint stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, . . .
+cultivated his acquaintance.  I,” continued Miss Cobbe frankly, “never
+liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite.” {445b}
+
+On one occasion Borrow had accepted an invitation from Miss Cobbe to meet
+some friends, but subsequently withdrew his acceptance “on finding that
+Dr Martineau was to be of the party . . . nor did he ever after attend
+our little assemblies without first ascertaining that Dr Martineau would
+not be present!”  This she explained by the assertion that Dr Martineau
+had “horsed” Borrow when he was punished for running away from school at
+Norwich.  It appeared “irresistibly comic” to her mind.
+
+There is an amusing account given by Miss Cobbe of how she worsted
+Borrow, which is certainly extremely flattering to her accomplishments.
+Once when talking with him she happened to say
+
+    “something about the imperfect education of women, and he said it was
+    _right_ they should be ignorant, and that no man could endure a
+    clever wife.  I laughed at him openly,” she continues, “and told him
+    some men knew better.  What did he think of the Brownings?  ‘Oh, he
+    had heard the name; he did not know anything of them.  Since Scott,
+    he read no modern writer; Scott _was greater than Homer_!  What he
+    liked were curious, old, erudite books about mediæval and northern
+    things.’  I said I knew little of such literature, and preferred the
+    writers of our own age, but indeed I was no great student at all.
+    Thereupon he evidently wanted to astonish me; and, talking of
+    Ireland, said, ‘Ah, yes; a most curious, mixed race.  First there
+    were the Firbolgs,—the old enchanters, who raised mists.’  . . .
+    ‘Don’t you think, Mr Borrow,’ I asked, ‘it was the Tuatha-de-Danaan
+    who did that?  Keatinge expressly says that they conquered the
+    Firbolgs by that means.’  (Mr B. somewhat out of countenance), ‘Oh!
+    Aye!  Keatinge is _the_ authority; a most extraordinary writer.’
+    ‘Well, I should call him the Geoffrey of Monmouth of Ireland.’  (Mr
+    B. changing the _venue_), ‘I delight in Norse-stories; they are far
+    grander than the Greek.  There is the story of Olaf the Saint of
+    Norway.  Can anything be grander?  What a noble character!’  ‘But,’ I
+    said, ‘what do _you_ think of his putting all those poor Druids on
+    the Skerry of Shrieks, and leaving them to be drowned by the tide?’
+    (Thereupon Mr B. looked at me askant out of his gipsy eyes, as if he
+    thought me an example of the evils of female education!)  ‘Well!
+    Well!  I forgot about the Skerry of Shrieks.  Then there is the story
+    of Beowulf the Saxon going out to sea in his burning ship to die.’
+    ‘Oh, Mr Borrow! that isn’t a Saxon story at all.  It is in the
+    Heimskringla!  It is told of Hakon of Norway.’  Then, I asked him
+    about the gipsies and their language, and if they were certainly
+    Aryans?  He didn’t know (or pretended not to know) what Aryans were;
+    and altogether displayed a miraculous mixture of odd knowledge and
+    more odd ignorance.  Whether the latter were real or assumed I know
+    not!” {446}
+
+These were some of the neighbourly little pleasantries indulged in by
+Miss Cobbe, regarding a man who was a frequent guest at her house.
+
+    “His has indeed been a fantastic fate!” writes Mr Theodore
+    Watts-Dunton.  “When the shortcomings of any illustrious man save
+    Borrow are under discussion, ‘_les défauts de ses qualités_’ is the
+    criticism—wise as charitable—which they evoke.  Yes, each one is
+    allowed to have his angularities save Borrow.  Each one is allowed to
+    show his own pet unpleasant facets of character now and then—allowed
+    to show them as inevitable foils to the pleasant ones—save Borrow.
+    _His_ weaknesses no one ever condones.  During his lifetime his
+    faults were for ever chafing and irritating his acquaintances, and
+    now that he and they are dead, these faults of his seem to be chafing
+    and irritating people of another generation.  A fantastic fate, I
+    say, for him who was so interesting to some of us!” {447a}
+
+On occasion Borrow could be inexcusably rude, as he was to a member of
+the Russian Embassy who one day called at Hereford Square for a copy of
+_Targum_ for the Czar, when he told him that his Imperial master could
+fetch it himself.  Again, no one can defend him for affronting the “very
+distinguished scholar” with whom he happened to disagree, by thundering
+out, “Sir, you’re a fool!”  Such lapses are deplorable; but why should we
+view them in a different light from those of Dr Johnson?
+
+What would have been regarded in another distinguished man as a pleasant
+vein of humour was in Borrow’s case looked upon as evidence of his
+unveracity.  A contemporary tells how, on one occasion, he went with him
+into “a tavern” for a pint of ale, when Borrow pointed out
+
+    “a yokel at the far end of the apartment.  The foolish bumpkin was
+    slumbering.  Borrow in a stage whisper, gravely assured me that the
+    man was a murderer, and confided to me with all the emphasis of
+    honest conviction the scene and details of his crime.  Subsequently I
+    ascertained that the elaborate incidents and fine touches of local
+    colour were but the coruscations of a too vivid imagination, and that
+    the villain of the ale-house on the common was as innocent as the
+    author of _The Romany Rye_.” {447b}
+
+If Borrow had been called upon to explain this little pleasantry he would
+in all probability have replied in the words of Mr Petulengro, that he
+had told his acquaintance “things . . . which are not exactly true,
+simply to make a fool of you, brother.”
+
+It is strange how those among his contemporaries who disliked him, denied
+Borrow the indulgence that is almost invariably accorded to genius.
+Those who were not for him were bitterly against him.  In their eyes he
+was either outrageously uncivil or insultingly rude.  Dr Hake, although a
+close friend, saw Borrow’s dominant weakness, his love of the outward
+evidences of fame.  Dr Hake’s impartiality gives greater weight to his
+testimony when he tells of Borrow’s first meeting with Dr Robert Latham,
+the ethnologist, philologist and grammarian.  Latham much wanted to meet
+Borrow, and promised Dr Hake to be on his best behaviour.  He was
+accordingly invited to dinner with Borrow.  Latham as usual began to show
+off his knowledge.  He became aggressive, and finally very excited; but
+throughout the meal Borrow showed the utmost patience and courtesy, much
+to his host’s relief.  When he subsequently encountered Latham in the
+street he always stopped “to say a kind word, seeing his forlorn
+condition.”
+
+Dr Hake had settled at Coombe End, Roehampton, and now that the Borrows
+were in London, the two families renewed their old friendship.  Borrow
+would walk over to Coombe End, and on arriving at the gate would call
+out, “Are you alone?”  If there were other callers he would pass by, if
+not he would enter and frequently persuade Dr Hake, and perhaps his sons,
+to accompany him for a walk.
+
+“There was something not easily forgotten,” writes Mr A. Egmont Hake, “in
+the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates, singing some
+gypsy song, and as suddenly depart.” {448}  They had many pleasant tramps
+together, mostly in Richmond Park, where Borrow appeared to know every
+tree and showed himself very learned in deer.  He was
+
+    “always saying something in his loud, self-asserting voice; sometimes
+    stopping suddenly, drawing his huge stature erect, and changing the
+    keen and haughty expression of his face into the rapt and half
+    fatuous look of the oracle, he would without preface recite some long
+    fragment from Welsh or Scandinavian bards, his hands hanging from his
+    chest and flapping in symphony.  Then he would push on again, and as
+    suddenly stop, arrested by the beautiful scenery, and exclaim, ‘Ah!
+    this is England, as the Pretender said when he again looked on his
+    fatherland.’  Then on reaching any town, he would be sure to spy out
+    some lurking gypsy, whom no one but himself would have known from a
+    common horse-dealer.  A conversation in Romany would ensue, a
+    shilling would change hands, two fingers would be pointed at the
+    gypsy, and the interview would be at an end.” {449a}
+
+One day he asked Dr Hake’s youngest boy if he knew how to fight a man
+bigger than himself, and on being told that he didn’t, advised him to
+“accept his challenge, and tell him to take off his coat, and while he
+was doing it knock him down and then run for your life.” {449b}
+
+Once Borrow arrived at Dr Hake’s house to find another caller in the
+person of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, and they “went through a pleasant
+trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took the first fiddle . . .
+Borrow made himself agreeable to Watts [-Dunton], recited a fairy tale in
+the best style to him, and liked him.” {449c}  Borrow did not recognise
+in Mr Watts-Dunton the young man whom he had seen bathing on the beach at
+Great Yarmouth, pleased to be near his hero, but too much afraid to
+venture to address him.  Writing of this meeting at Coombe End, Mr
+Watts-Dunton says: “There is however no doubt that Borrow would have run
+away from me had I been associated in his mind with the literary calling.
+But at that time I had written nothing at all save poems, and a prose
+story or two of a romantic kind.” {450}  Borrow hated the literary man,
+he was at war with the whole genus.
+
+    [Picture: The Rev. Andrew Brandram.  From an old silhouette in the
+           possession of the British and Foreign Bible Society]
+
+Mr Watts-Dunton confesses that he made great efforts to enlist Borrow’s
+interest.  He touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, beer, bruisers, philology,
+“gentility nonsense,” the “trumpery great”; but without success.  Borrow
+was obviously suspicious of him.  Then with inspiration he happened to
+mention what proved to be a magic name.
+
+    “I tried other subjects in the same direction,” Mr Watts-Dunton
+    continues, “but with small success, till in a lucky moment I
+    bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett, . . . the man who, after having
+    been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had
+    shared a double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night,
+    escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor, and
+    afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had been
+    hanged for murdering.  The truth was that Gwinett’s supposed victim,
+    having been attacked on the night in question by a violent bleeding
+    of the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes’ walk in
+    the sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to
+    sea, where he had been in service ever since.  The story is true, and
+    the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on what
+    authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett’s dictation for a
+    platter of cow-heel.
+
+    “To the bewilderment of Dr Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose
+    Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of
+    ‘Achilles’ wrath,’ and appealed to Dr Hake (who, of course, had never
+    heard of the book or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the
+    pamphlet had gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor
+    theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story.  Borrow was caught
+    at last.  ‘What?’ said he, ‘you know that pamphlet about Ambrose
+    Gwinett?’  ‘Know it?’ said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked
+    me if I knew ‘Macbeth’; ‘of course I know Ambrose Gwinett, Mr Borrow,
+    don’t you?’  ‘And you know the play?’ said he.  ‘Of course I do, Mr
+    Borrow,’ I said, in a tone that was now a little angry at such an
+    insinuation of crass ignorance.  ‘Why,’ said he, ‘it’s years and
+    years since it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I
+    did go to see _that_.’  ‘Well I should rather think you _did_, Mr
+    Borrow,’ said I.  ‘But,’ said he, staring hard at me, ‘you—you were
+    not born!’  ‘And I was not born,’ said I, ‘when the “Agamemnon” was
+    produced, and yet one reads the “Agamemnon,” Mr Borrow.  I have read
+    the drama of “Ambrose Gwinett.”  I have it bound in morocco, with
+    some more of Douglas Jerrold’s early transpontine plays, and some
+    Æschylean dramas by Mr Fitzball.  I will lend it to you, Mr Borrow,
+    if you like.’  He was completely conquered, ‘Hake!’ he cried, in a
+    loud voice, regardless of my presence, ‘Hake! your friend knows
+    everything.’  Then he murmured to himself.  ‘Wonderful man!  Knows
+    Ambrose Gwinett!’
+
+    “It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause me to
+    have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for the memory
+    of George Borrow.” {451a}
+
+After this, intercourse proved easy.  At Borrow’s suggestion they walked
+to the Bald-Faced Stag, in Kingston Vale, to inspect Jerry Abershaw’s
+sword.  This famous old hostelry was a favourite haunt of Borrow’s, where
+he would often rest during his walk and drink “a cup of ale” (which he
+would call “swipes,” and make a wry face as he swallowed) and talk of the
+daring deeds of Jerry the highwayman.
+
+Many people have testified to the pleasure of being in the company of the
+whimsical, eccentric, humbug-hating Borrow.
+
+    “He was a choice companion on a walk,” writes Mr A. Egmont Hake,
+    “whether across country or in the slums of Houndsditch.  His
+    enthusiasm for nature was peculiar; he could draw more poetry from a
+    wide-spreading marsh with its straggling rushes than from the most
+    beautiful scenery, and would stand and look at it with rapture.”
+    {451b}
+
+Since the tour in Wales in 1854, from which he returned with the four
+“Note Books,” Borrow had been working steadily at _Wild Wales_.  In 1857
+the book had been announced as “ready for the press”; but this was
+obviously an anticipation.  The manuscript was submitted to John Murray
+early in November 1861.  On the 20th of that month he wrote the following
+letter, addressing it, not to Borrow, but to his wife:—
+
+    DEAR MRS BORROW,—The MS. of _Wild Wales_ has occupied my thoughts
+    almost ever since Friday last.
+
+    I approached this MS. with some diffidence, recollecting the
+    unsatisfactory results, on the whole, of our last publication—_Romany
+    Rye_.  I have read a large part of this new work with care and
+    attention, and although it is beautifully written and in a style of
+    English undefiled, which few writers can surpass, there is yet a want
+    of stirring incident in it which makes me fearful as to the result of
+    its publication.
+
+    In my hands at least I cannot think it would succeed even as well as
+    _Romany Rye_—and I am fearful of not doing justice to it.  I do not
+    like to undertake a work with the chance of reproach that it may have
+    failed through my want of power to promote its circulation, and I do
+    wish, for Borrow’s own sake, that in this instance he would try some
+    other publisher and perhaps some other form of publication.
+
+    In my hands I am convinced the work will not answer the author’s
+    expectations, and I am not prepared to take on me this amount of
+    responsibility.
+
+    I will give the best advice I can if called upon, and shall be only
+    too glad if I can be useful to Mr Borrow.  I regret to have to write
+    in this sense, but believe me always, Dear Mrs Borrow,
+
+                            Your faithful friend,
+
+                                                              JOHN MURRAY.
+
+The reply to this letter has not been preserved.  It would appear that
+some “stirring incidents” were added, among others most probably the
+account of Borrow blessing the Irish reapers, who mistook him for Father
+Toban.  This anecdote was one of John Murray’s favourite passages.  It is
+evident that some concession was made to induce Murray to change his
+mind.  In any case _Wild Wales_ appeared towards the close of 1862 in an
+edition of 1000 copies.  The publisher’s misgivings were not justified,
+as the first edition produced a profit, up to 30th June 1863, of £531,
+14s., which was equally divided between author and publisher.  The
+second, and cheap, edition of 3000 copies lasted for thirteen years, and
+the deficiency on this absorbed the greater part of the publisher’s
+profit.
+
+In a way it is the most remarkable of Borrow’s books; for it shows that
+he was making a serious effort to regain his public.  It is an older,
+wiser and chastened Borrow that appears in its pages, striding through
+the land of the bards at six miles an hour, his satchel slung over his
+shoulder, his green umbrella grasped in his right hand, shouting the
+songs of Wales, about which he knew more than any man he met.  There are
+no gypsies (except towards the end of the book a reference to his meeting
+with Captain Bosvile), no bruisers, the pope is scarcely mentioned, and
+“gentility-nonsense” is veiled almost to the point of elimination.  It
+seems scarcely conceivable that the hand that had written the appendix to
+_The Romany Rye_ could have so restrained itself as to write _Wild
+Wales_.  Borrow had evidently read and carefully digested Whitwell
+Elwin’s friendly strictures upon _The Romany Rye_.  Instead of the pope,
+the gypsies and the bruisers of England, there were the vicarage cat, the
+bards and the thousand and one trivial incidents of the wayside.  There
+were occasional gleams of the old fighting spirit, notably when he
+characterises sherry, {453} as “a silly, sickly compound, the use of
+which will transform a nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a
+race of sketchers, scribblers, and punsters,—in fact, into what
+Englishmen are at the present day.”  He has created the atmosphere of
+Wales as he did that of the gypsy encampment.  He shows the jealous way
+in which the Welsh cling to their language, and their suspicion of the
+_Saesneg_, or Saxon.  Above all, he shows how national are the Welsh
+poets, belonging not to the cultured few; but to the labouring man as
+much as to the landed proprietor.  Borrow earned the respect of the
+people, not only because he knew their language; but on account of his
+profound knowledge of their literature, their history, and their
+traditions.  No one could escape him, he accosted every soul he met, and
+evinced a desire for information as to place-names that instantly
+arrested their attention.
+
+The most curious thing about _Wild Wales_ is the omission of all mention
+of the Welsh Gypsies, who, with those of Hungary, share the distinction
+of being the aristocrats of their race.  Several explanations have been
+suggested to account for the curious circumstance.  Had Borrow’s
+knowledge of Welsh Romany been scanty, he could very soon have improved
+it.  The presence of his wife and stepdaughter was no hindrance; for, as
+a matter of fact, they were very little with him, even when they and
+Borrow were staying at Llangollen; but during the long tours they were
+many miles away.  In all probability the Welsh Gypsies were sacrificed to
+British prejudice, much as were pugilism and the baiting of the pope.
+
+In spite of its simple charm and convincing atmosphere, _Wild Wales_ did
+not please the critics.  Those who noticed it (and there were many who
+did not) either questioned its genuineness, or found it crowded with
+triviality and self-glorification.  It was full of the superfluous, the
+superfluous repeated, and above all it was too long (some 250,000 words).
+_The Spectator_ notice was an exception; it did credit to the critical
+faculty of the man who wrote it.  He declined “to boggle and wrangle over
+minor defects in what is intrinsically good,” and praised _Wild Wales_ as
+“the first really clever book . . . in which an honest attempt is made to
+do justice to Welsh literature.”
+
+Borrow had much time upon his hands in London, which he occupied largely
+in walking.  He visited the Metropolitan Gypsyries at Wandsworth, “the
+Potteries,” and “the Mounts,” as described in _Romano Lavo-Lil_.
+Sometimes he would be present at some sporting event, such as the race
+between the Indian Deerfoot and Jackson, styled the American Deer—tame
+sport in comparison with the “mills” of his boyhood.  He did very little
+writing, and from 1862, when _Wild Wales_ appeared, until he published
+_The Romano Lavo-Lil_ in 1874, his literary output consisted of only some
+translations contributed to _Once a Week_ (January 1862 to December
+1863).
+
+In 1865 he was to lose his stepdaughter, who married a William MacOubrey,
+M.D., described in the marriage register as a physician of Sloane Street,
+London, and subsequently upon his tombstone as a barrister.  In the July
+of 1866 Borrow and his wife went to Belfast on a visit to the newly
+married pair.  From Belfast Borrow took another trip into Scotland,
+crossing over to Stranraer.  From there he proceeded to Glen Luce and
+subsequently to Newton Stewart, Castle Douglas, Dumfries, Ecclefechan,
+Gretna Green, Carlisle, Langholm, Hawick, Jedburgh, Yetholm (where he saw
+Esther Blyth of Kirk Yetholm), Kelso, Abbotsford, Melrose, Berwick,
+Edinburgh, Glasgow, and so back to Belfast, having been absent for nearly
+four weeks.
+
+Mrs Borrow’s health had been the cause of the family leaving Oulton for
+Great Yarmouth, and about the time of the Irish visit it seems to have
+become worse.  When Borrow was away upon his excursion he received a
+letter at Carlisle in which his wife informed him that she was not so
+well; but urging him not to return if he were enjoying his trip and it
+were benefiting his health.
+
+In the autumn of the following year (1867) they were at Bognor, Mrs
+Borrow taking the sea air, her husband tramping about the country and
+penetrating into the New Forest.  On their return to town Mrs Borrow
+appears to have become worse.  There was much correspondence to be
+attended to with regard to the Oulton Estate, and she had to go down to
+Suffolk to give her personal attention to certain important details.
+Miss Cobbe throws a little light on the period in a letter to a friend,
+in which she says:
+
+    “Mr Borrow says his wife is very ill and anxious to keep the peace
+    with C. (a litigious neighbour).  Poor old B. was very sad at first,
+    but I cheered him up and sent him off quite brisk last night.  He
+    talked all about the Fathers again, arguing that their quotations
+    went to prove that it was _not_ our gospels they had in their hands.
+    I knew most of it before, but it was admirably done.  I talked a
+    little theology to him in a serious way (finding him talk of his
+    ‘horrors’) and he abounded in my sense of the non-existence of Hell,
+    and of the presence and action on the soul of _a_ Spirit, rewarding
+    and punishing.  He would not say ‘God’; but repeated over and over
+    again that he spoke not from books but from his own personal
+    experience.” {456}
+
+On 24th January (1869) Mrs Borrow was taken suddenly ill and the family
+doctor being out of town, Borrow sent for Dr W. S. Playfair of 5 Curzon
+Street.  A letter from Dr Playfair, 25th January, to the family doctor is
+the only coherent testimony in existence as to what was actually the
+matter with Mrs Borrow.  It runs:—
+
+    “I found great difficulty in making out the case exactly,” he writes,
+    “since Mr Borrow himself was so agitated that I could get no very
+    clear account of it.  I could detect no marked organic affection
+    about the heart or lungs, of which she chiefly complained.  It seemed
+    to me to be either a very aggravated form of hysteria, or, what
+    appears more likely, some more serious mental affection.  In any
+    case, the chief requisite seemed very careful and intelligent nursing
+    or management, and I doubt very much, from what I saw, whether she
+    gets that with her present surroundings.  If it is really the more
+    serious mental affection, I should fancy that the sooner means are
+    taken to have her properly taken care of, the better.”
+
+Dr Playfair saw in Borrow’s highly nervous excitable nature, if not the
+cause of his wife’s breakdown, at least an obstacle to her recovery, and
+was of opinion that Mrs Borrow’s disorder had been greatly aggravated by
+her husband’s presence.
+
+Mrs Borrow never rallied from the attack, and on the 30th she died of
+“valvular disease of the heart and dropsy,” being then in her
+seventy-seventh year.  On 4th February she was buried in Brompton
+Cemetery, and the lonely man, her husband, returned to Hereford Square.
+The grave bears the inscription, “To the Beloved Memory of My Mother,
+Mary Borrow, who fell asleep in Jesus, 30th January 1869.”  It is strange
+that this should be in Henrietta’s and not Borrow’s name.
+
+Mrs Borrow evidently made over her property to her husband during her
+lifetime, as there is no will in existence, and no application appears to
+have been made either by Borrow or anyone else for letters of
+administration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+JANUARY 1869–1881
+
+
+THE death of his wife was a last blow to Borrow, and he soon retired from
+the world.  At first he appears to have sought consolation in books, to
+judge from the number of purchases he made about this time; but it was,
+apparently, with pitiably unsuccessful results.  In a letter to a friend
+Miss Cobbe gives a picture in his lonliness:
+
+    “Poor old Borrow is in a sad state,” she wrote.  “I hope he is
+    starting in a day or two for Scotland.  I sent C. with a note begging
+    him to come and eat the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent
+    back word, ‘Yes.’  Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a
+    most agitated manner said he had come to say ‘he would rather not.
+    He would not trouble anyone with his sorrows.’  I made him sit down,
+    and talked as gently to him as possible, saying: ‘It won’t be a
+    trouble Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me.’  But it was all of
+    no use.  He was so cross, so _rude_, I had the greatest difficulty in
+    talking to him.  I asked about his servant, and he said I could not
+    help him.  I asked him about Bowring, and he said: ‘Don’t speak of
+    it.’  (It was some dispute with Sir John Bowring, who was an
+    acquaintance of mine, and with whom I offered to mediate.)  ‘I asked
+    him would he look at the photos of the Siamese,’ and he said: ‘Don’t
+    show them to me!’  So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I had
+    been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met Mr L—,
+    who told me of certain curious books of mediæval history.  ‘Did he
+    know them?’  ‘No, and he _dare said_ Mr L— did not, either!  Who was
+    Mr L—?’  I described that _obscure_ individual, (one of the foremost
+    writers of the day), and added that he was immensely liked by
+    everybody.  Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times,
+    ‘Immensely liked!  As if a man could be immensely liked!’ quite
+    insultingly.  To make a diversion (I was very patient with him as he
+    was in trouble), ‘I said I had just come home from the Lyell’s and
+    had heard—’ . . .  But there was no time to say what I had heard!  Mr
+    Borrow asked: ‘Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man who stands
+    at the door (of some den or other) and _bets_?’  I explained who Sir
+    Charles was, {459a} (of course he knew very well), but he went on and
+    on, till I said gravely: ‘I don’t think you will meet those sort of
+    people here, Mr Borrow.  We don’t associate with blacklegs,
+    exactly.’” {459b}
+
+In the Autumn of 1870 Borrow became acquainted with Charles G. Leland
+(“Hans Breitmann”) as the result of receiving from him the following
+letter:—
+
+                                          BRIGHTON, 24_th_ _October_ 1870.
+
+    DEAR SIR,—During the eighteen months that I have been in England, my
+    efforts to find some mutual friend who would introduce me to you have
+    been quite in vain.  As the author of two or three works which have
+    been kindly received in England, I have made the acquaintance of many
+    literary men and enjoyed much hospitality; but I assure you very
+    sincerely that my inability to find you out or get at you has been a
+    source of great annoyance to me.  As you never published a book which
+    I have not read through five times—excepting _The Bible in Spain_ and
+    _Wild Wales_, which I have only read once—you will perfectly
+    understand why I should be so desirous of meeting you.
+
+    As you have very possibly never heard of me before, I would state
+    that I wrote a collection of Ballads satirising Germany and the
+    Germans under the title of _Hans Breitmann_.
+
+    I never before in my life solicited the favour of any man’s
+    acquaintance, except through the regular medium of an introduction.
+    If my request to be allowed the favour of meeting and seeing you does
+    not seem too _outré_, I would be to glad to go to London, or wherever
+    you may be, if it can be done without causing you any inconvenience,
+    and if I should not be regarded as an intruder.  I am an American,
+    and among us such requests are _parfaitment_ (sic) _en régle_.
+
+                                 I am, . . .
+
+                                                        CHARLES G. LELAND.
+
+Borrow replied on 2nd Nov.:
+
+    SIR,
+
+    I have received your letter and am gratified by the desire you
+    express to make my acquaintance.
+
+    Whenever you please to come I shall be happy to see you.
+
+    Truly yours,
+
+                                                     GEORGE BORROW. {460a}
+
+The meeting unquestionably took place at Hereford Square, and Leland
+found Borrow “a tall, large, fine-looking man who must have been handsome
+in his youth.” {460b}  The result of the interview was that Leland sent
+to Borrow a copy of his _Ballads_ and also _The Music Lesson of
+Confucius_, then about to appear.  At the same time he wrote to Borrow
+drawing his attention to one of the ballads written in German Romany
+_jib_, and enquiring if it were worth anything.  Whilst deprecating his
+“impudence” in writing a Romany _gili_ and telling, as a pupil might a
+master, of his interest in and his association with the gypsies, he
+continues: “My dear Mr Borrow, for all this you are entirely responsible.
+More than twenty years ago your books had an incredible influence on me,
+and now you see the results.”  After telling him that he can _never_
+thank him sufficiently for the instructions he has given in _The Romany
+Rye_ as to how to take care of a horse on a thirty mile ride, he
+concludes—“With apologies for the careless tone of this letter, and with
+sincere thanks for your kindness in permitting me to call on you and for
+your courteous note,—I am your sincere admirer.”
+
+The account that Leland gives of this episode in his _Memoirs_ is
+puzzling and contradictory in the light of his first letter.  He writes:
+
+    “There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted
+    in those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him,
+    exercised in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature.
+    This was George Borrow.  I was in the habit of reading a great deal
+    in the British Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced
+    to him. {461a}  [Leland seems to be in error here; see _ante_, page
+    460.]  He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish, and
+    made the remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living
+    who could read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was
+    ‘fished’ out of Sir W. Betham).  We discussed several Gypsy words and
+    phrases.  I met him in the same place several times.” {461b}
+
+Leland states that he sent a note to Borrow, care of John Murray, asking
+permission to dedicate to him his forthcoming book, _The English Gypsies
+and Their Language_; but received no reply, although Murray assured him
+that the letter had been received by Borrow.  “He received my note on the
+Saturday,” Leland writes—“never answered it—and on Monday morning
+advertised in all the journals his own forthcoming work on the same
+subject.” {461c}  Had Borrow asked him to delay publishing his own book,
+Leland says he would have done so, “for I had so great a respect for the
+Nestor of Gypsyism, that I would have been very glad to have gratified
+him with such a small sacrifice.” {462a}
+
+However Borrow may have heard that Leland had in preparation a book on
+the English Gypsies, he seemed to feel that it was a trespass upon ground
+that was peculiarly his own.  Having revised and prepared for the press
+the new edition of the Gypsy St Luke for the Bible Society (published
+December 1872), and the one-volume editions of _Lavengro_ and _The Romany
+Rye_, he set to work to forestall Leland with his own _Romano Lavo-Lil_.
+
+In spite of his haste, however, Borrow was beaten in the race, and Leland
+got his volume out first.  When the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ {462b} appeared in
+March 1874, Borrow found what, in all probability he had not dreamed of,
+that the thirty-three years intervening between its publication and that
+of _The Zincali_, had changed the whole literary world as regards “things
+of Egypt.”  In 1841 Borrow had produced a unique book, such as only one
+man in England could have written, and that man himself {462c}; but in
+1874 he found himself not only out of date, but out-classed.
+
+The title very thoroughly explains the scope of the work.  The Vocabulary
+had existed in manuscript for many years.  For some reason, difficult to
+explain, Borrow had omitted from this Vocabulary a number of the gypsy
+words that appeared in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_.  In spite of this
+“Mr Borrow’s present vocabulary makes a goodly show,” wrote F. H. Groome,
+“. . . containing no fewer than fourteen hundred words, of which about
+fifty will be entirely new to those who only know Romany in books.”
+{463a}
+
+After praising the Gypsy songs as the best portion of the book, Groome
+proceeds:
+
+    “Of his prose I cannot say so much.  It is the Romany of the study
+    rather than of the tents [!]  Mr Borrow has attempted to rehabilitate
+    English Romany by enduing it with forms and inflections, of which
+    some are still rarely to be heard, some extinct, and others
+    absolutely incorrect; while Mr Leland has been content to give it as
+    it really is.  Of the two methods I cannot doubt that most readers
+    will agree with me in thinking that Mr Leland’s is the more
+    satisfactory.” {463b}
+
+The _Athenæum_ sternly rebuked Borrow for seeming “to make the mistake of
+confounding the amount of Rommanis which he has collected in this book
+with the actual extent of the language itself.”  The reviewer pays a
+somewhat grudging tribute to other portions of the book, the accounts of
+the Gypsyries and the biographical particulars of the Romany worthies,
+but the work suffers by comparison with those of Paspati and Leland.  He
+acknowledges that Borrow was one of the pioneers of those who gave
+accounts of the Gypsies in English, who gave to many their present taste
+for Gypsy matters,
+
+    “but,” he proceeds, “we cannot allow merely sentimental
+    considerations to prevent us from telling the honest truth.  The fact
+    is that the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ is nothing more than a _réchauffé_ of
+    the materials collected by Mr Borrow at an early stage of his
+    investigations, and nearly every word and every phrase may be found
+    in one form or another in his earlier works.  Whether or not Mr
+    Borrow _has_ in the course of his long experience become the _deep_
+    Gypsy which he has always been supposed to be, we cannot say; but it
+    is certain that his present book contains little more than he gave to
+    the public forty years ago, and does not by any means represent the
+    present state of knowledge on the subject.  But at the present day,
+    when comparative philology has made such strides, and when want of
+    accurate scholarship is as little tolerated in strange and remote
+    languages as in classical literature, the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ is, to
+    speak mildly, an anachronism.”
+
+This notice, if Borrow read it, must have been very bitter to him.  All
+the loyalty to, and enthusiasm for, Borrow cannot disguise the fact that
+his work, as far as the Gypsies were concerned, was finished.  He had
+first explored the path, but others had followed and levelled it into a
+thoroughfare, and Borrow found his facts and theories obsolete—a
+humiliating discovery to a man so shy, so proud, and so sensitive.
+
+The _Romano Lavo-Lil_ was Borrow’s swan song.  He lived for another seven
+years; but as far as the world was concerned he was dead.  In an obituary
+notice of Robert Latham, Mr Watts-Dunton tells a story that emphasizes
+how thoroughly his existence had been forgotten.  At one of Mrs Procter’s
+“at homes” he was talking of Latham and Borrow, but when he happened to
+mention that both men were still alive, that is in the early Seventies,
+and that quite recently he had been in the company of each on separate
+occasions, he found that he had lost caste in the eyes of his hearers for
+talking about men as alive “who were well known to have been dead years
+ago.” {464}
+
+There is an interesting picture of Borrow as he appeared in the
+Seventies, given by F. H. Groome, who writes:
+
+    “The first time I ever saw him was at Ascot, the Wednesday evening of
+    the Cup week in, I think, the year 1872.  I was stopping at a wayside
+    inn, half-a-mile on the Windsor road, just opposite which inn there
+    was a great encampment of Gypsies.  One of their lads had on the
+    Tuesday affronted a soldier; so two or three hundred redcoats came
+    over from Windsor, intending to wreck the camp.  There was a babel of
+    cursing and screaming, much brandishing of belts and tent-rods, when
+    suddenly an arbiter appeared, a white-haired, brown-eyed, calm
+    Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of
+    ale—in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were
+    sworn friends over a loving-quart.  “Mr Burroughs,” said one of the
+    Gypsies (it is the name by which Gypsies still speak of him), and I
+    knew that at last I had met him whom of all men I most wished to
+    meet.  Matty Cooper, the ‘celebrated Windsor Frog’ (_vide_ Leland),
+    presented me as ‘a young gentleman, _Rya_, a scholard from Oxford’;
+    and ‘H’m,’ quoth Colossus, ‘a good many fools come from Oxford.’  It
+    was a bad beginning, but it ended well, by his asking me to walk with
+    him to the station, and on the way inviting me to call on him in
+    London.  I did so, but not until nearly a twelve-month afterwards,
+    when I found him in Hereford Square, and when he set strong ale
+    before me, as again on the occasion of my third and last meeting with
+    him in the tent of our common acquaintance, Shadrach Herne, at the
+    Potteries, Notting Hill.  Both these times we had much talk together,
+    but I remember only that it was partly about East Anglia, and more
+    about ‘things of Egypt.’  Conversations twenty years old are easy to
+    imagine, hard to reproduce . . .  Probably Borrow asked me the Romany
+    for ‘frying-pan,’ and I modestly answered, ‘Either _maasalli_ or
+    _tasseromengri_’ (this is password No. 1), and then I may have asked
+    him the Romany for ‘brick,’ to which he will have answered, that
+    ‘there is no such word’ (this is No. 2).  But one thing I do
+    remember, that he was frank and kindly, interesting and interested; I
+    was only a lad, and he was verging on seventy.  I could tell him
+    about a few ‘travellers’ whom he had not recently seen—Charlie
+    Pinfold, the hoary polygamist, Plato and Mantis Buckland, Cinderella
+    Petulengro, and Old Tom Oliver (‘Ha! so he has seen Tom Oliver,’ I
+    seem to remember that).” {466a}
+
+There was nothing now to keep Borrow in London.  Nobody wanted to read
+his books, other stars had risen in the East.  His publisher had
+exclaimed with energy, as Borrow himself would relate, “I want to meet
+with good writers, but there are none to be had: I want a man who can
+write like Ecclesiastes.”  There is something tragic in the account that
+Mr Watts-Dunton gives of his last encounter with Borrow:
+
+    “The last time I ever saw him,” he writes, “was shortly before he
+    left London to live in the country.  It was, I remember well, on
+    Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular
+    and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were
+    reeling and boiling over the West-End.  Borrow came up and stood
+    leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might
+    be.  Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for
+    sunsets.  Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and
+    certainly my pen could not describe it . . . I never saw such a
+    sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its
+    association with ‘the last of Borrow,’ I shall never forget it.”
+    {466b}
+
+In 1874 Borrow withdrew to Oulton, there to end his lonely life, his
+spirit seeming to enjoy the dreary solitude of the Cottage, with its
+mournful surroundings.  His stepdaughter, the Henrietta of old, remained
+in London with her husband, and Borrow’s loneliness was complete.
+Sometimes he was to be seen stalking along the highways at a great pace,
+wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a Spanish cloak, a tragic figure of
+solitude and despair, speaking to no one, no one daring to speak to him,
+who locally was considered as “a funny tempered man.”
+
+In a fragment of a letter from Edward FitzGerald to W. B. Donne (June
+1874), there is an interesting reference to Borrow:—
+
+    “Wait!” he writes.  “I have one little thing to tell you, which,
+    little as it is, is worth all the rest, if you don’t know already.
+
+    “_Borrow_—has got back to his own Oulton Lodge.  My Nephew, Edmund
+    Kerrich, now Adjutant to some Volunteer Battalion, wants a house
+    _near_, not _in_, Lowestoft: and got some Agent to apply for
+    Borrow’s—who sent word that he is himself there—an old Man—wanting
+    Retirement, etc.  This was the account Edmund got.
+
+    “I saw in some Athenæum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.’s
+    ‘Rommany Lil’ or whatever the name is.  I can easily understand that
+    B. should not meddle with _science_ of any sort; but some years ago
+    he would not have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have
+    cooled him now.” {467}
+
+Borrow sent a message to FitzGerald through Edmund Kerrich of Geldeston,
+asking him to visit Oulton Cottage.  The reply shows all the sweetness of
+the writer’s nature:—
+
+                                                LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE,
+                                                             _Jan._ 10/75.
+
+    DEAR BORROW,—My nephew Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation that
+    you sent to me, through him, some while ago.  I think the more of it
+    because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away
+    from human company as much—as I have!  For the last fifteen years I
+    have not visited any one of my very oldest friends, except the
+    daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and Donne—once only, and
+    for half a day, just to assure myself by—my own eyes how he was after
+    the severe illness he had last year, and which he never will quite
+    recover from, I think; though he looked and moved better than I
+    expected.
+
+    Well—to tell you all about _why_ I have thus fallen from my company
+    would be a tedious thing, and all about one’s self too—whom,
+    Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person
+    talked about.  Suffice to say, ‘so it is’; and one’s friends, however
+    kind and ‘loyal’ (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy
+    themselves pretty reasonably without one.
+
+    So with me.  And is it not much the same with you also?  Are you not
+    glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than
+    the grasshopper?  If one ever had this solitary habit, it is not
+    likely to alter for the better as one grows older—as one grows _old_.
+    I like to think over my old friends.  There they are, lingering as
+    ineffaceable portraits—done in the prime of life—in my memory.
+    Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen-years
+    separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse.  I do
+    not say _that_ would be your case; but you must, at any rate, be less
+    inclined to disturb the settled repose into which you, I suppose,
+    have fallen.  I remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five
+    years ago; then at Donne’s in London; then at my own happy home in
+    Regent’s Park; then _ditto_ at Gorleston—after which, I have seen
+    nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me by my good sister
+    Kerrich.
+
+    So shall things rest?  I could not go to you, after refusing all this
+    while to go to older—if not better—friends, fellow Collegians, fellow
+    schoolfellows; and yet will you still believe me (as I hope _they_
+    do)
+
+    Yours and theirs sincerely,
+
+                                                        EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+Borrow was still a remarkably robust man.  Mr Watts-Dunton tells how,
+
+    “At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o’clock in
+    Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at
+    Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in
+    the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water
+    like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off
+    some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then,
+    after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would
+    have done Sir Walter Scott’s eyes good to see.  Finally, he would
+    walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night.  And if the
+    physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened
+    to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was
+    still more so.  Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen
+    could describe.  There is a kind of humour the delight of which is
+    that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as
+    much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchetty,
+    and odd as to draw them.  This was the humour of Borrow.” {469a}
+
+He was seventy years of age when, one March day during a bitterly-cold
+east wind, he stripped and plunged into one of the Fen Ponds in Richmond
+Park, which was covered with ice, and dived and swam under the water for
+a time, reappearing some distance from the spot where he had entered the
+water. {469b}
+
+The remaining years of Borrow’s life were spent in Suffolk.  He would
+frequently go to Norwich, however; for the old city seemed to draw him
+irresistibly from his hermitage.  He would take a lodging there, and
+spend much of his time occupying a certain chair in the Norfolk Hotel in
+St Giles.  There were so many old associations with Norwich that made it
+appear home to him.  He was possessed of sentiment in plenty, it had
+caused his old mother to wish that “dear George would not have such
+fancies about _the old house_” in Willow Lane.
+
+Later, Dr and Mrs MacOubrey removed to Oulton (about 1878), and Borrow’s
+life became less dismal and lonely; but he was nearing his end.
+Sometimes there would be a flash of that old unconquerable spirit.  His
+stepdaughter relates how,
+
+    “on the 21st of November [1878], the place [the farm] having been
+    going to decay for fourteen months, Mr Palmer [the tenant] called to
+    demand that Mr Borrow should put it in repair; otherwise he would do
+    it himself and send in the bills, saying, ‘I don’t care for the old
+    farm or you either,’ and several other insulting things; whereupon Mr
+    Borrow remarked very calmly, ‘Sir, you came in by that door, you can
+    go out by it’—and so it ended.” {470a}
+
+It was on an occasion such as this that Borrow yearned for a son to knock
+the rascal down.  He was an infirm man, his body feeling the wear and
+tear of the strenuous open-air life he had led.  In 1879, according to
+Mrs MacOubrey, he was “unable to walk as far as the white gate,” the
+boundary of his estate.  He was obviously breaking-up very rapidly.  The
+surroundings appear to have reflected the gloomy nature of the master of
+the estate.  The house was dilapidated, “with everything about it more or
+less untidy,” {470b} although at this period his income amounted to
+upwards of five hundred pounds a year.
+
+    “During his latter years,” writes Mr W. A. Dutt, “his tall, erect,
+    somewhat mysterious figure was often seen in the early hours of
+    summer mornings or late at night on the lonely pathways that wind in
+    and out from the banks of Oulton Broad . . . the village children
+    used to hush their voices and draw aside at his approach.  They
+    looked upon him with fear and awe. . . .  In his heart, Borrow was
+    fond of the little ones, though it amused him to watch the impression
+    his strange personality made upon them.  Older people he seldom spoke
+    to when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would flash out
+    such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows
+    as would make timid country folk hasten on their way filled with
+    vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye.” {470c}
+
+Even to the last the old sensitiveness occasionally flashed out, as on
+the occasion of a visit from the Vicar of Lowestoft, who drove over with
+an acquaintance of Borrow’s to make the hermit’s acquaintance.  The
+visitor was so incautious as to ask the age of his host, when, with
+Johnsonian emphasis, came the reply: “Sir, I tell my age to no man!”
+This occurred some time during the year 1880.  Immediately his
+discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to the summer-house,
+where he drew up the following apothegm on “People’s Age”:—
+
+    “Never talk to people about their age.  Call a boy a boy, and he will
+    fly into a passion and say, ‘Not quite so much of a boy either; I’m a
+    young man.’  Tell an elderly person that he’s not so young as he was,
+    and you will make him hate you for life.  Compliment a man of
+    eighty-five on the venerableness of his appearance, and he will
+    shriek out: ‘No more venerable than yourself,’ and will perhaps hit
+    you with his crutch.”
+
+On 1st December 1880 Borrow sent for his solicitor from Lowestoft, and
+made his will, by which he bequeathed all his property, real and
+personal, to his stepdaughter Henrietta, devising that it should be held
+in trust for her by his friend Elizabeth Harvey.  It was evidently
+Borrow’s intention so to tie up the bequest that Dr MacOubrey could not
+in any way touch his wife’s estate.
+
+The end came suddenly.  On the morning of 26th July 1881 Dr and Mrs
+MacOubrey drove into Lowestoft, leaving Borrow alone in the house.  When
+they returned he was dead.  Throughout his life Borrow had been a
+solitary, and it seems fitting that he should die alone.  It has been
+urged against his stepdaughter that she disregarded Borrow’s appeals not
+to be left alone in the house, as he felt himself to be dying.  He may
+have made similar requests on other occasions; still, whatever the facts,
+it was strange to leave so old and so infirm a man quite unattended.
+
+On 4th August the body was brought to London, and buried beside that of
+Mrs George Borrow in Brompton Cemetery.  On the stone, which is what is
+known as a saddle-back, is inscribed:
+
+                           IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF
+
+                          GEORGE HENRY BORROW, ESQ.,
+
+    WHO DIED JULY 26TH, 1881 (AT HIS RESIDENCE “OULTON COTTAGE, SUFFOLK”)
+
+                              IN HIS 79TH YEAR.
+
+          (AUTHOR OF THE BIBLE IN SPAIN, LAVENGRO—AND OTHER WORKS.)
+
+                    “IN HOPE OF A GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.”
+
+A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow to
+purchase the whole of Borrow’s manuscripts, library, and papers for the
+Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a thousand pounds, was
+considered too high, and they passed into the possession of another.
+Eventually they found their way into the reverent hands of the man who
+subsequently made Borrow his hero, and who devoted years of his life to
+the writing of his biography—Dr W. J. Knapp.
+
+It was Borrow’s fate, a tragic fate for a man so proud, to outlive the
+period of his fame.  Not only were his books forgotten, but the world
+anticipated his death by some seven or eight years.  His was a curiously
+complex nature, one that seems specially to have been conceived by
+Providence to arouse enmity among the many, and to awaken in the hearts
+of the few a sterling, unwavering friendship.  It is impossible to
+reconcile the accounts of those who hated him with those whose love and
+respect he engaged.
+
+He was in sympathy with vagrants and vagabonds—a taste that was perhaps
+emphasised by the months he spent in preparing _Celebrated Trials_.  If
+those months of hack work taught him sympathy with pariahs, it also
+taught him to write strong, nervous English.
+
+He was one of the most remarkable characters of his century—whimsical,
+eccentric, lovable, inexplicable; possessed of an odd, dry humour that
+sometimes failed him when most he needed it.  He lived and died a
+stranger to the class to which he belonged, and was the intimate friend
+and associate of that dark and mysterious personage, Mr Petulengro.  He
+hated his social equals, and admired Tamerlane and Jerry Abershaw.  It
+has been said {473} that he was born three centuries too late, and that
+he belonged to the age when men dropped mysteriously down the river in
+ships, later to return with strange stories and great treasure from the
+Spanish Main.  Mr Watts-Dunton has said:—
+
+    “When Borrow was talking to people in his own class of life there was
+    always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism.  What Carlyle
+    called the ‘armed neutrality’ of social intercourse oppressed him.
+    He felt himself to be in the enemy’s camp.  In his eyes there was
+    always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his
+    interlocutor and weighing him against himself.  He seemed to be
+    observing what effect his words were having, and this attitude
+    repelled people at first.  But the moment he approached a gypsy on
+    the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by
+    the wayside, he became another man.  He threw off the burden of
+    restraint.  The feeling of the ‘armed neutrality’ was left behind,
+    and he seemed to be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that
+    could give him pleasure.  This it was that enabled him to make
+    friends so entirely with the gypsies.  Notwithstanding what is called
+    ‘Romany guile’ (which is the growth of ages of oppression), the basis
+    of the Romany character is a joyous frankness.  Once let the
+    isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from the ‘Gorgio’ be broken
+    through, and the communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins
+    to show itself.  The gypsies are extremely close observers; they were
+    very quick to notice how different was Borrow’s bearing towards
+    themselves from his bearing towards people of his own race, and
+    Borrow used to say that ‘old Mrs Herne and Leonora were the only
+    gypsies who suspected and disliked him.’” {474a}
+
+This convincing character sketch seems to show the real Borrow.  It
+accounts even for that high-piping, artificial voice (a gypsy trait) that
+he assumed when speaking with those who were not his intimate friends,
+and which any sudden interest in the conversation would cause him to
+abandon in favour of his own deep, rich tones.  Mr F. J. Bowring, himself
+no friend of Borrow’s for very obvious reasons, has described this
+artificial intonation as something between a beggar’s whine and the
+high-pitched voice of a gypsy—in sort, a falsetto.  He tells how, on one
+occasion, when in conversation with Borrow, he happened to mention to him
+something of particular interest concerning the gypsies, Borrow became
+immensely interested, immediately dropped the falsetto and spoke in his
+natural voice, which Mr Bowring describes as deep and manly.
+
+Even his friends were led sometimes into criticisms that appear
+unsympathetic. {474b}  He was, Dr Hake has said, “essentially
+hypochondriacal.  Society he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he
+might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the
+prince that he felt himself in its midst.” {474c}  It is the son who
+shows the better understanding, although there is no doubt about Dr
+Hake’s loyalty to Borrow.  There is a faithful presentation of a man such
+as Borrow really seems to have been, in the following words:—
+
+    “Few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow.
+    His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so
+    bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval beardless face, his
+    loud rich voice and bold heroic air were such as to impress the most
+    indifferent lookers-on.  Added to this there was something not easily
+    forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our
+    gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart.” {475a}
+
+If Borrow wrote that he was ashamed of being an Englishman and referred
+to their “pinched and mortified expressions,” if he found the virtues of
+the Saxons “uncouth and ungracious,” he never permitted others to make
+disparaging remarks about his country or his countrymen. {475b}  He was
+typically English in this: agree with his strictures, add a word or two
+of dispraise of the English, and there appeared a terrifying figure of a
+patriot; “not only an Englishman but an East Englishman,” which in
+Borrow’s vocabulary meant the finest of the breed.  He might with more
+truth have said a Cornishman.  “I could not command myself when I heard
+my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner,” {475c} he once
+exclaimed.  He permitted to himself, and to himself only, a certain
+latitude in such matters.
+
+That Borrow exaggerated is beyond all question, but it must not be called
+deliberate.  He desired to give impressions of scenes and people, and he
+was inclined to emphasize certain features.  Isopel Berners he wished it
+to be known was a queenly creature, and he described her as taller than
+himself (he was 6 feet 2 inches without his shoes).  Exaggeration is
+colour, not form.  A disbelief in his having encountered the convict son
+of the old apple-woman near Salisbury does not imply that the old woman
+herself is a fiction.  Borrow insisted upon Norfolk as his county, “where
+the people eat the best dumplings in the world, and speak the purest
+English.”  He even spoke with a strong, if imperfect, East Anglian
+accent.  As a matter of fact his father was Cornish and his mother of
+Huguenot stock.  It would be absurd to argue from this obvious
+exaggeration of the actual facts that Borrow was a myth.
+
+Then he has been taken to task for not being a philologist as well as a
+linguist.  He may have used the word philologist somewhat loosely on
+occasion.  “Think what the reader would have lost,” says one eminent but
+by no means prejudiced critic {476} with real sympathy and insight, “had
+Borrow waited to verify his etymologies.”  In all probability Nature will
+never produce a Humboldt-Le Sage combination of intellect.  Language was
+to Borrow merely the key that permitted him access to the chamber of
+men’s minds.  It must be confessed that sometimes he invaded the sacred
+precincts of philology.  His chapter on the Basque language in _The Bible
+in Spain_ has been described as “utterly frantic,” and German
+philologists, speechless in their astonishment, have expressed themselves
+upon his conclusions in marks of exclamation!  He was not qualified to
+discourse upon the science of language.
+
+He was a staunch member of the Church of England, because he believed
+there was in it more religion than in any other Church; but this did not
+hinder him from consorting with the godless children of the tents, or
+contributing towards the upkeep of Nonconformist-schools.  The gypsies
+honoured and trusted him because, crooked themselves, they appreciated
+straightness and clean living in another.  They had never known him use a
+bad word or do a bad thing.  He was, on occasion, arrogant, overbearing,
+ungracious, in short all the unattractive things that a proud and
+masterful man can be; but his friendship was as strong as the man
+himself; his charity above the narrow prejudices of sect.  When he threw
+his tremendous power into any enterprise or undertaking, it was with the
+determination that it should succeed, if work and self-sacrifice could
+make it.  “The wisest course,” he thought, was, “ . . . to blend the
+whole of the philosophy of the tombstone with a portion of the philosophy
+of the publican and something more, to enjoy one’s pint and pipe and
+other innocent pleasures, and to think every now and then of death and
+judgment.” {477}
+
+Borrow loved mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able quite to
+penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality.  Those who came
+nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent
+good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men.  Of
+all Borrow’s friends it is probable that none understood him so well as
+Hasfeldt.  He recognised the strength of character of the white-haired
+man who sang when he was happy, and he refused to be affected by his
+gloomy moods.  “Write and tell me,” he requests, “if you have not fallen
+in love with some nun or Gypsy in Spain, or have met with some other
+romantic adventure worthy of a roaming knight.”  On another occasion
+(June 1845) he boasts with some justification, “Heaven be praised, I can
+comprehend you as a reality, while many regard you as an imaginary,
+fantastic being.  But they who portray you have not eaten bread and salt
+with you.”
+
+Borrow’s contemporary recognition was a chance; he was writing for
+another generation, and some of the friends that he left behind have
+loyally striven to erect to him the only monument an artist desires—the
+proclaiming of his works.
+
+Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of magnificence, and,
+lest he should be enticed away from her, had instilled into his soul a
+hatred of all things artificial and at variance with her august decrees.
+He was shy and suspicious with the men and women who regulated their
+lives by the narrow standards of civilisation and decorum; but with the
+children of the tents and the vagrants of the wayside he was a
+single-minded man, eager to learn the lore of the open air.  He
+recognised in these vagabonds the true sons and daughters of “the Great
+Mother who mixes all our bloods.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 THE END
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF BORROW’S WORKS
+
+
+1825
+
+
+_Celebrated Trials_, _and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence_,
+_from the Earliest Records to the Year_ 1825.  Six volumes, with plates.
+London.
+
+_Faustus_: _His Life_, _Death_, _and Descent into Hell_.  Translated from
+the German [of F. M. von Klinger].  W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, London.
+
+
+
+1826
+
+
+_Romantic Ballads_.  Translated from the Danish: and Miscellaneous
+Pieces.  S. Wilkin, Norwich.
+
+
+
+1835
+
+
+_Targum_: _or_, _Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and
+Dialects_.  St Petersburgh.  Reprinted later by Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.
+
+_The Talisman_.  From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin.  With _Other
+Pieces_.  St Petersburg.
+
+
+
+1841
+
+
+_The Zincali_; _or_, _An Account of the Gypsies of Spain_.  With an
+Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary
+of their Language.  Two volumes.  John Murray, London.
+
+
+
+1842
+
+
+_The Bible in Spain_; _or_, _the Journeys_, _Adventures_, _and
+Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures
+in the Peninsula_.  Three volumes.  John Murray, London.
+
+_Lavengro_: The Scholar—The Gypsy—The Priest.  Three volumes.  John
+Murray, London.
+
+_The Romany Rye_: _a Sequel to Lavengro_.  Two volumes.  John Murray,
+London.
+
+_The Sleeping Bard_; _or_, _Visions of the World_, _Death_, _and Hell_.
+By Elis Wyn.  Translated from the Cambrian British.  John Murray, London.
+
+
+
+1862
+
+
+_Wild Wales_: _Its People_, _Language_, _and Scenery_.  Three volumes.
+John Murray, London.
+
+_Romano Lavo-Lil_: _Word-Book of Romany_; _or_, _English Gypsy Language_.
+With Many Pieces in Gypsy, Illustrative of the Way of Speaking and
+Thinking of the English Gypsies; with Specimens of Their Poetry, and an
+Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various
+Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England.  John Murray, London.
+
+
+
+1884
+
+
+_The Turkish Jester_; _or_, _the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin
+Effendi_.  Translated from the Turkish.  Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.
+
+
+
+1892
+
+
+_The Death of Balder_.  Translated from the Danish of Evald.  Jarrold &
+Sons, Norwich.
+
+From the foregoing list has been omitted the mysterious _Life and
+Adventures of Joseph Sell_, _the Great Traveller_, and those works that
+Borrow edited or translated for the British and Foreign Bible Society.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{3}  Afterwards General Morshead and friend of the Duke of York.  Captain
+Morshead, himself a Cornishman, is credited with doing everything in his
+power to dissuade Thomas Borrow from enlisting, but without result.
+
+{4a}  _Lavengro_, page 2.  References to Borrow’s works throughout this
+volume are to the Standard Edition, published by John Murray.
+
+{4b}  Ann, the third of eight children born to Samuel Perfrement and Mary
+his wife, 23rd January 1772.
+
+{4c}  Locally, the name is pronounced “_Par_frement.”  This is quite in
+accordance with the Norfolk dialect, which changes “e” into “a.”  Thus
+“Ernest” becomes “Arnest”; “Earlham,” “Arlham”; “Erpingham,” “Arpingham,”
+and so on.  In Norfolk there are grave peculiarities of pronunciation,
+which have caused many a stranger to wish that he had never enquired his
+way, so puzzling are the replies hurled at him in an incomprehensible
+vernacular.
+
+{5}  Married the Rev. Wm. Holland, rector of Walmer and afterwards rector
+of Brasted, Kent.
+
+{6a}  _Lavengro_, page 5.
+
+{6b}  _Lavengro_, page 5.
+
+{7a}  George in honour of the King, it is said, and Henry after his
+father’s eldest brother.
+
+{7b}  _Lavengro_, page 6.
+
+{7c}  _Lavengro_, page 6.
+
+{7d}  _Lavengro_, page 6.
+
+{7e}  _Lavengro_, page 7.
+
+{7f}  _Lavengro_, page 7.
+
+{9a}  _Lavengro_, page 16.
+
+{9b}  The widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the _Paston Letters_.
+
+{9c}  _Lavengro_, page 15.
+
+{10a}  _Lavengro_, pages 398–9.
+
+{10b}  “Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those which I
+can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, pass away,
+and become forgotten, except by myself, who, in spite of all my
+endeavours, never can forget anything.”—_Lavengro_, page 166.
+
+{10c}  _Lavengro_, page 16.
+
+{11a}  _Lavengro_, pages 19–20.
+
+{11b}  _Lavengro_, page 22.
+
+{12a}  The gypsies “have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family
+having a public and private name, one by which they are known to the
+Gentiles, and another to themselves alone . . .  There are only two names
+of trades which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper names,
+Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English gypsy dialect
+by _Vardo-mescro_ and _Petulengro_ (_Romano Lavo-Lil_, page 185).  Thus
+the Smiths are known among themselves as the Petulengros.  Petul, a horse
+shoe, and engro a “masculine affix used in the formation of figurative
+names.”  Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes from Bosh a fiddle,
+Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor = to fight.
+
+{12b}  The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard narrated at a provincial Bible
+Society’s meeting that when Borrow first called at Earl Street “he said
+that he had been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had passed several
+years with them, but had been recognised at a fair in Norfolk and brought
+home to his family by his uncle.”  There is, however, nothing to confirm
+this story.
+
+{13a}  _Lavengro_, page 164.
+
+{13b}  The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait making;
+but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of the English
+that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.
+
+{13c}  _Lavengro_, page 45.
+
+{14}  David Haggart, born 24th June 1801, was an instinctive criminal,
+who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the
+West Norfolks.  Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his
+career of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a
+policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, he was hanged at
+Edinburgh.
+
+{15a}  _Lavengro_, page 138.
+
+{15b}  John Crome (1768–1821), landscape painter.  Apprenticed 1783 as
+sign-painter; introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded the
+Norwich School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy 1806.
+
+{17}  Borrow was always a magnificent horseman.  “Vaya! how you ride!  It
+is dangerous to be in your way!” said the Archbishop of Toledo to him
+years later.  In _The Bible in Spain_ he wrote that he had “been
+accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a saddle.”  The Rev.
+Wentworth Webster states that in Madrid “he used to ride with a Russian
+skin for a saddle and _without stirrups_.”
+
+{20}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_,
+26th April 1851.
+
+{21a}  “It is probable, that had I been launched about this time into
+some agreeable career, that of arms, for example, for which, being the
+son of a soldier, I had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I might have
+thought nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any kind; but,
+having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to my genius
+which appeared open to me.”—_Lavengro_, page 89.
+
+{21b}  The Rev. Thomas D’Eterville, M.A., “Poor Old Detterville,” as the
+Grammar School boys called him, of Caen University, who arrived at
+Norwich in 1793.  He acquired a small fortune by teaching languages.
+There were rumours that he was engaged in the contraband trade, an
+occupation more likely to bring fortune than teaching languages.
+
+{21c}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_,
+26th April 1851.
+
+{22}  It was here, in 1827, that he saw the world’s greatest trotter,
+Marshland Shales, and in common with other lovers of horses lifted his
+hat to salute “the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother
+England.”  In _Lavengro_ Borrow antedated this event by some nine years.
+
+{23}  Manuscript autobiographical notes supplied by Borrow to Mr John
+Longe, 1862.
+
+{24}  _Lavengro_, page 134.
+
+{25a}  This account is taken from a letter by “A Schoolfellow of
+_Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_, 26th April 1851.
+
+{25b}  In a letter to Borrow, dated 15th October 1862, John Longe, J.P.,
+of Spixworth Park, Norwich, in acknowledging some biographical
+particulars that Borrow had sent him for inclusion in Burton’s
+_Antiquities of the Royal School of Norwich_, wrote:—
+
+    “You have omitted an important and characteristic anecdote of your
+    early days (fifteen years of age).  When at school you, with
+    Theodosius and Francis W. Purland, _absented_ yourself from home and
+    school and took up your abode in a certain ‘Robber’s Cave’ at Acle,
+    where you _resided_ three days, and once more returned to your
+    homes.”
+
+{26}  According to the original manuscript of _Lavengro_, it appears that
+Roger Kerrison, a Norwich friend of Borrow’s, strongly advised the law as
+“an excellent profession . . . for those who never intend to follow
+it.”—_Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp, i., 66.
+
+{27a}  The Rev. Wm. Drake of Mundesley, in a letter which appeared in
+_The Eastern Daily Press_, 22nd September 1892:—
+
+    “ . . . I was at the Norwich Grammar School nine years, from 1820 to
+    1829, and during that time (probably in 1824 and 1825) George Borrow
+    was lodging in the Upper Close . . .  The house was a low
+    old-fashioned building with a garden in front of it, and the fact of
+    Borrow’s residence there is fixed in my memory because I had spent
+    the first five or six years of my own life in the same house, from
+    1811 to 1816 or 1817.  My father occupied it in virtue of his being a
+    minor canon in Norwich Cathedral.  I remember Borrow very distinctly,
+    because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who used to gather
+    round the railings of his garden, and occasionally he would ask one
+    or two of them to have tea with him.  I have a faint recollection
+    that he gave us some of our first notions of chess, but I am not sure
+    of this.  I . . . remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man,
+    usually dressed in black.  In person he was not unlike another
+    Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different notoriety
+    from that which now belongs to Borrow’s name.  I mean John Thurtell,
+    who murdered Mr Weare.”
+
+{27b}  _Wild Wales_, page 3.
+
+{28a}  _Wild Wales_, page 157.
+
+{28b}  Forty years later Borrow wrote of these days:—“‘How much more
+happy, innocent, and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I
+translated Iolo’s ode than I am at the present time!’  Then covering my
+face with my hands I wept like a child.”—_Wild Wales_, page 448.
+
+{30a}  There is no doubt that Borrow became possessed of a copy of
+_Kiæmpe Viser_, first collected by Anders Vedel, which may or may not
+have been given to him, with a handshake from the old farmer and a kiss
+from his wife, in recognition of the attention he had shown the pair in
+his official capacity.  He refers to the volume repeatedly in _Lavengro_,
+and narrates how it was presented by some shipwrecked Danish mariners to
+the old couple in acknowledgment of their humanity and hospitality.  It
+is, however, most likely that he was in error when he stated that “in
+less than a month” he was able “to read the book.”—_Lavengro_, pages
+140–4.
+
+{30b}  _Wild Wales_, page 2.
+
+{30c}  _Wild Wales_, page 374.
+
+{30d}  _Wild Wales_, page 9.  There is an interesting letter written to
+Borrow by the old lawyer’s son on the appearance of _Lavengro_, in which
+he says: “With tearful eyes, yet smiling lips, I have read and re-read
+your faithful portrait of my dear old father.  I cannot mistake him—the
+creaking shoes, the florid face, the polished pate—all serve as marks of
+recognition to his youngest son!”
+
+{31a}  _Wild Wales_, page 374.
+
+{31b}  During the five years that he was articled to Simpson & Rackham,
+Borrow, according to Dr Knapp, studied Welsh, Danish, German, Hebrew,
+Arabic, Gaelic, and Armenian.  He already had a knowledge of Latin,
+Greek, Irish, French, Italian, and Spanish.
+
+{31c}  _Lavengro_, page 235.
+
+{32a}  Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), the historical painter.
+
+{32b}  _Lavengro_, page 166.
+
+{33a}  William Taylor (1765–1836) was an admirer of German literature and
+a defender of the French Revolution.  He is credited with having first
+inspired his friend Southey with a liking for poetry.  He travelled much
+abroad, met Goethe, attended the National Assembly debates in 1790,
+translated from the German and contributed to a number of English
+periodicals.
+
+{33b}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.
+
+{33c}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.
+
+{33d}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in The Britannia, 26th
+April 1851.
+
+{34a}  _Memoir of Wm. Taylor_, by J. W. Robberds.
+
+{34b}  _Memoir of Wm. Taylor_, by J. W. Robberds.
+
+{34c}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in The Britannia, 26th
+April 1851.
+
+{35a}  The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in a letter, 17th February 1887.
+
+{35b}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.
+
+{35c}  _Lavengro_, page 355.
+
+{36a}  John Bowring, F.R.S. (1792–1872), began life in trade, went to the
+Peninsula for Milford & Co., army contractors, in 1811, set up for
+himself as a merchant, travelled and acquired a number of languages.  He
+was ambitious, energetic and shrewd.  He became editor of _The
+Westminster Review_ in 1824, and LL.D., Grönigen, in 1829.  He was sent
+by the Government upon a commercial mission to Belgium, 1833; to Egypt;
+Syria and Turkey, 1837–8; M.P. for Clyde burghs, 1835–7, and for Bolton,
+1841; was instrumental in obtaining the issue of the florin as a first
+step toward a decimal system of currency; Consul of Canton, 1847;
+plenipotentiary to China; governor, commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral
+of Hong Kong, 1854; knighted 1854; established diplomatic and commercial
+relations with Siam, 1855.  He published a number of volumes of
+translations from various languages.  He died full of years and honours
+in 1872.
+
+{36b}  _The Romany Rye_, page 368, _et seq._
+
+{38}  _Lavengro_, pages 177–8.
+
+{39}  _Lavengro_, pages 179–80.  Captain Borrow was in his sixty-sixth
+year at his death; b. December 1758, d. 28th February 1824.  He was
+buried in St Giles churchyard, Norwich, on 4th March 1824.
+
+{40a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 302.
+
+{40b}  In his will Captain Borrow bequeathed to George his watch and “the
+small Portrait,” and to John “the large Portrait” of himself; his mother
+to hold and enjoy them during her lifetime.  Should Mrs Borrow die or
+marry again, elaborate provision was made for the proper distribution of
+the property between the two sons.
+
+{41}  In particular Borrow believed in Ab Gwilym “the greatest poetical
+genius that has appeared in Europe since the revival of literature”
+(_Wild Wales_, page 6).  “The great poet of Nature, the contemporary of
+Chaucer, but worth half-a-dozen of the accomplished word-master, the
+ingenious versifier of Norman and Italian Tales.” (_Wild Wales_, page
+xxviii.).
+
+{42a}  Lines to Six-Foot-Three.  _Romantic Ballads_.  Norwich 1826.
+
+{42b}  Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840) before becoming a publisher was a
+schoolmaster, hosier, stationer, bookseller, and vendor of patent
+medicines at Leicester, where he also founded a newspaper.  In 1795 he
+came to London, was sheriff in 1807, and received his knighthood a year
+later.
+
+{43}  It has been urged against Borrow’s accuracy that Sir Richard
+Phillips had retired to Brighton in 1823, vide _The Dictionary of
+National Biography_.  In the January number (1824) of _The Monthly
+Magazine_ appeared the following paragraph: “The Editor [Sir Richard
+Phillips], having retired from his commercial engagements and removed
+from his late house of business in New Bridge Street, communications
+should be addressed to the appointed Publishers [Messrs Whittakers]; but
+personal interviews of Correspondents and interested persons may be
+obtained at his private residence in Tavistock Square.”  This proves
+conclusively that Sir Richard was to be seen in London in the early part
+of 1824.
+
+{44a}  _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence
+from the Earliest Records to the Year_ 1825, 6 vols., with plates.
+London, 1825.
+
+{44b}  _Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe_.  By
+Sir Richard Phillips.  London, 1821.
+
+{45a}  Dr Knapp identified the editor as “William Gifford, editor of _The
+Quarterly Review_ from 1809 to September 1824.”  (Life of George Borrow,
+i. 93.)  The late Sir Leslie Stephen, however, cast very serious doubt
+upon this identification, himself concluding that the editor of _The
+Universal Review_ was John Carey (1756–1826), whose name was actually
+associated with an edition of Quintilian published in 1822.  Carey was a
+known contributor to two of Sir Richard Phillips’ magazines.
+
+{45b}  _The Monthly Magazine_, July 1824.
+
+{46a}  It appeared in six volumes.
+
+{46b}  The work when completed contained accounts of over 400 trials.
+
+{46c}  It appeared on 19th March following.
+
+{46d}  _Lavengro_, page 210.
+
+{47}  The picture was duly painted in the Heroic manner, the artist
+lending to the ex-mayor, for some reason or other, his own unheroically
+short legs.  Haydon received his fee of a hundred guineas, and the
+picture now hangs in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich.
+
+{48a}  Letter from Roger Kerrison to John Borrow, 28th May 1824.
+
+{48b}  _Memoirs_, _C. G. Leland_ 1893.
+
+{49a}  Borrow himself gave the sum as “eighteen-pence a page.”  The books
+themselves apparently did not become the property of the reviewer.—_The
+Romany Rye_, page 324.
+
+{49b}  Borrow says that he demanded lives of people who had never lived,
+and cancelled others that Borrow had prepared with great care, because be
+considered them as “drugs.”—_Lavengro_, pages 245–6.
+
+{50a}  “‘Sir,’ said he, ‘you know nothing of German; I have shown your
+translation of the first chapter of my Philosophy to several Germans: it
+is utterly unintelligible to them.’  ‘Did they see the Philosophy?’ I
+replied.  ‘They did, sir, but they did not profess to understand
+English.’  ‘No more do I,’ I replied, ‘if the Philosophy be
+English.’”—_Lavengro_, page 254.
+
+{50b}  A German edition of the work appeared in Stuttgart in 1826.
+
+{52a}  This sentence is quoted in _The Gypsies of Spain_ as a heading to
+the section “On Robber Language,” page 335.
+
+{52b}  _Lavengro_, pages 216–7.
+
+{52c}  _Lavengro_, page 271.
+
+{53a}  _Faustus_: _His Life_, _Death and Descent into Hell_.  Translated
+from the German.  London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825, pages xxii.,
+251.  Coloured Plate.
+
+{53b}  A letter from Borrow to the publishers, which Dr Knapp quotes, and
+dates 15th September 1825, but without giving his reasons, was written
+from Norwich, and runs:
+
+    Dear Sir,—
+
+    As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to take
+    thirty copies of _Faustus_ instead of the money.  The book has been
+    _burnt_ in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked about,
+    I may, perhaps, be able to dispose of some in the course of a year or
+    so.—Yours, G. BORROW.
+
+{55a}  _Lavengro_, page 310.
+
+{55b}  _The Romany Rye_, Appendix, page 303.
+
+{57}  Probably it was only a portion of the whole amount of £50 that
+Borrow drew after the completion of the work.  One thing is assured, that
+Sir Richard Phillips was too astute a man to pay the whole amount before
+the completion of the work.
+
+{58}  Dr Knapp’s _Life of George Borrow_, i., page 141.
+
+{60}  Dr Knapp gives the date as the 22nd; but Mr John Sampson makes the
+date the 24th, which seems more likely to be correct.
+
+{61a}  _The Athenæum_, 25th March 1899.
+
+{61b}  _Lavengro_, page 362.
+
+{62a}  _Lavengro_, page 362.
+
+{62b}  _Lavengro_, page 374.
+
+{63a}  _Lavengro_, pages 431–2.
+
+{64a}  _Lavengro_, page 451.
+
+{64b}  Mr Watts-Dunton in a review of Dr Knapp’s _Life of Borrow_ says
+that she “was really an East-Anglian road-girl of the finest type, known
+to the Boswells, and remembered not many years ago.”—_Athenæum_, 25th
+March 1899.
+
+{66a}  Mr Petulengro is made to say the “Flying Tinker.”
+
+{66b}  Dr Knapp sees in the account of Murtagh’s story of his travels
+Barrow’s own adventures during 1826–7, but there is no evidence in
+support of this theory.  Another contention of Dr Knapp’s is more likely
+correct, viz., that the story of Finn MacCoul was that told him by Cronan
+the Cornish guide during the excursion to Land’s End.
+
+{67a}  It will be remembered that in _The Romany Rye_ Borrow takes his
+horse to the Swan Inn at Stafford, meets his postilion friend and is
+introduced by him to the landlord, with the result that he arranges to
+act as “general superintendent of the yard,” and keep the hay and corn
+account.  In return he and his horse are to be fed and lodged.  Here
+Borrow encounters Francis Ardry, on his way to see the dog and lion fight
+at Warwick, and the man in black.
+
+{67b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 360.
+
+{68}  Introduction to _The Romany Rye_ in The Little Library, Methuen &
+Co., Ltd.
+
+{69a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 162.
+
+{69b}  _The Romany Rye_, page 162.
+
+{69c}  _The Romany Rye_, page 50.
+
+{69d}  “Let but the will of a human being be turned to any particular
+object, and it is ten to one that sooner or later he achieves
+it.”—_Lavengro_, page 16.
+
+{73}  They appeared as _Romantic Ballads_, _translated from the Danish_,
+_and Miscellaneous Pieces_, by George Borrow.  Norwich.  S. Wilkin, 1826.
+Included in the volume were translations from the _Kiæmpe Viser_ and from
+Oehlenschlæger.
+
+{74}  _Correspondence and Table-Talk of B. R. Haydon_.  London, 1876.
+The position of the letter in the _Haydon Journal_ is between November
+1825 and January 1826; but it is more likely that it was written some
+months later.  Unfortunately, Borrow’s portrait cannot be traced in any
+of Haydon’s pictures.
+
+{75a}  _Lavengro_, page 9.
+
+{75b}  There was a tradition that Borrow became a foreign correspondent
+for the _Morning Herald_, and it was in this capacity that he travelled
+on the Continent in 1826–7; but Dr Knapp clearly showed that such a
+theory was untenable.
+
+{75c}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 11.
+
+{75d}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 219.
+
+{75e}  Letter to his mother, August 1833.
+
+{75f}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 172.
+
+{75g}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 31.
+
+{76a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 703.
+
+{76b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 67.
+
+{76c}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 19.
+
+{76d}  _Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean_, by Lt.-Col. E.
+H. D. E. Napier.  London, 1842.
+
+{76e}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, pages 10–11.
+
+{76f}  _Patteran_, or _Patrin_; a gypsy method of indicating by means of
+grass, leaves, or a mark in the dust to those behind the direction taken
+by the main body.
+
+{76g}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 31.
+
+{77a}  If he went abroad, he certainly did so without obtaining a
+passport from the Foreign Office.  The only passports issued to him
+between the years 1825–1840 were:
+
+  27th July 1833, to St Petersburg;
+
+  2nd November 1836 and 20th December 1838, to Spain,
+
+as far as the F. O. Registers show.
+
+{77b}  Dr Knapp takes Borrow’s statement, made 29th March 1839, “I have
+been three times imprisoned and once on the point of being shot,” as
+indicating that he was imprisoned at Pamplona in 1826.  The imprisonments
+were September 1837, Finisterre; May 1838, Madrid; and another unknown.
+The occasion on which he was nearly shot, which may be assumed to be
+connected with one of the imprisonments (otherwise he was more than “once
+nearly shot”), was at Finisterre, when he, with his guide, was seized as
+a Carlist spy “by the fishermen of the place, who determined at first on
+shooting us.”  (Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th September 1837.)
+
+{78}  The incident is given in _Lavengro_ under date of 1818, when
+Marshland Shales was fifteen years old.  It was not, however, until 1827
+that he appeared at the Norwich Horse Fair and was put up for auction.
+“Such a horse as this we shall never see again; a pity that he is so
+old,” was the opinion of those who lifted their hats as a token of
+respect.
+
+{79}  This and subsequent letters from Borrow to Sir John Bowring not
+specially acknowledged have been courteously placed at the writer’s
+disposal by Mr Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring’s grandson.
+
+{81}  In _The Monthly Review_, March 1830, there appeared among the
+literary announcements a paragraph to the same effect.
+
+{83}  From the original draft of his letter of 20th May to Dr Bowring,
+omitted from the letter itself.
+
+{86a}  Mr Thomas Seccombe in _Bookman_, February 1902.
+
+{86b}  It is only fair to add that Mr Seccombe wrote without having seen
+the correspondence quoted from above.  His words have been given as
+representing the opinion held by most people regarding the Borrow-Bowring
+dispute.  It has been said that Bowring sought to suck Borrow’s brains;
+it would appear, however, that Borrow strove rather to make every
+possible use that he could of Bowring.
+
+{87a}  Preface to _The Sleeping Bard_, 1860.
+
+{87b}  _Ibid._
+
+{88a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 201.
+
+{88b}  Dr Knapp gives the date as during the early days of September, but
+without mentioning his authority.
+
+{90}  _The Romany Rye_, page 362.
+
+{91a}  _Lavengro_, page 403.
+
+{91b}  _Lavengro_, page 446.
+
+{92}  Vicar of Pakefield, in Norfolk, 1814–1830; Lowestoft, 1830–63.  He
+married a sister of J. J. Gurney of Earlham Hall.
+
+{93a}  Dr Knapp was in error when he credited J. J. Gurney with the
+introduction.  In a letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 10th Feb. 1833, Borrow
+wrote, “I must obtain a letter from him [Rev. F. Cunningham] to Joseph
+Gurney.”
+
+{93b}  T. Pell Platt, formerly the Hon. Librarian of the Society; W.
+Greenfield, its lately deceased Editorial Superintendent.
+
+{94a}  S. V. Lipovzoff (1773–1841) had studied Chinese and Manchu at the
+National College of Pekin, and had lived in China for 20 years; belonged
+to the Russian Foreign Office (Asiatic section); head of Board of Censors
+for books in Eastern languages printed in Russia: Corresponding member of
+Academy of Sciences for department of Oriental Literature and
+Antiquities.  “A gentleman in the service of the Russian Department of
+Foreign Affairs, who has spent the greater part of an industrious life in
+Peking and the East.”—J. P. H[asfeldt] in the _Athenæum_, 5th March 1836.
+
+{94b}  Asmus, Simondsen & Co., Sarepta House.
+
+{95}  Borrow’s report upon Puerot’s translation, 23rd September 5th
+October, 1835.
+
+{96a}  _The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_, vol. i., July 1888 to
+October 1899.  In the MS. autobiographical note he wrote later for Mr
+John Longe, Borrow stated that he walked from London to Norwich in
+November 1825.  He may have performed the journey twice.
+
+{96b}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, to whom he
+wrote on his return home, _circa_ January, acquainting him with what had
+transpired in London, assuring him that “I am returned with a firm
+determination to exert all my energies to attain the desired end [the
+learning of Manchu]; and I hope, Sir, that I shall have the benefit of
+your prayers for my speedy success, for the language is one of those
+which abound with difficulties against which human skill and labour,
+without the special favour of God, are as blunt hatchets against the oak;
+and though I shall almost weary Him with my own prayers, I wish not to
+place much confidence in them, being at present very far from a state of
+grace and regeneration, having a hard and stony heart, replete with
+worldy passions, vain wishes, and all kinds of ungodliness; so that it
+would be no wonder if God to prayers addressed from my lips were to turn
+away His head in wrath.”
+
+{97}  Borrow always writes Mandchow, but, for the sake of uniformity his
+spelling is corrected throughout.
+
+{98}  Letter to Rev. Francis Cunningham, _circa_ January 1833.
+
+{99a}  Dr Knapp ascribes the translation to Dr Pazos Kanki, who undertook
+it at the instance of the Bishop of Puebla, but gives no authority.  Dr
+Kanki was a native of La Paz, Peru, and translated St Luke into his
+native dialect Aimará.  He had no more connection with Mexico than “stout
+Cortez” with “a peak in Darien.”
+
+{99b}  _Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp, i., page 157.
+
+{100a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
+
+{100b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
+
+{100c}  Letter to Rev J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
+
+{101}  Caroline Fox wrote in her _Memories of Old Friends_ (1882):
+“Andrew Brandram gave us at breakfast many personal recollections of
+curious people.  J. J. Gurney recommended George Borrow to their
+Committee [!]; so he stalked up to London, and they gave him a hymn to
+translate into the Manchu language, and the same to one of their own
+people to translate also.  When compared they proved to be very
+different.  When put before their reader, he had the candour to say that
+Borrow’s was much the better of the two.  On this they sent him to St
+Petersburg, got it printed [!] and then gave him business in Portugal,
+which he took the liberty greatly to extend, and to do such good as
+occurred to his mind in a highly executive manner [22nd August 1844].”
+
+{102}  Mr Lipovzoff’s unfortunate name was a great stumbling-block.
+Borrow spelt it many ways, varying from Lipoffsky to Lipofsoff.  It has
+been thought advisable to adopt Mr Lipovzoff’s _own_ spelling of his
+name, in order to preserve some uniformity.
+
+{104}  Minutes of the Editorial Sub-Committee, 29th July 1833.
+
+{105}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_.
+
+{106}  Letter to his mother, 30th July 1833.
+
+{107a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th August 1833.
+
+{107b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th August 1833.
+
+{108a}  Borrow is always puzzling when concerned with dates.  He writes
+to his mother telling her that he left on the 7th, and later gives the
+date, in a letter to Mr Jowett, as 24th July, O.S. (5th August).  The 7th
+seems to be the correct date.
+
+{108b}  Letter to his mother.
+
+{109}  “If I had my choice of all the cities of the world to live in, I
+would choose Saint Petersburg.”—_Wild Wales_, page 665.
+
+{110}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, undated: received 26th September 1833.
+
+{111}  In a letter dated 3rd/15th August, the Prince wrote to Mr Venning
+at Norwich, “On returning thence, your son came to introduce to me the
+Englishman who has come over here about the translation of the Manchu
+Bible, and who brought with him your letter.”—_Memorials of John
+Venning_, 1862.
+
+{112a}  Best known for his Grammar, written in German.
+
+{112b}  Nephew of J. C Adelung, the philologist.
+
+{113}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, undated, but received 26th September
+1833.
+
+{114a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{114b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{114c}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{115a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{115b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+Probably this means the New Testament only, as there was no intention of
+printing the Old Testament at that date.
+
+{116}  In a letter to his mother, dated 1st/13th Feb., Borrow writes:
+“The Bible Society depended upon Dr Schmidt and the Russian translator
+Lipovzoff to manage this business [the obtaining of the official
+sanction], but neither the one nor the other would give himself the least
+trouble about the matter, or give me the slightest advice how to
+proceed.”
+
+{117}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{118a}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.
+
+{118b}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.
+
+{118c}  Letter to the Rev. F. Cunningham, 17th/29th Nov. 1834.
+
+{119}  1st/13th May 1834.
+
+{121a}  This spelling is adopted throughout for uniformity.  Borrow
+writes Chiachta.
+
+{121b}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{121c}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{121d}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{123a}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 15th/23rd April 1834.
+
+{123b}  In a letter dated 1st/13th May 1834.
+
+{123c}  A suburb of Norwich.
+
+{126a}  Mrs Borrow eventually received from Allday Kerrison £50, 11s.
+1d., the amount realised from the sale of John’s effects.
+
+{126b}  This was partly on account of the Bible Society for storage
+purposes.  In the minutes of the Sub-Committee, 18th August 1834, there
+is a record of an advice having been received from Borrow that he had
+drawn “for 400 Roubles for one year’s rent in advance for a suitable
+place of deposit for the Society’s paper, etc., part of which had been
+received.”
+
+{126c}  Letter to John P. Hasfeldt from Madrid, 29th April 1837.
+
+{129}  In the minutes of the Sub-Committee, 18th August (N.S.) 1834,
+there is a note of Borrow having drawn 210 roubles “to pay for certain
+articles required to complete the Society’s fount of Manchu type.”
+
+{132a}  “My letters to my private friends have always been written during
+gleams of sunshine, and traced in the characters of hope.”
+
+{132b}  “You may easily judge of the state of book-binding here by the
+fact that for every volume, great or small, printed in Russia, there is a
+duty of 30 copecks, or threepence, to be paid to the Russian Government,
+if the said volume be exported unbound.”
+
+{135a}  John Hasfeldt.
+
+{135b}  Letter to Mr J. Tarn, Treasurer of the Bible Society, 15th/27th
+December 1834.
+
+{136}  Letter to the Rev. Joseph Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.
+
+{138a}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Feb./4th March
+1834.  In his Report on Puerot’s translation, received on 23rd Sep. 1835,
+Borrow writes: “To translate literally, or even closely, according to the
+common acceptation of the term, into the Manchu language is of all
+impossibilities the greatest; partly from the grammatical structure of
+the language, and partly from the abundance of its idioms.”  The lack of
+“some of those conjunctions generally considered as indispensable” was
+one of the chief difficulties.
+
+{138b}  Letter, 31st Dec. 1834.
+
+{139a}  Letter, 31st Dec. 1834.
+
+{139b}  Letter, 20th Feb./4th Mar. 1835.
+
+{139c}  Letter, 20th Feb./4th Mar. 1835.
+
+{139d}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.
+
+{139e}  _Ibid._
+
+{140}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.
+
+{141a}  Letter to Mr J. Tarn.
+
+{141b}  None of these translations ever appeared, owing to the refusal of
+the Russian Government to grant permission.  John Hasfeldt wrote to
+Borrow, June 1837, apropos of the project: “You know the Russian
+priesthood cannot suffer foreigners to mix themselves up in the affairs
+of the Orthodox Church.  The same would have happened to the New
+Testament itself.  You may certainly print in the Manchu-Tartar or what
+the d-l you choose, only not in Russian, for that the long-bearded
+he-goats do not like.”
+
+{142a}  Letter to Rev. F. Cunningham, 27th/29th Nov. 1834.
+
+{142b}  The principal interest in Targum lies in the number of languages
+and dialects from which the poems are translated; for it must be
+confessed that Borrow’s verse translations have no very great claim to
+attention on account of their literary merit.  The “Thirty Languages”
+were, in reality, thirty-five, viz.:—
+
+Ancient British.        Gaelic.            Portuguese.
+   “    Danish.         German.            Provençal
+   “    Irish.          Greek.             Romany.
+   “    Norse.          Hebrew.            Russian.
+Anglo-Saxon.            Irish.             Spanish.
+Arabic.                 Italian.           Suabian.
+Cambrian British.       Latin.             Swedish.
+Chinese.                Malo-Russian.      Tartar.
+Danish.                 Manchu.            Tibetan.
+Dutch.                  Modern Greek.      Turkish.
+Finnish.                Persian.           Welsh.
+French.                 Polish.
+
+
+
+{143a}  A copy was presented by John Hasfeldt to Pushkin, who expressed
+in a note to Borrow his gratification at receiving the book, and his
+regret at not having met the translator.
+
+{143b}  These two volumes were printed in one and published at a later
+date by Messrs Jarrold & Son, London & Norwich.
+
+{143c}  5th March 1836.
+
+{143d}  From a letter to Borrow from Dr Gordon Hake.
+
+{143e}  Borrow’s Report to the Committee of the Bible Society, received
+23rd September 1835.
+
+{144a}  Borrow’s Report to the Committee of the Bible Society, received
+23rd September 1835.
+
+{144b}  _Ibid._
+
+{145a}  _Kak my tut kamasa_.
+
+{145b}  Borrow’s Report to the Committee of the Bible Society, received
+23rd September 1835.  He gives an account of the episode in _The Gypsies
+of Spain_, page 6.
+
+{146a}  The Thirty-First Annual Report.
+
+{146b}  _Athenæum_, 5th March 1836.
+
+{147}  Borrow’s Report to the Committee of the Bible Society, received
+23rd September 1835.
+
+{148}  18th/30th June 1834.
+
+{149}  27th October 1835.
+
+{150a}  His salary was paid continuously, and included the period of rest
+between the Russian and Peninsula expeditions.
+
+{150b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 26th October 1835.
+
+{150c}  In a letter dated 27th October 1835.
+
+{151}  Minutes of the General Committee of the Bible Society, 2nd Nov.
+1835.
+
+{153}  In his first letter from Spain, addressed to Rev. J. Jowett (30th
+Nov. 1835), Borrow tells of this incident in practically the same words
+as it appears in _The Bible in Spain_, pages 1–3.
+
+{154a}  _The Bible in Spain_, pages 73–4.
+
+{154b}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 30th Nov. 1835.
+
+{155a}  Dr Knapp states that upon this expedition he was accompanied by
+Captain John Rowland Heyland of the 35th Regiment of Foot, whose
+acquaintance he had made on the voyage out.—_Life of George Borrow_, i.,
+page 234.
+
+{155b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 30th Nov. 1835.
+
+{155c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th Dec. 1835.
+
+{159a}  Letter to Dr Bowring, 26th December 1835.
+
+{159b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 67.
+
+{159c}  Dated 8th and 10th January 1836, giving an account of his journey
+to Evora.
+
+{160a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 78.
+
+{160b}  _The Bible in Spain_, pages 77–8.
+
+{161a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 87.
+
+{161b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 88.
+
+{162a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 99.
+
+{162b}  _Lavengro_, page 191.
+
+{162c}  _The Bible in Spain_, pages 97–8.
+
+{162d}  Not 5th Jan., as given in _The Bible in Spain_.
+
+{162e}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 103.
+
+{164a}  _The Bible in Spain_, Preface, page vi.
+
+{164b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 179.
+
+{164c}  “Throughout my life the Gypsy race has always had a peculiar
+interest for me.  Indeed I can remember no period when the mere mention
+of the name Gypsy did not awaken within me feelings hard to be described.
+I cannot account for this—I merely state it as a fact.”—_The Gypsies of
+Spain_, page 1.
+
+{165a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, pages 184–5.
+
+{165b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 186.
+
+{166a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 109.
+
+{166b}  Dr Knapp states that the wedding described in _The Gypsies of
+Spain_ took place during these three days.—_Life of George Borrow_, by Dr
+Knapp, i., page 242.
+
+{167a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 162.
+
+{167b}  “I am not partial to Madrid, its climate, or anything it can
+offer, if I except its unequalled gallery of pictures.”—Letter to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 22nd March 1836.
+
+{167c}  24th February 1836.
+
+{167d}  Letter to his mother, 24th February 1836.
+
+{168a}  Letter to his mother, 24th February 1836
+
+{168b}  _Ibid._
+
+{168c}  _Ibid._
+
+{168d}  _Ibid._
+
+{169}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 173.
+
+{170a}  Born 1790, commissariat contractor in 1808 during the French
+invasion, he was of great assistance to his country.  In 1823 he fled
+from the despotism of Ferdinand VII.; he returned twelve years later as
+Minister of Finance under Toreno.  He resigned in 1837, was again in
+power in 1841, and died in 1853.
+
+{170b}  George William Villiers, afterwards 4th Earl of Clarendon, born
+12th Jan. 1800; created G.C.B., 19th Oct. 1837; succeeded his uncle as
+Earl of Clarendon, 1838; K.G., 1849.  He twice refused a Marquisate, also
+the Governor-generalship of India.  He refused the Order of the Black
+Eagle (Prussia) and the Legion of Honour.  Lord Privy Seal, 1839–41;
+Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1840–1, 1864–5; Lord-Lieutenant of
+Ireland, 1847–52.  Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1853–8,
+1865–6, 1868–9.  Died 27th June 1870.
+
+{171}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 165.
+
+{173a}  Extracts accompanying letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd March
+1836.
+
+{173b}  _Ibid._
+
+{173c}  _Ibid._
+
+{174}  Letter of 22nd March 1837.
+
+{175a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd May 1836.
+
+{175b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd May 1836.
+
+{175c}  Letter dated 6th April 1836.
+
+{175d}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th April 1836.
+
+{175e}  _Ibid._
+
+{176a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th April 1836.
+
+{176b}  _Ibid._  Borrow’s destitution was entirely accidental, and
+immediately that his letter was received at Earl Street the sum of
+twenty-five pounds was forwarded to him.
+
+{177}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th April 1836.
+
+{178a}  Letter of 9th May 1836.
+
+{178b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th June 1836.
+
+{178c}  _Ibid._
+
+{178d}  _Ibid._
+
+{179a}  The Duke’s secretary who had shown so profound a respect for the
+decrees of the Council of Trent.
+
+{179b}  Late of the Royal Navy, who for sheer love of the work
+distributed the Scriptures in Spain, and who later was to come into grave
+conflict with Borrow.
+
+{180}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th June 1836.
+
+{181a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 7th July 1836.
+
+{181b}  _Ibid._
+
+{181c}  _Ibid._
+
+{181d}  _Ibid._
+
+{182a}  Dr Usoz was a Spaniard of noble birth, a pupil of Mezzofanti, and
+one of the editors of _El Español_.  He occupied the chair of Hebrew at
+Valladolid.  He was deeply interested in the work of the Bible Society,
+and was fully convinced that in nothing but the reading of the Bible
+could the liberty in Spain be found.
+
+{182b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th December 1837.
+
+{182c}  La Granja was a royal palace some miles out of Madrid, to which
+the Queen Regent had withdrawn.  On the night of 12th August, two
+sergeants had forced their way into the Queen Regent’s presence, and
+successfully demanded that she should restore the Constitution of 1812.
+This incident was called the Revolution of La Granja.
+
+{183a}  _The Bible in Spain_, pages 197–206.
+
+{183b}  30th July 1836.
+
+{183c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 10th August 1836.
+
+{184}  17th October 1836.
+
+{185a}  _The Bible in Spain_, pages 209–11.
+
+{185b}  _Ibid._, page 211.
+
+{186}  The Rev. Wentworth Webster in _The Journal of Gypsy Lore Society_,
+vol. i., July 1888–Oct. 1889.
+
+{187}  Letter from Rev. A. Brandram, 6th Jan. 1837.
+
+{188}  Isidor Just Severin, Baron Taylor (1789–1879), was a naturalised
+Frenchman and a great traveller.  In 1821 he, with Charles Nodier, wrote
+the play _Bertram_, which was produced with great success at Paris in
+1821.  Later he was made Commissaire du Théâtre Français, and authorised
+the production of _Hernani_ and _Le Mariage de Figaro_.  Later he became
+Inspecteur-Général des Beaux Arts (1838).  When seen by Borrow in Seville
+he was collecting Spanish pictures for Louis-Philippe.
+
+{189}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 221.
+
+{190a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 237.
+
+{190b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 26th Dec. 1836.
+
+{191a}  In letter to the Rev. A. Brandram (26th Dec. 1836), Borrow gives
+the quantity of brandy as two bottles.  This letter was written within a
+few hours of the act and is more likely to be accurate.
+
+{191b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 254.
+
+{191c}  Borrow’s letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.
+
+{191d}  He was authorised to purchase 600 reams at 60 _reals_ per ream,
+whereas he paid only 45 _reals_ a ream for a paper “better,” he wrote,
+“than I could have purchased at 70.”
+
+{192a}  Author of _La Historia de las Córtes de España durante el Siglo
+XIX_. (1885) and other works of a political character.  He was also
+proprietor and editor of _El Español_.  Isturitz had intended raising
+Borrégo to the position of minister of finance when his government
+suddenly terminated.
+
+{192b}  General report prepared by Borrow in the Autumn of 1838 for the
+General Committee of the Bible Society detailing his labours in Spain.
+This was subsequently withdrawn, probably on account of its somewhat
+aggressive tone.  In the course of this work the document will be
+referred to as _General Report_, _Withdrawn_.
+
+{192c}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.
+
+{193}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.
+
+{194a}  27th January 1837.
+
+{194b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 27th Feb. 1837.
+
+{195a}  Letter from Rev. A. Brandram to Borrow, 22nd March 1837.
+
+{195b}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Dec. 1837.
+
+{195c}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 27th February 1837.
+
+{195d}  Rev. Wentworth Webster in _The Journal of the Gypsy Lore
+Society_, vol. i., July 1888–October 1889.
+
+{196a}  _General Report_ withdrawn.
+
+{196b}  _General Report_, withdrawn.
+
+{196c}  Borrow to Richard Ford.  _Letters of Richard Ford_ 1797–1858.
+Ed. R. E. Prothero.  Murray, 1905.
+
+{197a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 7th June 1837.
+
+{197b}  _Ibid._
+
+{197c}  _Ibid._
+
+{198}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 27th February 1837.
+
+{199}  As the method adopted was practically the same in every town he
+visited, no further reference need be made to the fact, and in the brief
+survey of the journeys that Borrow himself has described so graphically,
+only incidents that tend to throw light upon his character or
+disposition, and such as he has not recorded himself, will be dealt with.
+
+{200a}  Via Pitiegua, Pedroso, Medina del Campo, Dueñas Palencia.
+
+“I suffered dreadfully during this journey,” Borrow wrote, “as did
+likewise my man and horses, for the heat was the fiercest which I have
+ever known, and resembled the breath of the simoon or the air from an
+oven’s mouth.”—Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 5th July 1837.
+
+{200b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 5th July 1837.
+
+{201}  _The Bible in Spain_, pages 352–4.
+
+{202}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 364.
+
+{203a}  This is the story particularly referred to by Richard Ford in
+report upon the MS. of _The Bible in Spain_.
+
+{203b}  In the Report to the General Committee of the Bible Society on
+Past and Future Operations in Spain, November 1838.
+
+{204a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 409.
+
+{204b}  In _The Bible in Spain_ Borrow says he was arrested on suspicion
+of being the Pretender himself; but in a letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th
+September 1837, he says that he and his guide were seized as Carlist
+spies, and makes no mention of Don Carlos.
+
+{205a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th September 1837.
+
+{205b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th September 1837.
+
+{205c}  By way of Ferrol, Novales, Santa María, Coisa d’Ouro, Viviero,
+Foz, Rivadéo, Castro Pól, Naváia, Luarca, the Caneiro, Las Bellotas, Soto
+Luiño, Muros, Avilés and Gijon.
+
+{205d}  To the Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1837.  The story also appears
+in _The Bible in Spain_, pages 479–480.
+
+{206}  Borrow’s original idea in printing only the New Testament was that
+in Spain and Portugal he deemed it better not to publish the whole Bible,
+at least not “until the inhabitants become christianised,” because the
+Old Testament “is so infinitely entertaining to the carnal man,” and he
+feared that in consequence the New Testament would be little read.  Later
+he saw his mistake, and was constantly asking for Bibles, for which there
+was a big demand.
+
+{207}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 29th September 1837.
+
+{208}  George Dawson Flinter, an Irishman in the service of Queen
+Isabella II., who fought for his adopted Queen with courage and
+distinction, and eventually committed suicide as a protest against the
+monstrously unjust conspiracy to bring about his ruin, September 1838.
+
+{209a}  By way of Ontanéda, Oña, Búrgos, Vallodolid, Guadarrama.
+
+{209b}  _General Report_, withdrawn.
+
+{209c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 1st November 1837.
+
+{210}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 507.
+
+{211}  He was created G.C.B. 19th Oct. 1837.
+
+{212a}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 20th Nov. 1837.
+
+{212b}  To the Rev. A. Brandram, 20th Nov. 1837.
+
+{213a}  _History of the British and Foreign Bible Society_, W. Canton.
+
+{213b}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th March 1838.
+
+{214a}  Mr Brandram wrote to Graydon (12th April 1838): “Mr Rule being at
+Madrid and having conferred with Mr Borrow and Sir George Villiers, it
+appears to have struck them all three that a visit on your part to Cadiz
+and Seville could not at present be advantageous to our cause.”
+
+{214b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th November 1837.
+
+{214c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 28th November 1837.  The comment on
+the badness of the London edition had reference to the translation, which
+Borrow had condemned with great vigour; he subsequently admitted that he
+had been too sweeping in his disapproval.
+
+{215a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 28th November 1837.
+
+{215b}  Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th May 1838.
+
+{215c}  _Ibid._
+
+{216a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 241.
+
+{216b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Dec. 1837.
+
+{216c}  These Bibles fetched, the large edition (Borrow wrote “I would
+give my right hand for a thousand of them”) 17s. each, and the smaller
+7s. each, whereas the New Testaments fetched about half-a crown.
+
+{216d}  Letter dated 16th Jan. 1838.
+
+{217a}  In _The Bible in Spain_ he says “the greater part,” in _The
+Gypsies of Spain_ he says “the whole.”
+
+{217b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 275.
+
+{218a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 280.
+
+{218b}  _Ibid._
+
+{218c}  _Ibid._, page 282.
+
+{219a}  On 25th December 1837.
+
+{219b}  It is strange that Borrow should insist that he had Sir George
+Villiers’ approval; for Sir George himself has clearly stated that he
+strongly opposed the opening of the _Despacho_.
+
+{220}  15th January 1838.
+
+{221a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th March 1838.
+
+{221b}  In _The Gypsies of Spain_ Borrow gives the number as 500 (page
+281); but the Resolution, confirmed 20th March 1837, authorised the
+printing of 250 copies only.  In all probability the figures given by
+Borrow are correct, as in a letter to Mr Brandram, dated 18th July 1839,
+he gives his unsold stock of books at Madrid as:—
+
+Of Testaments                           962
+Of Gospels in the Gypsy Tongue          286
+Of ditto in Basque                      394
+
+{222a}  Original Report, withdrawn.
+
+{222b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, pages 280–1.
+
+{224a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th March 1838.
+
+{224b}  _The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society_, by W.
+Canton.
+
+{225}  Mr Canton writes in _The History of the British and Foreign Bible
+Society_: “His [Graydon’s] opportunity was indeed unprecedented; and had
+he but more accurately appreciated the unstable political conditions of
+the country, the susceptibilities, suspicious and precarious tenure of
+ministers and placemen, the temper of the priesthood, their sensitive
+attachment to certain tenets of their faith, and their enormous influence
+over the civil power, there is reason to believe that he might have
+brought his mission to a happier and more permanent issue.”
+
+{226}  [11th] May 1838.
+
+{227a}  Letter from George Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram [11th] May 1838.
+
+{227b}  23rd April 1838.
+
+{227c}  The Marin episode is amazing.  The object of distributing the
+Scriptures was to enlighten men’s minds and bring about conversion, and a
+priest was a distinct capture, more valuable by far than a peasant, and
+likely to influence others; yet when they had got him no one appears to
+have known exactly what to do, and all were anxious to get rid of him
+again.
+
+{228a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 536.
+
+{228b}  _Ibid._
+
+{229a}  Original Report, withdrawn.
+
+{229b}  Original Report, withdrawn.
+
+{231}  Sometimes this personage is referred to in official papers as the
+“Political Chief,” a too literal translation of _Gefé Politico_.  In all
+cases it has been altered to Civil Governor to preserve uniformity.  Many
+of the official translations of Foreign Office papers can only be
+described as grotesque.
+
+{232a}  This is the official translation among the Foreign Office papers
+at the Record Office.
+
+{232b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 539.
+
+{233}  There is an error in the dating of this letter.  It should be 1st
+May.
+
+{234a}  In a letter to Count Ofalia, Sir George Villiers states that
+“George Borrow, fearing violence, prudently abstained from going to his
+ordinary place of abode.”
+
+{234b}  Borrow pays a magnificent and well-deserved tribute to this queen
+among landladies.  (_The Bible in Spain_, pages 256–7.)  She was always
+his friend and frequently his counsellor, thinking nothing of the risk
+she ran in standing by him during periods of danger.  She refused all
+inducements to betray him to his enemies, and, thoroughly deserved the
+eulogy that Borrow pronounced upon her.
+
+{234c}  It was subsequently stated that the arrest was ordered because
+Borrow had refused to recognise the Civil Governor’s authority and made
+use “of offensive expressions” towards his person.  The Civil Governor
+had no authority over British subjects, and Borrow was right in his
+refusal to acknowledge his jurisdiction.
+
+{235}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 547.
+
+{238a}  Dispatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th
+May.
+
+{238b}  _Ibid._
+
+{239a}  Despatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 12th
+May 1838.
+
+{239b}  _Ibid._
+
+{240a}  Despatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston.
+
+{240b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th May 1838.
+
+{241a}  Despatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th May
+1838.
+
+{241b}  In a letter to the Rev. A. Brandram, 17th May 1838.
+
+{242a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at the
+Record Office.
+
+{242b}  Mr William Mark’s (the British Consul at Malaga) Official account
+of the occurrence, 16th May 1838.
+
+{243a}  Mr William Mark’s (the British Consul at Malaga) Official account
+of the occurrence, 16th May 1838.
+
+{243b}  _Ibid._
+
+{243c}  Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May 1838.
+
+{243d}  _Ibid._
+
+{244a}  Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May 1838.
+
+{244b}  _Ibid._
+
+{244c}   Sir George Villiers’ Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May
+1838.
+
+{246a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at the
+Record Office.
+
+{246b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 578.
+
+{247a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 241.
+
+{247b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 579.
+
+{249}  _History of the British and Foreign Bible Society_.  By W. Canton.
+
+{252}  On [11th] May 1838.
+
+{253}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th May 1838.
+
+{254a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th May 1838.
+
+{255a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at the
+Record Office.
+
+{255b}  Sir George Villiers to Count Ofalia, 25th May 1838.
+
+{255c}  Letter to Mr A. Brandram, 25th May 1838.
+
+{256a}  At the time of writing Borrow had not seen any of these tracts
+himself; but Sir George Villiers, who had, expressed the opinion that
+“one or two of them were outrages not only to common sense but to
+decency.”—Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 25th June 1838.
+
+{256b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th June 1838.
+
+{257a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th June 1838.
+
+{257b}  _Ibid._
+
+{259}  The quotations from Lieut. Graydon’s tracts were not sent by
+Borrow to Mr Brandram until some weeks later.  They ran:—A True History
+of the Dolorous Virgin to whom the Rebellious and Fanatical Don Carlos
+Has Committed His Cause and the Ignorance which It Displays.
+
+                                EXTRACTS.
+
+_Page_ 17.  You will readily see in all those grandiose epithets showered
+upon Mary, the work of the enemy of God, which tending essentially
+towards idolatry has managed, under the cloak of Christianity, to
+introduce idolatry, and endeavours to divert to a creature, and even to
+the image of that creature, the adoration which is due to God alone.
+Without doubt it is with this very object that on all sides we see
+erected statues of Mary, adorned with a crown, and bearing in her arms a
+child of tender years, as though to accustom the populace intimately to
+the idea of Mary’s superiority over Jesus.
+
+_Page_ 30.  This, then, is our conclusion.  In recognising and
+sanctioning this cult, the Church of Rome constitutes itself an
+idolatrous Church, and every member of it who is incapable of detecting
+the truth behind the monstrous accumulation of impieties with which they
+veil it, is proclaimed by the Church as condemned to perdition.  The
+guiding light of this Church, which they are not ashamed to smother or to
+procure the smothering of, by which nevertheless they hold their
+authority, to be plain, the word of God, should at least teach them, if
+they set any value on the Spirit of Christ, that their Papal Bulls would
+be better directed to the cleansing of the Roman Church from all its
+iniquities than to the promulgation of such unjust prohibitions.  Yet in
+struggling against better things, this Church is protecting and hallowing
+in all directions an innumerable collection of superstitions and false
+cults, and it is clear that by this means it is abased and labelled as
+one of the principal agents of Anti-Christ.
+
+{262}  _The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society_, by W.
+Canton.
+
+{265a}  This letter reached Borrow when his “foot was in the stirrup,” as
+he phrased it, ready to set out for the Sagra of Toledo.  He felt that it
+could only have originated with “the enemy of mankind for the purpose of
+perplexing my already harrassed and agitated mind”; but he continues,
+“merely exclaiming ‘Satan, I defy thee,’ I hurried to the Sagra. . . .
+But it is hard to wrestle with the great enemy.”  _General Report_,
+withdrawn.
+
+{265b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th July 1838.
+
+{265c}  Mr Brandram informed Borrow that the General Committee wished him
+to visit England if he could do so without injury to the cause (29th
+June).
+
+{266}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th July 1838.
+
+{269a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 602.
+
+{269b}  _Ibid._, page 606.
+
+{269c}  _Ibid._, page 606.
+
+{270a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 27th July 1838.
+
+{270b}  This would have been impossible.  If his age were seventy-four,
+he would of necessity have been four years old in 1838.
+
+{271a}  By Mr A. G. Jayne in “Footprints of George Borrow,” in _The Bible
+in the World_, July 1908.
+
+{271b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th July 1838.
+
+{273a}  This letter, in which there was a hint of desperation, disturbed
+the officials at Earl Street a great deal.  Mr Brandram wrote (28th July)
+that he was convinced that the Committee would “still feel that if you
+are to continue to act with them _they must see you_, and I will only add
+that it is _utterly foreign to their wishes_ that you should _expose
+yourself in the daring manner you are now doing_.  I lose not a post in
+conveying this impression to you.”
+
+{273b}  The Translation of this communication runs:—“Madrid, 7th July
+1838—I have the honour to inform your Excellency that according to
+official advices received in the first Secretary of State’s Office, it
+appears that in Malaga, Murcia, Valladolid, and Santiago, copies of the
+New Testament of Padre Scio, without notes, have been exposed for sale,
+which have been deposited with the political chiefs of the said
+provinces, or in the hands of such persons as the chiefs have entrusted
+with them in Deposit; it being necessary further to observe that the
+parties giving them up have uniformly stated that they belonged to Mr
+Borrow, and that they were commissioned by him to sell and dispose of
+them.
+
+“Under these circumstances, Her Majesty’s Government have deemed it
+expedient that I should address your Excellency, in order that the above
+may be intimated to the beforementioned Mr Borrow, so that he may take
+care that the copies in question, as well as those which have been seized
+in this City, and which are packed up in cases or parcels marked and
+sealed, may be sent out of the Kingdom of Spain, agreeably to the Royal
+order with which your Excellency is already acquainted, and through the
+medium of the respective authorities who will be able to vouch for their
+Exportation.  To this Mr Borrow will submit in the required form, and
+with the understanding that he formally binds himself thereto, they will
+remain in the meantime in the respective depots.”
+
+{275}  _General Report_, withdrawn.
+
+{277a}  Borrow’s letter to the Rev. A. Brandram, 1st Sept. 1838.
+
+{277b}  To Lord William Hervey, Chargé d’Affaires at Madrid (23rd Aug.
+1838).
+
+{278}  To Rev. G. Browne, one of the Secretaries of the Bible Society,
+29th Aug. 1838.
+
+{279a}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 19th September 1838.
+
+{279b}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 621.
+
+{279c}  Letter to Dr Usoz, 22nd Feb. 1839.
+
+{279d}  _Ibid._
+
+{279e}  _Ibid._
+
+{280}  The Report has here been largely drawn upon and has been referred
+to as “Original Report, withdrawn.”
+
+{282}  _History of the British and Foreign Bible Society_.
+
+{284}  On the publication of _The Bible in Spain_ the Prophetess became
+famous.  Thirty-six years later Dr Knapp found her still soliciting alms,
+and she acknowledged that she owed her celebrity to the _Inglés rubio_,
+the blonde Englishman.
+
+{285a}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 627.
+
+{285b}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Jan. 1839.
+
+{286}  On 6th Feb. 1839.
+
+{288a}  Letter to Mr W. Hitchin of the Bible Society, 9th March 1839.
+
+{288b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 26th March 1839.
+
+{290}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 10th April 1839.
+
+{293}  Letter to the Rev. A. Brandram, 2nd May 1839.
+
+{294a}  _Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean_, by Lt.-Col.
+E. Napier, 46th Regt.  Colburn, 1842, 2 vols.
+
+{294b}  _Ibid._
+
+{295}  _Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean_, by Lt.-Col. E.
+Napier, 46th Regt.  Colburn, 1842, 2 vols.
+
+{297}  A reference to Charles Robert Maturin’s _Melmoth the Wanderer_, 4
+vols., 1820.  This book was republished in 3 vols. in 1892, an almost
+unparalleled instance of the reissue of a practically forgotten book in a
+form closely resembling that of the original.  Melmoth the Wanderer was
+referred to in the most enthusiastic terms by Balzac, Thackeray and
+Baudelaire among others.
+
+{298}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 663.
+
+{299}  Maria Diaz had written on 24th May: “Calzado has been here to see
+if I would sell him the lamps that belong to the shop [the _Despacho_].
+He is willing to give four dollars for them, and he says they cost five,
+so if you want me to sell them to him, you must let me know.  It seems he
+is going to set up a beer-shop.”  It is not on record whether or no the
+lamps from the Bible Society’s _Despacho_ eventually illuminated a
+beer-shop.
+
+{300}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 28th June 1839.
+
+{301}  28th June.
+
+{302}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 18th July 1839.
+
+{307a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.
+
+{307b}  _Ibid._
+
+{307c}  Mr John M. Brackenbury, in writing to Mr Brandram, made it quite
+clear that he had no doubt that the “inhibition was assuredly
+accelerated, if not absolutely occasioned, by the indiscretion of some of
+those who entered Spain for the avowed object of circulating the
+Scriptures, and of others who, not being Agents of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, were nevertheless considered to be connected with
+it, as they distributed your editions of the Old and New Testaments.  Our
+objects were defeated and your interests injured, therefore, when the
+Spanish Government required the departure from this country of those who,
+by other acts and deeds wholly distinct from the distribution of Bibles
+and Testaments, had been infracting the Laws, Civil and Ecclesiastical.”
+
+{307d}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.
+
+{308a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.
+
+{308b}  _Ibid._
+
+{309}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+{310}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+{313}  From the Public Record Office.
+
+{315}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+{316}  Rev. Wentworth Webster in _The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_.
+
+{317}  The phrasing of the official translation has everywhere been
+followed.
+
+{319}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at the
+Record Office.
+
+{320}  28th Dec. 1839.
+
+{321}  Henrietta played “remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery
+German thing so-called—but the real Spanish guitar.”—_Wild Wales_, page
+6.
+
+{322}  _Wild Wales_, page 6.
+
+{323a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 18th March 1840.
+
+{323b}  _Ibid._
+
+{328a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 312.
+
+{328b}  _Ibid._, page 313.
+
+{328c}  _Wild Wales_, page 289.
+
+{329a}  _Lavengro_, page 261.
+
+{329b}  _The Romany Rye_, page 22.
+
+{329c}  _The Journals of Caroline Fox_.
+
+{330a}  _The Letters of Richard Ford_ 1797–1858.—Edited, R. E. Prothero,
+M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{330b}  _Ibid._
+
+{331a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page xiv.
+
+{331b}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{331c}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 238.
+
+{332a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{332b}  _Ibid._
+
+{332c}  _Ibid._
+
+{332d}  _Ibid._
+
+{333a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{333b}  _Ibid._
+
+{333c}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 41.
+
+{334a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{334b}  In _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.  She also tells how
+“at the Exhibition in 1851, whither we went with his step-daughter, he
+spoke to the different foreigners in their own languages, until his
+daughter saw some of them whispering together and looking as if they
+thought he was ‘uncanny,’ and she became alarmed, and drew him away.”
+
+{334c}  _Ibid._
+
+{334d}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page vii.
+
+{335a}  _A Publisher and His Friends_.  Samuel Smiles.
+
+{335b}  Richard Ford, 1796–1858.  Critic and author.  Spent several years
+in touring about Spain on horseback.  Published in 1845, _Hand-Book for
+Travellers in Spain_.  Contributed to the _Edinburgh_, _Quarterly_, and
+_Westminster_ Reviews from 1837.
+
+{335c}  _The Letters of Richard Ford_, 1797–1858.  Ed. R. E. Prothero,
+M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{336a}  Dr. Knapp points out that the title is inaccurate, there being no
+such word as “Zincali.”  It should be “Zincalé.”
+
+{336b}  _The Letters of Richard Ford_, 1797–1858.  Ed. R. E. Prothero,
+M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{337a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 1.  As the current edition of _The
+Zincali_ has been retitled _The Gypsies of Spain_, reference is made to
+it throughout this work under that title and to the latest edition.
+
+{337b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 32.
+
+{338a}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 81.
+
+{338b}  _Ibid._, page 186.
+
+{338c}  _Ibid._, page 283.
+
+{339}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 274.
+
+{340a}  Introduction to _Lavengro_.  The Little Library, Methuen, 2
+vols., 1, xxiii.-xxiv.  C. G. Leland expressed himself to the same
+effect.
+
+{340b}  _Academy_, 13th July 1874.
+
+{340c}  _Wild Wales_, page 186.
+
+{340d}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 64.
+
+{341}  _Lavengro_, page 81.
+
+{343}  Ford to John Murray.  _The Letters of Richard Ford_, 1797–1858.
+Ed. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{344}  Ford to John Murray.  _The Letters of Richard Ford_, 1797–1858.
+Ed. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{347}  Dr Knapp’s _Life of George Borrow_.
+
+{349}  _The Letters of Richard Ford_, 1797–1858.  Edited, R. E. Prothero,
+M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{352}  _Times_, 12th April 1843, Hansard’s summary reads: “It might have
+been said, to Mr Borrow with respect to Spain, that it would be
+impossible to distribute the Bible in that country in consequence of the
+danger of offending the prejudices which prevail there; yet he, a private
+individual, by showing some zeal in what he believed to be right,
+succeeded in triumphing over many obstacles.”
+
+{353}  This is obviously the letter that Borrow paraphrases at the end of
+Chapter XLII. of _The Bible in Spain_.
+
+{354}  In the Appendix to _The Romany Rye_ Borrow wrote, “Having the
+proper pride of a gentleman and a scholar, he did not, in the year ’43,
+choose to permit himself to be exhibited and made a zany of in London.”
+Page 355.
+
+{355a}  Letters to John Murray, 27th Jan. and 13th March, 1843.
+
+{355b}  Letters to John Murray, 27th Jan. and 13th March, 1843.
+
+{355c}  Borrow wrote later on that he was “a sincere member of the
+old-fashioned Church of England, in which he believes there is more
+religion, and consequently less cant, than in any other Church in the
+world” (_The Romany Rye_, page 346).  On another occasion he gave the
+following reason for his adherence to it: “Because I believe it is the
+best religion to get to heaven by” (_Wild Wales_, page 520).
+
+{356}  No trace can be found among the Bible Society Records of any such
+translation.
+
+{357}  This portrait has sometimes been ascribed to Thomas Phillips,
+R.A., in error.
+
+{360a}  _Memories of Old Friends_ (1835–1871).  London 1882.
+
+{360b}  _Memories of Eighty Years_, page 164.
+
+{360c}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{360d}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Express_, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{361}  _Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake_, ed. by C. E.
+Smith, 1895.
+
+{362a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 344.
+
+{362b}  Dr Knapp’s _Life of George Borrow_, ii. 44.
+
+{362c}  _Hungary in_ 1851.  By Charles L. Brace.
+
+{363}  Mrs Borrow to John Murray, 4th June 1844.
+
+{364}  _Memoirs_, C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{365a}  Both these MSS. were acquired by the Trustees of the British
+Museum in 1892 by purchase.  The _Gypsy Vocabulary_ runs to fifty-four
+Folios and the _Bohemian Grammar_ to seventeen Folios.
+
+{365b}  24th April 1841.
+
+{365c}  Dr Knapp’s _Life of George Borrow_, ii. page 5.
+
+{367}  As late even as 13th March 1851, Dr Hake wrote to Mrs Borrow: “He
+[Borrow] had better carry on his biography in three more volumes.”
+
+{372}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in _Athenæum_, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{374}  There is something inexplicable about these dates.  On 6th
+November Borrow agrees to alter a passage that in the 14th of the
+previous July he refers to as already amended.
+
+{375}  _Vestiges of Borrow_: _Some Personal Reminiscences_, _The Globe_,
+21st July 1896.
+
+{376a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in _Athenæum_, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{376b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 287.
+
+{376c}  “His sympathies were confined to the gypsies.  Where he came they
+followed.  Where he settled, there they pitched their greasy and horribly
+smelling camps.  It pleased him to be called their King.  He was their
+Bard also, and wrote songs for them in that language of theirs which he
+professed to consider not only the first, but the finest of the human
+modes of speech.  He liked to stretch himself large and loose-limbed
+before the wood fires of their encampment and watch their graceful
+movements among the tents” (_Vestiges of Borrow_: _Some Personal
+Reminiscences_, _Globe_, 21st July 1896).
+
+{376d}  This was said in the presence of Mr F. G. Bowring, son of Dr
+Bowring.
+
+{378a}  Mr F. J. Bowring writes: “I was myself present at Borrow’s last
+call, when he came to take tea _as usual_, and not a word of the kind [as
+given in the Appendix], was delivered.”
+
+{378b}  There is no record of any correspondence with Borrow among the
+Museum Archives.  Dr F. G. Kenyon, C.B., to whom I am indebted for this
+information, suggests that the communications may have been verbal.
+
+{379}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{380a}  _Annals of the Harford Family_.  Privately printed, 1909.  Mr
+Theodore Watts-Dunton, in the _Athenæum_, 25th March 1899, has been
+successful in giving a convincing picture of Borrow: “As to his
+countenance,” he writes, “‘noble’ is the only word that can be used to
+describe it.  The silvery whiteness of the thick crop of hair seemed to
+add in a remarkable way to the beauty of the hairless face, but also it
+gave a strangeness to it, and this strangeness was intensified by a
+certain incongruity between the features (perfect Roman-Greek in type),
+and the Scandinavian complexion, luminous and sometimes rosy as an
+English girl’s.  An increased intensity was lent by the fair skin to the
+dark lustre of the eyes.  What struck the observer, therefore, was not
+the beauty but the strangeness of the man’s appearance.”
+
+{380b}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{381a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{381b}  The story is narrated by Dr Augustus Jessopp in the _Athenæum_,
+8th July 1893.
+
+{381c}  _Wild Wales_, page 487.
+
+{381d}  _Wild Wales_, page 36 et seq.
+
+{382}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{383a}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{383b}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{384a}  _George Borrow in East Anglia_.  W. A. Dutt.
+
+{384b}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{385a}  _William Bodham Donne and His Friends_.  By Catherine B. Johnson.
+
+{385b}  William Whewell (1794–1866), Master of Trinity College,
+Cambridge, 1848–66; Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1843–56;
+secured in 1847 the election of the Prince Consort as Chancellor;
+enlarged the buildings of Trinity College and founded professorship and
+scholarships for international law.  Published and edited many works on
+natural and mathematical science, philosophy, theology and sermons.
+
+{386}  Mr John Murray in _Good Words_.
+
+{390}  To John Murray; the letter is in Mrs Borrow’s hand but drafted by
+Borrow himself, 29th Jan. 1855.
+
+{391a}  16th April 1845.
+
+{391b}  See post.
+
+{393a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 338.
+
+{393b}  _Life of Frances Power Cable_, by herself.
+
+{393c}  Borrow goes on to an anti-climax when he states that he “believes
+him [Scott] to have been by far the greatest [poet], with perhaps the
+exception of Mickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate Poland, that
+Europe has given birth to during the last hundred years.”
+
+{393d}  _The Romany Rye_, pages 344–5.
+
+{393e}  _Romano Lavo-Lil_, page 274.
+
+{393f}  _The Romany Rye_, page 134.
+
+{394a}  Letter from Borrow to Dr Usoz, 22nd Feb. 1839.
+
+{394b}  _Macmillan’s Magazine_, vol. 45.
+
+{396}  “Notes upon George Borrow” prefaced to an edition of _Lavengro_.
+Ward, Lock & Co.
+
+{398}  Mr W. Elvin in the _Athenæum_, 6th Aug. 1881.
+
+{399a}  John Wilson Croker (1780–1857): Politician and Essayist; friend
+of Canning and Peel.  At one time Temporary Chief Secretary for Ireland
+and later Secretary of the Admiralty.  Supposed to have been the original
+of Rigby in Disraeli’s _Coningsby_.
+
+{399b}  Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, “Notes upon George Borrow” prefaced to
+an edition of _Lavengro_.  Ward, Lock & Co.
+
+{400a}  The Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell in _Obiter Dicta_, and Series,
+1887.
+
+{400b}  Francis Hindes Groome in _Bookman_, May 1899.
+
+{404a}  “Swimming is a noble exercise, but it certainly does not tend to
+mortify either the flesh or the spirit.”—_The Bible in Spain_, page 688.
+
+{404b}  Mr John Murray in _Good Words_.
+
+{404c}  In _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st October 1892.
+
+{405}  Borrow’s reference is to the county motto, “One and All.”
+
+{407a}  _The Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp, ii., 79–80.
+
+{407b}  _George Borrow_, by R. A. J. Walling.
+
+{407c}  _George Borrow_, by R. A. J. Walling.
+
+{408}  _George Borrow_, by R. A. J. Walling.
+
+{409}  _The Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{411}  This is rather awkwardly phrased, as Mrs Borrow was alive at that
+date.
+
+{412a}  The first reference to the famous Appendix is contained in a
+letter to John Murray (11th Nov. 1853) in which Borrow writes: “In answer
+to your inquiries about the fourth volume of _Lavengro_, I beg leave to
+say that I am occasionally occupied upon it.  I shall probably add some
+notes.”
+
+{412b}  _The Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{413}  _The Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{415a}  _Wild Wales_, page 6.
+
+{415b}  There appears to have been a slight cast in his (Borrow’s) left
+eye.  The Queen of the Nokkums remarked that, like Will Faa, he had “a
+skellying look with the left eye” (_Romano Lavo-Lil_, page 267).  Mr F.
+H. Bowring, who frequently met him, states that he “had a slight cast in
+the eye.”
+
+{416}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{417a}  Ellen Jones actually wrote—
+
+       Ellen Jones
+    yn pithyn pell
+    i gronow owen
+
+{417b}  _Wild Wales_, pages 227–8.
+
+{418a}  This was the mason of whom Borrow enquired the way, and who
+“stood for a moment or two, as if transfixed, a trowel motionless in one
+of his hands, and a brick in the other,” who on recovering himself
+replied in “tolerable Spanish.”—_Wild Wales_, page 225.
+
+{418b}  _Wild Wales_, page 5.
+
+{418c}  These particulars have been courteously supplied by Mr George
+Porter of Denbigh, who interviewed Mrs Thomas on 27th Dec. 1910.
+Borrow’s accuracy in _Wild Wales_ was photograph.  The Norwich jeweller
+Rossi mentioned in _Wild Wales_ (page 159 _et seq._) was a friend of
+Borrow’s with whom he frequently spent an evening: conversing in Italian,
+“being anxious to perfect himself in that language.”  I quote from a
+letter from his son Mr Theodore Rossi.  “There was an entire absence of
+pretence about him and we liked him very much—he always seemed desirous
+of learning.”
+
+{419a}  This story is told by Mr F. J. Bowring, son of Sir John Bowring.
+He heard it from Mrs Roberts, the landlady of the inn.
+
+{419b}  _Wild Wales_, page 274.
+
+{419c}  _Wild Wales_, page 130.
+
+{419d}  _Wild Wales_, page 130.
+
+{420a}  _Wild Wales_, page 150.
+
+{420b}  These carvels were written by such young people as thought
+themselves “endowed with the poetic gift, to compose carols some time
+before Christmas, and to recite them in the parish churches.  Those
+pieces which were approved of by the clergy were subsequently chanted by
+their authors through their immediate neighbourhoods.”  (Introduction to
+_Bayr Jairgey_, Borrow’s projected book on the Isle of Man.)
+
+{422}  Painted by H. W. Phillips in 1843.
+
+{423a}  _Vestiges of Borrow_: _Some Personal Reminiscences_.  _The
+Globe_, 21st July 1896.
+
+{423b}  The Anglo-Saxon scholar (1795–1857), who though paralysed during
+the whole of her life visited Rome, Athens and other places.  She was the
+first woman elected a member of the British Association.
+
+{423c}  To judge from Borrow’s opinion of O’Connell previously quoted,
+“notoriety” would have been a more appropriate word in his case.
+
+{424}  Given to the Rev. A. W. Upcher and related by him in _The
+Athenæum_, 22nd July 1893.
+
+{425a}  _Lavengro_, page 361.
+
+{425b}  _The Romany Rye_, page 309.
+
+{425c}  _Wild Wales_, page 285.
+
+{425d}  _The Eastern Daily Press_, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{427}  Garcin de Tassy.  Note sur les Rubâ’ïyât de ’Omar Khaïyam, which
+appeared in the _Journal Asiatique_.
+
+{428a}  _Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald_, 1889.
+
+{428b}  _Songs of Europe_, _or Metrical Translations from All the
+European Languages_, _With Brief Prefatory Remarks on Each Language and
+its Literature_.  2 vols.  (Advertised as “Ready for the Press” at the
+end of _The Romany Rye_.  See page 438.)
+
+{429}  Rev. Whitwell Elwin, editor of _The Quarterly Review_.  See
+_post_, p. 431.
+
+{431}  Elwin could not very well have known Borrow all his, Borrow’s
+life, as Dr Knapp states, for he was fifteen years younger, being born
+26th Feb. 1816.
+
+{432a}  _Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters_.  Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.
+
+{432b}  _Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters_.  Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.
+
+{433}  _Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters_.  Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.
+
+{435}  Entitled _Roving Life in England_.  March 1857.
+
+{436}  Elwin had already testified, also in _The Quarterly Review_, to
+the accuracy of Borrow’s portrait of B. R. Haydon in _Lavengro_, as
+confirmed by documentary evidence, and this after first reading the
+account as “a comic exaggeration.”
+
+{437a}  _Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald_, 1889.
+
+{437b}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in _Athenæum_, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{438}  Works by the Author of _The Bible in Spain_, ready for the Press.
+
+In Two Volumes, Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings.—In Two Volumes, Wild
+Wales, Its People, Language, and Scenery.—In Two Volumes, Songs of
+Europe; or, Metrical Translations From all the European Languages.  With
+brief Prefatory Remarks on each Language and its Literature.—In Two
+Volumes, Koempe Viser; Songs about Giants and Heroes.  With Romantic and
+Historical Ballads, Translated from the Ancient Danish.  With an
+Introduction and Copious Notes.—In One Volume, The Turkish Jester; or,
+The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Efendi.  Translated from the
+Turkish.  With an Introduction.—In Two Volumes, Penquite and Pentyre; or,
+The Head of the Forest and the Headland.  A Book on Cornwall.—In One
+Volume, Russian Popular Tales, With an Introduction and Notes.
+Contents:—The Story of Emelian the Fool; The Story of the Frog and the
+Hero; The Story of the Golden Mountain; The Story of the Seven
+Sevenlings; The Story of the Eryslan; The Story of the Old Man and his
+Son, the Crane; The Story of the Daughter of the Stroey; The Story of
+Klim; The Story of Prince Vikor; The Story of Prince Peter; The Story of
+Yvashka with the Bear’s Ear.—In One Volume, The Sleeping Bard; or,
+Visions of the World, Death, & Hell.  By Master Elis Wyn.  Translated
+from the Cambrian British.—In Two Volumes (Unfinished), Northern-Skalds,
+Kings, and Earls.—The Death of Balder; A Heroic Play.  Translated from
+the Danish of Evald.—In One Volume, Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo: The Red
+Path and the Black Valley.  Wanderings in Quest of Manx Literature.
+
+{439}  “She was a lady of striking figure and very graceful manners,
+perhaps more serious than vivacious.”—Mr A. Egmont Hake in _The
+Athenæum_, 13th August 1881.
+
+{440a}  She bequeathed to her son by will “all and every thing” of which
+she died possessed, charging him with the delivery of any gift to any
+other person she might desire.
+
+{440b}  _Wild Wales_, page 548.
+
+{442}  These particulars have been kindly supplied by Mr D. B. Hill of
+Mattishall, Norfolk.
+
+{445a}  Mr. A. Egmont Hake in _The Athenæum_, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{445b}  _The Life of Frances Power Cobbe_, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{446}  _The Life of Frances Power Cobbe_, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{447a}  “In Defence of Borrow,” prefixed to _The Romany Rye_.  Ward,
+Locke & Co.
+
+{447b}  _Vestiges of Borrow_; _Some Personal Reminiscences_.  _The
+Globe_, 21st July 1896.
+
+{448}  _The Athenæum_, 13th August 1881.
+
+{449a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, November 1881.
+
+{449b}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in _The Athenæum_, 13th August 1881.
+
+{449c}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_, by Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{450}  _The Athenæum_, 10th September 1881.
+
+{451a}  _The Athenæum_, 10th September 1881.
+
+{451b}  _The Athenæum_, 13th August 1881.
+
+{453}  “Sherry drinkers, . . . I often heard him say in a tone of
+positive loathing, he _despised_.  He had a habit of speaking in a
+measured syllabic manner, if he wished to express dislike or contempt,
+which was certainly very effective.  He would say: ‘If you want to have
+the Sherry _tang_, get Madeira (that’s a gentleman’s wine), and throw
+into it two or three pairs of old boots, and you’ll get the taste of the
+pig skins they carry the Sherry about in.”—Rev. J. R. P. Berkeley’s
+_Recollections_.  _The Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{456}  _Life of Frances Power Cobbe_, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{459a}  _The Geologist_, 1797–1875.
+
+{459b}  _The Life of Frances Power Cobbe_, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{460a}  _Charles Godfrey Leland_, by E. R. Pennell, 1908
+
+{460b}  _Memoirs_, by C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{461a}  In her biography of Leland, Mrs Pennell states that an American
+woman, a Mrs Lewis (“Estelle”) introduced Leland to Borrow at the British
+Museum and that they talked Gypsy.  “I hear he expressed himself as
+greatly pleased with me,” was Leland’s comment.  The correspondence
+clearly shows that Leland called on Borrow.
+
+{461b}  _Memoirs_ of C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{461c}  _Memoirs_ of C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{462a}  Leland’s annoyance with Borrow did not prevent him paying to his
+memory the following tribute:—
+
+“What I admire in Borrow to such a degree that before it his faults or
+failings seem very trifling, is his absolutely vigorous, marvellously
+varied originality, based on direct familiarity with Nature, but guided
+and cultured by the study of natural, simple writers, such as Defoe and
+Smollett.  I think that the ‘interest’ in, or rather sympathy for
+gypsies, in his case as in mine, came not from their being curious or
+dramatic beings, but because they are so much a part of free life, of
+out-of-doors Nature; so associated with sheltered nooks among rocks and
+trees, the hedgerow and birds, river-sides, and wild roads.  Borrow’s
+heart was large and true as regarded English rural life; there was a
+place in it for everything which was of the open air and freshly
+beautiful.”—_Memoirs_ of C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{462b}  _Romano Lavo-Lil_.  Word-Book of the Romany, or English Gypsy
+Language.  With Specimens of Gypsy Poetry, and an Account of Certain
+Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating to
+Gypsy Life in England.
+
+{462c}  “There were not two educated men in England who possessed the
+slightest knowledge of Romany.”—F. H. Groome in _Academy_,—13th June
+1874.
+
+{463a}  F. H. Groome in _Academy_, 13th June 1874.
+
+{463b}  _Ibid._
+
+{464}  _The Athenæum_, 17th March 1888.
+
+{466a}  _The Bookman_, February 1893.
+
+{466b}  _The Athenæum_, 10th Sept. 1881.
+
+{467}  _William Bodham Donne and His Friends_.  Edited by Catherine B.
+Johnson, 1905.
+
+{469a}  Mr T. Watts-Dunton, in _The Athenæum_, 3rd Sept. 1881.
+
+{469b}  Mr A. Egmont Hake, in _The Athenæum_, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{470a}  _The Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{470b}  _East Anglia_, by J. Ewing Ritchie, 1883.
+
+{470c}  _George Borrow in East Anglia_.
+
+{473}  W. E. Henley.
+
+{474a}  _The Athenæum_, 25th March 1899.
+
+{474b}  Many attacks have been made upon Borrow’s memory: one well-known
+man of letters and divine has gone to lengths that can only be described
+as unpardonable.  It is undesirable to do more than deplore the lapse
+that no doubt the writer himself has already deeply regretted.
+
+{474c}  _Memoirs of Eighty Years_, 1892.
+
+{475a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in _The Athenæum_, 13th August 1881.
+
+{475b}  In _The Bible in Spain_.  “Next to the love of God, the love of
+country is the best preventative of crime.”  (Page 53.)
+
+{475c}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 97.
+
+{476}  Mr Thomas Seccombe in _The Bookman_, Feb. 1892.
+
+{477}  _Wild Wales_, page 628.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Life of George Borrow, by Herbert Jenkins
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
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+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Life of George Borrow
+       Compiled from Unpublished Official Documents, his Works,
+       Correspondence, etc.
+
+
+Author: Herbert Jenkins
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2014  [eBook #3481]
+[This file was first posted on May 11, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1912 John Murray edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Book cover"
+title=
+"Book cover"
+ src="images/covers.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"George Borrow from the picture in the possession of John Murray"
+title=
+"George Borrow from the picture in the possession of John Murray"
+ src="images/fps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1><span class="GutSmall">THE LIFE OF</span><br />
+GEORGE BORROW</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center">COMPILED FROM UNPUBLISHED<br />
+OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS, HIS<br />
+WORKS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">BY HERBERT JENKINS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WITH A
+FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE, AND</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br />
+JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.<br />
+1912</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">TO</span><br
+/>
+JOHN MURRARY THE FOURTH</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">IN GRATEFUL
+RECOLLECTION OF THE KEEN INTEREST</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">HE HAS SHOWN IN THE WRITING OF THE LIFE
+OF</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">A MAN WHOM HE WELL REMEMBERS AND MUCH
+ADMIRES</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">BY THE AUTHOR</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> the whole of Borrow&rsquo;s
+manhood there was probably only one period when he was
+unquestionably happy in his work and content with his
+surroundings.&nbsp; He may almost be said to have concentrated
+into the seven years (1833&ndash;1840) that he was employed by
+the British and Foreign Bible Society in Russia, Portugal and
+Spain, a lifetime&rsquo;s energy and resource.&nbsp; From an
+unknown hack-writer, who hawked about unsaleable translations of
+Welsh and Danish bards, a travelling tinker and a vagabond
+Ulysses, he became a person of considerable importance.&nbsp; His
+name was acclaimed with praise and enthusiasm at Bible meetings
+from one end of the country to the other.&nbsp; He developed an
+astonishing aptitude for affairs, a tireless energy, and a
+diplomatic resourcefulness that aroused silent wonder in those
+who had hitherto regarded him as a failure.&nbsp; His illegal
+imprisonment in Madrid nearly brought about a diplomatic rupture
+between Great Britain and Spain, and later his missionary work in
+the Peninsula was referred to by Sir Robert Peel in the House of
+Commons as an instance of what could be achieved by courage and
+determination in the face of great difficulties.</p>
+<p>Those seven rich and productive years realised to the full the
+strange talents and unsuspected abilities of George
+Borrow&rsquo;s unique character.&nbsp; He himself referred to the
+period spent in Spain as the &ldquo;five happiest years&rdquo; of
+his life.&nbsp; When, however, his life came to be written by Dr
+Knapp, than whom no biographer has approved himself more loyal or
+enthusiastic, it was found that the records of that period were
+not accessible.&nbsp; The letters that he had addressed to the
+Bible Society had been mislaid.&nbsp; These came to light shortly
+after the publication of Dr Knapp&rsquo;s work, and type-written
+copies were placed at my disposal by the General Committee long
+before they were given to the public in volume form.</p>
+<p>A systematic search at the Public Record Office has revealed a
+wealth of unpublished documents, including a lengthy letter from
+Borrow relating to his imprisonment at Seville in 1839.&nbsp;
+From other sources much valuable information and many interesting
+anecdotes have been obtained, and through the courtesy of their
+possessor a number of unpublished Borrow letters are either
+printed in their entirety or are quoted from in this volume.</p>
+<p>My thanks are due in particular to the Committee of British
+and Foreign Bible Society for placing at my disposal the copies
+of the Borrow Letters, and also for permission to reproduce the
+interesting silhouette of the Rev. Andrew Brandram, and to the
+Rev. T. H. Darlow, M.A. (Literary Superintendent), whose uniform
+kindness and desire to assist me I find it impossible adequately
+to acknowledge.&nbsp; My thanks are also due to the Rt. Hon. Sir
+Edward Grey, M.P., for permission to examine the despatches from
+the British Embassy at Madrid at the Record Office, and the
+Registers of Passports at the Foreign Office, and to Mr F. H.
+Bowring (son of Sir John Bowring), Mr Wilfrid J. Bowring (who has
+placed at my disposal a number of letters from Borrow to his
+grandfather), Mr R. W. Brant, Mr Ernest H. Caddie, Mr William
+Canton, Mr S. D. Charles, an ardent Borrovian from whom I have
+received much kindness and many valuable suggestions, Mr A. I.
+Dasent, the editors of <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i> and <i>The
+Bookman</i>, Mr Thomas Hake, Mr D. B. Hill of Mattishall,
+Norfolk, Mr James Hooper, Mr W. F. T. Jarrold (for permission to
+reproduce the hitherto unpublished portrait of Borrow painted by
+his brother), Dr F. G. Kenyon, C.B., Mr F. A. Mumby, Mr George
+Porter of Denbigh (for interesting particulars about
+Borrow&rsquo;s first visit to Wales), Mr Theodore Rossi, Mr
+Theodore Watts-Dunton, Mr Thomas Vade-Walpole, who have all
+responded to my appeal for help with great willingness.</p>
+<p>To one friend, who elects to be nameless, I am deeply grateful
+for many valuable suggestions and much help; but above all for
+the keen interest he has taken in a work which he first
+encouraged me to write.&nbsp; To her who gave so plentifully of
+her leisure in transcribing documents at the Record Office and in
+research work at the British Museum and elsewhere, I am indebted
+beyond all possibility of acknowledgment.&nbsp; To no one more
+than to Mr John Murray are my acknowledgments due for his
+unfailing kindness, patience and assistance.&nbsp; It is no
+exaggeration to state that but for his aid and encouragement this
+book could not have been written.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Herbert
+Jenkins</span>.</p>
+<p><i>January</i>, 1912.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER I:<br />
+1678&ndash;MAY 1816</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 28th July 1783 was held the
+annual fair at Menheniot, and for miles round the country folk
+flocked into the little Cornish village to join in the
+festivities.&nbsp; Among the throng was a strong contingent of
+young men from Liskeard, a town three miles distant, between whom
+and the youth of Menheniot an ancient feud existed.&nbsp; In days
+when the bruisers of England were national heroes, and a fight
+was a fitting incident of a day&rsquo;s revelry, the very
+presence of their rivals was a sufficient challenge to the
+chivalry of Menheniot, and a contest became inevitable.&nbsp;
+Some unrecorded incident was accepted by both parties as a
+sufficient cause for battle, and the two factions were soon
+fighting furiously midst collapsing stalls and tumbled
+merchandise.&nbsp; Women shrieked and fainted, men shouted and
+struck out grimly, whilst the stall-holders, in a frenzy of grief
+and despair, wrung their hands helplessly as they saw their goods
+being trampled to ruin beneath the feet of the contestants.</p>
+<p>Slowly the men of Liskeard were borne back by their more
+numerous opponents.&nbsp; They wavered, and just as defeat seemed
+inevitable, there arrived upon the scene a young man who, on
+seeing his townsmen in danger of being beaten, placed himself at
+their head and charged down upon the enemy, forcing them back by
+the impetuosity of his attack.</p>
+<p>The new arrival was a man of fine physique, above the medium
+height and a magnificent fighter, who, later in life, was to
+achieve something of which a Mendoza or a Belcher might have been
+proud.&nbsp; He fought strongly and silently, inspiring his
+fellow townsmen by his example.&nbsp; The new leader had entirely
+turned the tide of battle, but just as the defeat of the men of
+Menheniot seemed certain, a diversion was created by the arrival
+of the local constables.&nbsp; Now that their own villagers were
+on the verge of disaster, there was no longer any reason why they
+should remain in the background.&nbsp; They made a determined
+effort to arrest the leader of the Liskeard contingent, and were
+promptly knocked down by him.</p>
+<p>At that moment Mr Edmund Hambley, a much-respected maltster
+and the headborough of Liskeard, was attracted to the spot.&nbsp;
+Seeing in the person of the outrageous leader of the battle one
+of his own apprentices, he stepped forward and threatened him
+with arrest.&nbsp; Goaded to desperation by the scornful attitude
+of the young man, the master-maltster laid hands upon him, and
+instantly shared the fate of the constables.&nbsp; With great
+courage and determination the headborough rose to his feet and
+again attempted to enforce his authority, but with no better
+result.&nbsp; When he picked himself up for a second time, it was
+to pass from the scene of his humiliation and, incidentally, out
+of the life of the young man who had defied his authority.</p>
+<p>The young apprentice was Thomas Borrow (born December 1758),
+eighth and posthumous child of John Borrow and of Mary his wife,
+of Trethinnick (the House on the Hill), in the neighbouring
+parish of St Cleer, two and a half miles north of Liskeard.&nbsp;
+At the age of fifteen, Thomas had begun to work upon his
+father&rsquo;s farm.&nbsp; At nineteen he was apprenticed to
+Edmund Hambley, maltster, of Liskeard, who five years later, in
+his official capacity as Constable of the Hundred of Liskeard,
+was to be publicly defied and twice knocked down by his
+insubordinate apprentice.</p>
+<p>A trifling affair in itself, this village fracas was to have a
+lasting effect upon the career of Thomas Borrow.&nbsp; He was
+given to understand by his kinsmen that he need not look to them
+for sympathy or assistance in his wrongdoing.&nbsp; The Borrows
+of Trethinnick could trace back further than the parish registers
+record (1678).&nbsp; They were godly and law-abiding people, who
+had stood for the king and lost blood and harvests in his
+cause.&nbsp; If a son of the house disgrace himself, the
+responsibility must be his, not theirs.&nbsp; In the opinion of
+his family, Thomas Borrow had, by his vigorous conduct towards
+the headborough, who was also his master, placed himself outside
+the radius of their sympathy.&nbsp; At this period Trethinnick, a
+farm of some fifty acres in extent, was in the hands of Henry,
+Thomas&rsquo; eldest brother, who since his mother&rsquo;s death,
+ten years before, had assumed the responsibility of launching his
+youngest brother upon the world.</p>
+<p>Fearful of the result of his assault on the headborough,
+Thomas Borrow left St Cleer with great suddenness, and for five
+months disappeared entirely.&nbsp; On 29th December he presented
+himself as a recruit before Captain Morshead, <a
+name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3"
+class="citation">[3]</a> in command of a detachment of the
+Coldstream Guards, at that time stationed in the duchy.</p>
+<p>Thomas Borrow was no stranger to military training.&nbsp; For
+five years he had been in the Yeomanry Militia, which involved a
+short annual training.&nbsp; In the regimental records he is
+credited with five years &ldquo;former service.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+remained for eight years with the Coldstream Guards, most of the
+time being passed in London barracks.&nbsp; He had no money with
+which to purchase a commission, and his rise was slow and
+deliberate.&nbsp; At the end of nine months he was promoted to
+the rank of corporal, and five years later he became a
+sergeant.&nbsp; In 1792 he was transferred as Sergeant-Major to
+the First, or West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, whose
+headquarters were at East Dereham in Norfolk.</p>
+<p>It was just previous to this transfer that Sergeant Borrow had
+his famous encounter in Hyde Park with Big Ben Bryan, the
+champion of England; he &ldquo;whose skin was brown and dusky as
+that of a toad.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was a combat in which &ldquo;even
+Wellington or Napoleon would have been heartily glad to cry for
+quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and even the Blacksmith
+Tartar would, perhaps, have shrunk from the opponent with whom,
+after having had a dispute with him,&rdquo; Sergeant Borrow
+&ldquo;engaged in single combat for one hour, at the end of which
+time the champions shook hands and retired, each having
+experienced quite enough of the other&rsquo;s prowess.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation4a"></a><a href="#footnote4a"
+class="citation">[4a]</a></p>
+<p>At East Dereham Thomas Borrow met Ann <a
+name="citation4b"></a><a href="#footnote4b"
+class="citation">[4b]</a> Perfrement, <a name="citation4c"></a><a
+href="#footnote4c" class="citation">[4c]</a> a strikingly
+handsome girl of twenty, whose dark eyes first flashed upon him
+from over the footlights.&nbsp; It was, and still is, the custom
+for small touring companies to engage their supernumeraries in
+the towns in which they were playing.&nbsp; The pretty daughter
+of Farmer Perfrement, whose farm lay about one and a half miles
+out of East Dereham, was one of those who took occasion to earn a
+few shillings for pin-money.&nbsp; The Perfrements were of
+Huguenot stock.&nbsp; On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
+their ancestors had fled from their native town of Caen and taken
+refuge in East Anglia, there to enjoy the liberty of conscience
+denied them in their beloved Normandy.&nbsp; Thomas Borrow made
+the acquaintance of the young probationer, and promptly settled
+any aspirations that she may have had towards the stage by
+marrying her.&nbsp; The wedding took place on 11th February 1793
+at East Dereham church, best known as the resting-place of the
+poet Cowper, Ann being twenty-one and Thomas thirty-four years of
+age.</p>
+<p>For the next seven years Thomas and Ann Borrow moved about
+with the West Norfolk Militia, which now marched off into Essex,
+a few months later doubling back again into Norfolk.&nbsp; Then
+it dived into Kent and for a time hovered about the Cinque Ports,
+Thomas Borrow in the meantime being promoted to the rank of
+quarter-master (27th May 1795).&nbsp; It was not until he had
+completed fourteen years of service that he received a
+commission.&nbsp; On 27th February 1798 he became Adjutant in the
+same regiment, a promotion that carried with it a captain&rsquo;s
+rank.</p>
+<p>Whilst at Sandgate Mrs Borrow became acquainted with John
+Murray, the son of the founder of the publishing house from
+which, forty-four years later, were to be published the books of
+her second son, then unborn.&nbsp; The widow of John Murray the
+First had married in 1795 Lieutenant Henry Paget of the West
+Norfolk Militia.&nbsp; Years later (27th March 1843) George
+Borrow wrote to John Murray, Junr., third of the line:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am at present in Norwich with my mother,
+who has been ill, but is now, thank God, recovering fast.&nbsp;
+She begs leave to send her kind remembrances to Mr Murray.&nbsp;
+She knew him at Sandgate in Kent <i>forty-six</i> years ago, when
+he came to see his mother, Mrs P[aget].&nbsp; She was also
+acquainted with his sister, Miss Jane Murray, <a
+name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5"
+class="citation">[5]</a> who used to ride on horseback with her
+on the Downs.&nbsp; She says Captain [<i>sic</i>] Paget once
+cooked a dinner for Mrs P. and herself; and sat down to table
+with his cook&rsquo;s apron on.&nbsp; Is not this funny?&nbsp;
+Does it not &lsquo;beat the Union,&rsquo; as the Yankees
+say?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The first child of the marriage was born in 1800, it is not
+known exactly when or where.&nbsp; This was John, &ldquo;the
+brother some three years older than myself,&rdquo; whose beauty
+in infancy was so great &ldquo;that people, especially those of
+the poorer classes, would follow the nurse who carried him about
+in order to look at and bless his lovely face,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation6a"></a><a href="#footnote6a"
+class="citation">[6a]</a> with its rosy cheeks and smiling,
+blue-eyed innocence.&nbsp; On one occasion even, an attempt was
+made to snatch him from the arms of his nurse as she was about to
+enter a coach.&nbsp; The parents became a prey to anxiety; for
+the child seems to have possessed many endearing qualities as
+well as good looks.&nbsp; He was quick and clever, and when the
+time came for instruction, &ldquo;he mastered his letters in a
+few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of people
+on the doors of houses and over the shop windows.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation6b"></a><a href="#footnote6b"
+class="citation">[6b]</a>&nbsp; His cleverness increased as he
+grew up, and later he seems to have become, in the mind of
+Captain Borrow at least, a standard by which to measure the
+shortcomings of his younger son George, whom he never was able to
+understand.</p>
+<p>For the next three years, 1800&ndash;3, the regiment continued
+to hover about the home counties.&nbsp; The Peace of Amiens
+released many of the untried warriors, who had enlisted
+&ldquo;until the peace,&rdquo; their adjutant having to find new
+recruits to fill up the gaps.&nbsp; War broke out again the
+following year (18th May 1803), and the Great Terror assumed a
+phase so critical as to subdue almost entirely all thought of
+party strife.&nbsp; On 5th July Ann Borrow gave birth to a second
+son, in the house of her father.&nbsp; At the time Captain Borrow
+was hunting for recruits in other parts of Norfolk, in order to
+send them to Colchester, where the regiment was stationed.&nbsp;
+In due course the child was christened George Henry <a
+name="citation7a"></a><a href="#footnote7a"
+class="citation">[7a]</a> at the church of East Dereham, and,
+within a few weeks of his birth, he received his first experience
+of the vicissitudes of a soldier&rsquo;s life, by accompanying
+his father, mother, and brother to Colchester to rejoin the
+regiment.&nbsp; The whole infancy of George Borrow was spent in
+the same trailing restlessness.&nbsp; Napoleon was alive and at
+large, and the West Norfolks seemed doomed eternally to march and
+countermarch in the threatened area, Sussex, Kent, Essex.</p>
+<p>No efforts appear to have been made to steal the younger
+brother, although &ldquo;people were in the habit of standing
+still to look at me, ay, more than at my brother.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation7b"></a><a href="#footnote7b"
+class="citation">[7b]</a>&nbsp; Unlike John in about everything
+that one child could be unlike another, George was a gloomy,
+introspective creature who considerably puzzled his
+parents.&nbsp; He compares himself to &ldquo;a deep, dark lagoon,
+shaded by black pines, cypresses and yews,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation7c"></a><a href="#footnote7c"
+class="citation">[7c]</a> beside which he once paused to
+contemplate &ldquo;a beautiful stream . . . sparkling in the
+sunshine, and . . . tumbling merrily into cascades,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation7d"></a><a href="#footnote7d"
+class="citation">[7d]</a> which he likened to his brother.</p>
+<p>Slow of comprehension, almost dull-witted, shy of society,
+sometimes bursting into tears when spoken to, George became
+&ldquo;a lover of nooks and retired corners,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation7e"></a><a href="#footnote7e"
+class="citation">[7e]</a> where he would sit for hours at a time
+a prey to &ldquo;a peculiar heaviness . . . and at times . . . a
+strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to
+horror,&rdquo; <a name="citation7f"></a><a href="#footnote7f"
+class="citation">[7f]</a> for which there was no apparent
+cause.&nbsp; In time he grew to be as much disliked as his
+brother was admired.&nbsp; On one occasion an old Jew pedlar,
+attracted by the latent intelligence in the smouldering eyes of
+the silent child, who ignored his questions and continued tracing
+in the dust with his fingers curious lines, pronounced him
+&ldquo;a prophet&rsquo;s child.&rdquo;&nbsp; This carried to the
+mother&rsquo;s heart a quiet comfort; and reawakened in her hope
+for the future of her second son.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p8b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The birthplace of George Borrow, East Dereham.  Photo. H. T.
+Cave, East Dereham"
+title=
+"The birthplace of George Borrow, East Dereham.  Photo. H. T.
+Cave, East Dereham"
+ src="images/p8s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The early childhood of George Borrow was spent in stirring
+times.&nbsp; Without, there was the menace of Napoleon&rsquo;s
+invasion; within, every effort was being made to meet and repel
+it.&nbsp; Dumouriez was preparing his great scheme of defence;
+Captain Thomas Borrow was doing his utmost to collect and drill
+men to help in carrying it into effect.&nbsp; Sometimes the
+family were in lodgings; but more frequently in barracks, for
+reasons of economy.&nbsp; Once, at least, they lived under
+canvas.</p>
+<p>The strange and puzzling child continued to impress his
+parents in a manner well-calculated to alarm them.&nbsp; One day,
+with a cry of delight, he seized a viper that, &ldquo;like a line
+of golden light,&rdquo; was moving across the lane in which he
+was playing.&nbsp; Whilst making no effort to harm the child, who
+held and regarded it with awe and admiration, the reptile showed
+its displeasure towards John, his brother, by hissing and raising
+its head as if to strike.&nbsp; This happened when George was
+between two and three years of age.&nbsp; At about the same
+period he ate largely of some poisonous berries, which resulted
+in &ldquo;strong convulsions,&rdquo; lasting for several
+hours.&nbsp; He seems to have been a source of constant anxiety
+to his parents, who were utterly unable to understand the strange
+and gloomy child who had been vouchsafed to them by the
+inscrutable decree of providence.</p>
+<p>In the middle of the year 1809 the regiment returned from
+Essex to Norfolk, marching first to Norwich and thence to other
+towns in the county.&nbsp; Captain Borrow and his family took up
+their quarters once more at Dereham.&nbsp; George was now six
+years old, acutely observant of the things that interested him,
+but reluctant to proceed with studies which, in his eyes, seemed
+to have nothing to recommend them.&nbsp; Books possessed no
+attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and could even
+read imperfectly.&nbsp; The acquirement of book-learning he found
+a dull and dolorous business, to which he was driven only by the
+threats or entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern
+lest he should become an &ldquo;arrant dunce.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The intelligence that the old Jew pedlar had discovered still
+lay dormant, as if unwilling to manifest itself.&nbsp; The boy
+loved best &ldquo;to look upon the heavens, and to bask in the
+rays of the sun, or to sit beneath hedgerows and listen to the
+chirping of the birds, indulging the while in musing and
+meditation.&rdquo; <a name="citation9a"></a><a href="#footnote9a"
+class="citation">[9a]</a>&nbsp; Meanwhile John was earning golden
+opinions for the astonishing progress he continued to make at
+school, unconsciously throwing into bolder relief the apparent
+dullness of his younger brother.&nbsp; George, however, was as
+active mentally as the elder.&nbsp; The one was studying men, the
+other books.&nbsp; George was absorbing impressions of the things
+around him: of the quaint old Norfolk town, its &ldquo;clean but
+narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with
+thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of
+venerable thatch&rdquo;; of that exquisite old gentlewoman Lady
+Fenn, <a name="citation9b"></a><a href="#footnote9b"
+class="citation">[9b]</a> as she passed to and from her mansion
+upon some errand of bounty or of mercy, &ldquo;leaning on her
+gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a
+respectful distance behind.&rdquo; <a name="citation9c"></a><a
+href="#footnote9c" class="citation">[9c]</a>&nbsp; On Sundays,
+from the black leather-covered seat in the church-pew, he would
+contemplate with large-eyed wonder the rector and James Philo his
+clerk, &ldquo;as they read their respective portions of the
+venerable liturgy,&rdquo; sometimes being lulled to sleep by the
+monotonous drone of their voices.</p>
+<p>On fine Sundays there was the evening walk &ldquo;with my
+mother and brother&mdash;a quiet, sober walk, during which I
+would not break into a run, even to chase a butterfly, or yet
+more a honey-bee, being fully convinced of the dread importance
+of the day which God had hallowed.&nbsp; And how glad I was when
+I had got over the Sabbath day without having done anything to
+profane it.&nbsp; And how soundly I slept on the Sabbath night
+after the toil of being very good throughout the day.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation10a"></a><a href="#footnote10a"
+class="citation">[10a]</a></p>
+<p>During these early years there was being photographed upon the
+brain of George Borrow a series of impressions which, to the end
+of his life, remained as vivid as at the moment they were
+absorbed.&nbsp; What appeared to those around him as dull-witted
+stupidity was, in reality, mental surfeit.&nbsp; His mind was
+occupied with other things than books, things that it eagerly
+took cognisance of, strove to understand and was never to forget.
+<a name="citation10b"></a><a href="#footnote10b"
+class="citation">[10b]</a>&nbsp; Hitherto he had taken &ldquo;no
+pleasure in books . . . and bade fair to be as arrant a dunce as
+ever brought the blush of shame into the cheeks of anxious and
+affectionate parents.&rdquo; <a name="citation10c"></a><a
+href="#footnote10c" class="citation">[10c]</a>&nbsp; His mind was
+not ready for them.&nbsp; When the time came there was no
+question of dullness: he proved an eager and earnest student.</p>
+<p>One day an intimate friend of Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s, who was also
+godmother to John, brought with her a present of a book for each
+of the two boys, a history of England for the elder and for the
+younger <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>.&nbsp; Instantly George became
+absorbed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The true chord had now been touched . . . Weeks
+succeeded weeks, months followed months, and the wondrous volume
+was my only study and principal source of amusement.&nbsp; For
+hours together I would sit poring over a page till I had become
+acquainted with the import of every line.&nbsp; My progress, slow
+enough at first, became by degrees more rapid, till at last,
+under a &lsquo;shoulder of mutton sail,&rsquo; I found myself
+cantering before a steady breeze over an ocean of enchantment, so
+well pleased with my voyage that I cared not how long it might be
+ere it reached its termination.&nbsp; And it was in this manner
+that I first took to the paths of knowledge.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation11a"></a><a href="#footnote11a"
+class="citation">[11a]</a></p>
+<p>In the spring of 1810 the regiment was ordered to Norman
+Cross, in Huntingdonshire, situated at the junction of the
+Peterborough and Great North Roads.&nbsp; At this spot the
+Government had caused to be erected in 1796 an extensive prison,
+covering forty acres of ground, in which to confine some of the
+prisoners made during the Napoleonic wars.&nbsp; There were
+sixteen large buildings roofed with red tiles.&nbsp; Each group
+of four was surrounded by a palisade, whilst another palisade
+&ldquo;lofty and of prodigious strength&rdquo; surrounded the
+whole.&nbsp; At the time when the West Norfolk Militia arrived
+there were some six thousand prisoners, who, with their guards,
+constituted a considerable-sized township.&nbsp; From time to
+time fresh batches of captives arrived amid a storm of cheers and
+cries of &ldquo;Vive L&rsquo;Empereur!&rdquo;&nbsp; These were
+the only incidents in the day&rsquo;s monotony, save when some
+prisoner strove to evade the hospitality of King George, and was
+shot for his ingratitude.</p>
+<p>Captain Borrow rejoined his regiment at Norman Cross,
+leaving his family to follow a few days later.&nbsp; At the time
+the country round Peterborough was under water owing to the
+recent heavy rains, and at one portion of the journey the whole
+party had to embark in a species of punt, which was towed by
+horses &ldquo;up to the knees in water, and, on coming to blind
+pools and &lsquo;greedy depths,&rsquo; were not unfrequently
+swimming.&rdquo; <a name="citation11b"></a><a href="#footnote11b"
+class="citation">[11b]</a>&nbsp; But they were all old
+campaigners and accepted such adventures as incidents of a
+soldier&rsquo;s life.</p>
+<p>At Norman Cross George made the acquaintance of an old
+snake-catcher and herbalist, a circumstance which, insignificant
+in itself, was to exercise a considerable influence over his
+whole life.&nbsp; Frequently this curious pair were to be seen
+tramping the countryside together; a tall, quaint figure with fur
+cap and gaiters carrying a leathern bag of wriggling venom, and
+an eager child with eyes that now burned with interest and
+intelligence&mdash;and the talk of the two was the lore of the
+viper.&nbsp; When the snake-catcher passed out of the life of his
+young disciple, he left behind him as a present a tame and
+fangless viper, which George often carried with him on his
+walks.&nbsp; It was this well-meaning and inoffensive viper that
+turned aside the wrath of Gypsy Smith, <a
+name="citation12a"></a><a href="#footnote12a"
+class="citation">[12a]</a> and awakened in his heart a
+superstitious awe and veneration for the child, the
+<i>Sap-engro</i>, who might be a goblin, but who certainly would
+make a most admirable &ldquo;clergyman and God Almighty,&rdquo;
+who read from a book that contained the kind of prayers
+particularly to his taste&mdash;perhaps the greatest encomium
+ever bestowed upon the immortal <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>.&nbsp;
+Thus it came about that George Borrow was proclaimed brother to
+the gypsy&rsquo;s son Ambrose, <a name="citation12b"></a><a
+href="#footnote12b" class="citation">[12b]</a> who as Jasper
+Petulengro figures so largely in <i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The
+Romany Rye</i>, and is credited with that exquisitely phrased
+pagan glorification of mere existence:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Life is sweet, brother . . . There&rsquo;s
+night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars,
+brother, all sweet things; there&rsquo;s likewise the wind on the
+heath.&nbsp; Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to
+die?&rdquo; <a name="citation13a"></a><a href="#footnote13a"
+class="citation">[13a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Borrows were nomads, permitted by God and the king to
+tarry not over long in any one place.&nbsp; In the following July
+(1811) the West Norfolks proceeded to Colchester <i>via</i>
+Norfolk, after fifteen months of prison duty and straw-plait
+destroying. <a name="citation13b"></a><a href="#footnote13b"
+class="citation">[13b]</a>&nbsp; Captain Borrow betook himself to
+East Dereham again to seek for likely recruits.&nbsp; In the
+meantime George made his first acquaintance with that universal
+specific for success in life, for correctness of conduct, for
+soundness of principles&mdash;Lilly&rsquo;s Latin Grammar, which
+to learn by heart was to acquire a virtue that defied evil.&nbsp;
+The good old pedagogue who advocated Lilly&rsquo;s Latin Grammar
+as a remedy for all ills, would have traced George Borrow&rsquo;s
+eventual success in life entirely to the fact that within three
+years of the date that the solemn exhortation was pronounced the
+boy had learned Lilly by heart, although without in the least
+degree comprehending him.</p>
+<p>Early in 1812 the regiment turned its head north, and by slow
+degrees, with occasional counter marchings, continued to progress
+towards Edinburgh, which was reached thirteen months later (6th
+April 1813).&nbsp; &ldquo;With drums beating, colours flying, and
+a long train of baggage-waggons behind,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation13c"></a><a href="#footnote13c"
+class="citation">[13c]</a> the West Norfolk Militia wound its way
+up the hill to the Castle, the adjutant&rsquo;s family in a
+chaise forming part of the procession.&nbsp; There in barracks
+the regiment might rest itself after long and weary marches, and
+the two young sons of the adjutant be permitted to continue their
+studies at the High School, without the probability that the
+morrow would see them on the road to somewhere else.</p>
+<p>Whilst at Edinburgh George met with his first experience of
+racial feeling, which, under uncongenial conditions, develops
+into race-hatred.&nbsp; He discovered that one English boy, when
+faced by a throng of young Scots patriots, had best be silent as
+to the virtues of his own race.&nbsp; He joined in and enjoyed
+the fights between the &ldquo;Auld and the New Toon,&rdquo; and
+incidentally acquired a Scots accent that somewhat alarmed his
+loyal father, who had named him after the Hanoverian
+Georges.&nbsp; Proving himself a good fighter, he earned the
+praise of his Scots acquaintances, and a general invitation to
+assist them in their &ldquo;bickers&rdquo; with &ldquo;thae New
+Toon blackguards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He loved to climb and clamber over the rocks, peeping into
+&ldquo;all manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses,
+where owls nestled and the weasel brought forth her
+young.&rdquo;&nbsp; He would go out on all-day excursions,
+enjoying the thrills of clambering up to what appeared to be
+inaccessible ledges, until eventually he became an expert
+cragsman.&nbsp; One day he came upon David Haggart <a
+name="citation14"></a><a href="#footnote14"
+class="citation">[14]</a> sitting on the extreme verge of a
+precipice, &ldquo;thinking of Willie Wallace.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For fifteen months the regiment remained at Edinburgh.&nbsp;
+In the spring of 1814 the waning star of Napoleon had, to all
+appearances, set, and he was on his way to his miniature kingdom,
+the Isle of Elba (28th April).&nbsp; Europe commenced to disband
+its huge armies, Great Britain among the rest.&nbsp; On 21st June
+the West Norfolks received orders to proceed to Norwich by ship
+<i>via</i> Leith and Great Yarmouth.&nbsp; The Government,
+relieved of all apprehension of an invasion, had time to think of
+the personal comfort of the country&rsquo;s defenders.&nbsp; With
+marked consideration, the orders provided that those who wished
+might march instead of embarking on the sea.&nbsp; Accordingly
+Captain Borrow and his family chose the land route.&nbsp; Arrived
+at Norwich, the regiment was formally disbanded amid great
+festivity.&nbsp; The officers, at the Maid&rsquo;s Head, the
+queen of East Anglian inns, and the men in the spacious
+market-place, drank to the king&rsquo;s health and peace.&nbsp;
+The regiment was formally mustered out on 19th July.</p>
+<p>The Borrows took up their quarters at the Crown and Angel in
+St Stephen&rsquo;s Street, a thoroughfare that connects the main
+roads from Ipswich and Newmarket with the city.&nbsp; George, now
+eleven years old, had an opportunity of continuing his education
+at the Norwich Grammar School, whilst his brother proceeded to
+study drawing and painting with a &ldquo;little dark man with
+brown coat . . . and top-boots, whose name will one day be
+considered the chief ornament of the old town,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation15a"></a><a href="#footnote15a"
+class="citation">[15a]</a> and whose works are to &ldquo;rank
+among the proudest pictures of England,&rdquo;&mdash;the Norwich
+painter, &ldquo;Old Crome.&rdquo; <a name="citation15b"></a><a
+href="#footnote15b" class="citation">[15b]</a></p>
+<p>Whilst the two boys were thus occupied, Louis XVIII. was
+endeavouring to reorder his kingdom, and on a little island in
+the Mediterranean, Napoleon was preparing a bombshell that was to
+shatter the peace of Europe and send Captain Borrow hurrying
+hither and thither in search of the men who, a few months before,
+had left the colours, convinced that a generation of peace was
+before them.</p>
+<p>On 1st March Napoleon was at Cannes; eighteen days later Louis
+XVIII. fled from Paris.&nbsp; Everywhere there were feverish
+preparations for war.&nbsp; John Borrow threw aside pencil and
+brush and was gazetted ensign in his father&rsquo;s regiment
+(29th May).&nbsp; Europe united against the unexpected and
+astonishing danger.&nbsp; By the time Captain Borrow had finished
+his task, however, the crisis was past, Waterloo had been won and
+Napoleon was on his way to St Helena.</p>
+<p>By a happy inspiration it was decided to send the West
+Norfolks to Ireland, where &ldquo;disturbances were
+apprehended&rdquo; and private stills flourished.&nbsp; On 31st
+August the regiment, some eight hundred strong, sailed in two
+vessels from Harwich for Cork, the passage occupying eight
+days.&nbsp; The ship that carried the Borrows was old and crazy,
+constantly missing stays and shipping seas, until it seemed that
+only by a miracle she escaped &ldquo;from being dashed upon the
+foreland.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After a few days&rsquo; rest at Cork, the &ldquo;city of
+contradictions,&rdquo; where wealth and filth jostled one another
+in the public highways and &ldquo;boisterous shouts of laughter
+were heard on every side,&rdquo; the regiment marched off in two
+divisions for Clonmel in Tipperary.&nbsp; Walking beside his
+father, who was in command of the second division, and holding on
+to his stirrup-leather, George found a new country opening out
+before him.&nbsp; On one occasion, as they were passing through a
+village of low huts, &ldquo;that seemed to be inhabited solely by
+women and children,&rdquo; he went up to an old beldam who sat
+spinning at the door of one of the hovels and asked for some
+water.&nbsp; She &ldquo;appeared to consider for a moment, then
+tottering into her hut, presently reappeared with a small pipkin
+of milk, which she offered . . . with a trembling
+hand.&rdquo;&nbsp; When the lad tendered payment she declined the
+money, and patted his face, murmuring some unintelligible
+words.&nbsp; Obviously there was nothing in the boy&rsquo;s
+nature now that appeared strange to simple-minded folk.&nbsp;
+Probably the intercourse with other boys at Edinburgh and Norwich
+had been beneficial in its effect.&nbsp; Keenly interested in
+everything around him, George fell to speculating as to whether
+he could learn Irish and speak to the people in their own
+tongue.</p>
+<p>At Clonmel the Borrows lodged with an Orangeman, who had run
+out of his house as the Adjutant rode by at the head of his men,
+and proceeded to welcome him with flowery volubility.&nbsp; On
+the advice of his host Captain Borrow sent George to a Protestant
+school, where he met the Irish boy Murtagh, who figures so
+largely in <i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp;
+Murtagh settled any doubts that Borrow may have had as to his
+ability to acquire Erse, by teaching it to him in exchange for a
+pack of cards.</p>
+<p>On 23rd December 1815 Ensign John Thomas Borrow was promoted
+to the rank of lieutenant, he being then in his sixteenth
+year.&nbsp; In the following January, after only a few
+months&rsquo; stay, the West Norfolks were moved on to
+Templemore.&nbsp; It was here that George learned to ride, and
+that without a saddle, and had awakened in him that
+&ldquo;passion for the equine race&rdquo; that never left him. <a
+name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17"
+class="citation">[17]</a></p>
+<p>The nine months spent in Ireland left an indelible mark upon
+Borrow&rsquo;s imagination.&nbsp; In later life he repeatedly
+referred to his knowledge of the country, its people, and their
+language.&nbsp; In overcoming the difficulties of Erse, he had
+opened up for himself a larger prospect than was to be enjoyed by
+a traveller whose first word of greeting or enquiry is uttered in
+a hated tongue.</p>
+<p>On 11th May 1816 the West Norfolk Militia was back again at
+Norwich.&nbsp; Peace was now finally restored to Europe, and
+every nation was far too impoverished, both as regards men and
+money, to nourish any schemes of aggression.&nbsp; Napoleon was
+safe at St Helena, under the eye of that instinctive gaoler, Sir
+Hudson Lowe.&nbsp; The army had completed its work and was being
+disbanded with all possible speed.&nbsp; The turn of the West
+Norfolk Militia came on 17th June, when they were formally
+mustered out for the second time within two years.&nbsp; Three
+years later their Adjutant was retired upon full-pay&mdash;eight
+shillings a day.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II:<br />
+MAY 1816&ndash;MARCH 1824</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">For</span> the first time since his
+marriage, Captain Borrow found himself at liberty to settle down
+and educate his sons.&nbsp; He had spent much of his life in
+Norfolk, and he decided to remain there and make Norwich his
+home.&nbsp; It was a quiet and beautiful old-world city: healthy,
+picturesque, ancient, and, above all, possessed of a Grammar
+School, where George could try and gather together the stray
+threads of education that he had acquired at various times and in
+various dialects.&nbsp; It was an ideal city for a warrior to
+take his rest in; but probably what counted most with Captain
+Borrow was the Grammar School&mdash;more than the Norman
+Cathedral, the grim old Castle that stands guardian-like upon its
+mound, the fact of its being a garrison town, or even the
+traditions that surrounded the place.&nbsp; He had two sons who
+must be appropriately sent out into the world, and Norwich
+offered facilities for educating both.&nbsp; He accordingly took
+a small house in Willow Lane, to which access was obtained by a
+covered passage then called King&rsquo;s, but now Borrow&rsquo;s
+Court.</p>
+<p>During the most nomadic portion of his life, when, with
+discouraging rapidity, he was moving from place to place, Captain
+Borrow never for one moment seems to have forgotten his
+obligations as a father.&nbsp; Whenever he had been quartered in
+a town for a few months, he had sought out a school to which to
+send John and George, notably at Huddersfield and
+Sheffield.&nbsp; Had he known it, these precautions were
+unnecessary; for he had two sons who were of what may be called
+the self-educating type: John, by virtue of the quickness of his
+parts; George, on account of the strangeness of his interests and
+his thirst for a knowledge of men and the tongues in which they
+communicate to each other their ideas.&nbsp; It would be
+impossible for an unconventional linguist, such as George Borrow
+was by instinct, to remain uneducated, and it was equally
+impossible to educate him.</p>
+<p>Quite unaware of the trend of his younger son&rsquo;s genius,
+Captain Borrow obtained for him a free-scholarship at the Grammar
+School, then under the headmastership of the Rev. Edward Valpy,
+B.D., whose principal claims to fame are his severity, his having
+flogged the conqueror of the &ldquo;Flaming Tinman,&rdquo; and
+his destruction of the School Records of Admission, which dated
+back to the Sixteenth Century.&nbsp; Among Borrow&rsquo;s
+contemporaries at the Grammar School were &ldquo;Rajah&rdquo;
+Brooke of Sarawak (for whose achievements he in after life
+expressed a profound admiration), Sir Archdale Wilson of Delhi,
+Colonel Charles Stoddart, Dr James Martineau, and Thomas Borrow
+Burcham, the London Magistrate.</p>
+<p>Borrow was now thirteen, and, it would appear, as determined
+as ever to evade as much as possible academic learning.&nbsp; He
+was &ldquo;far from an industrious boy, fond of idling, and
+discovered no symptoms by his progress either in Latin or Greek
+of that philology, so prominent a feature of his last work
+(<i>Lavengro</i>).&rdquo; <a name="citation20"></a><a
+href="#footnote20" class="citation">[20]</a>&nbsp; Borrow was an
+idler merely because his work was uncongenial to him.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Mere idleness is the most disagreeable state of existence,
+and both mind and body are continually making efforts to escape
+from it,&rdquo; he wrote in later years concerning this
+period.&nbsp; He wanted an object in life, an occupation that
+would prove not wholly uncongenial.&nbsp; That he should dislike
+the routine of school life was not unnatural; for he had lived
+quite free from those conventional restraints to which other boys
+of his age had always been accustomed.&nbsp; Occupation of some
+sort he must have, if only to keep at a distance that insistent
+melancholy that seems to have been for ever hovering about him,
+and the tempter whispered &ldquo;Languages.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation21a"></a><a href="#footnote21a"
+class="citation">[21a]</a>&nbsp; One day chance led him to a
+bookstall whereon lay a polyglot dictionary, &ldquo;which
+pretended to be an easy guide to the acquirement of French,
+Italian, Low Dutch, and English.&rdquo;&nbsp; He took the two
+first, and when he had gleaned from the old volume all it had to
+teach him, he longed for a master.&nbsp; Him he found in the
+person of an old French <i>&eacute;migr&eacute;</i> priest, <a
+name="citation21b"></a><a href="#footnote21b"
+class="citation">[21b]</a> a study in snuff-colour and drab with
+a frill of dubious whiteness, who attended to the accents of a
+number of boarding-school young ladies.&nbsp; The progress of his
+pupil so much pleased the old priest that &ldquo;after six
+months&rsquo; tuition, the master would sometimes, on his
+occasional absences to teach in the country, request his so
+forward pupil to attend for him his home scholars.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation21c"></a><a href="#footnote21c"
+class="citation">[21c]</a>&nbsp; It was M. D&rsquo;Eterville who
+uttered the second recorded prophecy concerning George Borrow:
+&ldquo;Vous serez un jour un grand philologue, mon cher,&rdquo;
+he remarked, and heard that his pupil nourished aspirations
+towards other things than mere philology.</p>
+<p>In the study of French, Spanish, and Italian, Borrow spent
+many hours that other boys would have devoted to pleasure; yet he
+was by no means a student only.&nbsp; He found time to fish and
+to shoot, using a condemned, honey-combed musket that bore the
+date of 1746.&nbsp; His fishing was done in the river Yare, which
+flowed through the estate of John Joseph Gurney, the
+Quaker-banker of Earlham Hall, two miles out of Norwich.&nbsp; It
+was here that he was reproached by the voice, &ldquo;clear and
+sonorous as a bell,&rdquo; of the banker himself; not for
+trespassing, but &ldquo;for pulling all those fish out of the
+water, and leaving them to gasp in the sun.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At Harford Bridge, some two miles along the Ipswich Road,
+lived &ldquo;the terrible Thurtell,&rdquo; a patron and companion
+of &ldquo;the bruisers of England,&rdquo; who taught Borrow to
+box, and who ultimately ended his own inglorious career by being
+hanged (9th January 1824) for the murder of Mr Weare, and
+incidentally figuring in De Quincey&rsquo;s &ldquo;On Murder
+Considered As One of the Fine Arts.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was through
+&ldquo;the king of flash-men&rdquo; that Borrow saw his first
+prize-fight at Eaton, near Norwich.</p>
+<p>The passion for horses that came suddenly to Borrow with his
+first ride upon the cob in Ireland had continued to grow.&nbsp;
+He had an opportunity of gratifying it at the Norwich Horse Fair,
+held each Easter under the shadow of the Castle, and famous
+throughout the country. <a name="citation22"></a><a
+href="#footnote22" class="citation">[22]</a>&nbsp; It was here,
+in 1818, that Borrow encountered again Ambrose Petulengro, an
+event that was to exercise a considerable influence upon his
+life.&nbsp; Mr Petulengro had become the head of his tribe, his
+father and mother having been transported for passing bad
+money.&nbsp; He was now a man, with a wife, a child, and also a
+mother-in-law, who took a violent dislike to the tall,
+fair-haired <i>gorgio</i>.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s life was much
+broadened by his intercourse with Mr Petulengro.&nbsp; He was
+often at the gypsy encampment on Mousehold, a heath just outside
+Norwich, where, under the tuition of his host, he learned the
+Romany tongue with such rapidity as to astonish his instructor
+and earn for him among the gypsies the name of
+&ldquo;Lav-engro,&rdquo; word-fellow or word-master.&nbsp; He
+also boxed with the godlike Tawno Chikno, who in turn pronounced
+him worthy to bear the name &ldquo;Cooro-mengro,&rdquo;
+fist-fellow or fist-master.&nbsp; He frequently accompanied Mr
+Petulengro to neighbouring fairs and markets, riding one of the
+gypsy&rsquo;s horses.&nbsp; At other times the two would roam
+over the gorse-covered Mousehold, discoursing largely about
+things Romany.</p>
+<p>The departure of Mr Petulengro and his retinue from Norwich
+threw Borrow back once more upon his linguistic studies, his
+fishing, his shooting, and his smouldering discontent at the
+constraints of school life.&nbsp; It was probably an endeavour on
+Borrow&rsquo;s part to make himself more like his gypsy friends
+that prompted him to stain his face with walnut juice, drawing
+from the Rev. Edward Valpy the question: &ldquo;Borrow, are you
+suffering from jaundice, or is it only dirt?&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+gypsies were not the only vagabonds of Borrow&rsquo;s
+acquaintance at this period.&nbsp; There were the Italian
+peripatetic vendors of weather-glasses, who had their
+headquarters at Norwich.&nbsp; In after years he met again more
+than one of these merchants.&nbsp; They were always glad to see
+him and revive old memories of the Norwich days.</p>
+<p>About this time he saved a boy from drowning in the Yare. <a
+name="citation23"></a><a href="#footnote23"
+class="citation">[23]</a>&nbsp; It may be this act with which he
+generously credits his brother John when he says&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have known him dash from a steep bank
+into a stream in his full dress, and pull out a man who was
+drowning; yet there were twenty others bathing in the water, who
+might have saved him by putting out a hand, without inconvenience
+to themselves, which, however, they did not do, but stared with
+stupid surprise at the drowning one&rsquo;s struggles.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation24"></a><a href="#footnote24"
+class="citation">[24]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>From the first Borrow had shown a strong distaste for the
+humdrum routine of school life.&nbsp; In a thousand ways he was
+different from his fellows.&nbsp; He had been accustomed to meet
+strange and, to him, deeply interesting people.&nbsp; Now he was
+bidden adopt a course of life against which his whole nature
+rebelled.&nbsp; It was impossible.&nbsp; He missed the atmosphere
+of vagabondage that had inspired and stimulated his early
+boyhood.</p>
+<p>The crisis came at last.&nbsp; There was only one way to avoid
+the awkward and distasteful destiny that was being forced upon
+him.&nbsp; He entered into a conspiracy with three
+school-fellows, all younger than himself, to make a dash for a
+life that should offer wider opportunities to their adventurous
+natures.&nbsp; The plan was to tramp to Great Yarmouth and there
+excavate on the seashore caves for their habitation.&nbsp; From
+these headquarters they would make foraging expeditions, and live
+on what they could extract from the surrounding country, either
+by force or by the terror that they inspired.&nbsp; One morning
+the four started on their twenty-mile trudge to the sea; but,
+when only a few miles out, one of their number became fearful and
+turned back.</p>
+<p>Encouraged by their leader, the others continued on their
+way.&nbsp; The father of the other two boys appears to have got
+wind of the project and posted after them in a chaise.&nbsp; He
+came up with them at Acle, about eleven miles from Norwich.&nbsp;
+When they were first seen, Borrow was striving to hearten his
+fellow buccaneers, who were tired and dispirited after their long
+walk.&nbsp; The three were unceremoniously bundled into the
+chaise and returned to their homes and, subsequently, to the
+wrath of the Rev. Edward Valpy. <a name="citation25a"></a><a
+href="#footnote25a" class="citation">[25a]</a></p>
+<p>The names of the three confederates were John Dalrymple (whose
+heart failed him) and Theodosius and Francis Purland, sons of a
+Norwich chemist.&nbsp; The Purlands are credited with robbing
+&ldquo;the paternal till,&rdquo; while Dalrymple confined himself
+to the less compromising duty of &ldquo;gathering horse-pistols
+and potatoes.&rdquo;&nbsp; If the boys robbed their
+father&rsquo;s till, why did they beg?&nbsp; In the ballad
+entitled <i>The Wandering Children and the Benevolent
+Gentleman</i>, Borrow depicts the &ldquo;eldest child&rdquo; as
+begging for charity for these hungry children, who have had
+&ldquo;no breakfast, save the haws.&rdquo;&nbsp; This does not
+seem to suggest that the boys were in the possession of
+money.&nbsp; Again, it was the father of one of their
+schoolfellows who was responsible for their capture, according to
+Dr Knapp, by asking them to dinner whilst he despatched a
+messenger to the Rev. Edward Valpy.&nbsp; The story of
+Borrow&rsquo;s being &ldquo;horsed&rdquo; on Dr Martineau&rsquo;s
+back is apocryphal.&nbsp; Martineau himself denied it. <a
+name="citation25b"></a><a href="#footnote25b"
+class="citation">[25b]</a></p>
+<p>There is no record of how Captain Borrow received the news of
+his younger son&rsquo;s breach of discipline.&nbsp; It probably
+reminded him that the boy was now fifteen and it was time to
+think about his future.&nbsp; The old soldier was puzzled.&nbsp;
+Not only had his second son shown a great partiality for
+acquiring Continental tongues, but he had learned Irish, and
+Captain Borrow seemed to think that by learning the language of
+Papists and rebels, his son had sullied the family honour.&nbsp;
+To his father&rsquo;s way of thinking, this accomplishment seemed
+to bar him from most things that were at one and the same time
+honourable and desirable.</p>
+<p>The boy&rsquo;s own inclinations pointed to the army; but
+Captain Borrow had apparently seen too much of the army in war
+time, and the slowness of promotion, to think of it as offering a
+career suitable to his son, now that there was every prospect of
+a prolonged peace.&nbsp; He thought of the church as an
+alternative; but here again that fatal facility the boy had shown
+in learning Erse seemed to stand out as a barrier.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+have observed the poor lad attentively and really I do not see
+what to make of him,&rdquo; Captain Borrow is said to have
+remarked.&nbsp; What could be expected of a lad who would forsake
+Greek for Irish, or Latin for the barbarous tongue of homeless
+vagabonds?&nbsp; Certainly not a good churchman.&nbsp; At length
+it became obvious to the distressed parents that there was only
+one choice left them&mdash;the law.</p>
+<p>About this period Borrow fell ill of some nameless and
+unclassified disease, which defied the wisdom of physicians, who
+shook their heads gravely by his bedside.&nbsp; An old woman,
+however, cured him by a decoction prepared from a bitter
+root.&nbsp; The convalescence was slow and laborious; for the
+boy&rsquo;s nerves were shattered, and that deep, haunting
+melancholy, which he first called the &ldquo;Fear&rdquo; and
+afterwards the &ldquo;Horrors,&rdquo; descended upon him.</p>
+<p>On the 30th of March 1819 Borrow was articled for five years
+to Simpson &amp; Rackham, solicitors, of Tuck&rsquo;s Court, St
+Giles, Norwich. <a name="citation26"></a><a href="#footnote26"
+class="citation">[26]</a>&nbsp; He consequently left home to take
+up his abode at the house of the senior partner in the Upper
+Close. <a name="citation27a"></a><a href="#footnote27a"
+class="citation">[27a]</a>&nbsp; Mr William Simpson was a man of
+considerable importance in the city; for besides being Treasurer
+of the County, he was Chamberlain and Town Clerk, whilst his wife
+was famed for her hospitality, in particular her expensive
+dinners.</p>
+<p>With that unerring instinct of contrariety that never seemed
+to forsake him, Borrow proceeded to learn, not law but
+Welsh.&nbsp; When the eyes of authority were on him he
+transcribed Blackstone, but when they were turned away he read
+and translated the poems of Ab Gwilym.&nbsp; He performed his
+tasks &ldquo;as well as could be expected in one who was occupied
+by so many and busy thoughts of his own.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At the end of Tuck&rsquo;s Court was a house at which was
+employed a Welsh groom, a queer fellow who soon attracted the
+notice of Simpson &amp; Rackham&rsquo;s clerks, young gentlemen
+who were bent on &ldquo;mis-spending the time which was not
+legally their own.&rdquo; <a name="citation27b"></a><a
+href="#footnote27b" class="citation">[27b]</a>&nbsp; They would
+make audible remarks about the unfortunate and inoffensive Welsh
+groom, calling out after him &ldquo;Taffy&rdquo;&mdash;in short,
+rendering the poor fellow&rsquo;s life a misery with their jibes,
+until at last, almost distracted, he had come to the
+determination either to give his master notice or to hang
+himself, that he might get away from that &ldquo;nest of
+parcupines.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow saw in the predicament of the
+Welsh groom the hand of providence.&nbsp; He made a compact with
+him, that in exchange for lessons in Welsh, he, Borrow, should
+persuade his fellow clerks to cease their annoyance.</p>
+<p>From that time, each Sunday afternoon, the Welsh groom would
+go to Captain Borrow&rsquo;s house to instruct his son in Welsh
+pronunciation; for in book Welsh Borrow was stronger than his
+preceptor.&nbsp; Borrow had learned the language of the bards
+&ldquo;chiefly by going through Owen Pugh&rsquo;s version of
+&lsquo;Paradise Lost&rsquo; twice&rdquo; with the original by his
+side.&nbsp; After which &ldquo;there was very little in Welsh
+poetry that I could not make out with a little pondering.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation28a"></a><a href="#footnote28a"
+class="citation">[28a]</a>&nbsp; This had occupied some three
+years.&nbsp; The studies with the groom lasted for about twelve
+months, until he left Norwich with his family. <a
+name="citation28b"></a><a href="#footnote28b"
+class="citation">[28b]</a></p>
+<p>Captain Borrow&rsquo;s thoughts were frequently occupied with
+the future of his younger son, a problem that had by no means
+been determined by signing the articles that bound him to Simpson
+&amp; Rackham.&nbsp; The boy was frank and honest and did not
+scruple to give expression to ideas of his own, and it was these
+ideas that alarmed his father.&nbsp; Once at the house of Mr
+Simpson, and before the assembled guests, he told an archdeacon,
+worth &pound;7000 a year, that the classics were much overvalued,
+and compared Ab Gwilym with Ovid, to the detriment of the
+Roman.&nbsp; To Captain Borrow the possession of ideas upon any
+subject by one so young was in itself a thing to be deplored; but
+to venture an opinion contrary to that commonly held by men of
+weight and substance was an unforgivable act of
+insubordination.</p>
+<p>The boy had been sent to Tuck&rsquo;s Court to learn law, and
+instead he persisted in acquiring languages, and such
+languages!&nbsp; Welsh, Danish, Arabic, Armenian, Saxon; for
+these were the tongues with which he occupied himself.&nbsp; None
+but a perfect mother such as Mrs Borrow could have found excuses
+for a son who pursued such studies, and her husband pointed out
+to her, it is &ldquo;in the nature of women invariably to take
+the part of the second born.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In one of those curiously self-revelatory passages with which
+his writings abound, Borrow tells how he continued to act as
+door-keeper long after it had ceased to be part of his
+duty.&nbsp; As a student of men and a collector of strange
+characters, it was in keeping with his genius to do so, although
+he himself was unable to explain why he took pleasure in the
+task.&nbsp; No one was admitted to the presence of the senior
+partner who did not first pass the searching scrutiny of his
+articled clerk.&nbsp; Those who pleased him were admitted to Mr
+Simpson&rsquo;s private room; to those who did not he proved
+himself an almost insuperable obstacle.&nbsp; Unfortunately
+Borrow&rsquo;s standards were those of the physiognomist rather
+than the lawyer; he inverted the whole fabric of professional
+desirability by admitting the goats and refusing the sheep.&nbsp;
+He turned away a knight, or a baronet, and admitted a poet, until
+at last the distressed old gentleman in black, with the
+philanthropical head, his master, was forced to expostulate and
+adjure his clerk to judge, not by faces but by clothes, which in
+reality make the man.&nbsp; Borrow bowed to the ruling of
+&ldquo;the prince of English solicitors,&rdquo; revised his
+standards and continued to act as keeper of the door.</p>
+<p>Mr Simpson seems to have earned Borrow&rsquo;s thorough
+regard, no small achievement considering in how much he differed
+from his illustrious articled-clerk in everything, not excepting
+humour, of which the delightful, old-world gentleman seems to
+have had a generous share.&nbsp; He was doubtless puzzled to
+classify the strange being by whose instrumentality a stream of
+undesirable people was admitted to his presence, whilst
+distinguished clients were sternly and rigorously turned
+away.&nbsp; He probably smiled at the story of the old yeoman and
+his wife who, in return for some civility shown to them by
+Borrow, presented him with an old volume of Danish ballads, which
+inspired him to learn the language, aided by a Danish Bible. <a
+name="citation30a"></a><a href="#footnote30a"
+class="citation">[30a]</a>&nbsp; He was not only &ldquo;the first
+solicitor in East Anglia,&rdquo; but &ldquo;the prince of all
+English solicitors&mdash;for he was a gentleman!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation30b"></a><a href="#footnote30b"
+class="citation">[30b]</a>&nbsp; In another place Borrow refers
+to him as &ldquo;my old master . . . who would have died sooner
+than broken his word.&nbsp; God bless him!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation30c"></a><a href="#footnote30c"
+class="citation">[30c]</a>&nbsp; And yet again as &ldquo;my
+ancient master, the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation30d"></a><a href="#footnote30d"
+class="citation">[30d]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow was always handsome in everything he did.&nbsp; If he
+hated a man he hated him, his kith and kin and all who bore his
+name.&nbsp; His friendship was similarly sweeping, and his regard
+for William Simpson prompted him to write subsequently of the law
+as &ldquo;a profession which abounds with honourable men, and in
+which I believe there are fewer scamps than in any other.&nbsp;
+The most honourable men I have ever known have been lawyers; they
+were men whose word was their bond, and who would have preferred
+ruin to breaking it.&rdquo; <a name="citation31a"></a><a
+href="#footnote31a" class="citation">[31a]</a></p>
+<p>Fortunately for Borrow there was at the Norwich Guildhall a
+valuable library consisting of a large number of ancient folios
+written in many languages.&nbsp; &ldquo;Amidst the dust and
+cobwebs of the Corporation Library&rdquo; he studied earnestly
+and, with a fine disregard for a librarian&rsquo;s feelings,
+annotated some of the volumes, his marginalia existing to this
+day.&nbsp; One of his favourite works was the <i>Danica
+Literatura Antiquissima</i> of Olaus Wormius, 1636, which
+inspired him with the idea of adopting the name Olaus, his
+subsequent contributions to <i>The New Magazine</i> being signed
+George Olaus Borrow.</p>
+<p>Whilst Borrow was striving to learn languages and avoid the
+law, <a name="citation31b"></a><a href="#footnote31b"
+class="citation">[31b]</a> the question of his brother&rsquo;s
+career was seriously occupying the mind of their father.&nbsp;
+Borrow loved and admired his brother.&nbsp; There is sincerity in
+all he writes concerning John, and there is something of nobility
+about the way in which he tells of his father&rsquo;s preference
+for him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who,&rdquo; he asks, &ldquo;cannot excuse
+the honest pride of the old man&mdash;the stout old man?&rdquo;
+<a name="citation31c"></a><a href="#footnote31c"
+class="citation">[31c]</a></p>
+<p>The Peace had closed to John Borrow the army as a profession,
+and he had devoted himself assiduously to his art.&nbsp; Under
+Crome the elder he had made considerable progress, and had
+exhibited a number of pictures at the yearly exhibitions of the
+Norwich Society of Artists.&nbsp; He continued to study with
+Crome until the artist&rsquo;s death (22nd April 1821), when a
+new master had to be sought.&nbsp; With his father&rsquo;s
+blessing and &pound;150 he proceeded to London, where he remained
+for more than a year studying with B. R. Haydon. <a
+name="citation32a"></a><a href="#footnote32a"
+class="citation">[32a]</a>&nbsp; Later he went to Paris to copy
+Old Masters.</p>
+<p>About this time Borrow had an opportunity of seeing many of
+&ldquo;the bruisers of England.&rdquo;&nbsp; In his veins flowed
+the blood of the man who had met Big Ben Bryan and survived the
+encounter undefeated.&nbsp; &ldquo;Let no one sneer at the
+bruisers of England,&rdquo; Borrow wrote&mdash;&ldquo;What were
+the gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its
+palmiest days, compared to England&rsquo;s bruisers?&rdquo; <a
+name="citation32b"></a><a href="#footnote32b"
+class="citation">[32b]</a> he asks.&nbsp; On 17th July 1820
+Edward Painter of Norwich was to meet Thomas Oliver of London for
+a purse of a hundred guineas.&nbsp; On the Saturday previous (the
+15th) the Norwich hotels began to fill with bruisers and their
+patrons, and men went their ways anxiously polite to the
+stranger, lest he turn out to be some champion whom it were
+dangerous to affront.&nbsp; Thomas Cribb, the champion of
+England, had come to see the fight, &ldquo;Teucer Belcher, savage
+Shelton, . . . the terrible Randall, . . . Bulldog Hudson, . . .
+fearless Scroggins, . . . Black Richmond, . . . Tom of
+Bedford,&rdquo; and a host of lesser lights of the
+&ldquo;Fancy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the Monday, upwards of 20,000 men swept out of the old city
+towards North Walsham, less than twenty miles distant, among them
+George Borrow, striding along among the varied stream of men and
+vehicles (some 2000 in number) to see the great fight, which was
+to end in the victory of the local man and a terrible storm, as
+if heaven were thundering its anger against a brutal
+spectacle.&nbsp; The sportsmen were left to find their way to
+shelter, Borrow and Mr Petulengro, whom he had encountered just
+after the fight, with them, talking of dukkeripens
+(fortunes).</p>
+<p>Some time during the year 1820, a Jew named Levy (the Mousha
+of <i>Lavengro</i>), Borrow&rsquo;s instructor in Hebrew,
+introduced him to William Taylor, <a name="citation33a"></a><a
+href="#footnote33a" class="citation">[33a]</a> one of the most
+extraordinary men that Norwich ever produced.&nbsp; In the
+long-limbed young lawyer&rsquo;s clerk, whose hair was rapidly
+becoming grey, Taylor showed great interest, and, as an act of
+friendship, undertook to teach him German.&nbsp; He was gratified
+by the young man&rsquo;s astonishing progress, and much
+interested in his remarkable personality.&nbsp; As a result
+Borrow became a frequent visitor at 21 King Street, Norwich,
+where Taylor lived and many strange men assembled.</p>
+<p>It is doubtful if William Taylor ever found another pupil so
+apt, or a disciple so enthusiastic among all the
+&ldquo;harum-scarum young men&rdquo; <a name="citation33b"></a><a
+href="#footnote33b" class="citation">[33b]</a> that he was so
+fond of taking up and introducing &ldquo;into the best society
+the place afforded.&rdquo; <a name="citation33c"></a><a
+href="#footnote33c" class="citation">[33c]</a>&nbsp; He was much
+impressed by Borrow&rsquo;s extraordinary memory and power of
+concentration.&nbsp; Speaking one day of the different degrees of
+intelligence in men he said:&mdash;&ldquo;I cannot give you a
+better example to explain my meaning than my two pupils (there
+was another named Cooke, who was said to be &lsquo;a genius in
+his way&rsquo;); what I tell Borrow once he ever remembers;
+whilst to the fellow Cooke I have to repeat the same thing twenty
+times, often without effect; and it is not from want of memory
+either, but he will never be a linguist.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation33d"></a><a href="#footnote33d"
+class="citation">[33d]</a></p>
+<p>To a correspondent Taylor wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A Norwich young man is construing with me
+Schiller&rsquo;s <i>Wilhelm Tell</i>, with the view of
+translating it for the press.&nbsp; His name is George Henry
+Borrow, and he has learnt German with extraordinary rapidity;
+indeed, he has the gift of tongues, and, though not yet eighteen,
+understands twelve languages&mdash;English, Welsh, Erse, Latin,
+Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, and
+Portuguese; he would like to get into the Office for Foreign
+Affairs, but does not know how.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation34a"></a><a href="#footnote34a"
+class="citation">[34a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This was in 1821; two years later Borrow is said to have
+&ldquo;translated with fidelity and elegance from twenty
+different languages.&rdquo; <a name="citation34b"></a><a
+href="#footnote34b" class="citation">[34b]</a>&nbsp; In spite of
+his later achievements in learning languages, it seems scarcely
+credible that he acquired eight separate languages in two years,
+although it must be remembered that with him the learning of a
+language was to be able to read it after a rather laborious
+fashion.&nbsp; Taylor, however, uses the words &ldquo;facility
+and elegance.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p34b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"William Taylor of Norwich"
+title=
+"William Taylor of Norwich"
+ src="images/p34s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>In the autobiographical notes that Borrow supplied to Mr John
+Longe in 1862 there appears the following passage:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;At the expiration of his clerkship he knew
+little of the law, but he was well versed in languages, being not
+only a good Greek and Latin scholar, but acquainted with French,
+Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic dialects, and
+likewise with the peculiar language of the English Romany Chals
+or gypsies.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>At William Taylor&rsquo;s table Borrow met &ldquo;the most
+intellectual and talented men of Norwich, as also those of note
+who visited the city.&rdquo; <a name="citation34c"></a><a
+href="#footnote34c" class="citation">[34c]</a>&nbsp; Taylor was
+much interested in young men, into whose minds he did not
+hesitate to instil his own ideas, ideas that not only earned for
+him the name of &ldquo;Godless Billy,&rdquo; but outraged his
+respectable fellow-citizens as much as did his intemperate
+habits.&nbsp; &ldquo;His face was terribly bloated from drink,
+and he had a look as if his intellect was almost as much decayed
+as his body,&rdquo; wrote a contemporary. <a
+name="citation35a"></a><a href="#footnote35a"
+class="citation">[35a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Matters grew worse in his
+old age,&rdquo; says Harriet Martineau, &ldquo;when his habits of
+intemperance kept him out of the sight of ladies, and he got
+round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who thought
+they could set the whole world right by their destructive
+propensities.&nbsp; One of his chief favourites was George
+Borrow.&rdquo; <a name="citation35b"></a><a href="#footnote35b"
+class="citation">[35b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow has given the following
+convincing picture of Taylor:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Methought I was in a small, comfortable
+room wainscotted with oak; I was seated on one side of a
+fireplace, close by a table on which were wine and fruit; on the
+other side of the fire sat a man in a plain suit of brown, with
+the hair combed back from the somewhat high forehead; he had a
+pipe in his mouth, which for some time he smoked gravely and
+placidly, without saying a word; at length, after drawing at the
+pipe for some time rather vigorously, he removed it from his
+mouth, and emitting an accumulated cloud of smoke, he exclaimed
+in a slow and measured tone: &lsquo;As I was telling you just
+now, my good chap, I have always been an enemy of
+humbug.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation35c"></a><a
+href="#footnote35c" class="citation">[35c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>William Taylor appears to have flattered &ldquo;the
+harum-scarum young men&rdquo; with whom he surrounded himself by
+talking to them as if they were his intellectual equals.&nbsp; He
+encouraged them to form their own opinions, in itself a thing
+scarcely likely to make him popular with either parents or
+guardians, least of all with discipline-loving Captain Borrow,
+who declined even to return the salute of his son&rsquo;s friend
+on the public highway.</p>
+<p>Borrow now began to look to the future and speculate as to
+what his present life would lead to.&nbsp; His cogitations seem
+to have ended, almost invariably, in a gloomy mist of pessimism
+and despair&mdash;in other words, an attack of the
+&ldquo;Horrors.&rdquo;&nbsp; If Mr Petulengro were encamped upon
+Mousehold, the antidote lay near to hand in his friend&rsquo;s
+pagan optimism; if, on the other hand, the tents of Egypt were
+pitched on other soil, there was no remedy, unless perhaps a
+prize-fight supplied the necessary stimulus to divert his
+thoughts from their melancholy trend.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p36b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"George Borrow (1821).  From a hitherto unpublished painting by
+John Borrow, now in the posession of W. F. T. Jarrold, Esq."
+title=
+"George Borrow (1821).  From a hitherto unpublished painting by
+John Borrow, now in the posession of W. F. T. Jarrold, Esq."
+ src="images/p36s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Borrow met at the house of his tutor and friend, in July 1821,
+Dr Bowring <a name="citation36a"></a><a href="#footnote36a"
+class="citation">[36a]</a> (afterwards Sir John) at a dinner
+given in his honour.&nbsp; Bowring had recently published
+<i>Specimen of Russian Poets</i>, in recognition of which the
+Czar (Alexander I.) had presented him with a diamond ring.&nbsp;
+He had a considerable reputation as a linguist, which naturally
+attracted Borrow to him.&nbsp; Dr Bowring was told of
+Borrow&rsquo;s accomplishments, and during the evening took a
+seat beside him.&nbsp; Borrow confessed to being &ldquo;a little
+frightened at first&rdquo; of the distinguished man, whom he
+described as having &ldquo;a thin weaselly figure, a sallow
+complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of
+spectacles.&rdquo;&nbsp; It would be dangerous to accept entirely
+the account that Borrow gives of the meeting, <a
+name="citation36b"></a><a href="#footnote36b"
+class="citation">[36b]</a> because when that was written he had
+come to hate and despise the man whom he had begun by regarding
+with such awe.&nbsp; Bowring appears to have ventilated his views
+with some freedom, and to have had a rather serious passage of
+arms with another guest whom he had rudely contradicted.&nbsp; It
+is very probable that Borrow&rsquo;s dislike of Bowring prompted
+him to exaggerate his account of what happened at Taylor&rsquo;s
+house that evening.</p>
+<p>Whilst Borrow was industriously occupied in collecting
+vagabonds and imbibing the dangerous beliefs of William Taylor,
+there sat in an easy-chair in the small front-parlour of the
+little house in Willow Lane, in a faded regimental coat, a
+prematurely old man, whose frame still showed signs of the
+magnificent physique of his vigorous manhood.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in meditation, and
+sometimes in reading the Scriptures,&rdquo; with his dog beside
+him, Captain Thomas Borrow, now sixty-five, was preparing for the
+end that he felt to be approaching.&nbsp; He frequently meditated
+upon what was to become of his younger son George, who held his
+father in such awe as to feel ill at ease when alone with
+him.</p>
+<p>One day the inevitable interrogation took place.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What do you propose to do?&rdquo; and the equally
+inevitable reply followed, &ldquo;I really do not know what I
+shall do.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the course of a somewhat lengthy
+cross-examination, Captain Borrow discovered that his son knew
+the Armenian tongue, for which he very cunningly strove to enlist
+his father&rsquo;s interest by telling him that in Armenia was
+Mount Ararat, whereon the ark rested.&nbsp; Captain Borrow also
+discovered that his son could not only shoe a horse, but also
+make the shoes; but, what was most important, he found that
+George had learned &ldquo;very little&rdquo; law.&nbsp; When
+asked if he thought he could support himself by Armenian or his
+&ldquo;other acquirements,&rdquo; the younger man was not very
+hopeful, and horrified the old soldier by suggesting that if all
+else failed there was always suicide.</p>
+<p>The dying man was thus left to yearn for the return of his
+elder son, in whom all his hopes lay centred.&nbsp; John appears
+to have been by no means dutiful to his parents in the matter of
+letters.&nbsp; For six months he left them unacquainted even with
+his address in Paris, where he was still copying Old Masters in
+the Louvre.</p>
+<p>After their talk the father and younger son seem to have come
+to a better understanding.&nbsp; George would frequently read
+aloud from the Bible, whilst Captain Borrow would tell about his
+early life.&nbsp; His son &ldquo;had no idea that he knew and had
+seen so much; my respect for him increased, and I looked upon him
+almost with admiration.&nbsp; His anecdotes were in general
+highly curious; some of them related to people in the highest
+stations, and to men whose names are closely connected with some
+of the brightest glories of our native land.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation38"></a><a href="#footnote38"
+class="citation">[38]</a></p>
+<p>At last John arrived, apparently a little disillusioned with
+the world; but the coming of his favourite son produced no change
+for the better in Captain Borrow&rsquo;s health.&nbsp; He was
+content and happy that God had granted his wish.&nbsp; There
+remained nothing now to do but &ldquo;to bless my little family
+and go.&rdquo;&nbsp; George learned &ldquo;that it is possible to
+feel deeply and yet make no outward sign.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The end came on the morning of 28th February 1824.&nbsp; It
+was by a strange chance that the old man should die in the arms
+of his younger son, who had run down on hearing his
+mother&rsquo;s anguished screams.&nbsp; Borrow has given a
+dramatic account of his father&rsquo;s last moments:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;At the dead hour of night, it might be
+about two, I was awakened from sleep by a cry which sounded from
+the room immediately below that in which I slept.&nbsp; I knew
+the cry, it was the cry of my mother, and I also knew its import;
+yet I made no effort to rise, for I was for the moment
+paralysed.&nbsp; Again the cry sounded, yet still I lay
+motionless&mdash;the stupidity of horror was upon me.&nbsp; A
+third time, and it was then that, by a violent effort bursting
+the spell which appeared to bind me, I sprang from the bed and
+rushed downstairs.&nbsp; My mother was running wildly about the
+room; she had awoke and found my father senseless in the bed by
+her side.&nbsp; I essayed to raise him, and after a few efforts
+supported him in the bed in a sitting posture.&nbsp; My brother
+now rushed in, and snatching a light that was burning, he held it
+to my father&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; &lsquo;The surgeon, the
+surgeon!&rsquo; he cried; then dropping the light, he ran out of
+the room followed by my mother; I remained alone, supporting the
+senseless form of my father; the light had been extinguished by
+the fall, and an almost total darkness reigned in the room.&nbsp;
+The form pressed heavily against my bosom&mdash;at last methought
+it moved.&nbsp; Yes, I was right, there was a heaving of the
+breast, and then a gasping.&nbsp; Were those words which I
+heard?&nbsp; Yes, they were words, low and indistinct at first,
+and then audible.&nbsp; The mind of the dying man was reverting
+to former scenes.&nbsp; I heard him mention names which I had
+often heard him mention before.&nbsp; It was an awful moment; I
+felt stupified, but I still contrived to support my dying
+father.&nbsp; There was a pause, again my father spoke: I heard
+him speak of Minden, and of Meredith, the old Minden sergeant,
+and then he uttered another name, which at one period of his life
+was much on his lips, the name of&mdash;but this is a solemn
+moment!&nbsp; There was a deep gasp: I shook, and thought all was
+over; but I was mistaken&mdash;my father moved and revived for a
+moment; he supported himself in bed without my assistance.&nbsp;
+I make no doubt that for a moment he was perfectly sensible, and
+it was then that, clasping his hands, he uttered another name
+clearly, distinctly&mdash;it was the name of Christ.&nbsp; With
+that name upon his lips, the brave old soldier sank back upon my
+bosom, and, with his hands still clasped, yielded up his
+soul.&rdquo; <a name="citation39"></a><a href="#footnote39"
+class="citation">[39]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
+APRIL 1824&ndash;MAY 1825</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 2nd April 1824, George Borrow
+was cast upon the world of London by the death of his father,
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation40a"></a><a href="#footnote40a"
+class="citation">[40a]</a></p>
+<p>It had become necessary for him to earn his own
+livelihood.&nbsp; Captain Borrow&rsquo;s pension had ceased with
+his death, and the old soldier&rsquo;s savings of a lifetime were
+barely sufficient to produce an income of a hundred pounds a year
+for his widow.&nbsp; The provision made in the will for his
+younger son during his minority would operate only for about four
+months, as he would be of age in the following July. <a
+name="citation40b"></a><a href="#footnote40b"
+class="citation">[40b]</a>&nbsp; The clerkship with Simpson &amp;
+Rackham would expire at the end of March.&nbsp; Borrow had
+outlined his ambitions in a letter written on 20th January 1824,
+when he was ill and wretched, to Roger Kerrison, then in London:
+&ldquo;If ever my health mends [this has reference to a very
+unpleasant complaint he had contracted], and possibly it may by
+the time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live in London,
+write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get myself
+prosecuted,&rdquo; for he was tired of the &ldquo;dull and gloomy
+town.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was therefore with a feeling of relief
+that, on the evening of 1st April, he took his seat on the top of
+the London coach, his hopes centred in a small green box that he
+carried with him.&nbsp; It contained his stock-in-trade as an
+author: his beloved manuscripts, &ldquo;closely written over in a
+singular hand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Among the bundles of papers were:</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(i.)&nbsp; The Ancient Songs of Denmark,
+heroic and romantic, translated by himself, with notes
+philological, critical and historical.</p>
+<p class="gutindent">(ii.)&nbsp; The Songs of Ab Gwilym, the
+Welsh Bard, also translated by himself, with notes critical,
+philological and historical. <a name="citation41"></a><a
+href="#footnote41" class="citation">[41]</a></p>
+<p class="gutindent">(iii.)&nbsp; A romance in the German
+style.</p>
+<p>In addition to his manuscripts, Borrow had some twenty or
+thirty pounds, his testimonials, and a letter from William Taylor
+to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher, to whose <i>New
+Magazine</i> he had already contributed a number of translations
+of poems.&nbsp; He had also printed in <i>The Monthly
+Magazine</i> and <i>The New Monthly Magazine</i> translations of
+verse from the German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish and Spanish, and an
+essay on Danish ballad writing.</p>
+<p>On the morning of 2nd April there arrived at 16 Milman Street,
+Bedford Row, London, W.C.,</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;A lad who twenty tongues can talk,<br />
+And sixty miles a day can walk;<br />
+Drink at a draught a pint of rum,<br />
+And then be neither sick nor dumb;<br />
+Can tune a song and make a verse,<br />
+And deeds of Northern kings rehearse;<br />
+Who never will forsake his friend<br />
+While he his bony fist can bend;<br />
+And, though averse to broil and strife,<br />
+Will fight a Dutchman with a knife;<br />
+O that is just the lad for me,<br />
+And such is honest six-foot-three.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation42a"></a><a href="#footnote42a"
+class="citation">[42a]</a></p>
+<p>It was through the Kerrisons that Borrow went to 16 Milman
+Street, where Roger was lodging.&nbsp; His apartments seem to
+have been dismal enough, consisting of &ldquo;a small room, up
+two pair of stairs, in which I was to sit, and another, still
+smaller, above it, in which I was to sleep.&rdquo;&nbsp; After
+the first feeling of loneliness had passed, dispelled largely by
+a bright fire and breakfast, he sallied forth, the contents of
+the green box under his arm, to present his letter of
+introduction to Sir Richard Phillips, <a
+name="citation42b"></a><a href="#footnote42b"
+class="citation">[42b]</a> in whom centred his hopes of
+employment.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p42b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sir Richard Phillips.  From the painting by James Saxon in the
+National Portrait Gallery"
+title=
+"Sir Richard Phillips.  From the painting by James Saxon in the
+National Portrait Gallery"
+ src="images/p42s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>On arriving at the publisher&rsquo;s house in Tavistock
+Square, he was immediately shown into Sir Richard&rsquo;s study,
+where he found &ldquo;a tall, stout man, about sixty, dressed in
+a loose morning gown,&rdquo; and with him his confidential clerk
+Bartlett (the Taggart of <i>Lavengro</i>).&nbsp; Sir Richard was
+at first enthusiastic and cordial, but when he learned from
+William Taylor&rsquo;s letter that Borrow had come up to earn his
+livelihood by authorship, his manner underwent a marked
+change.&nbsp; The bluff, hearty expression gave place to &ldquo;a
+sinister glance,&rdquo; and Borrow found that within that loose
+morning gown there was a second Sir Richard.</p>
+<p>He learned two things&mdash;first, that Sir Richard Phillips
+had retired from publishing and had reserved only <i>The Monthly
+Magazine</i>; <a name="citation43"></a><a href="#footnote43"
+class="citation">[43]</a> secondly, that literature was a drug
+upon the market.&nbsp; With airy self-assertiveness, the
+ex-publisher dismissed the contents of the green box that Borrow
+had brought with him, which had already aroused considerable
+suspicion in the mind of the maid who had admitted him to the
+publisher&rsquo;s presence.</p>
+<p>When he had thoroughly dashed the young author&rsquo;s hopes
+of employment, Sir Richard informed him of a new publication he
+had in preparation, <i>The Universal Review</i> [<i>The Oxford
+Review</i> of <i>Lavengro</i>], which was to support the son of
+the house and the wife he had married.&nbsp; With a promise that
+he should become a contributor to the new review, an earnest
+exhortation to write a story in the style of <i>The
+Dairyman&rsquo;s Daughter</i>, and an invitation to dinner for
+the following Sunday, the first interview between George Borrow
+and Sir Richard Phillips ended, and Borrow left the great
+man&rsquo;s presence to begin his exploration of London, first
+leaving his manuscripts at Milman Street.&nbsp; During the rest
+of the day he walked &ldquo;scarcely less than thirty miles about
+the big city.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was late when he returned to his
+lodgings, thoroughly tired, but with a copy of <i>The
+Dairyman&rsquo;s Daughter</i>, for &ldquo;a well-written tale in
+the style&rdquo; of which Sir Richard Phillips &ldquo;could
+afford as much as ten pounds.&rdquo;&nbsp; The day had been one
+of the most eventful in Borrow&rsquo;s life.</p>
+<p>On the following Sunday Borrow dined at Tavistock Square, and
+met Lady Phillips, young Phillips and his bride.&nbsp; He learned
+that Sir Richard was a vegetarian of twenty years&rsquo; standing
+and a total abstainer, although meat and wine were not banished
+from his table.&nbsp; When publisher and potential author were
+left alone, the son having soon followed the ladies into the
+drawing-room, Borrow heard of Sir Richard&rsquo;s amiable
+intentions towards him.&nbsp; He was to compile six volumes of
+the lives and trials of criminals [the <i>Newgate Lives and
+Trials</i> of <i>Lavengro</i>], each to contain not less than a
+thousand pages. <a name="citation44a"></a><a href="#footnote44a"
+class="citation">[44a]</a>&nbsp; For this work he was to receive
+the munificent sum of fifty pounds, which was to cover all
+expenses incurred in the purchase of books, papers and
+manuscripts necessary to the compilation of the work.&nbsp; This
+was only one of the employments that the fertile brain of the
+publisher had schemed for him.&nbsp; He was also to make himself
+useful in connection with the forthcoming <i>Universal
+Review</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;Generally useful, sir&mdash;doing
+whatever is required of you&rdquo;; for it was not Sir
+Richard&rsquo;s custom to allow young writers to select their own
+subjects.</p>
+<p>With impressive manner and ponderous diction, Sir Richard
+Phillips unfolded his philanthropic designs regarding the young
+writer to whom his words meant a career.&nbsp; He did not end
+with the appointment of Borrow as general utility writer upon
+<i>The Universal Review</i>; but proceeded to astonish him with
+the announcement that to him, George Borrow, understanding German
+in a manner that aroused the &ldquo;strong admiration&rdquo; of
+William Taylor, was to be entrusted the translating into that
+tongue of Sir Richard Phillips&rsquo; book of Philosophy. <a
+name="citation44b"></a><a href="#footnote44b"
+class="citation">[44b]</a>&nbsp; If translations of Goethe into
+English were a drug, Sir Richard Phillips&rsquo; <i>Proximate
+Causes</i> was to prove that neither he nor his book would be a
+drug in Germany.&nbsp; For this work the remuneration was to be
+determined by the success of the translation, an arrangement
+sufficiently vague to ensure eventual disagreement.</p>
+<p>When Sir Richard had finished his account of what were his
+intentions towards his guest, he gave him to understand that the
+interview was at an end, at the same time intimating how seldom
+it was that he dealt so generously with a young writer.&nbsp;
+Borrow then rose from the table and passed out of the house,
+leaving his host to muse, as was his custom on Sunday afternoons,
+&ldquo;on the magnificence of nature and the moral dignity of
+man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For the next few weeks Borrow was occupied in searching in
+out-of-the-way corners for criminal biography.&nbsp; If he
+flagged, a visit from his philosopher-publisher spurred him on to
+fresh effort.&nbsp; He received a copy of <i>Proximate
+Causes</i>, with an injunction that he should review it in <i>The
+Universal Review</i>, as well as translate it into German.&nbsp;
+He was taken to and introduced to the working editor <a
+name="citation45a"></a><a href="#footnote45a"
+class="citation">[45a]</a> of the new publication, which was only
+ostensibly under the control of young Phillips.</p>
+<p>In the provision that he should purchase at his own expense
+all the necessary materials for <i>Celebrated Trials</i>, Borrow
+found a serious tax upon his resources; but a harder thing to
+bear with patience and good-humour were the frequent visits he
+received from Sir Richard himself, who showed the keenest
+possible interest in the progress of the compilation.&nbsp; He
+had already caused a preliminary announcement to be made <a
+name="citation45b"></a><a href="#footnote45b"
+class="citation">[45b]</a> to the effect that:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A Selection of the most remarkable Trials
+and Criminal Causes is printing, in five volumes. <a
+name="citation46a"></a><a href="#footnote46a"
+class="citation">[46a]</a>&nbsp; It will include all famous
+cases, from that of Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth,
+to that of John Thurtell: and those connected with foreign as
+well as English jurisprudence.&nbsp; Mr Borrow, the editor, has
+availed himself of all the resources of the English, German,
+French, and Italian languages; and his work, including from 150
+to 200 <a name="citation46b"></a><a href="#footnote46b"
+class="citation">[46b]</a> of the most interesting cases on
+record, will appear in October next.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation46c"></a><a href="#footnote46c"
+class="citation">[46c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Sir Richard&rsquo;s visits to Milman Street were always
+accompanied by numerous suggestions as to criminals whose claims
+to be included in this literary chamber of horrors were in his,
+Sir Richard&rsquo;s, opinion unquestionable.&nbsp; The English
+character of the compilation was soon sacrificed in order to
+admit notable malefactors of other nationalities, and the drain
+upon the editor&rsquo;s small capital became greater than
+ever.</p>
+<p>The leisure that he allowed himself, Borrow spent in exploring
+the city, or in the company of Francis Arden (Ardrey in
+<i>Lavengro</i>), whom he had met by chance in the coffee-room of
+a hotel.&nbsp; The two appear to have been excellent friends,
+perhaps because of the dissimilarity of their natures.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He was an Irishman,&rdquo; Borrow explains, &ldquo;I an
+Englishman; he fiery, enthusiastic and opened-hearted; I neither
+fiery, enthusiastic, nor open-hearted; he fond of pleasure and
+dissipation, I of study and reflection.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation46d"></a><a href="#footnote46d"
+class="citation">[46d]</a></p>
+<p>They went to the play together, to dog-fights, gaming-houses,
+in short saw the sights of London.&nbsp; The arrival of Francis
+Arden at 16 Milman Street was a signal for books and manuscripts
+to be thrown aside in favour either of some expedition or an hour
+or two&rsquo;s conversation.&nbsp; Borrow, however, soon tired of
+the pleasures of London, and devoted himself almost entirely to
+work.&nbsp; Although he saw less of Francis Arden in consequence,
+they continued to be excellent friends.</p>
+<p>After being some four weeks in London, Borrow received a
+surprise visit (29th April) from his brother, whom he found
+waiting for him one morning when he came down to breakfast.&nbsp;
+John told him of his mother&rsquo;s anxiety at receiving only one
+letter from him since his departure, of her fits of crying, of
+the grief of Captain Borrow&rsquo;s dog at the loss of his
+master.&nbsp; He also explained the reason for his being in
+London.&nbsp; He had been invited to paint the portrait of Robert
+Hawkes, an ex-mayor of Norwich, for a fee of a hundred
+guineas.&nbsp; Lacking confidence in his own ability, he had
+declined the honour and suggested that Benjamin Haydon should be
+approached.&nbsp; At the request of a deputation of his fellow
+citizens, which had waited upon him, he had undertaken to enter
+into negotiations with Haydon.&nbsp; He even undertook to come up
+to London at his own expense, that he might see his old master
+and complete the bargain.&nbsp; Borrow subsequently accompanied
+his brother when calling upon Haydon, and was enabled to give a
+thumbnail-sketch of the painter of the Heroic at work that has
+been pronounced to be photographic in its faithfulness.</p>
+<p>John returned to Norwich about a fortnight later accompanied
+by Haydon, who was to become the guest of his sitter, <a
+name="citation47"></a><a href="#footnote47"
+class="citation">[47]</a> and George was left to the compilation
+of <i>Celebrated Trials</i>.&nbsp; Sir Richard Phillips appears
+to have been a man as prolific of suggestion as he was destitute
+of tact.&nbsp; He regarded his authors as the instruments of his
+own genius.&nbsp; Their business it was to carry out his ideas in
+a manner entirely congenial to his colossal conceit.&nbsp; His
+latest author he exposed &ldquo;to incredible mortification and
+ceaseless trouble from this same rage for
+interference.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The result of all this was an attack of the
+&ldquo;Horrors.&rdquo;&nbsp; Towards the end of May, Roger
+Kerrison received from Borrow a note saying that he believed
+himself to be dying, and imploring him to &ldquo;come to me
+immediately.&rdquo;&nbsp; The direct outcome of this note was,
+not the death of Borrow, but the departure from Milman Street of
+Roger Kerrison, lest he should become involved in a tragedy
+connected with Borrow&rsquo;s oft-repeated threat of
+suicide.&nbsp; Kerrison became &ldquo;very uneasy and
+uncomfortable on his account, so that I have found it utterly
+impossible to live any longer in the same lodgings with
+him.&rdquo; <a name="citation48a"></a><a href="#footnote48a"
+class="citation">[48a]</a>&nbsp; Looked at dispassionately it
+seems nothing short of an act of cowardice on Kerrison&rsquo;s
+part to leave alone a man such as Borrow, who might at any moment
+be assailed by one of those periods of gloom from which suicide
+seemed the only outlet.&nbsp; On the other hand, from an anecdote
+told by C. G. Leland (&ldquo;Hans Breitmann&rdquo;), there seems
+to be some excuse for Kerrison&rsquo;s wish to live alone.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I knew at that time [about 1870],&rdquo; he writes, <a
+name="citation48b"></a><a href="#footnote48b"
+class="citation">[48b]</a> &ldquo;a Mr Kerrison, who had been as
+a young man, probably in the Twenties, on intimate terms with
+Borrow.&nbsp; He told me that one night Borrow acted very wildly,
+whooping and vociferating so as to cause the police to follow
+him, and after a long run led them to the edge of the Thames,
+&lsquo;and there they thought they had him.&rsquo;&nbsp; But he
+plunged boldly into the water and swam in his clothes to the
+opposite shore, and so escaped.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A serious misfortune now befell Borrow in the premature death
+of <i>The Universal Review</i>, which expired with the sixth
+number (March 1824&mdash;January 1825).&nbsp; It is not known
+what was the rate of pay to young and impecunious reviewers <a
+name="citation49a"></a><a href="#footnote49a"
+class="citation">[49a]</a> certainly not large, if it may be
+judged by the amount agreed upon for <i>Celebrated
+Trials</i>.&nbsp; Still, its end meant that Borrow was now
+dependent upon what he received for his compilation, and what he
+merited by his translation into German of <i>Proximate
+Causes</i>.</p>
+<p>There appears to have been some difficulty about payment for
+Borrow&rsquo;s contributions to the now defunct review, which
+considerably widened the breach that the <i>Trials</i> had
+created.&nbsp; Sir Richard became more exacting and more than
+ever critical. <a name="citation49b"></a><a href="#footnote49b"
+class="citation">[49b]</a>&nbsp; The end could not be far
+off.&nbsp; Borrow had come to London determined to be an author,
+and by no juggling with facts could his present drudgery be
+considered as authorship.&nbsp; Occasionally his mind reverted to
+the manuscripts in the green box, his faith in which continued
+undiminished.&nbsp; He made further efforts to get his
+translations published, but everywhere the answer was the same,
+in effect, &ldquo;A drug, sir, a drug!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At last he determined to approach John Murray (the Second),
+&ldquo;Glorious John, who lived at the western end of the
+town&rdquo;; but he called many times without being successful in
+seeing him.&nbsp; Another seventeen years were to elapse before
+he was to meet and be published by John Murray.</p>
+<p>Yet another dispute arose between Borrow and Sir Richard
+Phillips.&nbsp; Neither appeared to have realised the supreme
+folly of entrusting to a young Englishman the translation into
+German of an English work.&nbsp; A novel would have presented
+almost insurmountable difficulties; but a work of
+philosophy!&nbsp; The whole project was absurd.&nbsp; The diction
+of philosophy in all languages is individual, just as it is in
+other branches of science, and a very thorough knowledge of, and
+deep reading in both languages are necessary to qualify a man to
+translate from a foreign tongue into his own.&nbsp; To expect an
+inexperienced youth to reverse the order seems to suggest that
+Sir Richard Phillips must have been a publisher whose enthusiasm
+was greater than his judgment.</p>
+<p>One day when calling at Tavistock Square, Borrow found Sir
+Richard in a fury of rage.&nbsp; He had submitted the first
+chapter of the translation of <i>Proximate Causes</i> to some
+Germans, who found it utterly unintelligible.&nbsp; This was only
+to be expected, as Borrow confesses that, when he found himself
+unable to comprehend what was the meaning of the English text, he
+had translated it <i>literally into German</i>!</p>
+<p>The result of the interview was that Borrow, after what
+appears to be a tactless, not to say impertinent, rejoinder, <a
+name="citation50a"></a><a href="#footnote50a"
+class="citation">[50a]</a> relapsed into silence and finally left
+the house, ordered back to his compilation by Sir Richard, as
+soon as he became sufficiently calm to appear coherent, and
+Borrow walked away musing on the &ldquo;difference in clever
+men.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The discovery of the inadequacy of the German translation
+apparently urged Borrow to hasten on with <i>Celebrated
+Trials</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Universal Review</i> was dead, the
+German version of <i>Proximate Causes</i> <a
+name="citation50b"></a><a href="#footnote50b"
+class="citation">[50b]</a> had passed out of his hands.&nbsp; It
+was desirable, therefore, that the remaining undertaking should
+be completed as soon as possible, that the two might part.&nbsp;
+The last of the manuscript was delivered, the proofs passed for
+press, and on 19th March the work appeared, the six volumes,
+running to between three and four thousand pages, containing
+accounts of some four hundred trials, including that of
+Borrow&rsquo;s old friend Thurtell for the murder of Mr
+Weare.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s name did not appear.&nbsp; He was &ldquo;the
+editor,&rdquo; and as such was referred to in the preface
+contributed by Sir Richard himself.&nbsp; Among other things he
+tells of how, in some cases, &ldquo;the Editor has compressed
+into a score of pages the substance of an entire
+volume.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sir Richard was a philosopher as well as a
+preface-writing publisher, and it was only natural that he should
+speculate as to the effect upon his editor&rsquo;s mind of months
+spent in reading and editing such records of vice.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It may be expected,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;that the
+Editor should convey to his readers the intellectual impressions
+which the execution of his task has produced on his mind.&nbsp;
+He confesses that they are mournful.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sir Richard was
+either a master of irony, or a man of singular obtuseness.</p>
+<p>One effect of this delving into criminal records had been to
+raise in Borrow&rsquo;s mind strange doubts about virtue and
+crime.&nbsp; When a boy, he had written an essay in which he
+strove to prove that crime and virtue were mere terms, and that
+we were the creatures of necessity or circumstance.&nbsp; These
+broodings in turn reawakened the theory that everything is a lie,
+and that nothing really exists except in our imaginations.&nbsp;
+The world was &ldquo;a maze of doubt.&rdquo;&nbsp; These
+indications of an overtaxed brain increased, and eventually
+forced Borrow to leave London.&nbsp; His work was thoroughly
+uncongenial.&nbsp; He disliked reviewing; he had failed in his
+endeavours to render <i>Proximate Causes</i> into intelligible
+German; and it had taken him some time to overcome his dislike of
+the sordid stories of crime and criminals that he had to read and
+edit.&nbsp; He became gloomy and depressed, and prone to compare
+the real conditions of authorship with those that his imagination
+had conjured up.</p>
+<p>The most important result of his labours in connection with
+<i>Celebrated Trials</i> was that upon his literary style.&nbsp;
+There is a tremendous significance in the following
+passage.&nbsp; It tells of the transition of the actual vagabond
+into the literary vagabond, with power to express in words what
+proved so congenial to Borrow&rsquo;s vagabond temperament:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Of all my occupations at this period I am
+free to confess I liked that of compiling the Newgate Lives and
+Trials [Celebrated Trials] the best; that is, after I had
+surmounted a kind of prejudice which I originally
+entertained.&nbsp; The trials were entertaining enough; but the
+lives&mdash;how full were they of wild and racy adventures, and
+in what racy, genuine language were they told.&nbsp; What struck
+me most with respect to these lives was the art which the
+writers, whoever they were, possessed of telling a plain
+story.&nbsp; It is no easy thing to tell a story plainly and
+distinctly by mouth; but to tell one on paper is difficult
+indeed, so many snares lie in the way.&nbsp; People are afraid to
+put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish their
+narratives, as they think, by philosophic speculations and
+reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are
+anxious to shine can never tell a plain story.&nbsp; &lsquo;So I
+went with them to a music booth, where they made me almost drunk
+with gin, and began to talk their flash language, which I did not
+understand,&rsquo; <a name="citation52a"></a><a
+href="#footnote52a" class="citation">[52a]</a> says, or is made
+to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before
+the time of which I am speaking.&nbsp; I have always looked upon
+this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so
+concise and yet so clear.&rdquo; <a name="citation52b"></a><a
+href="#footnote52b" class="citation">[52b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>By the time the work was published and Borrow had been paid
+his fee, all relations between editor and publisher had ceased,
+and there was &ldquo;a poor author, or rather philologist, upon
+the streets of London, possessed of many tongues,&rdquo; which he
+found &ldquo;of no use in the world.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation52c"></a><a href="#footnote52c"
+class="citation">[52c]</a>&nbsp; A month after the appearance of
+<i>Celebrated Trials</i> (18th April), and a little more than a
+year after his arrival in London, Borrow published a translation
+of Klinger&rsquo;s <i>Faustus</i>. <a name="citation53a"></a><a
+href="#footnote53a" class="citation">[53a]</a>&nbsp; He himself
+gives no particulars as to whether it was commissioned or
+no.&nbsp; It may even have been &ldquo;the Romance in the German
+style&rdquo; from the Green Box.&nbsp; It is known that he
+received payment for it by a bill at five or six months, <a
+name="citation53b"></a><a href="#footnote53b"
+class="citation">[53b]</a> but there is no mention of the
+amount.&nbsp; It would appear that the translation had long been
+projected, for in <i>The Monthly Magazine</i>, July 1824, there
+appeared, in conjunction with the announcement of <i>Celebrated
+Trials</i>, the following paragraph: &ldquo;The editor of the
+preceding has ready for the press, a Life of Faustus, his Death
+and Descent into Hell, which will also appear the next
+winter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><i>Faustus</i> did not meet with a very cordial
+reception.&nbsp; <i>The Literary Gazette</i> (16th July 1825)
+characterised it as &ldquo;another work to which no respectable
+publisher ought to have allowed his name to be put.&nbsp; The
+political allusion and metaphysics, which may have made it
+popular among a low class in Germany, do not sufficiently season
+its lewd scenes and coarse descriptions for British
+palates.&nbsp; We have occasionally publications for the
+fireside,&mdash;these are only fit for the fire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had apparently been in some doubt about certain
+passages, for in a note headed &ldquo;The Translator to the
+Public,&rdquo; he defends the work as moral in its general
+teaching:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The publication of the present volume may
+at first sight appear to require some brief explanation from the
+Translator, inasmuch as the character of the incidents may
+justify such an expectation on the part of the reader.&nbsp; It
+is, therefore, necessary to state that, although scenes of vice
+and crime are here exhibited, it is merely in the hope that they
+may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and unwary from the
+shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked.&nbsp; The work,
+when considered as a whole, is strictly moral.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It must be confessed that Faustus does not err on the side of
+restraint.&nbsp; Many of its scenes might appear &ldquo;lewd . .
+. and coarse&rdquo; to anyone who for a moment allowed his mind
+to wander from the morality of &ldquo;its general
+teaching.&rdquo;&nbsp; The attacks upon the lax morals of the
+priesthood must have proved particularly congenial to the
+translator.</p>
+<p>The more Borrow read his translations of Ab Gwilym, the more
+convinced he became of their merit and the profit they would
+bring to him who published them.&nbsp; The booksellers, however,
+with singular unanimity, declined the risk of introducing to the
+English public either Welsh or Danish ballads; and their
+translator became so shabby in consequence, that he refrained
+from calling upon his friend Arden, for whom he had always
+cherished a very real friendship.&nbsp; He began to lose
+heart.&nbsp; His energy left him and with it went hope.&nbsp; He
+was forced to review his situation.&nbsp; Authorship had
+obviously failed, and he found himself with no reasonable
+prospect of employment.</p>
+<p>There is no episode in Borrow&rsquo;s life that has so
+exercised the minds of commentators and critics as his account of
+the book he terms in <i>Lavengro</i>, <i>The Life and Adventures
+of Joseph Sell</i>, <i>the Great Traveller</i>.&nbsp; Some
+dismiss the whole story as apocryphal; others see in it a grain
+of truth distorted into something of vital importance; whilst
+there are a number of earnest Borrovians that accept the whole
+story as it is written.&nbsp; Dr Knapp has said that Joseph Sell
+&ldquo;was not a book at all, and the author of it never said
+that it was.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was obviously an error, for the
+bookseller is credited with saying, &ldquo;I think I shall
+venture on sending your book to the press,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation55a"></a><a href="#footnote55a"
+class="citation">[55a]</a> referring to it as a
+&ldquo;book&rdquo; four times in nine lines.&nbsp; Again, in
+another place, Borrow describes how he rescued himself
+&ldquo;from peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book,
+an original book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have
+written his <i>Rasselas</i> and Beckford his
+<i>Vathek</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation55b"></a><a
+href="#footnote55b" class="citation">[55b]</a>&nbsp; This removes
+all question of the <i>Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell</i>
+being included in a collection of short stories.&nbsp; The title
+would not be the same, the date is most probably wrongly given,
+as in the case of Marshland Shales; but the general accuracy of
+the account as written seems to be highly probable.&nbsp; Many
+efforts have been made to trace the story; but so far
+unsuccessfully.&nbsp; It must be remembered that Borrow loved to
+stretch the long arm of coincidence; but he loved more than
+anything else a dramatic situation.&nbsp; He was always on the
+look out for effective &ldquo;curtains.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In favour of the story having been actually written, is the
+knowledge that Borrow invented little or nothing.&nbsp;
+Collateral evidence has shown how little he deviated from actual
+happenings, although he did not hesitate to revise dates or
+colour events.&nbsp; The strongest evidence, however, lies in the
+atmosphere of truth that pervades Chapters LV.&ndash;LVII. of
+<i>Lavengro</i>.&nbsp; They are convincing.&nbsp; At one time or
+another during his career, it would appear that Borrow wrote
+against time from grim necessity; otherwise he must have been a
+master of invention, which everything that is known about him
+clearly shows that he was not.</p>
+<p><i>Joseph Sell</i> has disappeared, a most careful search of
+the Registers at Stationers&rsquo; Hall can show no trace of that
+work, or any book that seems to suggest it, and the contemporary
+literary papers render no assistance.</p>
+<p>According to Borrow&rsquo;s own account, one morning on
+getting up he found that he had only half a crown in the
+world.&nbsp; It was this circumstance, coupled with the timely
+notice that he saw affixed to a bookseller&rsquo;s window to the
+effect that &ldquo;A Novel or Tale is much wanted,&rdquo; that
+determined him to endeavour to emulate Dr Johnson and William
+Beckford.&nbsp; He had tired of &ldquo;the Great City,&rdquo; and
+his thoughts turned instinctively to the woods and the fields,
+where he could be free to meditate and muse in solitude.</p>
+<p>When he returned to Milman Street after seeing the
+bookseller&rsquo;s advertisement, he found that his resources had
+been still further reduced to eighteen-pence.&nbsp; He was too
+proud to write home for assistance, he had broken with Sir
+Richard Phillips, and he had no reasonable expectation of
+obtaining employment of any description; for his accomplishments
+found no place in the catalogue of everyday wants.&nbsp; He was a
+proper man with his hands, and knew some score or more
+languages.&nbsp; No matter how he regarded the situation, the
+facts were obvious.&nbsp; Between him and actual starvation there
+was the inconsiderable sum of eighteen-pence and the
+bookseller&rsquo;s advertisement.&nbsp; The gravity of the
+situation banished the cloud of despondency that threatened to
+settle upon him, and also the doubts that presented themselves as
+to whether he possessed the requisite ability to produce what the
+bookseller required.&nbsp; The all-important question was, could
+he exist sufficiently long on eighteen-pence to complete a
+story?&nbsp; Sir Richard Phillips had told him to live on bread
+and water.&nbsp; He now did so.</p>
+<p>For a week he wrote ceaselessly at the <i>Life and Adventures
+of Joseph Sell</i>, <i>the Great Traveller</i>.&nbsp; He wrote
+with the feverish energy of a man who sees the shadow of actual
+starvation cast across his manuscript.&nbsp; When the tale was
+finished there remained the work of revision, and after that,
+worst of all, fears lest the bookseller were already suited.</p>
+<p>Fortune, however, was kind to him, and he was successful in
+extracting for his story the sum of twenty pounds.&nbsp; Borrow
+had not mixed among gypsies for nothing.&nbsp; He, a starving and
+unknown author, succeeded in extracting from a bookseller twenty
+pounds for a story, twice the amount offered by Sir Richard
+Phillips for a novel on the lines of <i>The Dairyman&rsquo;s
+Daughter</i>.&nbsp; It was an achievement.</p>
+<p>The first argument against the story, as related by Borrow, is
+that he was not without resources at the time.&nbsp; Why should
+he be so impoverished a few weeks after receiving payment for
+<i>Celebrated Trials</i>? <a name="citation57"></a><a
+href="#footnote57" class="citation">[57]</a>&nbsp; Above all, why
+did he not realise upon Simpkin &amp; Marshall&rsquo;s bill for
+<i>Faustus</i>?&nbsp; He would have experienced no difficulty in
+discounting a bill accepted by such a firm.&nbsp; It seems hardly
+conceivable that he should preserve this piece of paper when he
+had only eighteen-pence in the world.&nbsp; Everything seems to
+point to the fact that in May 1825 Borrow was not in want of
+money, and if he were not, why did he almost kill himself by
+writing the <i>Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell</i>?&nbsp;
+Again, at that period he had met with no adventures such as might
+be included in the life of a &ldquo;Great Traveller,&rdquo; and
+Borrow was not an inventive writer.&nbsp; Later he possessed
+plenty of material; for there can be no question that he roamed
+about the world for a considerable portion of those seven
+mysterious years of his life that came to be known as the
+&ldquo;Veiled Period.&rdquo;&nbsp; His accuracy as to actual
+occurrences has been so emphasised that this particular argument
+holds considerable significance.</p>
+<p>The strongest evidence against <i>Joseph Sell</i> having been
+written in 1825, however, lies in the fact that Greenwich Fair
+was held on 23rd May, and not 12th May, as given by Dr
+Knapp.&nbsp; By his error Dr Knapp makes Borrow leave London a
+day before the Fair took place that he describes.&nbsp; Borrow
+must have left London on the day following Greenwich Fair (24th
+May).&nbsp; If he left later, then those things which tend to
+confirm his story of the life in the Dingle do not fit in, as
+will be seen.&nbsp; He certainly could not have left before
+Greenwich Fair was held.</p>
+<p>In one of his brother John&rsquo;s letters, written at the end
+of 1829, there is a significant passage, &ldquo;Let me know how
+you sold your manuscript.&rdquo; <a name="citation58"></a><a
+href="#footnote58" class="citation">[58]</a>&nbsp; What
+manuscript is it that is referred to?&nbsp; There is no record of
+George having sold a manuscript in the autumn of 1829.&nbsp; The
+passage can scarcely have reference to some article or
+translation; it seems to suggest something of importance, an
+event in George&rsquo;s life that his brother is anxious to know
+more about.&nbsp; If this be <i>Joseph Sell</i>, then it explains
+where Borrow got the money from to go up to London at the end of
+1829, when he entered into relations with Dr Bowring.&nbsp; It is
+merely a theory, it must be confessed; but there is certain
+evidence that seems to support it.&nbsp; In the first place,
+Borrow was a chronicler before all else.&nbsp; He possessed an
+amazing memory and a great gift for turning his experiences into
+literary material.&nbsp; If he coloured facts, he appears to have
+done so unconsciously, to judge from those portions of <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i> that were covered by letters to the Bible
+Society.&nbsp; Not only are the facts the same, but, with very
+slight changes, the words in which he relates them.&nbsp; He
+never hesitated to change a date if it served his purpose, much
+as an artist will change the position of a tree in a landscape to
+suit the exigencies of composition.&nbsp; His five volumes of
+autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they
+were actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius
+on record for attracting to himself strange adventures.&nbsp; He
+met the sailor son of the old Apple-Woman returning from his
+enforced exile; Murtagh tells him of how the postilion frightened
+the Pope at Rome by his denunciation, a story Borrow had already
+heard from the postilion himself; the Hungarian at Horncastle
+narrates how an Armenian once silenced a Moldavian, the same
+Moldavian whom Borrow had encountered in London; the postilion
+meets the man in black again.&nbsp; There are scores of such
+coincidences, which must be accepted as dramatic
+embellishments.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
+MAY&ndash;SEPTEMBER 1825</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Fourteen</span> months in London had shown
+Borrow how hard was the road of authorship.&nbsp; He confessed
+that he was not &ldquo;formed by nature to be a pallid indoor
+student.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The peculiar atmosphere of the big
+city&rdquo; did not agree with him, and this fact, together with
+the anxiety and hard work of the past twelve months, caused him
+to flag, and his first thought was how to recover his
+health.&nbsp; He was disillusioned as to the busy world, and the
+opportunities it offered to a young man fired with ambition to
+make a stir in it.&nbsp; He determined to leave London, which he
+did towards the end of May, <a name="citation60"></a><a
+href="#footnote60" class="citation">[60]</a> first despatching
+his trunk &ldquo;containing a few clothes and books to the old
+town [Norwich].&rdquo;&nbsp; He struck out in a south-westerly
+direction, musing on his achievements as an author, and finding
+that in having preserved his independence and health, he had
+&ldquo;abundant cause to be grateful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Throughout his life Borrow was hypnotised by
+independence.&nbsp; Like many other proud natures, he carried his
+theory of independence to such an extreme as to become a slave to
+it and render himself unsociable, sometimes churlish.&nbsp; It
+was this virtue carried to excess that drove Borrow from
+London.&nbsp; He must tell men what was in his mind, and his one
+patron, Sir Richard Phillips, he had mortally offended in this
+manner.</p>
+<p>Finding that he was unequal to much fatigue, after a few
+hours&rsquo; walking he hailed a passing coach, which took him as
+far as Amesbury in Wiltshire.&nbsp; From here he walked to
+Stonehenge and on to Salisbury, &ldquo;inspecting the curiosities
+of the place,&rdquo; and endeavouring by sleep and good food to
+make up the wastage of the last few months.&nbsp; The weather was
+fine and his health and spirits rapidly improved as he tramped
+on, his &ldquo;daily journeys varying from twenty to twenty-five
+miles.&rdquo;&nbsp; He encountered the mysterious stranger who
+&ldquo;touched&rdquo; against the evil eye.&nbsp; F. H. Groome
+asserts, on the authority of W. B. Donne, that this was in
+reality William Beckford.&nbsp; Borrow must have met him at some
+other time and place, as he had already left Fonthill in
+1825.&nbsp; It is, however, interesting to recall that Borrow
+himself &ldquo;touched&rdquo; against the evil eye.&nbsp; Mr
+Watts-Dunton has said:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There was nothing that Borrow strove
+against with more energy than the curious impulse, which he seems
+to have shared with Dr Johnson, to touch the objects along his
+path in order to save himself from the evil chance.&nbsp; He
+never conquered the superstition.&nbsp; In walking through
+Richmond Park he would step out of his way constantly to touch a
+tree, and he was offended if the friend he was with seemed to
+observe it.&rdquo; <a name="citation61a"></a><a
+href="#footnote61a" class="citation">[61a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The chance meeting with Jack Slingsby (in fear of his life
+from the Flaming Tinman, and bound by oath not to continue on the
+same beat) gave Borrow the idea of buying out Slingsby, beat,
+plant, pony and all.&nbsp; &ldquo;A tinker is his own master, a
+scholar is not,&rdquo; <a name="citation61b"></a><a
+href="#footnote61b" class="citation">[61b]</a> he remarks, and
+then proceeds to draw tears and moans from the dispirited
+Slingsby and his family by a description of the joys of
+tinkering, &ldquo;the happiest life under heaven . . . pitching
+your tent under the pleasant hedge-row, listening to the song of
+the feathered tribes, collecting all the leaky kettles in the
+neighbourhood, soldering and joining, earning your honest bread
+by the wholesome sweat of your brow.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation62a"></a><a href="#footnote62a"
+class="citation">[62a]</a></p>
+<p>By the expenditure of five pounds ten shillings, plus the cost
+of a smock-frock and some provisions, George Borrow, linguist,
+editor and translator, became a travelling tinker.&nbsp; With his
+dauntless little pony, Ambrol, he set out, a tinkering Ulysses,
+indifferent to what direction he took, allowing the pony to go
+whither he felt inclined.&nbsp; At first he experienced some
+apprehension at passing the night with only a tent or the stars
+as a roof.&nbsp; Rain fell to mar the opening day of the
+adventure, but the pony, with unerring instinct, led his new
+master to one of Slingsby&rsquo;s usual camping grounds.</p>
+<p>In the morning Borrow fell to examining what it was beyond the
+pony and cart that his five pounds ten shillings had
+purchased.&nbsp; He found a tent, a straw mattress and a blanket,
+&ldquo;quite clean and nearly new.&rdquo;&nbsp; There were also a
+frying-pan, a kettle, a teapot (broken in three pieces) and some
+cups and saucers.&nbsp; The stock-in-trade &ldquo;consisted of
+various tools, an iron ladle, a chafing-pan, and small bellows,
+sundry pans and kettles, the latter being of tin, with the
+exception of one which was of copper, all in a state of
+considerable dilapidation.&rdquo;&nbsp; The pans and kettles were
+to be sold after being mended, for which purpose there was
+&ldquo;a block of tin, sheet-tin, and solder.&rdquo;&nbsp; But
+most precious of all his possessions was &ldquo;a small anvil and
+bellows of the kind which are used in forges, and two hammers
+such as smiths use, one great, and the other small.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation62b"></a><a href="#footnote62b"
+class="citation">[62b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow had learned the
+blacksmith&rsquo;s art when in Ireland, and the anvil, bellows
+and smith&rsquo;s hammers were to prove extremely useful.</p>
+<p>A few days after pitching his tent, Borrow received from his
+old enemy Mrs Herne, Mr Petulengro&rsquo;s mother-in-law, a
+poisoned cake, which came very near to ending his career.&nbsp;
+He then encountered the Welsh preacher (&ldquo;the worthiest
+creature I ever knew&rdquo;) and his wife, who were largely
+instrumental in saving him from Mrs Herne&rsquo;s poison.&nbsp;
+Having remained with his new friends for nine days, he
+accompanied them as far as the Welsh border, where he confessed
+himself the translator of Ab Gwilym, giving as an excuse for not
+accompanying them further that it was &ldquo;neither fit nor
+proper that I cross into Wales at this time, and in this
+manner.&nbsp; When I go into Wales, I should wish to go in a new
+suit of superfine black, with hat and beaver, mounted on a
+powerful steed, black and glossy, like that which bore Greduv to
+the fight of Catraeth.&nbsp; I should wish, moreover,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;to see the Welshmen assembled on the border
+ready to welcome me with pipe and fiddle, and much whooping and
+shouting, and to attend me to Wrexham, or even as far as
+Machynllaith, where I should wish to be invited to a dinner at
+which all the bards should be present, and to be seated at the
+right hand of the president, who, when the cloth was removed,
+should arise, and amidst cries of silence,
+exclaim&mdash;&lsquo;Brethren and Welshmen, allow me to propose
+the health of my most respectable friend the translator of the
+odes of the great Ab Gwilym, the pride and glory of
+Wales.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation63a"></a><a
+href="#footnote63a" class="citation">[63a]</a></p>
+<p>He returned with Mr Petulengro, who directed him to Mumber
+Lane (Mumper&rsquo;s Dingle), near Willenhall, in Staffordshire,
+&ldquo;the little dingle by the side of the great north
+road.&rdquo;&nbsp; Here Borrow encamped and shod little Ambrol,
+who kicked him over as a reminder of his clumsiness.</p>
+<p>He had refused an invitation from Mr Petulengro to become a
+Romany <i>chal</i> and take a Romany bride, the granddaughter of
+his would-be murderess, who &ldquo;occasionally talked of&rdquo;
+him.&nbsp; He yearned for solitude and the country&rsquo;s
+quiet.&nbsp; He told Mr Petulengro that he desired only some
+peaceful spot where he might hold uninterrupted communion with
+his own thoughts, and practise, if so inclined, either tinkering
+or the blacksmith&rsquo;s art, and he had been directed to
+Mumper&rsquo;s Dingle, which was to become the setting of the
+most romantic episode in his life.</p>
+<p>In the dingle Borrow experienced one of his worst attacks of
+the &ldquo;Horrors&rdquo;&mdash;the &ldquo;Screaming
+Horrors.&rdquo;&nbsp; He raged like a madman, a prey to some
+indefinable, intangible fear; clinging to his &ldquo;little horse
+as if for safety and protection.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation64a"></a><a href="#footnote64a"
+class="citation">[64a]</a>&nbsp; He had not recovered from the
+prostrating effects of that night of tragedy when he was called
+upon to fight Anselo Herne, &ldquo;the Flaming Tinman,&rdquo; who
+somehow or other seemed to be part of the bargain he had made
+with Jack Slingsby, and encounter the queen of road-girls, Isopel
+Berners.&nbsp; The description of the fight has been proclaimed
+the finest in our language, and by some the finest in the
+world&rsquo;s literature.</p>
+<p>Isopel Berners is one of the great heroines of English
+Literature.&nbsp; As drawn by Borrow, with her strong arm,
+lion-like courage and tender tearfulness, she is unique.&nbsp;
+However true or false the account of her relations with Borrow
+may be, she is drawn by him as a living woman.&nbsp; He was
+incapable of conceiving her from his imagination.&nbsp; It may go
+unquestioned that he actually met an Isopel Berners, <a
+name="citation64b"></a><a href="#footnote64b"
+class="citation">[64b]</a> but whether or no his parting from her
+was as heart-rendingly tragic as he has depicted it, is open to
+very grave question.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p64b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Mumber Lane (Mumper&rsquo;s Dingle)"
+title=
+"Mumber Lane (Mumper&rsquo;s Dingle)"
+ src="images/p64s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>With this queen of the roads he seems to have been less
+reticent and more himself than with any other of his vagabond
+acquaintance, not excepting even Mr Petulengro.&nbsp; To the
+handsome, tall girl with &ldquo;the flaxen hair, which hung down
+over her shoulders unconfined,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;determined
+but open expression,&rdquo; he showed a more amiable side of his
+character; yet he seems to have treated her with no little
+cruelty.&nbsp; He told her about himself, how he &ldquo;had tamed
+savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with
+ferocious publishers,&rdquo; bringing tears to her eyes, and when
+she grew too curious, he administered an antidote in the form of
+a few Armenian numerals.&nbsp; If his <i>Autobiography</i> is to
+be credited, Isopel loved him, and he was aware of it; but the
+knowledge did not hinder him from torturing the poor girl by
+insisting that she should decline the verb &ldquo;to love&rdquo;
+in Armenian.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s attitude towards Isopel was curiously complex;
+he seemed to find pleasure in playing upon her emotions.&nbsp; At
+times he appeared as deliberately brutal to her, as to the gypsy
+girl Ursula when he talked with her beneath the hedge.&nbsp; He
+forced from Isopel a passionate rebuke that he sought only to vex
+and irritate &ldquo;a poor ignorant girl . . . who can scarcely
+read or write.&rdquo;&nbsp; He asked her to marry him, but not
+until he had convinced her that he was mad.&nbsp; How much she
+had become part of his life in the dingle he did not seem to
+realise until after she had left him.&nbsp; Isopel Berners was a
+woman whose character was almost masculine in its strength; but
+she was prepared to subdue her spirit to his, wished to do so
+even.&nbsp; With her strength, however, there was wisdom, and she
+left Borrow and the dingle, sending him a letter of farewell that
+was certainly not the composition of &ldquo;a poor girl&rdquo;
+who could &ldquo;scarcely read or write.&rdquo;&nbsp; The story
+itself is in all probability true; but the letter rings
+false.&nbsp; Isopel may have sent Borrow a letter of farewell,
+but not the one that appears in <i>The Romany Rye</i>.</p>
+<p>Among Borrow&rsquo;s papers Dr Knapp discovered a fragment of
+manuscript in which Mr Petulengro is shown deliberating upon the
+expediency of emulating King Pharaoh in the number of his
+wives.&nbsp; Mrs Petulengro desires &ldquo;a little pleasant
+company,&rdquo; and urges her husband to take a second
+spouse.&nbsp; He proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Now I am thinking that this here Bess of
+yours would be just the kind of person both for my wife and
+myself.&nbsp; My wife wants something <i>gorgiko</i>, something
+genteel.&nbsp; Now Bess is of blood gorgious; if you doubt it,
+look at her face, all full of <i>pawno ratter</i>, white blood,
+brother; and as for gentility, nobody can make exceptions to
+Bess&rsquo;s gentility, seeing she was born in the workhouse of
+Melford the Short.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr Petulengro sees in Bess another advantage.&nbsp; If
+&ldquo;the Flaming Tinman&rdquo; <a name="citation66a"></a><a
+href="#footnote66a" class="citation">[66a]</a> were to descend
+upon them, as he once did, with the offer to fight the best of
+them for nothing, and Tawno Chikno were absent, who was to fight
+him?&nbsp; Mr Petulengro could not do so for less than five
+pounds; but with Bess as a second wife the problem would be
+solved.&nbsp; She would fight &ldquo;the Flaming
+Tinman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This proves nothing, one way or the other, and can scarcely be
+said to &ldquo;dispel any allusions,&rdquo; as Dr Knapp suggests,
+or confirm the story of Isopel.&nbsp; Why did Borrow omit it from
+Lavengro?&nbsp; Not from caprice surely.&nbsp; It has been stated
+that those who know the gypsies can vouch for the fact that no
+such suggestion could have been made by a gypsy woman.</p>
+<p>It would appear that Isopel Berners existed, but the account
+of her given by Borrow in Lavengro and The Romany Rye is in all
+probability coloured, just as her stature was heightened by
+him.&nbsp; If she were taller than he, she must have appeared a
+giantess.&nbsp; Borrow was an impressionist, and he has probably
+succeeded far better in giving a faithful picture of Isopel
+Berners than if he had been photographically accurate in his
+measurements.</p>
+<p>According to Borrow&rsquo;s own account, he left Willenhall
+mounted upon a fine horse, purchased with money lent to him by Mr
+Petulengro, a small valise strapped to the saddle, and
+&ldquo;some desire to meet with one of those adventures which
+upon the roads of England are generally as plentiful as
+blackberries.&rdquo;&nbsp; From this point, however, <i>The
+Romany Rye</i> becomes dangerous as autobiography. <a
+name="citation66b"></a><a href="#footnote66b"
+class="citation">[66b]</a></p>
+<p>For one thing, it was unlike Borrow to remain in debt, and it
+is incredible that he should have ridden away upon a horse
+purchased with another man&rsquo;s money, without any set purpose
+in his mind.&nbsp; Therefore the story of his employment at the
+Swan Inn, Stafford, where he found his postilion friend, and the
+subsequent adventures must be reluctantly sacrificed.&nbsp; They
+do not ring true, nor do they fit in with the rest of the
+story.&nbsp; That he experienced such adventures is highly
+probable; but it is equally probable that he took some liberty
+with the dates.</p>
+<p>Up to the point where he purchases the horse, Borrow&rsquo;s
+story is convincing; but from there onwards it seems to go to
+pieces, that is as autobiography.&nbsp; The arrival of Ardry
+(Arden) at the inn, <a name="citation67a"></a><a
+href="#footnote67a" class="citation">[67a]</a> <i>passing through
+Stafford on his way to Warwick</i> to be present at a dog and
+lion fight that had already taken place (26th July), is in itself
+enough to shake our confidence in the whole episode of the
+inn.&nbsp; In <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i> Mr Petulengro is made
+to say:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen
+years ago, when you made horseshoes in the little dingle by the
+side of the great north road, I lent you fifty cottors [guineas]
+to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the
+green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two
+hundred.&nbsp; Well, brother, if you had wanted the two hundred
+instead of the fifty, I could have lent them to you, and would
+have done so, for I knew you would not be long pazorrhus
+[indebted] to me.&rdquo; <a name="citation67b"></a><a
+href="#footnote67b" class="citation">[67b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It seems more in accordance with Borrow&rsquo;s character to
+repay the loan within three days than to continue in Mr
+Petulengro&rsquo;s debt for weeks, at one time making no actual
+effort to realise upon the horse.&nbsp; The question as to
+whether Borrow received a hundred and fifty (as he himself
+states) or two hundred pounds is immaterial.&nbsp; It is quite
+likely that he sold the horse before he left the dingle, and that
+the adventures he narrates may be true in all else save the
+continued possession of his steed, that is, with the exception of
+the Francis Ardry episode, the encounter with the man in black,
+and the arrival at Horncastle during the fair.&nbsp; If Borrow
+left London on 24th May, and he could not have left earlier, as
+has been shown, he must have visited the Fair (Tamworth) with Mr
+Petulengro on 26th July, and set out from Willenhall about 2nd
+August.</p>
+<p>It has been pointed out by that distinguished scholar and
+gentleman-gypsy, Mr John Sampson, <a name="citation68"></a><a
+href="#footnote68" class="citation">[68]</a> that as the Horse
+Fair at Horncastle was held 12th&ndash;21st August, if Borrow
+took the horse there it could not have been in the manner
+described in <i>The Romany Rye</i>, where he is shown as spending
+some considerable time at the inn, if we may judge by the
+handsome cheque (&pound;10) offered to him by the landlord as a
+bonus on account of his services.&nbsp; Then there was the
+accident and the consequent lying-up at the house of the man who
+knew Chinese, but could not tell what o&rsquo;clock it was.&nbsp;
+To confirm Borrow&rsquo;s itinerary all this must have been
+crowded into less than three weeks, fully a third of which Borrow
+spent in recovering from his fall.&nbsp; This would mean that for
+less than a fortnight&rsquo;s work, the innkeeper offered him ten
+pounds as a gratuity, in addition to the bargain he had made,
+which included the horse&rsquo;s keep.</p>
+<p>Mr Sampson has supported his itinerary with several very
+important pieces of evidence.&nbsp; Borrow states in
+<i>Lavengro</i> that &ldquo;a young moon gave a feeble
+light&rdquo; as he mounted the coach that was to take him to
+Amesbury.&nbsp; The moon was in its first quarter on 24th
+May.&nbsp; There actually was a great thunderstorm in the
+Willenhall district about the time that Borrow describes (18th
+July).&nbsp; It is Mr Sampson also who has identified the fair to
+which Borrow went with the gypsies as that held at Tamworth on
+26th July.</p>
+<p>Whatever else Borrow may have been doing immediately after
+leaving the dingle, he appears to have been much occupied in
+speculating as to the future.&nbsp; Was he not &ldquo;sadly
+misspending his time?&rdquo;&nbsp; He was forced to the
+conclusion that he had done nothing else throughout his life but
+misspend his time.&nbsp; He was ambitious.&nbsp; He chafed at his
+narrow life.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh! what a vast deal may be done with
+intellect, courage, riches, accompanied by the desire of doing
+something great and good!&rdquo; <a name="citation69a"></a><a
+href="#footnote69a" class="citation">[69a]</a> he exclaims, and
+his thoughts turned instinctively to the career of his old
+school-fellow, Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. <a
+name="citation69b"></a><a href="#footnote69b"
+class="citation">[69b]</a>&nbsp; He was now, by his own
+confession, &ldquo;a moody man, bearing on my face, as I well
+knew, the marks of my strivings and my strugglings, of what I had
+learnt and unlearnt.&rdquo; <a name="citation69c"></a><a
+href="#footnote69c" class="citation">[69c]</a>&nbsp; He
+recognised the possibilities that lay in every man, only awaiting
+the hour when they should be called forth.&nbsp; He believed
+implicitly in the power of the will. <a name="citation69d"></a><a
+href="#footnote69d" class="citation">[69d]</a>&nbsp; He possessed
+ambition and a fine workable theory of how success was to be
+obtained; but he lacked initiative.&nbsp; He expected fortune to
+wait for him on the high-road, just as he knew adventures awaited
+him.&nbsp; He would not go &ldquo;across the country,&rdquo; to
+use a phrase of the time common to postilions.&nbsp; He was too
+independent, perhaps too sensitive of being patronised, to seek
+employment.&nbsp; That he cared &ldquo;for nothing in this world
+but old words and strange stories,&rdquo; was an error into which
+his friend Mr Petulengro might well fall.&nbsp; The mightiness of
+the man&rsquo;s pride could be covered only by a cloak of assumed
+indifference.&nbsp; He must be independent of the world, not only
+in material things, but in those intangible qualities of the
+spirit.&nbsp; It was this that lost him Isopel Berners, whose
+love he awakened by a strong right arm and quenched with an
+Armenian noun.&nbsp; Again, his independence stood in the way of
+his happiness.&nbsp; A man is a king, he seemed to think, and the
+attribute of kings is their splendid isolation, their godlike
+solitude.&nbsp; If his Ego were lonely and crying out for
+sympathy, Borrow thought it a moment for solitude, in which to
+discipline his insurgent spirit.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Horrors&rdquo;
+were the result of this self-repression.&nbsp; When they became
+unbearable, his spirit broke down, the yearning for sympathy and
+affection overmastered him, and he stumbled to his little horse
+in the desolate dingle, and found comfort in the faithful
+creature&rsquo;s whinny of sympathy and its affectionate licking
+of his hand.&nbsp; The strong man clung to his dumb brute friend
+as a protection against the unknown horror&mdash;the screaming
+horror that had gripped him.</p>
+<p>One quality Borrow possessed in common with many other men of
+strange and taciturn personality.&nbsp; He could always make
+friends when he chose.&nbsp; Ostlers, scholars, farmers, gypsies;
+it mattered not one jot to him what, or who they were.&nbsp; He
+could earn their respect and obtain their good-will, if he wished
+to do so.&nbsp; He demanded of men that they should have done
+things, or be capable of doing things.&nbsp; They must know
+everything there was to be known about some one thing; and the
+ostler, than whom none could groom a horse better, was worthy of
+being ranked with the best man in the land.&nbsp; He demanded of
+every man that he should justify his existence, and was logical
+in his attitude, save in the insignificant particular that he
+applied the same rule to himself only in theory.</p>
+<p>He was shrewd and a good judge of character, provided it were
+Protestant character, and could hold his own with a Jew or a
+Gypsy.&nbsp; He was fully justified in his boast of being able to
+take &ldquo;precious good care of&rdquo; himself, and
+&ldquo;drive a precious hard bargain&rdquo;; yet these qualities
+were not to find a market until he was thirty years of age.</p>
+<p>Sometime during the autumn (1825) Borrow returned to Norwich,
+where he busied himself with literary affairs, among other things
+writing to the publishers of <i>Faustus</i> about the bill that
+was shortly to fall due.&nbsp; The fact of the book having been
+destroyed at both the Norwich libraries, gave him the idea that
+he might make some profit by selling copies of the suppressed
+volume.&nbsp; Hence his offer to Simpkin &amp; Marshall to take
+copies in lieu of money.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
+SEPTEMBER 1825&ndash;DECEMBER 1832</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">From</span> the autumn of 1825 until the
+winter of 1832, when he obtained an introduction to the British
+&amp; Foreign Bible Society, only fragmentary details of
+Borrow&rsquo;s life exist.&nbsp; He decided to keep sacred to
+himself the &ldquo;Veiled Period,&rdquo; as it came to be
+called.&nbsp; In all probability it was a time of great hardship
+and mortification, and he wished it to be thought that the whole
+period was devoted to &ldquo;a grand philological
+expedition,&rdquo; or expeditions.&nbsp; There is no doubt that
+some portion of the mysterious epoch was so spent, but not
+all.&nbsp; Many of the adventures ascribed to characters in
+<i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i> were, most probably,
+Borrow&rsquo;s own experiences during that period of mystery and
+misfortune.&nbsp; Time after time he was implored to &ldquo;lift
+up a corner of the curtain&rdquo;; but he remained obdurate, and
+the seven years are in his life what the New Orleans days were in
+that of Walt Whitman.</p>
+<p>Soon after his return to Norwich, Borrow seems to have turned
+his attention to the manuscripts in the green box.&nbsp; In the
+days of happy augury, before he had quarrelled with Sir Richard
+Phillips, there had appeared in <i>The Monthly Magazine</i> the
+two following paragraphs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We have heard and seen much of the legends
+and popular superstitions of the North, but, in truth, all the
+exhibitions of these subjects which have hitherto appeared in
+England have been translations from the German.&nbsp; Mr Olaus
+Borrow, who is familiar with the Northern Languages, proposes,
+however, to present these curious reliques of romantic antiquity
+directly from the Danish and Swedish, and two elegant volumes of
+them now printing will appear in September.&nbsp; They are highly
+interesting in themselves, but more so as the basis of most of
+the popular superstitions of England, when they were introduced
+during the incursions and dominion of the Danes and
+Norwegians.&rdquo;&nbsp; (1st September 1824.)</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We have to acknowledge the favour of a beautiful
+collection of Danish songs and ballads, of which a specimen will
+be seen among the poetical articles of the present month.&nbsp;
+One, or more, of these very interesting translations will appear
+in each succeeding number.&rdquo;&nbsp; (1st December 1824.)</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It seems to have been Borrow&rsquo;s plan to run his ballads
+serially through <i>The Monthly Magazine</i> and then to publish
+them in book-form.&nbsp; His initial contribution to <i>The
+Monthly Magazine</i> had appeared in October 1823.&nbsp; The
+first of the articles, entitled &ldquo;Danish Traditions and
+Superstitions,&rdquo; appeared August 1824, and continued, with
+the omission of one or two months, until December 1825, there
+being in all nine articles; but there was only one instalment of
+&ldquo;Danish Songs and Ballads.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation73"></a><a href="#footnote73"
+class="citation">[73]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow was determined that these ballads, at least, should be
+published, and he set to work to prepare them for the
+press.&nbsp; Allan Cunningham, with whom Borrow was acquainted,
+contributed, at his request, a metrical dedication.&nbsp; The
+volume appeared on 10th May, in an edition of five hundred copies
+at ten shillings and sixpence each.&nbsp; It appears that some
+two hundred copies were subscribed for, thus ensuring the cost of
+production.&nbsp; The balance, or a large proportion of it, was
+consigned to John Taylor, the London publisher, who printed a new
+title-page and sold them at seven shillings each, probably the
+trade price for a half-guinea book.</p>
+<p>Cunningham wrote to Borrow advising him to send out freely
+copies for review, and with each a note saying that it was the
+translator&rsquo;s ultimate intention to publish an English
+version of the whole <i>Ki&aelig;mpe Viser</i> with notes; also
+to &ldquo;scatter a few judiciously among literary
+men.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is doubtful if this sage counsel were acted
+upon; for there is no record of any review or announcement of the
+work.&nbsp; This in itself was not altogether a misfortune; for
+Borrow did not prove himself an inspired translator of
+verse.&nbsp; Apart from the two hundred copies sold to
+subscribers, the book was still-born.</p>
+<p>After the publication of <i>Romantic Ballads</i>, Borrow
+appears to have returned to London, not to his old lodging at
+Milman Street, possibly on account of the associations, but to 26
+Bryanston Street, Portman Square, from which address he wrote to
+Benjamin Haydon the following note:&mdash;<a
+name="citation74"></a><a href="#footnote74"
+class="citation">[74]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;</p>
+<p>I should feel extremely obliged if you would allow me to sit
+to you as soon as possible.&nbsp; I am going to the South of
+France in little better than a fortnight, and I would sooner lose
+a thousand pounds than not have the honour of appearing in the
+picture.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In his account of how he first became acquainted with Haydon,
+Borrow shows himself as anything but desirous of appearing in a
+picture.&nbsp; When John tells of the artist&rsquo;s wish to
+include him as one of the characters in a painting upon which he
+is engaged, Borrow replies: &ldquo;I have no wish to appear on
+canvas.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is probable that in some way or other
+Haydon offended his sitter, who, regretting his acquiescence,
+antedated the episode and depicted himself as refusing the
+invitation.&nbsp; Such a liberty with fact and date would be
+quite in accordance with Borrow&rsquo;s autobiographical
+methods.</p>
+<p>Borrow wrote in <i>Lavengro</i>, &ldquo;I have been a wanderer
+the greater part of my life; indeed I remember only two periods,
+and these by no means lengthy, when I was, strictly speaking,
+stationary.&rdquo; <a name="citation75a"></a><a
+href="#footnote75a" class="citation">[75a]</a>&nbsp; One of the
+&ldquo;two periods&rdquo; was obviously the eight years spent at
+Norwich, 1816&ndash;24, the other is probably the years spent at
+Oulton.&nbsp; Thus the &ldquo;Veiled Period&rdquo; may be assumed
+to have been one of wandering.&nbsp; The seven years are gloomy
+and mysterious, but not utterly dark.&nbsp; There is a hint here,
+a suggestion there&mdash;a letter or a paragraph, that gives in a
+vague way some idea of what Borrow was doing, and where.&nbsp; It
+seems comparatively safe to assume that after the publication of
+<i>Romantic Ballads</i> he plunged into a life of roving and
+vagabondage, which, in all probability, was brought to an abrupt
+termination by either the loss or the exhaustion of his
+money.&nbsp; Anything beyond this is pure conjecture. <a
+name="citation75b"></a><a href="#footnote75b"
+class="citation">[75b]</a></p>
+<p>After he became associated with the British &amp; Foreign
+Bible Society, his movements are easily accounted for; but all we
+have to guide us as to what countries he had seen before 1833 is
+an occasional hint.&nbsp; He casually admits having been in
+Italy, <a name="citation75c"></a><a href="#footnote75c"
+class="citation">[75c]</a> at Bayonne, <a
+name="citation75d"></a><a href="#footnote75d"
+class="citation">[75d]</a> Paris, <a name="citation75e"></a><a
+href="#footnote75e" class="citation">[75e]</a> Madrid, <a
+name="citation75f"></a><a href="#footnote75f"
+class="citation">[75f]</a> the south of France. <a
+name="citation75g"></a><a href="#footnote75g"
+class="citation">[75g]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;I have visited most of
+the principal capitals of the world,&rdquo; he writes in 1843;
+and again in the same year, &ldquo;I have heard the ballad of
+Alonzo Guzman chanted in Danish, by a hind in the wilds of
+Jutland.&rdquo; <a name="citation76a"></a><a href="#footnote76a"
+class="citation">[76a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;I have lived in different
+parts of the world, much amongst the Hebrew race, and I am well
+acquainted with their words and phraseology,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation76b"></a><a href="#footnote76b"
+class="citation">[76b]</a> he writes; and on another occasion:
+&ldquo;I have seen gypsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian,
+and Turkish; and I have also seen the legitimate children of most
+countries of the world.&rdquo; <a name="citation76c"></a><a
+href="#footnote76c" class="citation">[76c]</a>&nbsp; An even more
+significant admission is that made when Colonel Elers Napier,
+whom Borrow met in Seville in 1839, enquired where he had
+obtained his knowledge of Moultanee.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some years ago,
+in Moultan,&rdquo; was the reply; then, as if regretting that he
+had confessed so much, showed by his manner that he intended to
+divulge nothing more. <a name="citation76d"></a><a
+href="#footnote76d" class="citation">[76d]</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once, during my own wanderings in Italy,&rdquo; Borrow
+writes, &ldquo;I rested at nightfall by the side of a kiln, the
+air being piercingly cold; it was about four leagues from
+Genoa.&rdquo; <a name="citation76e"></a><a href="#footnote76e"
+class="citation">[76e]</a>&nbsp; Again, &ldquo;Once in the south
+of France, when I was weary, hungry, and penniless, I observed
+one of these last patterans <a name="citation76f"></a><a
+href="#footnote76f" class="citation">[76f]</a> [a cross marked in
+the dust], and following the direction pointed out, arrived at
+the resting-place of &lsquo;certain Bohemians,&rsquo; by whom I
+was received with kindness and hospitality, on the faith of no
+other word of recommendation than patteran.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation76g"></a><a href="#footnote76g"
+class="citation">[76g]</a>&nbsp; In a letter of introduction to
+the Rev. E. Whitely, of Oporto, the Rev. Andrew Brandram, of the
+Bible Society, wrote in 1835: &ldquo;With Portugal he [Borrow] is
+already acquainted, and speaks the language.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+statement is significant, for only during the &ldquo;Veiled
+Period&rdquo; could Borrow have visited Portugal.</p>
+<p>It may be argued that Borrow was merely posing as a great
+traveller, but the foregoing remarks are too casual, too much in
+the nature of asides, to be the utterances of a poseur.&nbsp; A
+man seeking to impress himself upon the world as a great
+traveller would probably have been a little more definite.</p>
+<p>The only really reliable information as to Borrow&rsquo;s
+movements after his arrival in London is contained in the note to
+Haydon.&nbsp; In all probability he went to Paris, where possibly
+he met Vidocq, the master-rogue turned detective. <a
+name="citation77a"></a><a href="#footnote77a"
+class="citation">[77a]</a>&nbsp; It has been suggested by Dr
+Knapp that he went to Paris, and thence on foot to Bayonne and
+Madrid, after which he tramped to Pamplona, where he gets into
+trouble, is imprisoned, and is released on condition that he
+leave the country; he proceeds towards Marseilles and Genoa,
+where he takes ship and is landed safely in London.&nbsp; The
+data, however, upon which this itinerary is constructed are too
+frail to be convincing.&nbsp; There is every probability that he
+roamed about the Continent and met with adventures&mdash;he was a
+man to whom adventures gravitated quite naturally&mdash;but the
+fact of his saying that he had been imprisoned on three
+occasions, and there being only two instances on record at the
+time, cannot in itself be considered as conclusive evidence of
+his having been arrested at Pamplona. <a
+name="citation77b"></a><a href="#footnote77b"
+class="citation">[77b]</a></p>
+<p>In the spring of 1827 Borrow was unquestionably at Norwich,
+for he saw the famous trotting stallion Marshland Shales on the
+Castle Hill (12th April), and did for that grand horse
+&ldquo;what I would neither do for earl or baron, doffed my
+hat.&rdquo; <a name="citation78"></a><a href="#footnote78"
+class="citation">[78]</a>&nbsp; Borrow apparently remained with
+his mother for some months, to judge from certain entries (29th
+September to 19th November) in his hand that appear in her
+account books.</p>
+<p>In December 1829 he was back again in London at 77 Great
+Russell Street, W.C.&nbsp; He was as usual eager to obtain some
+sort of work.&nbsp; He wrote to &ldquo;the Committee of the
+Honourable and Praiseworthy Association, known by the name of the
+Highland Society . . . a body animate with patriotism, which,
+guided by philosophy, produces the noblest results, and many of
+whose members stand amongst the very eminent in the various
+departments of knowledge.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The project itself was that of translating into English
+&ldquo;the best and most approved poetry of the Ancient and
+Modern Scoto-Gaelic Bards, with such notes on the usages and
+superstitions therein alluded to, as will enable the English
+reader to form a clear and correct idea of the
+originals.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the course of a rather ornate letter,
+Borrow offers himself as the translator and compiler of such a
+work as he suggests, avowing his willingness to accept whatsoever
+remuneration might be thought adequate compensation for his
+expenditure of time.&nbsp; Furthermore, he undertakes to complete
+the work within a period of two years.</p>
+<p>On 7th December he wrote to Dr Bowring, recently returned from
+Denmark:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Lest I should intrude upon you when you are
+busy, I write to enquire when you will be unoccupied.&nbsp; I
+wish to show you my translation of The Death of Balder,
+Ewald&rsquo;s most celebrated production, which, if you approve
+of, you will perhaps render me some assistance in bringing forth,
+for I don&rsquo;t know many publishers.&nbsp; I think this will
+be a proper time to introduce it to the British public, as your
+account of Danish literature will doubtless cause a
+sensation.&rdquo; <a name="citation79"></a><a href="#footnote79"
+class="citation">[79]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 29th December he wrote again:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When I had last the pleasure of being at
+yours, you mentioned that we might at some future period unite
+our strength in composing a kind of Danish Anthology.&nbsp;
+Suppose we bring forward at once the first volume of the Danish
+Anthology, which should contain the heroic supernatural songs of
+the <i>K</i>[<i>i&aelig;mpe</i>]
+<i>V</i>[<i>iser</i>].&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was suggested that there should be four volumes in all, and
+the first, with an introduction that Borrow expressed himself as
+not ashamed of, was ready and &ldquo;might appear instanter, with
+no further trouble to yourself than writing, if you should think
+fit, a page or two of introductory matter.&rdquo;&nbsp; Dr
+Bowring replied by return of post that he thought that no more
+than two volumes could be ventured on, and Borrow acquiesced,
+writing: &ldquo;The sooner the work is advertised the better,
+<i>for I am terribly afraid of being forestalled in the
+Ki&aelig;mpe Viser by some of those Scotch blackguards</i>, who
+affect to translate from all languages, of which they are fully
+as ignorant as Lockhart is of Spanish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow was full of enthusiasm for the project, and repeated
+that the first volume was ready, adding: &ldquo;If we unite our
+strength in the second, I think we can produce something worthy
+of fame, for we shall have plenty of matter to employ talent
+upon.&rdquo;&nbsp; A later letter, which was written from 7
+Museum Street (8th January), told how he had &ldquo;been obliged
+to decamp from Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution
+having been sent into the house, and I thought myself happy in
+escaping with my things.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He drew up a prospectus, endeavouring &ldquo;to assume a
+Danish style,&rdquo; which he submitted to his collaborator,
+begging him to &ldquo;alter . . . whatever false logic has crept
+into it, find a remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit
+for its intended purpose.&nbsp; I have had for the two last days
+a rising headache which has almost prevented me doing
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It would appear that Dr Bowring did not altogether approve of
+the &ldquo;Danish style,&rdquo; for on 14th January Borrow wrote,
+&ldquo;I approve of the prospectus in every respect; it is
+business-like, and there is nothing flashy in it.&nbsp; I do not
+wish to suggest one alteration . . .&nbsp; When you see the
+foreign Editor,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;I should feel much
+obliged if you would speak to him about my reviewing Tegner, and
+enquire whether a <i>good</i> article on Welsh poetry would be
+received.&nbsp; I have the advantage of not being a
+Welshman.&nbsp; I would speak the truth, and would give
+translations of some of the best Welsh poetry; and I really
+believe that my translations would not be the worst that have
+been made from the Welsh tongue.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The prospectus, which appeared in several publications ran as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Dr Bowring and Mr George Borrow are about
+to publish, dedicated to the King of Denmark, by His
+Majesy&rsquo;s permission, THE SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA, in 2 vols.
+8vo, containing a Selection of the most interesting of the
+Historical and Romantic Ballads of North-Western Europe, with
+Specimens of the Danish and Norwegian Poets down to the present
+day.</p>
+<p>Price to Subscribers, &pound;1, 1s.&mdash;to Non-Subscribers
+&pound;1, 5s.</p>
+<p>The First Volume will be devoted to Ancient Popular Poetry;
+the Second will give the choicest productions of the Modern
+School, beginning with Tullin.&rdquo; <a name="citation81"></a><a
+href="#footnote81" class="citation">[81]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><i>The Songs of Scandinavia</i> now became to Borrow what the
+<i>Celebrated Trials</i> had been four years previously, a source
+of constant toil.&nbsp; On one occasion he writes to Dr Bowring
+telling him that he has just translated an ode &ldquo;as I
+breakfasted.&rdquo;&nbsp; What Borrow lived on at this period it
+is impossible to say.&nbsp; It may be assumed that Mrs Borrow did
+not keep him, for, apart from the slender proportions of the
+income of the mother, the unconquerable independence of the son
+must be considered; and Borrow loved his mother too tenderly to
+allow her to deprive herself of luxuries even to keep him.&nbsp;
+He borrowed money from her at various times; but he subsequently
+faithfully repaid her.&nbsp; Even John was puzzled.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You never tell me what you are doing,&rdquo; he writes to
+his brother at the end of 1832; &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t be living
+on nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow appears to have kept Dr Bowring well occupied with
+suggestions as to how that good-natured man might assist
+him.&nbsp; Although he is to see him on the morrow, he writes on
+the evening of 21st May regarding another idea that has just
+struck him:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As at present no doubt seems to be
+entertained of Prince Leopold&rsquo;s accepting the sovereignty
+of Greece, would you have any objection to write to him
+concerning me?&nbsp; I should be very happy to go to Greece in
+his service.&nbsp; I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic
+capacity, and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such situations
+have been long since filled up; I wish to go in a military one,
+for which I am qualified by birth and early habits.&nbsp; You
+might inform the Prince that I have been for years on the
+Commander-in-Chiefs list for a commission, but that I have not
+had sufficient interest to procure an appointment.&nbsp; One of
+my reasons for wishing to reside in Greece is, that the mines of
+Eastern literature would be accessible to me.&nbsp; I should soon
+become an adept in Turkish, and would weave and transmit to you
+such an anthology as would gladden your very heart.&nbsp; As for
+the <i>Songs of Scandinavia</i>, all the ballads would be ready
+before departure, and as I should have books, I would in a few
+months send you translations of the modern Lyric Poetry.&nbsp; I
+hope this letter will not displease you.&nbsp; I do not write it
+from <i>flightiness</i>, but from thoughtfulness.&nbsp; I am
+uneasy to find myself at four and twenty drifting on the sea of
+the world, and likely to continue so.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 22nd May Dr Bowring introduced Borrow to Dr Grundtvig, the
+Danish poet, who required some transcriptions done.&nbsp; On 7th
+June, Borrow wrote to Dr Bowring:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have looked over Mr Gruntvig&rsquo;s
+(<i>sic</i>) manuscript.&nbsp; It is a very long affair, and the
+language is Norman Saxon.&nbsp; &pound;40 would not be an
+extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told him at the
+Museum.&nbsp; However, as I am doing nothing particular at
+present, and as I might learn something from transcribing it, I
+would do it for &pound;20.&nbsp; He will call on you to-morrow
+morning, and then, if you please, you may recommend me.&nbsp; The
+character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can
+answer for my competency.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>At this time there were a hundred schemes seething through
+Borrow&rsquo;s eager brain.&nbsp; Hearing that &ldquo;an order
+has been issued for the making a transcript of the celebrated
+Anglo-Saxon Codex of Exeter, for the use of the British
+Museum,&rdquo; he applied to some unknown correspondent for his
+interest and help to obtain the appointment as transcriber.&nbsp;
+The work, however, was carried out by a Museum official.</p>
+<p>Another project appears to have been to obtain a post at the
+British Museum.&nbsp; On 9th March 1830 he had written to Dr
+Bowring:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have thought over the Museum matter,
+which we were talking about last night, and it appears to me that
+it would be the very thing for me, provided that it could be
+accomplished.&nbsp; I should feel obliged if you would deliberate
+upon the best mode of proceeding, so that when I see you again I
+may have the benefit of your advice.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In reply Dr Bowring commended the scheme, and promised to
+assist &ldquo;by every sort of counsel and exertion.&nbsp; But it
+would injure you,&rdquo; he proceeds, &ldquo;if I were to take
+the initiative.&nbsp; [The Gibraltar house of Bowring &amp;
+Murdock had recently failed.]&nbsp; Quietly make yourself master
+of that department of the Museum.&nbsp; We must then think of how
+best to get at the Council.&nbsp; If by any management they can
+be induced to ask my opinion, I will give you a character which
+shall take you to the top of Hecla itself.&nbsp; You have claims,
+strong ones, and I should rejoice to see you <i>niched</i> in the
+British Museum.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again failure!&nbsp; Disappointment seemed to be dogging
+Borrow&rsquo;s footsteps at this period.&nbsp; For years past he
+had been seeking some sort of occupation, into which he could
+throw all that energy and determination of character that he
+possessed.&nbsp; He was earnest and able, and he knew that he
+only required an opportunity of showing to the world what manner
+of man he was.&nbsp; He seemed doomed to meet everywhere with
+discouragement; for no one wanted him, just as no one wanted his
+translations of the glorious Ab Gwilym.&nbsp; He appeared before
+the world as a failure, which probably troubled him very little;
+but there was another aspect of the case that was in his eyes,
+&ldquo;the most heartbreaking of everything, the strange, the
+disadvantageous light in which I am aware that I must frequently
+have appeared to those whom I most love and honour.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation83"></a><a href="#footnote83"
+class="citation">[83]</a></p>
+<p>On 14th September he wrote to Dr Bowring:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am going to Norwich for some short time,
+as I am very unwell and hope that cold bathing in October and
+November may prove of service to me.&nbsp; My complaints are, I
+believe, the offspring of ennui and unsettled prospects.&nbsp; I
+have thoughts of attempting to get into the French service, as I
+should like prodigiously to serve under Clausel in the next
+Bedouin campaign.&nbsp; I shall leave London next Sunday and will
+call some evening to take my leave; I cannot come in the morning,
+as early rising kills me.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A year later he writes again to Dr Bowring, who once more has
+been exerting himself on his friend&rsquo;s behalf:</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;<span
+class="smcap">Willow Lane</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Norwich</span>,<br />
+11<i>th</i> <i>September</i> 1831.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Sir</span>,&mdash;</p>
+<p>I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of
+the 2nd inst., and though you have not been successful in your
+application to the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full
+well that you did your utmost, and am only sorry that at my
+instigation you attempted an impossibility.</p>
+<p>The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the
+opinion of the great Cyrus who gives this advice to his
+captains.&nbsp; &lsquo;Take no heed from what countries ye fill
+up your ranks, but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those
+particularly who are of your own country, but those of
+merit.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Belgians will only have such recruits as
+are born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in
+which the native Belgian army defended the person of their new
+sovereign in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them
+for their determination?&nbsp; It is rather singular, however,
+that resolved as they are to be served only by themselves they
+should have sent for 5000 Frenchmen to clear their country of a
+handful of Hollanders, who have generally been considered the
+most unwarlike people in Europe, but who, if they had fair play
+given them, would long ere this time have replanted the Orange
+flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians what they
+deserve to be, hewers of wood and drawers of water.</p>
+<p>And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important
+part of your letter; you ask me whether I wish to purchase a
+commission in the British service, because in that case you would
+speak to the Secretary at War about me.&nbsp; I must inform you
+therefore that my name has been for several years upon the list
+for the purchase of a commission, and I have never yet had
+sufficient interest to procure an appointment.&nbsp; If I can do
+nothing better I shall be very glad to purchase; but I will pause
+two or three months before I call upon you to fulfil your kind
+promise.&nbsp; It is believed that the Militia will be embodied
+in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and provided
+I can obtain a commission in one of them, and they are kept in
+service, it would be better than spending &pound;500 about one in
+the line.&nbsp; I am acquainted with the Colonels of the two
+Norfolk regiments, and I daresay that neither of them would have
+any objection to receive me.&nbsp; If they are not embodied I
+will most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you
+recommend me that being well grounded in Arabic, and having some
+talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps in one
+of our Eastern Colonies.&nbsp; I flatter myself that I could do a
+great deal in the East provided I could once get there, either in
+a civil or military capacity; there is much talk at present about
+translating European books into the two great languages, the
+Arabic and Persian; now I believe that with my enthusiasm for
+these tongues I could, if resident in the East, become in a year
+or two better acquainted with them than any European has been
+yet, and more capable of executing such a task.&nbsp; Bear this
+in mind, and if before you hear from me again you should have any
+opportunity to recommend me as a proper person to fill any civil
+situation in those countries or to attend any expedition thither,
+I pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever
+give you reason to repent it.</p>
+<p>I remain,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">My Dear Sir,<br />
+Your most obliged and obedient Servant,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Present my best remembrances to Mrs B. and
+to Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved.&nbsp;
+There is now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are
+blazing within twenty miles of this place.&nbsp; I have lately
+been wandering about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the
+minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement; I
+have repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest-field swear
+that not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be eaten,
+and that they would as lieve be hanged as live.&nbsp; I am afraid
+all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was pride that prompted Borrow to ask Dr Bowring to stay
+his hand for the moment about a commission.&nbsp; There was no
+reasonable possibility of his being able to raise
+&pound;500.&nbsp; Even if his mother had possessed it, which she
+did not, he would not have drained her resources of so large an
+amount.&nbsp; His subsequent attitude towards the Belgians was
+characteristic of him.&nbsp; To his acutely sensitive
+perceptions, failure to obtain an appointment he sought was a
+rebuff, and his whole nature rose up against what, at the moment,
+appeared to be an intolerable slight.</p>
+<p>Nothing came of the project of collaboration between Bowring
+and Borrow beyond an article on Danish and Norwegian literature
+that appeared in <i>The Foreign Quarterly Review</i> (June 1830),
+in which Borrow supplied translations of the sixteen poems
+illustrating Bowring&rsquo;s text.&nbsp; In all probability the
+response to the prospectus was deemed inadequate, and Bowring did
+not wish to face a certain financial loss.</p>
+<p>From Borrow&rsquo;s own letters there is no question that Dr
+Bowring was acting towards him in a most friendly manner, and
+really endeavouring to assist him to obtain some sort of
+employment.&nbsp; It may be, as has been said, and as seems
+extremely probable, that Bowring used his &ldquo;facility in
+acquiring and translating tongues deliberately as a ladder to an
+administrative post abroad,&rdquo; <a name="citation86a"></a><a
+href="#footnote86a" class="citation">[86a]</a> but if Borrow
+&ldquo;put a wrong construction upon his sympathy&rdquo; and was
+led into &ldquo;a veritable <i>cul-de-sac</i> of
+literature,&rdquo; <a name="citation86b"></a><a
+href="#footnote86b" class="citation">[86b]</a> it was no fault of
+Bowring&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s relations with Dr Bowring continued to be most
+cordial for many years, as his letters show.&nbsp; &ldquo;Pray
+excuse me for troubling you with these lines,&rdquo; he writes
+years later; &ldquo;I write to you, as usual, for assistance in
+my projects, convinced that you will withhold none which it may
+be in your power to afford, more especially when by so doing you
+will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our
+fellow-creatures.&rdquo;&nbsp; This is very significant as
+indicating the nature of the relations between the two men.</p>
+<p>Borrow was to experience yet another disappointment.&nbsp; A
+Welsh bookseller, living in the neighbourhood of Smithfield,
+commissioned him to translate into English Elis Wyn&rsquo;s
+<i>The Sleeping Bard</i>, a book printed originally in
+1703.&nbsp; The bookseller foresaw for the volume a large sale,
+not only in England but in Wales; but &ldquo;on the eve of
+committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian-Briton felt his
+small heart give way within him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Were I to print
+it,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I should be ruined; the terrible
+descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part
+of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a
+certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett . . . Myn
+Diawl!&nbsp; I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that
+Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation87a"></a><a href="#footnote87a"
+class="citation">[87a]</a></p>
+<p>With this Borrow had to be content and retire from the
+presence of the little bookseller, who told him he was
+&ldquo;much obliged . . . for the trouble you have given yourself
+on my account,&rdquo; <a name="citation87b"></a><a
+href="#footnote87b" class="citation">[87b]</a> and his bundle of
+manuscript, containing nearly three thousand lines, the work
+probably of some months, was to be put aside for thirty years
+before eventually appearing in a limited edition.</p>
+<p>It cannot be determined with exactness when Borrow
+relinquished the unequal struggle against adverse circumstances
+in London.&nbsp; He had met with sufficient discouragement to
+dishearten him from further effort.&nbsp; Perhaps his greatest
+misfortune was his disinclination to make friends with anybody
+save vagabonds.&nbsp; He could attract and earn the friendship of
+an apple-woman, thimble-riggers, tramps, thieves, gypsies, in
+short with any vagrant he chose to speak to; but his hatred of
+gentility was a great and grave obstacle in the way of his
+material advancement.&nbsp; His brother John seemed to recognise
+this; for in 1831 he wrote, &ldquo;I am convinced that <i>your
+want of success in life</i> is more owing to your being unlike
+other people than to any other cause.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It would appear that, finding nothing to do in London, Borrow
+once more became a wanderer.&nbsp; He was in London in March; but
+on 27th, 28th, and 29th July 1830 he was unquestionably in
+Paris.&nbsp; Writing about the Revolution of La Granja (August
+1836) and of the energy, courage and activity of the war
+correspondents, he says:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I saw them [the war correspondents] during
+the three days at Paris, mingled with <i>canaille</i> and
+<i>gamins</i> behind the barriers, whilst the <i>mitraille</i>
+was flying in all directions, and the desperate cuirassiers were
+dashing their fierce horses against these seemingly feeble
+bulwarks.&nbsp; There stood they, dotting down their observations
+in their pocket-books as unconcernedly as if reporting the
+proceedings of a reform meeting in Covent Garden or Finsbury
+Square.&rdquo; <a name="citation88a"></a><a href="#footnote88a"
+class="citation">[88a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This can have reference only to the &ldquo;Three Glorious
+Days&rdquo; of Revolution, 27th to 29th July 1830, during which
+Charles X. lost, and Louis-Philippe gained, a throne.&nbsp; He
+returned to Norwich sometime during the autumn of 1830. <a
+name="citation88b"></a><a href="#footnote88b"
+class="citation">[88b]</a>&nbsp; In November he was entering upon
+his epistolary duel with the Army Pay Office in connection with
+John&rsquo;s half-pay as a lieutenant in the West Norfolk
+Militia.</p>
+<p>In 1826 John had gone to Mexico, then looked upon as a land of
+promise for young Englishmen, who might expect to find fortunes
+in its silver mines.&nbsp; Allday, brother of Roger Kerrison, was
+there, and John Borrow determined to join him.&nbsp; Obtaining a
+year&rsquo;s leave of absence from his colonel, together with
+permission to apply for an extension, he entered the service of
+the Real del Monte Company, receiving a salary of three hundred
+pounds a year.&nbsp; He arranged that his mother should have his
+half-pay, and it was in connection with this that George entered
+upon a correspondence with the Army Pay Office that was to extend
+over a period of fifteen months.</p>
+<p>Originally John had arranged for the amounts to be remitted to
+Mexico, and he sent them back again to his mother.&nbsp; This
+involved heavy losses in connection with the bills of exchange,
+and wishing to avoid this tax, John sent to his brother an
+official copy of a Mexican Power of Attorney, which George strove
+to persuade the Army Pay Office was the original.</p>
+<p>Tact was unfortunately not one of George Borrow&rsquo;s
+acquirements at this period, and in this correspondence he
+adopted an attitude that must have seriously prejudiced his
+case.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am a solicitor myself, Sir,&rdquo; he
+states, and proceeds to threaten to bring the matter before
+Parliament.&nbsp; He writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury
+&ldquo;as a member of the same honourable profession to which I
+was myself bred up,&rdquo; and demands whether he has not law,
+etc., on his side.&nbsp; The outcome of the correspondence was
+that the disembodied allowance was refused on the plea
+&ldquo;that Lieutenant Borrow having been absent without Leave
+from the Training of the West Norfolk Militia has, under the
+provisions of the 12th Section of the Militia Pay and Clothing
+Act, forfeited his Allowance.&rdquo;&nbsp; In consequence,
+payment was made only for the amount due from 25th June 1829 to
+24th December 1830.&nbsp; The whole tone of Borrow&rsquo;s
+letters was unfortunate for the cause he pleaded.&nbsp; He wrote
+to the Secretary of State for War as he might have written to the
+little Welsh bookseller with &ldquo;the small heart.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He was indignant at what he conceived to be an injustice, and was
+unable to dissemble his anger.</p>
+<p>George had thought of joining his brother, but had not
+received any very marked encouragement to do so.&nbsp; John
+despised Mexican methods.&nbsp; On one occasion he writes apropos
+of George&rsquo;s suggestion of the army, &ldquo;If you can raise
+the pewter, come out here rather than that, and
+<i>rob</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; One sage thing at least John is to be
+credited with, when he wrote to his brother, &ldquo;Do not enter
+the army; it is a bad spec.&rdquo;&nbsp; It would have been for
+George Borrow.</p>
+<p>Among the papers left at Borrow&rsquo;s death was a fragment
+of a political article in dispraise of the Radicals.&nbsp; The
+editorial &ldquo;We&rdquo; suggests that Borrow might possibly
+have been engaged in political journalism.&nbsp; The statement
+made by him that he &ldquo;frequently spoke up for
+Wellington&rdquo; <a name="citation90"></a><a href="#footnote90"
+class="citation">[90]</a> may or may not have had reference to
+contributions to the press.&nbsp; The fragment itself proves
+nothing.&nbsp; Many would-be journalists write
+&ldquo;leaders&rdquo; that never see the case-room.</p>
+<p>It is useless to speculate further regarding the period that
+Borrow himself elected to veil from the eyes, not only of his
+contemporaries, but those of another generation.&nbsp; Men who
+have overcome adverse conditions and achieved fame are not as a
+rule averse from publishing, or at least allowing to be known,
+the difficulties that they had to contend with.&nbsp; Borrow was
+in no sense of the word an ordinary man.&nbsp; He unquestionably
+suffered acutely during the years of failure, when it seemed
+likely that his life was to be wasted, barren of anything else
+save the acquirement of a score or more languages; keys that
+could open literary storehouses that nobody wanted to explore, to
+the very existence of which, in fact, the public was frigidly
+indifferent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor George . . .&nbsp; I wish he was making money . .
+. He works hard and remains poor,&rdquo; is the comment of his
+brother John, written in the autumn of 1830.&nbsp; To no small
+degree Borrow was responsible for his own failure, or perhaps it
+would be more just to say that he had been denied many of the
+attributes that make for success.&nbsp; His independence was
+aggressive, and it offended people.&nbsp; Even with the Welsh
+Preacher and his wife he refused to unbend.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What a disposition!&rsquo;&rdquo; Winifred had
+exclaimed, holding up her hands; &ldquo;&lsquo;and this is pride,
+genuine pride&mdash;that feeling which the world agrees to call
+so noble.&nbsp; Oh, how mean a thing is pride! never before did I
+see all the meanness of what is called pride!&rsquo;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation91a"></a><a href="#footnote91a"
+class="citation">[91a]</a></p>
+<p>This pride, magnificent as the loneliness of kings, and about
+as unproductive of a sympathetic view of life, always constituted
+a barrier in the way of Borrow&rsquo;s success.&nbsp; There were
+innumerable other obstacles: his choice of friends, his fierce
+denunciatory hatred of gentility, together with humbug, which he
+always seemed to confuse with it, the attacks of the
+&ldquo;Horrors,&rdquo; his grave bearing, which no laugh ever
+disturbed, and, above all, his uncompromising hostility to the
+things that the world chose to consider excellent.&nbsp; The
+world in return could make nothing of a man who was a mass of
+moods and sensibilities, strange tastes and pursuits.&nbsp; It is
+not remarkable that he should fail to make the stir that he had
+hoped to make.</p>
+<p>With the unerring instinct of a hypersensitive nature, he knew
+his merit, his honesty, his capacity&mdash;knew that he possessed
+one thing that eventually commands success, which &ldquo;through
+life has ever been of incalculable utility to me, and has not
+unfrequently supplied the place of friends, money, and many other
+things of almost equal importance&mdash;iron perseverance,
+without which all the advantages of time and circumstance are of
+very little avail in any undertaking.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation91b"></a><a href="#footnote91b"
+class="citation">[91b]</a>&nbsp; It was this dogged determination
+that was to carry him through the most critical period of his
+life, enable him to earn the approval of those in whose interests
+he worked, and eventually achieve fame and an unassailable place
+in English literature.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
+JANUARY&ndash;JULY 1833</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is not a little curious that no
+one should have thought of putting Borrow&rsquo;s undoubted gifts
+as a linguist to some practical use.&nbsp; He himself had
+frequently cast his eyes in the direction of a political
+appointment abroad.&nbsp; It remained, however, for the Rev.
+Francis Cunningham, <a name="citation92"></a><a
+href="#footnote92" class="citation">[92]</a> vicar of Lowestoft,
+in Suffolk, to see in this young man against whom the curse of
+Babel was inoperative, a sword that, in the hands of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society, might be wielded with considerable
+effect against the heathen.</p>
+<p>Borrow appears to have become acquainted with the Rev. Francis
+Cunningham through the Skeppers of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft,
+of whom it is necessary to give some account.&nbsp; Edmund
+Skepper had married Anne Breame of Beetley, who, on the death of
+her father, came into &pound;9000.&nbsp; She and her husband
+purchased the Oulton Hall estate, upon which Anne Skepper seems
+to have been given a five per cent. mortgage.&nbsp; There were
+two children of the marriage, Breame (born 1794) and Mary (born
+1796).&nbsp; The boy inherited the estate, and the girl the
+mortgage, worth about &pound;450 per annum.&nbsp; Mary married
+Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Navy (26th July 1817), who
+within eight months died of consumption.&nbsp; Two months later
+Mrs Clarke gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Henrietta
+Mary.&nbsp; Mrs Clarke became acquainted with the Cunninghams
+while they were at Pakefield, and there is every reason to
+believe that she was instrumental in introducing Borrow to
+Cunningham.&nbsp; It is most probable that they met during
+Borrow&rsquo;s visit at Oulton Hall in November 1832.</p>
+<p>The Rev. Francis Cunningham appears to have been impressed by
+Borrow&rsquo;s talent for languages, and fully alive to his value
+to an institution such as the Bible Society, of which he,
+Cunningham, was an active member.&nbsp; He accordingly addressed
+<a name="citation93a"></a><a href="#footnote93a"
+class="citation">[93a]</a> to the secretary, the Rev. Andrew
+Brandram, the following letter:</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Lowestoft Vicarage</span>,<br />
+27<i>th</i> <i>Dec.</i> 1832.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Friend</span>,&mdash;</p>
+<p>A young farmer in this neighbourhood has introduced me to-day
+to a person of whom I have long heard, who appears to me to
+promise so much that I am induced to offer him to you as a
+successor of Platt and Greenfield. <a name="citation93b"></a><a
+href="#footnote93b" class="citation">[93b]</a>&nbsp; He is a
+person without University education, but who has read the Bible
+in thirteen languages.&nbsp; He is independent in circumstances,
+of no very defined denomination of Christians, but I think of
+certain Christian principle.&nbsp; I shall make more enquiry
+about him and see him again.&nbsp; Next week I propose to meet
+him in London, and I could wish that you should see him, and, if
+you please, take him under your charge for a few days.&nbsp; He
+is of the middle order in Society, and a very produceable
+person.</p>
+<p>I intend to be in town on Tuesday morning to go to the Socy.
+P. C. K.&nbsp; On Wednesday is Dr Wilson&rsquo;s meeting at
+Islington.&nbsp; He may be in town on Monday evening, and will
+attend to any appointment.</p>
+<p>Will you write me word by return of post, and believe me
+ever</p>
+<p>Most truly and affectionately yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">F. <span
+class="smcap">Cunningham</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The recommendation was well-timed, for the Bible Society at
+that particular moment required such a man as Borrow for a
+Manchu-Tartar project it had in view.&nbsp; In 1821 the Bible
+Society had commissioned Step&aacute;n Vasili&eacute;vitch
+Lipovzoff, <a name="citation94a"></a><a href="#footnote94a"
+class="citation">[94a]</a> of St Petersburg, to translate the New
+Testament into Manchu, the court and diplomatic language of
+China.&nbsp; A year later, an edition of 550 copies of the First
+Gospel was printed from type specially cast for the
+undertaking.&nbsp; A hundred copies were despatched to
+headquarters in London, and the remainder, together with the
+type, placed with the Society&rsquo;s bankers at St Petersburg,
+<a name="citation94b"></a><a href="#footnote94b"
+class="citation">[94b]</a> until the time should arrive for the
+distribution of the books.</p>
+<p>Three years after (1824), the overflowing Neva flooded the
+cellars in which the books were stored, causing their
+irretrievable ruin, and doing serious damage to the type.&nbsp;
+This misfortune appeared temporarily to discourage the
+authorities at home, although Mr Lipovzoff was permitted to
+proceed with the work of translation, which he completed in two
+years from the date of the inundation.</p>
+<p>In 1832 the Rev. Wm. Swann, of the London Missionary Society,
+discovered in the famous library of Baron Schilling de Canstadt
+at St Petersburg the manuscript of a Manchu translation of
+&ldquo;the principal part of the Old Testament,&rdquo; and two
+books of the New.&nbsp; The discovery was considered to be so
+important that Mr Swann decided to delay his departure for his
+post in Siberia and make a transcription, which he did.&nbsp; The
+Manchu translation was the work of Father Puerot,
+&ldquo;originally a Jesuit emissary at Pekin [who] passed the
+latter years of his life in the service of the Russian Mission in
+the capacity of physician.&rdquo; <a name="citation95"></a><a
+href="#footnote95" class="citation">[95]</a></p>
+<p>The immediate outcome of Mr Cunningham&rsquo;s letter was an
+interview between Borrow and the Bible Society&rsquo;s
+officials.&nbsp; With characteristic energy and determination,
+Borrow trudged up to London, covering the 112 miles on foot in
+27.5 hours.&nbsp; His expenses by the way amounted to
+fivepence-halfpenny for the purchase of a roll, two apples, a
+pint of ale and a glass of milk.&nbsp; On reaching London he
+proceeded direct to the Bible Society&rsquo;s offices in Earl
+Street, in spite of the early hour, and there awaited the arrival
+of the Rev. Andrew Brandram (Secretary), and the Rev. Joseph
+Jowett (Literary Superintendent).</p>
+<p>The story of Borrow&rsquo;s arrival at Earl Street was
+subsequently told, by one of the secretaries at a provincial
+meeting in connection with the Bible Society.&nbsp; The Rev.
+Wentworth Webster writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I was little more than a boy when I first
+heard George Borrow spoken of at the annual dinner given by a
+connection of my family to the deputation of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society in a country town near London . . . I can
+distinctly recall one of the secretaries telling of his first
+meeting with Borrow, whom he found waiting at the offices of the
+Society one morning;&mdash;how puzzled he was by his appearance;
+how, after he had read his letter of introduction, he wished to
+while away the time until a brother secretary should arrive, and
+did not want to say anything to commit himself to such a strange
+applicant; so he began by politely hoping that Borrow had slept
+well.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am not aware that I fell asleep on the
+road,&rsquo; was the reply; I have walked from Norwich to
+London.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation96a"></a><a
+href="#footnote96a" class="citation">[96a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It would appear that this conference took place on Friday, 4th
+January; for on that day there is an entry in the records of the
+Society of the loan to George Borrow of several books from the
+Society&rsquo;s library.&nbsp; On this and subsequent occasions,
+Borrow was examined as to his capabilities, the result appearing
+to be quite satisfactory.&nbsp; To judge from the books lent to
+Borrow, one of the subjects would seem to have been Arabic.</p>
+<p>Borrow appeared before the Committee on 14th January, with the
+result that they seemed to be &ldquo;quite satisfied with me and
+my philological capabilities,&rdquo; which they judged of from
+the report given by the Secretary and his colleague.&nbsp; A more
+material sign of approval was found in the undertaking to defray
+&ldquo;the expenses of my journey to and from London, and also of
+my residence in that city, in the most handsome manner.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation96b"></a><a href="#footnote96b"
+class="citation">[96b]</a>&nbsp; That is to say, the Committee
+voted him the sum of ten pounds.</p>
+<p>Borrow had been formally asked if he were prepared to learn
+Manchu sufficiently well to edit, or translate, into that
+language such portions of the Scriptures as the Society might
+decide to issue, provided means of acquiring the language were
+put within his reach, and employment should follow as soon as he
+showed himself proficient.&nbsp; To this Borrow had willingly
+agreed.&nbsp; At this period, the idea appears to have been to
+execute the work in London.</p>
+<p>Shortly after appearing before the Committee Borrow returned
+to Norwich, this time by coach, with several books in the
+Manchu-Tartar dialect, including the Gospel of St Matthew and
+Amyot&rsquo;s Manchu-French Dictionary.&nbsp; His instructions
+were to learn the language and come up for examination in six
+months&rsquo; time.&nbsp; Possibly the time limit was suggested
+by Borrow himself, for he had said that he believed he could
+master any tongue in a few months.</p>
+<p>After two or three weeks of incessant study of a language that
+Amyot says &ldquo;one may acquire in five or six years,&rdquo;
+Borrow, who, it should be remembered, possessed no grammar of the
+tongue, wrote to Mr Jowett:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It is, then, your opinion that, from the
+lack of anything in the form of Grammar, I have scarcely made any
+progress towards the attainment of Manchu: <a
+name="citation97"></a><a href="#footnote97"
+class="citation">[97]</a> perhaps you will not be perfectly
+miserable at being informed that you were never more mistaken in
+your life.&nbsp; I can already, with the assistance of Amyot,
+translate Manchu with no great difficulty, and am perfectly
+qualified to write a critique on the version of St
+Matthew&rsquo;s Gospel, which I brought with me into the country
+. . . I will now conclude by beseeching you to send me, as soon
+as possible, <i>whatever can serve to enlighten me in respect to
+Manchu Grammar</i>, for, had I a Grammar, I should in a
+month&rsquo;s time be able to send a Manchu translation of
+<i>Jonah</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The racy style of Borrow&rsquo;s letters must have been
+something of a revelation to the Bible Society&rsquo;s officers,
+who seem to have shown great tact and consideration in dealing
+with their self-confident correspondent There is something
+magnificent in the letters that Borrow wrote about this period;
+their directness and virility, their courage and determination
+suggest, not a man who up to the thirtieth year of his age has
+been a conspicuous failure, as the world gauges failure; but one
+who had grown confident through many victories and is merely
+proceeding from one success to another.</p>
+<p>Whilst in London, Borrow had discussed with Mr Brandram
+&ldquo;the Gypsies and the profound darkness as to religion and
+morality that envolved them.&rdquo; <a name="citation98"></a><a
+href="#footnote98" class="citation">[98]</a>&nbsp; The Secretary
+told him of the Southampton Committee for the Amelioration of the
+Condition of the Gypsies that had recently been formed by the
+Rev. James Crabbe for the express purpose of enlightening and
+spreading the Gospel among the Romanys.&nbsp; Furthermore, Mr
+Brandram, on hearing of Borrow&rsquo;s interest in, and knowledge
+of, the gypsies, had requested him immediately on his return to
+Norwich to draw up a vocabulary of Mr Petulengro&rsquo;s
+language, during such time as he might have free from his other
+studies.&nbsp; Borrow showed himself, as usual, prolific of
+suggestions, all of which involved him in additional
+labour.&nbsp; He enquired through Mr Jowett if Mr Brandram would
+write about him to the Southampton Committee.&nbsp; He wished to
+translate into the gypsy tongue the Gospel of St John,
+&ldquo;which I could easily do,&rdquo; he tells Mr Jowett,
+&ldquo;with the assistance of one or two of the old people, but
+then they must be paid, for the gypsies are more mercenary than
+the Jews.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He also informed Mr Jowett that he had a brother in Mexico,
+subsequently assuring him that he had no doubt of John&rsquo;s
+willingness to assist the Society in &ldquo;flinging the rays of
+scriptural light o&rsquo;er that most benighted and miserable
+region.&rdquo;&nbsp; He sent to his brother, at Mr Jowett&rsquo;s
+request, first a sheet, and afterwards a complete copy, of the
+Gospel of St Luke translated into Nahuatl, the prevailing dialect
+of the Mexican Indians, by Mariano Paz y Sanchez. <a
+name="citation99a"></a><a href="#footnote99a"
+class="citation">[99a]</a></p>
+<p>In addition to learning Manchu, Borrow is credited with
+correcting and passing for press the Nahuatl version of St. Luke.
+<a name="citation99b"></a><a href="#footnote99b"
+class="citation">[99b]</a>&nbsp; The Bible Society&rsquo;s
+records, however, point to the fact that this work was carried
+through by John Hattersley, who later was to come up with Borrow
+for examination in Manchu.&nbsp; In the light of this, the
+following passage from one of John&rsquo;s letters is puzzling in
+the extreme:&mdash;&ldquo;I have just received your letter of the
+16th of February, together with your translation of St
+Luke.&nbsp; I am glad you have got the job, but I must say that
+the Bible Society are just throwing away their time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He goes on to explain how many dialects there are in
+Mexico.&nbsp; &ldquo;The job&rdquo; can only refer to the Mexican
+translation, as, at that period, Borrow was merely studying
+Manchu.&nbsp; He had received no appointment from the
+Society.&nbsp; It may have happened that Borrow expressed a wish
+to look through the proofs and that a set was sent to him for
+this purpose; but there seems no doubt that the actual official
+responsibility for the work rested with Hattersley.&nbsp; A very
+important point in support of this view is that there is no
+record of Borrow being paid anything in connection with this
+Mexican translation, beyond the amount of fifteen shillings and
+fivepence, which he had expended in postage on the advance sheet
+and complete copy sent to John.&nbsp; To judge from the
+subsequent financial arrangements between the Society and its
+agent, it is very improbable that he was given work to do without
+payment.</p>
+<p>After seven weeks&rsquo; study Borrow wrote again to Mr
+Jowett:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am advancing at full gallop, and . . .
+able to translate with pleasure and facility the specimens of the
+best authors who have written in the language contained in the
+compilation of the Klaproth.&nbsp; But I confess that the want of
+a Grammar has been, particularly in the beginning of my course, a
+great clog to my speed, and I have little doubt that had I been
+furnished with one I should have attained my present knowledge of
+Manchu in half the time.&nbsp; I was determined, however, not to
+be discouraged, and, not having a hatchet at hand to cut down the
+tree with, to attack it with my knife; and I would advise every
+one to make the most of the tools which happen to be in his
+possession until he can procure better ones, and it is not
+improbable that by the time the good tools arrive he will find he
+has not much need of them, having almost accomplished his
+work.&rdquo; <a name="citation100a"></a><a href="#footnote100a"
+class="citation">[100a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There is a hint of the difficulties he was experiencing in his
+confession that tools would still be of service to him, in
+particular &ldquo;this same tripartite Grammar which Mr Brandram
+is hunting for, my ideas respecting Manchu construction being
+still very vague and wandering.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation100b"></a><a href="#footnote100b"
+class="citation">[100b]</a>&nbsp; There is also a request for
+&ldquo;the original grammatical work of Amyot, printed in the
+<i>Memoires</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation100c"></a><a
+href="#footnote100c" class="citation">[100c]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow had been studying Manchu for seven weeks when, feeling
+that his glowing report of the progress he was making might be
+regarded as &ldquo;a piece of exaggeration and vain
+boasting,&rdquo; he enclosed a specimen translation from Manchu
+into English.&nbsp; This he accompanied with an assurance that,
+if required, he could at that moment edit any book printed in the
+Manchu dialect.&nbsp; About this period Mr Jowett and his
+colleagues passed from one sensation to another.&nbsp; The calm
+confidence of this astonishing man was more than justified by his
+performance.&nbsp; His attitude towards life was strange to Earl
+Street.</p>
+<p>Nineteen weeks from the date of commencing his study of
+Manchu, Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett with unmistakable
+triumph: &ldquo;I have mastered Manchu, and I should feel obliged
+by your informing the Committee of the fact, and also my
+excellent friend Mr Brandram.&rdquo;&nbsp; He proceeds to
+indicate some of the many difficulties with which he has had to
+contend, the absolute difference of Manchu from all the other
+languages that he has studied, with the single exception of
+Turkish; the number of its idiomatic phrases, which must of
+necessity be learnt off by heart; the little assistance he has
+had in the nature of books.&nbsp; Finally he acknowledges
+&ldquo;the assistance of God,&rdquo; and asks &ldquo;to be
+regularly employed, for though I am not in want, my affairs are
+not in a very flourishing condition.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The response to this letter was an invitation to proceed to
+London to undergo an examination.&nbsp; His competitor was John
+Hattersley, upon whom, in the event of Borrow&rsquo;s failure,
+would in all probability have devolved the duty of assisting Mr
+Lipovzoff.&nbsp; A Manchu hymn, a p&aelig;an to the great
+F&ucirc;tsa, was the test.&nbsp; Each candidate prepared a
+translation, which was handed to the examiners, who in turn were
+to report to the Sub-Committee.&nbsp; Borrow returned to Norwich
+to await the result.&nbsp; This was most probably towards the end
+of June. <a name="citation101"></a><a href="#footnote101"
+class="citation">[101]</a></p>
+<p>Mr Jowett wrote encouragingly to Borrow of his prospects of
+obtaining the coveted appointment.&nbsp; In acknowledgment of
+this letter, Borrow dashed off a reply, magnificent in its
+confidence and manly sincerity.&nbsp; It was a defiance to the
+fate that had so long dogged his footsteps.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;What you have written has given me great
+pleasure,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;as it holds out hope that I may
+be employed usefully to the Deity, to man, and myself.&nbsp; I
+shall be very happy to visit St Petersburg and to become the
+coadjutor of Lipovzoff, <a name="citation102"></a><a
+href="#footnote102" class="citation">[102]</a> and to avail
+myself of his acquirements in what you very happily designate a
+most singular language, towards obtaining a still greater
+proficiency in it.&nbsp; I flatter myself that I am for one or
+two reasons tolerably well adapted for the contemplated
+expedition, for besides a competent knowledge of French and
+German, I possess some acquaintance with Russian, being able to
+read without much difficulty any printed Russian book, and I have
+little doubt that after a few months intercourse with the
+natives, I should be able to speak it fluently.&nbsp; It would
+ill become me to bargain like a Jew or a Gypsy as to terms; all I
+wish to say on that point is, that I have nothing of my own,
+having been too long dependent on an excellent mother, who is not
+herself in very easy circumstances.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Whilst still waiting for the confirmation by the General
+Committee of the Sub-Committee&rsquo;s resolution, which was
+favourable to Borrow, Mr Jowett wrote to him (5th July), telling
+him how good were his prospects; but warning him not to be too
+confident of success.&nbsp; The Sub-Committee had recommended
+that Borrow&rsquo;s services should be engaged that he might go
+to St Petersburg and assist Mr Lipovzoff in editing St Luke and
+the Acts and any other portions of the New Testament that it was
+thought desirable to publish in Manchu.&nbsp; Should the Russian
+Government refuse to permit the work to be proceeded with, Borrow
+was to occupy himself in assisting the Rev. Wm. Swan to
+transcribe and collate the manuscript of the Old Testament in
+Manchu that had recently come to light.&nbsp; At the same time,
+he was to seize every opportunity that presented itself of
+perfecting himself in Manchu.&nbsp; For this he was to receive a
+salary of two hundred pounds a year to cover all expenses, save
+those of the journey to and from St Petersburg, for which the
+Society was to be responsible.&nbsp; Borrow was advised to think
+carefully over the proposal, and, if it should prove attractive
+to him, to hold himself in readiness to start as soon as the
+General Committee should approve of the recommendation that was
+to be placed before it.&nbsp; In conclusion, Mr Jowett proceeded
+to administer a gentle rebuke to the confident pride with which
+the candidate indited his letters.&nbsp; Only a quotation can
+show the tact with which the admonition was conveyed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; wrote the Literary Superintendent,
+&ldquo;if as a clergyman, and your senior in years though not in
+talent, I venture, with the kindest of motives, to throw out a
+hint which may not be without its use.&nbsp; I am sure you will
+not be offended if I suggest that there is occasionally a tone of
+confidence in speaking of yourself, which has alarmed some of the
+excellent members of our Committee.&nbsp; It may have been this
+feeling, more than once displayed before, which prepared one or
+two of them to stumble at an expression in your letter of
+yesterday, in which, till pointed out, I confess I was not struck
+with anything objectionable, but at which, nevertheless, a humble
+Christian might not unreasonably take umbrage.&nbsp; It is where
+you speak of the prospect of becoming &lsquo;useful to the Deity,
+to man, and to yourself.&rsquo;&nbsp; Doubtless you meant the
+prospect of glorifying God.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had yet to learn the idiom of Earl Street, which he
+showed himself most anxious to acquire.&nbsp; He clearly
+recognised that the Bible Society required different treatment
+from the Army Pay Office, or the Solicitor of the Treasury.&nbsp;
+It was accustomed to humility in those it employed, and a trust
+in a higher power, and Borrow&rsquo;s self-confident letters
+alarmed the members of the Committee.&nbsp; How thoroughly Borrow
+appreciated what was required is shown in a letter that he wrote
+to his mother from Russia, when anticipating the return of his
+brother.&nbsp; &ldquo;Should John return home,&rdquo; he warns
+her, &ldquo;by no means let him go near the Bible Society, for he
+would not do for them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s reply to the Literary Superintendent&rsquo;s
+kindly worded admonition was entirely satisfactory and &ldquo;in
+harmony with the rule laid down by Christ himself.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+It was something of a triumph, too, for Mr Jowett to rebuke a man
+of such sensitiveness as Borrow, without goading him to an
+impatient retort.</p>
+<p>The meeting of the General Committee that was to decide upon
+Borrow&rsquo;s future was held on 22nd July, and on the following
+day Mr Jowett informed him that the recommendation of the
+Sub-Committee had been adopted and confirmed, at the same time
+requesting him to be at Earl Street on the morning of Friday,
+26th July, that he might set out for St Petersburg the following
+Tuesday.&nbsp; On 25th July Borrow took the night coach to
+London.&nbsp; On the 29th he appeared before the Editorial
+Sub-Committee and heard read the resolution of his appointment,
+and drafts of letters recommending him to the Rev. Wm. Swan and
+Dr I. J. Schmidt, a correspondent of the Society&rsquo;s in St
+Petersburg and a member of the Russian Board of Censors.&nbsp;
+Finally, there was impressed upon him &ldquo;the necessity of
+confining himself closely to the one object of his mission,
+carefully abstaining from mingling himself with political or
+ecclesiastical affairs during his residence in Russia.&nbsp; Mr
+Borrow assured them of his full determination religiously to
+comply with this admonition, and to use every prudent method for
+enlarging his acquaintance with the Manchu language.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation104"></a><a href="#footnote104"
+class="citation">[104]</a></p>
+<p>The salary was to date from the day he embarked, and on
+account of expenses to St Petersburg he drew the sum of
+&pound;37.&nbsp; The actual amount he expended was &pound;27, 7s.
+6d., according to the account he submitted, which was dated 2nd
+October 1834.&nbsp; It is to be feared that Borrow was not very
+punctual in rendering his accounts, as Mr Brandram wrote to him
+(18th October 1837):&mdash;&ldquo;I know you are no accountant,
+but do not forget that there are some who are.&nbsp; My memory
+was jogged upon this subject the other day, and I was expected to
+say to you that a letter of figures would be
+acceptable.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is not unnatural that those who remembered Borrow as one of
+William Taylor&rsquo;s &ldquo;harum-scarum&rdquo; young men, who
+at one time intended to &ldquo;abuse religion and get
+prosecuted,&rdquo; should find in his appointment as an agent of
+the British and Foreign Bible Society a subject for derisive
+mirth.&nbsp; Harriet Martineau&rsquo;s voice was heard well above
+the rest.&nbsp; &ldquo;When this polyglott gentleman appeared
+before the public as a devout agent of the Bible Society in
+foreign parts,&rdquo; she wrote, &ldquo;there was one burst of
+laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation105"></a><a href="#footnote105"
+class="citation">[105]</a>&nbsp; Like hundreds of other men,
+Borrow had, in youth, been led to somewhat hasty and
+ill-considered conclusions; but this in itself does not seem to
+be sufficiently strong reason why he should not change his
+views.&nbsp; Many young men pass through an aggressively
+irreligious phase without suffering much harm.&nbsp; Harriet
+Martineau was rather too precipitate in assuming that what a man
+believes, or disbelieves, at twenty, he holds to at thirty; such
+a view negatives the reformer.&nbsp; Perhaps the chief cause of
+the change in Borrow&rsquo;s views was that he had touched the
+depths of failure.&nbsp; Here was an opening that promised
+much.&nbsp; He was a diplomatist when it suited his purpose, and
+if the old poison were not quite gone out of his system, he would
+hide his wounds, or allow the secretaries to bandage them with
+mild reproof.</p>
+<p>Very different from the attitude of Harriet Martineau was that
+of John Venning, an English merchant resident at Norwich and
+recently returned from St Petersburg, where his charity and
+probity had placed him in high favour with the Emperor and the
+Goverment officials.&nbsp; Mr Venning gave Borrow letters of
+introduction to a number of influential personages at St
+Petersburg, including Prince Alexander Galitzin and Baron
+Schilling de Canstadt.&nbsp; Dr Bowring obtained a letter from
+Lord Palmerston to someone whose name is not known.&nbsp; There
+were letters of introduction from other hands, so that when he
+was ready to sail Borrow found himself &ldquo;loaded with letters
+of recommendation to some of the first people in Russia.&nbsp; Mr
+Venning&rsquo;s packet has arrived with letters to several of the
+Princes, so that I shall be protected if I am seized as a spy;
+for the Emperor is particularly cautious as to the foreigners
+whom he admits.&nbsp; It costs &pound;2, 7s. 6d. merely for
+permission to go to Russia, which alone is enough to deter most
+people.&rdquo; <a name="citation106"></a><a href="#footnote106"
+class="citation">[106]</a></p>
+<p>Before leaving England, Borrow paid into his mother&rsquo;s
+account at her bank the sum of seventeen pounds, an amount that
+she had advanced to him either during his unproductive years, or
+on account of his expenses in connection with the expedition to
+St Petersburg.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
+AUGUST 1833&ndash;JANUARY 1834</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 19th/31st July 1833 Borrow set
+out on a journey that was to some extent to realise his
+ambitions.&nbsp; He was to be trusted and encouraged and, what
+was most important of all, praised for what he accomplished; for
+Borrow&rsquo;s was a nature that responded best to the praise and
+entire confidence of those for whom he worked.</p>
+<p>Travelling second class for reasons of economy, he landed at
+Hamburg at seven in the morning of the fourth day, after having
+experienced &ldquo;a disagreeable passage of three days, in which
+I suffered much from sea-sickness.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation107a"></a><a href="#footnote107a"
+class="citation">[107a]</a>&nbsp; Exhausted by these days of
+suffering and want of sleep, the heat of the sun brought on
+&ldquo;a transient fit of delirium,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation107b"></a><a href="#footnote107b"
+class="citation">[107b]</a> in other words, an attack of the
+&ldquo;Horrors.&rdquo;&nbsp; Two fellow-passengers (Jews), with
+whom he had become acquainted, conveyed him to a comfortable
+hotel, where he was visited by a physician, who administered
+forty drops of laudanum, caused his head to be swathed in wet
+towels, ordered him to bed, and charged a fee of seven
+shillings.&nbsp; The result was that by the evening he had quite
+recovered.</p>
+<p>One of Borrow&rsquo;s first duties was to write a lengthy
+letter to Mr Jowett, telling him of his movements, describing the
+city, the service at a church he attended, the lax morality of
+the Hamburgers in permitting rope-dancers in the park, and the
+opening of dancing-saloons, &ldquo;most infamous places,&rdquo;
+on the Lord&rsquo;s day.&nbsp; &ldquo;England, with all her
+faults,&rdquo; he proceeds, &ldquo;has still some regard to
+decency, and will not tolerate such a shameless display of vice
+on so sacred a season, when a decent cheerfulness is the freest
+form in which the mind or countenance ought to invest
+themselves.&rdquo;&nbsp; In conclusion, he announced his
+intention of leaving for L&uuml;beck on the sixth, <a
+name="citation108a"></a><a href="#footnote108a"
+class="citation">[108a]</a> and he would be on the Baltic two
+days later en route for St Petersburg.&nbsp; &ldquo;My next
+letter, provided it pleases the Almighty to vouchsafe me a happy
+arrival, will be from the Russian capital.&rdquo;&nbsp; By
+&ldquo;a fervent request that you will not forget me in your
+prayers,&rdquo; he demonstrated that Mr Jowett&rsquo;s hint had
+not been forgotten.</p>
+<p>The distance between Hamburg and L&uuml;beck is only about
+thirty miles, yet it occupied Borrow thirteen hours, so
+abominable was the road, which &ldquo;was paved at intervals with
+huge masses of unhewn rock, and over this pavement the carriage
+was very prudently driven at a snail&rsquo;s pace; for, had
+anything approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition
+of the wheels in a few minutes must have been the necessary
+result.&nbsp; No sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement
+than we sank to our axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to
+render the journey perfectly delectable, the rain fell in
+torrents and ceaselessly.&rdquo; <a name="citation108b"></a><a
+href="#footnote108b" class="citation">[108b]</a>&nbsp; The state
+of the road Borrow attributed to the ill-nature of the King of
+Denmark, for immediately on leaving his dominions it improved
+into an excellent carriageway.</p>
+<p>On 28th July/9th August Borrow took steamer from
+Travem&uuml;nde, and three days later landed at St
+Petersburg.&nbsp; His first duty was to call upon Mr Swan, whom
+he found &ldquo;one of the most amiable and interesting
+characters&rdquo; he had ever met.&nbsp; The arrival of a
+coadjutor caused Mr Swan considerable relief, as he had suffered
+in health in consequence of his uninterrupted labours in
+transcribing the Manchu manuscript.</p>
+<p>Borrow was enthusiastic in his admiration of the capital of
+&ldquo;our dear and glorious Russia.&rdquo;&nbsp; St Petersburg
+he considered &ldquo;the finest city in the world&rdquo; <a
+name="citation109"></a><a href="#footnote109"
+class="citation">[109]</a> other European capitals were unworthy
+of comparison.&nbsp; The enormous palaces, the long, straight
+streets, the grandeur of the public buildings, the noble Neva
+that flows majestically through &ldquo;this Queen of the
+cities,&rdquo; the three miles long Nevsky Prospect, paved with
+wood; all aroused in him enthusiasm and admiration.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;In a word,&rdquo; he wrote to his mother, &ldquo;I can do
+little else but look and wonder.&rdquo;&nbsp; All that he had
+read and heard of the capital of All the Russias had failed to
+prepare him for this scene of splendour.&nbsp; The meeting and
+harmonious mixing of East and West early attracted his
+attention.&nbsp; The Oriental cultivation of a twelve-inch beard
+among the middle and lower classes, placed them in marked
+contrast with the moustached or clean-shaven patricians and
+foreigners.&nbsp; In short, Russia gripped hold of and warmed
+Borrow&rsquo;s imagination.&nbsp; Here were new types, curious
+blendings of nationalities unthought of and strange to him, a
+mine of wealth to a man whose studies were never books, except
+when they helped him the better to understand men.</p>
+<p>Another thing that attracted him to Russia was the great
+kindness with which he was received, both by the English Colony
+and the natives: to the one he appealed by virtue of a common
+ancestry; to the other, on account of his knowledge of the
+Russian tongue, not to speak of his mission, which acted as a
+strong recommendation to their favour.&nbsp; On his part Borrow
+reciprocated the esteem.&nbsp; If he were an implacable enemy, he
+was also a good friend, and he thoroughly appreciated the manner
+in which he was welcomed by his countrymen, especially the
+invitation he received from one of them to make his house his
+home until he found a suitable dwelling.&nbsp; To his mother he
+wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The Russians are the best-natured, kindest
+people in the world, and though they do not know as much as the
+English [he was not referring to the Colony], they have not their
+fiendish, spiteful dispositions, and if you go amongst them and
+speak their language, however badly, they would go through fire
+and water to do you a kindness.&rdquo;&nbsp; Later, when in
+Portugal, he heartily wished himself &ldquo;back in Russia . . .
+where I had left cherished friends and warm
+affections.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>High as was his opinion of the Russians, he was at a loss to
+understand how they had earned their reputation as &ldquo;the
+best general linguists in the world.&rdquo;&nbsp; He found
+Russian absolutely necessary to anyone who wished to make himself
+understood.&nbsp; French and German as equivalents were of less
+value in St Petersburg than in England.</p>
+<p>At first Borrow took up his residence &ldquo;for nearly a
+fortnight in a hotel, as the difficulty of procuring lodgings in
+this place is very great, and when you have procured them you
+have to furnish them yourself at a considerable expense . . .
+eventually I took up my abode with Mr Egerton Hubbard, a friend
+of Mr Venning&rsquo;s [at 221 Galernoy Ulitza], where I am for
+the present very comfortably situated.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation110"></a><a href="#footnote110"
+class="citation">[110]</a>&nbsp; He stayed with Mr Hubbard for
+three months; but was eventually forced to leave on account of
+constant interruptions, probably by his fellow-boarders, in
+consequence of which he could neither perform his task of
+transcription nor devote himself to study.&nbsp; He therefore
+took a small lodging at a cost of nine shillings a week,
+including fires, where he could enjoy quiet and solitude.&nbsp;
+His meals he got at a Russian eating-house, dinner costing
+fivepence, &ldquo;consequently,&rdquo; he writes to his mother,
+&ldquo;I am not at much expense, being able to live for about
+sixty pounds a year and pay a Russian teacher, who has five
+shillings for one lesson a week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One of Borrow&rsquo;s earliest thoughts on arriving at St
+Petersburg had been to present his letters of introduction.&nbsp;
+Within two days of landing he called upon Prince Alexander
+Gal&iacute;tzin, <a name="citation111"></a><a href="#footnote111"
+class="citation">[111]</a> accompanied by his fellow-lodger,
+young Venning.&nbsp; One of the most important, and at the same
+time useful, friendships that he made was with Baron Schilling de
+Canstadt, the philologist and savant, who, later, with his
+accustomed generosity, was to place his unique library at
+Borrow&rsquo;s disposition.&nbsp; The Baron was one of the
+greatest bibliophiles of his age, and possessed a collection of
+Eastern manuscripts and other priceless treasures that was
+world-famous.&nbsp; He spared neither expense nor trouble in
+procuring additions to his collection, which after his death was
+acquired by the Imperial Academy of Science at St
+Petersburg.&nbsp; In this literary treasure-house Borrow found
+facilities for study such as he nowhere else could hope to
+obtain.</p>
+<p>Another friendship that Borrow made was with John P. Hasfeldt,
+a man of about his own age attached to the Danish Legation, who
+also gave lessons in languages.&nbsp; Borrow seems to have been
+greatly attracted to Hasfeldt, who wrote to him with such
+cordiality.&nbsp; It was Hasfeldt who gave to Borrow as a parting
+gift the silver shekel that he invariably carried about with him,
+and which caused him to be hailed as blessed by the Gibraltar
+Jews.</p>
+<p>In his letter Hasfeldt shows himself a delightful
+correspondent.&nbsp; His generous camaraderie seemed to warm
+Borrow to response, as indeed well it might.&nbsp; Who could
+resist the breezy good humour of the following from a letter
+addressed to Borrow by Hasfeldt years later?&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Do you still eat Pike soup?&nbsp; Do you
+remember the time when you lived on that dish for more than six
+weeks, and came near exterminating the whole breed?&nbsp; And the
+pudding that accompanied it, that always lay as hard as a stone
+on the stomach?&nbsp; This you surely have not forgotten.&nbsp;
+Yes, your kitchen was delicately manipulated by Machmoud, your
+Tartar servant, who only needed to give you horse-meat to have
+merited a diploma.&nbsp; Do you still sing when you are in a good
+humour?&nbsp; Doubtless you are not troubled with many friends to
+visit you, for you are not of the sort who are easily understood,
+nor do you care to have everyone understand you; you prefer to
+have people call you grey and let you gae.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Other friends Borrow made, including Nikolai Iv&aacute;novitch
+Gretch, <a name="citation112a"></a><a href="#footnote112a"
+class="citation">[112a]</a> the grammarian, and Friedrich von
+Adelung, <a name="citation112b"></a><a href="#footnote112b"
+class="citation">[112b]</a> who assisted him with the loan of
+books and MSS. in Oriental tongues.</p>
+<p>The story of Borrow&rsquo;s labours in connection with the
+printing of the Manchu version of the New Testament, forms a
+remarkable study of unswerving courage and will-power triumphing
+over apparently insurmountable obstacles.&nbsp; The mere presence
+of difficulties seemed to increase his eagerness and
+determination to overcome them.&nbsp; Disappointments he had in
+plenty; but his indomitable courage and untiring energy, backed
+up by the earnest support he received from Earl Street, enabled
+him to emerge from his first serious undertaking with the
+knowledge that he had succeeded where failure would not have been
+discreditable.</p>
+<p>He threw himself into his work with characteristic
+eagerness.&nbsp; At the end of the first two months he had
+transcribed the Second Book of Chronicles and the Gospel of St
+Matthew.&nbsp; He formed a very high opinion of the work of the
+translator, and took the opportunity of paying a tribute to the
+followers of Ignatius Loyola (Father Puerot was a Jesuit).&nbsp;
+&ldquo;When,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;did a Jesuit any thing
+which he undertook, whether laudable or the reverse, not far
+better than any other person?&rdquo; yet they laboured in vain,
+for &ldquo;they thought not of His glory, but of the glory of
+their order.&rdquo; <a name="citation113"></a><a
+href="#footnote113" class="citation">[113]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow discovered that Mr Lipovzoff knew nothing of the Bible
+Society&rsquo;s scheme for printing the New Testament in Manchu;
+but he found, what was of even greater importance to him, that
+the old man knew no European language but Russian.&nbsp; Thus the
+frequent conversations and explanations all tended to improve
+Borrow&rsquo;s knowledge of the language of the people among whom
+he was living.</p>
+<p>Mr Lipovzoff struck Borrow as being &ldquo;rather a singular
+man,&rdquo; as he took occasion to inform Mr Jowett, apparently
+utterly indifferent as to the fate of his translation, excellent
+though it was.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, Mr Lipovzoff was
+occupied with his own concerns, and, as an official in the
+Russian Foreign Office, most likely saw the inexpediency of a too
+eager enthusiasm for the Bible Society&rsquo;s Manchu-Tartar
+programme.&nbsp; He was probably bewildered by the fierce energy
+of its honest and compelling agent, who had descended upon St
+Petersburg to do the Society&rsquo;s bidding with an impetuosity
+and determination foreign to Russian official life.&nbsp; Borrow
+was on fire with zeal and impatient of the apathy of those around
+him.</p>
+<p>He soon began to show signs of that singleness of purpose and
+resourcefulness that, later, was to arouse so much enthusiasm
+among the members of the Bible Society at home.&nbsp; The
+transcribing and collating Puerot&rsquo;s version of the
+Scriptures occupied the remainder of the year.&nbsp; On the
+completion of this work, it had been arranged that Mr Swan should
+return to his mission-station in Siberia.&nbsp; The next step was
+to obtain official sanction to print the Lipovzoff version of the
+New Testament.&nbsp; Dr Schmidt, to whom Borrow turned for advice
+and information, was apparently very busily occupied with his own
+affairs, which included the compilation of a Mongolian Grammar
+and Dictionary.&nbsp; The Doctor was optimistic, and promised to
+make enquiries about the steps to be taken to obtain the
+necessary permission to print; but Borrow heard nothing further
+from him.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Thus circumstanced, and being very uneasy
+in my mind,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;I determined to take a bold
+step, and directly and without further feeling my way, to
+petition the Government in my own name for permission to print
+the Manchu Scriptures.&nbsp; Having communicated this
+determination to our beloved, sincere, and most truly Christian
+friend Mr Swan (who has lately departed to his station in
+Siberia, shielded I trust by the arm of his Master), it met with
+his perfect approbation and cordial encouragement.&nbsp; I
+therefore drew up a petition, and presented it with my own hand
+to His Excellence Mr Bludoff, Minister of the Interior.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation114a"></a><a href="#footnote114a"
+class="citation">[114a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The minister made reply that he doubted his jurisdiction in
+the matter; but that he would consider.&nbsp; Fearful lest the
+matter should miscarry or be shelved, Borrow called on the
+evening of the same day upon the British Minister, the Hon. J. D.
+Bligh, &ldquo;a person of superb talents, kind disposition, and
+of much piety,&rdquo; <a name="citation114b"></a><a
+href="#footnote114b" class="citation">[114b]</a> whose friendship
+Borrow had &ldquo;assiduously cultivated,&rdquo; and who had
+shown him &ldquo;many condescending marks of kindness.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation114c"></a><a href="#footnote114c"
+class="citation">[114c]</a>&nbsp; But Mr Bligh was out.&nbsp;
+Nothing daunted, Borrow wrote a note entreating his interest with
+the Russian officials.&nbsp; On calling for an answer in the
+morning, he was received by Mr Bligh, when &ldquo;he was kind
+enough to say that if I desired it he would apply officially to
+the Minister, and exert all his influence in his official
+character in order to obtain the accomplishment of my views, but
+at the same time suggested that it would, perhaps, be as well at
+a private interview to beg it as a personal favour.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation115a"></a><a href="#footnote115a"
+class="citation">[115a]</a></p>
+<p>There was hesitation, perhaps suspicion, in official
+quarters.&nbsp; It is easy to realise that the Government was not
+eager to assist the agent of an institution closely allied to the
+Russian Bible Society, which it had recently been successful in
+suppressing.&nbsp; It might with impunity suppress a Society; but
+in George Borrow it soon became evident that the officials had to
+deal with a man of purpose and determination who used a British
+Minister as a two-edged sword.&nbsp; Borrow was invited to call
+at the Asiatic Department: he did so, and learned that if
+permission were granted, Mr Lipovzoff (who was a clerk in the
+Department) was to be censor (over his own translation!) and
+Borrow editor.&nbsp; There was still the &ldquo;If.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Borrow waited a fortnight, then called on Mr Bligh.&nbsp; By
+great good chance Mr Bludoff was dining that evening with the
+British Minister.&nbsp; The same night Borrow received a message
+requesting him to call on Mr Bludoff the next day.&nbsp; On
+presenting himself he was given a letter to the Director of
+Worship, which he delivered without delay, and was told to call
+again on the first day of the following week.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On calling there <i>I found that permission had been
+granted to print the Manchu Scripture</i>.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation115b"></a><a href="#footnote115b"
+class="citation">[115b]</a>&nbsp; Baron Schilling had rendered
+some assistance in getting the permission, and Borrow was
+requested to inform him of &ldquo;the deep sense of
+obligation&rdquo; of the Bible Society, to which was added a
+present of some books.</p>
+<p>Borrow clearly viewed this as only a preliminary success; he
+had in mind the eventual printing of the whole Bible.&nbsp; He
+was beginning to feel conscious of his own powers.&nbsp; Mr Swan
+had gone, and upon Borrow&rsquo;s shoulders rested the whole
+enterprise.&nbsp; A mild wave of enthusiasm passed over the Head
+Office at Earl Street on receipt of the news that permission to
+print had been obtained.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You cannot conceive,&rdquo; Borrow wrote to Mr Jowett,
+&ldquo;the cold, heartless apathy in respect to the affair, on
+which I have been despatched hither as an <i>assistant</i>, which
+I have found in people to whom I looked not unreasonably for
+encouragement and advice.&rdquo; <a name="citation116"></a><a
+href="#footnote116" class="citation">[116]</a>&nbsp; Well might
+he underline the word &ldquo;assistant.&rdquo;&nbsp; In this same
+letter, with a spasmodic flicker of the old self-confidence, he
+adds, &ldquo;In regard to what we have yet to do, let it be borne
+in mind, that we are by no means dependent upon Mr Lipovzoff,
+though certainly to secure the services, which he is capable of
+performing, would be highly desirable, and though he cannot act
+outwardly in the character of Editor (he having been appointed
+censor), he may privately be of great utility to us.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Borrow seems to have formed no very high opinion of Mr
+Lipovzoff&rsquo;s capacity for affairs, although he recognised
+his skill as a translator.</p>
+<p>At first Borrow seems to have found the severity of the winter
+very trying.&nbsp; &ldquo;The cold when you go out into
+it,&rdquo; he writes to his mother (1st/13th Feb. 1834),
+&ldquo;cuts your face like a razor, and were you not to cover it
+with furs the flesh would be bitten off.&nbsp; The rooms in the
+morning are heated with a stove as hot as ovens, and you would
+not be able to exist in one for a minute; but I have become used
+to them and like them much, though at first they made me
+dreadfully sick and brought on bilious headaches.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was still at the Sarepta House, the premises of the
+Bible Society&rsquo;s bankers in St Petersburg, the box of Manchu
+type, which had not been examined since the river floods.&nbsp;
+In addition to this, the only other Manchu characters in St
+Petersburg belonged to Baron Schilling, who possessed a small
+fount of the type, which he used &ldquo;for the convenience of
+printing trifles in that tongue,&rdquo; as Borrow phrased
+it.&nbsp; This was to be put at Borrow&rsquo;s disposal if
+necessary; but first the type at the Sarepta House had to be
+examined.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s plan was, provided the type were
+not entirely ruined, to engage the services of a printer who was
+accustomed to setting Mongolian characters, which are very
+similar to those of Manchu, who would, he thought, be competent
+to undertake the work.&nbsp; He suggested following the style of
+the St Matthew&rsquo;s Gospel already printed, giving to each
+Gospel and the Acts a volume and printing the Epistles and the
+Apocalypse in three more, making eight volumes in all.</p>
+<p>These he proposed putting &ldquo;in a small thin wooden case,
+covered with blue stuff, precisely after the manner of Chinese
+books, in order that they may not give offence to the eyes of the
+people for whom they are intended by a foreign and unusual
+appearance, for the mere idea that they are barbarian books would
+certainly prevent them being read, and probably cause their
+destruction if ever they found their way into the Chinese
+Empire.&rdquo; <a name="citation117"></a><a href="#footnote117"
+class="citation">[117]</a>&nbsp; Borrow left nothing to chance;
+he thought out every detail with great care before venturing to
+put his plans into execution.</p>
+<p>Although busily occupied in an endeavour to stimulate Russian
+government officials to energy and decision, Borrow was not
+neglecting what had been so strongly urged upon him, the
+perfecting of himself in the Manchu dialect.&nbsp; In reply to an
+enquiry from Mr Jowett as to what manner of progress he was
+making, he wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;For some time past I have taken lessons
+from a person who was twelve years in Pekin, and who speaks
+Manchu and Chinese with fluency.&nbsp; I pay him about six
+shillings English for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the
+perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent
+wishes.&rdquo; <a name="citation118a"></a><a href="#footnote118a"
+class="citation">[118a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This person Borrow subsequently recommended to the Society
+&ldquo;to assist me in making a translation into Manchu of the
+Psalms and Isaiah,&rdquo; but the pundit proved &ldquo;of no
+utility at all, but only the cause of error.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow was soon able to transcribe the Manchu characters with
+greater facility and speed than he could English.&nbsp; In
+addition to being able to translate from and into Manchu, he
+could compose hymns in the language, and even prepared a Manchu
+rendering of the second Homily of the Church of England,
+&ldquo;On the Misery of Man.&rdquo;&nbsp; He had, however, made
+the discovery that Manchu was far less easy to him than it had at
+first appeared, and that Amyot was to some extent justified in
+his view of the difficulties it presented.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is one
+of those deceitful tongues,&rdquo; he confesses in a letter to Mr
+Jowett, &ldquo;the seeming simplicity of whose structure induces
+you to suppose, after applying to it for a month or two, that
+little more remains to be learned, but which, should you continue
+to study a year, as I have studied this, show themselves to you
+in their veritable colours, amazing you with their copiousness,
+puzzling with their idioms.&rdquo;<a name="citation118b"></a><a
+href="#footnote118b" class="citation">[118b]</a>&nbsp; Its
+difficulties, however, did not discourage him; for he had a great
+admiration for the language which &ldquo;for majesty and grandeur
+of sound, and also for general copiousness is unequalled by any
+existing tongue.&rdquo; <a name="citation118c"></a><a
+href="#footnote118c" class="citation">[118c]</a></p>
+<p>However great his exertions or discouragements, Borrow never
+forgot his mother, to whom he was a model son.&nbsp; On 1st/13th
+February he sent her a draft for twenty pounds, being the second
+since his arrival six months previously.&nbsp; Thus out of his
+first half-year&rsquo;s salary of a hundred pounds, he sent to
+his mother forty pounds (in addition to the seventeen pounds he
+had paid into her account before sailing), and with it a promise
+that &ldquo;next quarter I shall try and send you thirty,&rdquo;
+lest in the recent storms of which he had heard, some of her
+property should have suffered damage and be in need of
+repair.&nbsp; The larger remittance, however, he was unable to
+make on account of the illness that had necessitated the drinking
+of a bottle of port wine each day (by doctor&rsquo;s orders); but
+he was punctual in remitting the twenty pounds.&nbsp; The attack
+which required so drastic a remedy originated in a chill caught
+as the ice was breaking up.&nbsp; &ldquo;I went mad,&rdquo; he
+tells his mother, &ldquo;and when the fever subsided, I was
+seized with the &lsquo;Horrors,&rsquo; which never left me day or
+night for a week.&rdquo; <a name="citation119"></a><a
+href="#footnote119" class="citation">[119]</a>&nbsp; During this
+illness everyone seems to have been extremely kind and attentive,
+the Emperor&rsquo;s apothecary, even, sending word that Borrow
+was to order of him anything, medical or otherwise, that he found
+himself in need of.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+FEBRUARY&ndash;OCTOBER 1834</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> had at last found work that
+was thoroughly congenial to him.&nbsp; It was not in his nature
+to exist outside his occupations, and his whole personality
+became bound up in the mission upon which he was engaged.&nbsp;
+Not content with preparing the way for printing the New Testament
+in Manchu, he set himself the problem of how it was to be
+distributed when printed.&nbsp; He foresaw serious obstacles to
+its introduction into China, on account of the suspicion with
+which was regarded any and everything European.&nbsp; With a
+modest disclaimer that his suggestion arose &ldquo;from a
+plenitude of self-conceit and a disposition to offer advice upon
+all matters, however far they may be above my
+understanding,&rdquo; he proceeds to deal with the difficulties
+of distribution with great clearness.</p>
+<p>To send the printed books to Canton, to be distributed by
+English missionaries, he thought would be productive of very
+little good, nor would it achieve the object of the Society, to
+distribute copies at seaports along the coasts, because it was
+unlikely that there would be many Tartars or people there who
+understood Manchu.&nbsp; There was a further obstacle in the
+suspicion in which the Chinese held all things English.&nbsp; On
+the other hand, he tells Mr Jowett,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;there is a most admirable opening for the
+work on the Russian side of the Chinese Empire.&nbsp; About five
+thousand miles from St Petersburg, on the frontiers of Chinese
+Tartary, and only nine hundred miles distant from Pekin, the seat
+of the Tartar Monarchy, stands the town of Kiakhta, <a
+name="citation121a"></a><a href="#footnote121a"
+class="citation">[121a]</a> which properly belongs to Russia, but
+the inhabitants of which are a medley of Tartary, Chinese, and
+Russ (<i>sic</i>).&nbsp; As far as this town a Russian or
+foreigner is permitted to advance, but his further progress is
+forbidden, and if he make the attempt he is liable to be taken up
+as a spy or deserter, and sent back under guard.&nbsp; This town
+is the emporium of Chinese and Russian trade.&nbsp; Chinese
+caravans are continually arriving and returning, bringing and
+carrying away articles of merchandise.&nbsp; There are likewise a
+Chinese and a Tartar Mandarin, also a school where Chinese and
+Tartar are taught, and where Chinese and Tartar children along
+with Russian are educated.&rdquo; <a name="citation121b"></a><a
+href="#footnote121b" class="citation">[121b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The advantages of such a town as a base of operations were
+obvious.&nbsp; Borrow was convinced that he could dispose
+&ldquo;of any quantity of Testaments to the Chinese merchants who
+arrive thither from Pekin and other places, and who would be glad
+to purchase them on speculation.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation121c"></a><a href="#footnote121c"
+class="citation">[121c]</a></p>
+<p>Russia and China were friendly to each other, so much so, that
+there was at Pekin a Russian mission, the only one of its
+kind.&nbsp; These good relations rendered Borrow confident that
+books from Russia, especially books which had not an outlandish
+appearance, would be purchased without scruple.&nbsp; &ldquo;In a
+word, were an agent for the Bible Society to reside at this town
+[Kiakhta] for a year or so, it is my humble opinion, and the
+opinion of much wiser people, that if he were active, zealous and
+likewise courageous, the blessings resulting from his labours
+would be incalculable.&rdquo; <a name="citation121d"></a><a
+href="#footnote121d" class="citation">[121d]</a></p>
+<p>He might even make excursions into Tartary, and become
+friendly with the inhabitants, and eventually perhaps,
+&ldquo;with a little management and dexterity,&rdquo; he might
+&ldquo;penetrate even to Pekin, and return in safety, after
+having examined the state of the land.&nbsp; I can only say that
+if it were my fortune to have the opportunity, I would make the
+attempt, and should consider myself only to blame if I did not
+succeed.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow was to revert to this suggestion on
+many occasions, in fact it seems to have been in his mind during
+the whole period of his association with the Bible Society.</p>
+<p>Acting upon instructions from Earl Street, Borrow proceeded to
+find out the approximate cost of printing the Manchu New
+Testament.&nbsp; He early discovered that in Russia &ldquo;the
+wisdom of the serpent is quite as necessary as the innocence of
+the dove,&rdquo; as he took occasion to inform Mr Jowett.&nbsp;
+The Russians rendered him estimates of cost as if of the opinion
+that &ldquo;Englishmen are made of gold, and that it is only
+necessary to ask the most extravagant price for any article in
+order to obtain it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In St Petersburg Borrow was taken for a German, a nation for
+which he cherished a cordial dislike.&nbsp; This mistake as to
+nationality, however, did not hinder the Russian tradesmen from
+asking exorbitant prices for their services or their goods.&nbsp;
+At first Borrow &ldquo;was quite terrified at the enormous sums
+which some of the printers . . . required for the
+work.&rdquo;&nbsp; At length he applied to the University Press,
+which asked 30 roubles 60 copecks (24s. 8d.) per sheet of two
+pages for composition and printing.&nbsp; A young firm of German
+printers, Schultz &amp; Beneze, was, however, willing to
+undertake the same work at the rate of 12.5 roubles (10s.) per
+two sheets.</p>
+<p>In contracting for the paper Borrow showed himself quite equal
+to the commercial finesse of the Russian.&nbsp; He scoured the
+neighbourhood round St Petersburg in a calash at a cost of about
+four pounds.&nbsp; Russian methods of conducting business are
+amazing to the English mind.&nbsp; At Peterhof, a town about
+twenty miles out of St Petersburg, he found fifty reams of a
+paper such as he required.&nbsp; &ldquo;Concerning the price of
+this paper,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;I could obtain no positive
+information, for the Director and first and second clerks were
+invariably absent, and the place abandoned to ignorant
+understrappers (according to the custom of Russia).&nbsp; And
+notwithstanding I found out the Director in St Petersburg, he
+himself could not tell me the price.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation123a"></a><a href="#footnote123a"
+class="citation">[123a]</a></p>
+<p>Eventually 75 roubles (&pound;3) a ream was quoted for the
+stock, and 100 roubles (&pound;4) a ream for any further quantity
+required.&nbsp; Thus the paper for a thousand copies would run to
+40,000 roubles (&pound;1600), or 32s. a copy.&nbsp; Borrow found
+that the law of commerce prevalent in the East was that adopted
+in St Petersburg.&nbsp; A price is named merely as a basis of
+negotiation, and the customer beats it down to a figure that
+suits him, or he goes elsewhere.&nbsp; Borrow was a master of
+such methods.&nbsp; The sum he eventually paid for the paper was
+25 roubles (&pound;1) a ream!&nbsp; Of all these negotiations he
+kept Mr Jowett well informed.&nbsp; By June he had received from
+Earl Street the official sanction to proceed, together with a
+handsome remittance.</p>
+<p>For some time past Borrow had been anxious on account of his
+brother John.&nbsp; On 9th/21st November, he had written to his
+mother telling her to write to John urging him to come home at
+once, as he had seen in the Russian newspapers how the town of
+Guanajuato had been taken and sacked by the rebels, and also that
+cholera was ravaging Mexico.&nbsp; Later <a
+name="citation123b"></a><a href="#footnote123b"
+class="citation">[123b]</a> he tells her of that nice house at
+Lakenham, <a name="citation123c"></a><a href="#footnote123c"
+class="citation">[123c]</a> which he means to buy, and how John
+can keep a boat and amuse himself on the river, and adds,
+&ldquo;I dare say I shall continue for a long time with the Bible
+Society, as they see that I am useful to them and can be depended
+upon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the day following that on which Borrow wrote asking his
+mother to urge his brother to return home, viz., 10th/22nd
+November, John died.&nbsp; He was taken ill suddenly in the
+morning and passed away the same afternoon.</p>
+<p>In February 1832 John Borrow had, much against the advice of
+his friends, left the United Mexican Company, which he had become
+associated with the previous year.&nbsp; He was of a restless
+disposition, never content with what he was doing.&nbsp; Thinking
+he could better himself, and having saved a few hundred dollars,
+he resigned his post.&nbsp; He appears soon to have discovered
+his mistake.&nbsp; First he indulged in an unfortunate
+speculation, by which he was a considerable loser, then cholera
+broke out.&nbsp; Without a thought of himself he turned nurse and
+doctor, witnessing terrible scenes of misery and death and
+ministering to the poor with an energy and humanity that earned
+for him the admiration of the whole township.&nbsp; Finally,
+finding himself in serious financial difficulties, he entered the
+service of the Colombian Mining Company, and was to be sent to
+Colombia &ldquo;for the purpose of introducing the Mexican system
+of beneficiating there.&rdquo;&nbsp; It only remained for the
+agreement to be signed, when he was taken ill.</p>
+<p>In the letter in which she tells George of their loss, Mrs
+Borrow expresses fear that he does &ldquo;not live regular.&nbsp;
+When you find yourself low,&rdquo; she continues, &ldquo;take a
+little wine, but not too much at one time; it will do you the
+more good; I find that by myself.&rdquo;&nbsp; Her solicitude for
+George&rsquo;s health is easily understandable.&nbsp; He is now
+her &ldquo;only hope,&rdquo; as she pathetically tells him.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Do not grieve, my dear George,&rdquo; she proceeds
+tenderly, &ldquo;I trust we shall all meet in heaven.&nbsp; Put a
+crape on your hat for some time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>George wrote immediately to acknowledge his mother&rsquo;s
+letter containing the news of John&rsquo;s death, which had given
+him &ldquo;the severest stroke I ever experienced.&nbsp; It [the
+letter] quite stunned me, and since reading its contents I have
+done little else but moan and lament . . . O that our darling
+John had taken the advice which I gave him nearly three years
+since, to abandon that horrid country and return to England! . .
+. Would that I had died for him! for I loved him dearly,
+dearly.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s affection for his bright and
+attractive brother is everywhere manifest in his writings.&nbsp;
+He never showed the least jealousy when his father held up his
+first-born as a model to the strange and incomprehensible younger
+son.&nbsp; His love for and admiration of John were genuine and
+deep-rooted.&nbsp; In the same letter he goes on to assure his
+mother that he was never better in his life, and that experience
+teaches him how to cure his disorders.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+&lsquo;Horrors,&rsquo; for example.&nbsp; Whenever they come I
+must drink strong Port wine, and then they are stopped
+instantly.&nbsp; But do not think that I drink habitually, for
+you ought to know that I abhor drink.&nbsp; The
+&lsquo;Horrors&rsquo; are brought on by weakness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He goes on to reassure his mother as to the care he takes of
+himself, telling her that he has three meals a day, although, as
+a rule, dinner is a poor one, &ldquo;for the Russians, in the
+first place, are very indifferent cooks, and the meat is very
+bad, as in fact are almost all the provisions.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+fish is without taste, Russian salmon having less savour than
+English skate; the fowls are dry because no endeavour is made to
+fatten them, and the &ldquo;mutton stinks worst than carrion, for
+they never cut the wool.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With great thought and tenderness he tells her that he wishes
+her &ldquo;to keep a maid, for I do not like that you should live
+alone.&nbsp; Do not take one of the wretched girls of
+Norwich,&rdquo; he advises her, but rather the daughter of one of
+her tenants.&nbsp; &ldquo;What am I working for here and saving
+money, unless it is for your comfort? for I assure you that to
+make you comfortable is my greatest happiness, almost my only
+one.&rdquo;&nbsp; Urging her to keep up her spirits and read much
+of the things that interest her, he concludes with a warning to
+her not to pay any debts contracted by John. <a
+name="citation126a"></a><a href="#footnote126a"
+class="citation">[126a]</a>&nbsp; The letter concludes with the
+postscript: &ldquo;I have got the crape.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In July 1834 Borrow again changed his quarters, taking an
+unfurnished floor, <a name="citation126b"></a><a
+href="#footnote126b" class="citation">[126b]</a> at the same time
+hiring a Tartar servant named Mahmoud, &ldquo;the best servant I
+ever had.&rdquo; <a name="citation126c"></a><a
+href="#footnote126c" class="citation">[126c]</a>&nbsp; The wages
+he paid this prince of body-servants was thirty shillings a
+month, out of which Mahmoud supplied himself &ldquo;with food and
+everything.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s reason for making this
+change in his lodgings was that he wanted more room than he had,
+and furnished apartments were very expensive.&nbsp; The actual
+furnishing was not a very costly matter to a man of
+Borrow&rsquo;s simple wants; for the expenditure of seven pounds
+he provided himself with all he required.</p>
+<p>After the letter of 27th June/9th July the Bible Society
+received no further news of what was taking place in St
+Petersburg.&nbsp; Week after week passed without anything being
+heard of its Russian agent&rsquo;s movements or activities.&nbsp;
+On 25th September/7th October Mr Jowett wrote an extremely
+moderate letter beseeching Borrow to remember &ldquo;the very
+lively interest&rdquo; taken by the General Committee in the
+printing of the Manchu version of the New Testament; that people
+were asking, &ldquo;What is Mr Borrow doing?&rdquo; that the
+Committee stands between its agents and an eager public, desirous
+of knowing the trials and tribulations, the hopes and fears of
+those actively engaged in printing or disseminating the
+Scriptures.&nbsp; &ldquo;You can have no difficulty,&rdquo; he
+continues, &ldquo;in furnishing me with such monthly information
+as may satisfy the Committee that they are not expending a large
+sum of money in vain.&rdquo;&nbsp; There was also a request for
+information as to how &ldquo;some critical difficulty has been
+surmounted by the translator, or editor, or both united, not to
+mention the advance already made in actual printing.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+On 1st/13th Oct. Borrow had written a brief letter giving an
+account of his disbursements during the journey to St Petersburg
+<i>fifteen months previously</i>; but he made no mention of what
+was taking place with regard to the printing.</p>
+<p>The letter in which Borrow replied to Mr Jowett is probably
+the most remarkable he ever wrote.&nbsp; It presents him in a
+light that must have astonished those who had been so eager to
+ridicule his appointment as an agent of the Bible Society.&nbsp;
+The letter runs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">St
+Petersburg</span>,<br />
+8<i>th</i> [20<i>th</i>] <i>October</i> 1834.</p>
+<p>I have just received your most kind epistle, the perusal of
+which has given me both pain and pleasure&mdash;pain that from
+unavoidable circumstances I have been unable to gratify eager
+expectation, and pleasure that any individual should have been
+considerate enough to foresee my situation and to make allowance
+for it.&nbsp; The nature of my occupations during the last two
+months and a half has been such as would have entirely unfitted
+me for correspondence, had I been aware that it was necessary,
+which, on my sacred word, I was not.&nbsp; Now, and only now,
+when by the blessing of God I have surmounted all my troubles and
+difficulties, I will tell, and were I not a Christian I should be
+proud to tell, what I have been engaged upon and accomplished
+during the last ten weeks.&nbsp; I have been working in the
+printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen
+hours every day during that period; the result of this is that St
+Matthew&rsquo;s Gospel, printed from such a copy as I believe
+nothing was ever printed from before, has been brought out in the
+Manchu language; two rude Esthonian peasants, who previously
+could barely compose with decency in a plain language which they
+spoke and were accustomed to, have received such instruction that
+with ease they can each compose at the rate of a sheet a day in
+the Manchu, perhaps the most difficult language for composition
+in the whole world.&nbsp; Considerable progress has also been
+made in St Mark&rsquo;s Gospel, and I will venture to promise,
+provided always the Almighty smiles upon the undertaking, that
+the entire work of which I have the superintendence will be
+published within eight months from the present time.&nbsp; Now,
+therefore, with the premise that I most unwillingly speak of
+myself and what I have done and suffered for some time past, all
+of which I wished to keep locked up in my own breast, I will give
+a regular and circumstantial account of my proceedings from the
+day when I received your letter, by which I was authorised by the
+Committee to bespeak paper, engage with a printer, and cause our
+type to be set in order.</p>
+<p>My first care was to endeavour to make suitable arrangements
+for the obtaining of Chinese paper.&nbsp; Now those who reside in
+England, the most civilised and blessed of countries, where
+everything is to be obtained at a fair price, have not the
+slightest idea of the anxiety and difficulty which, in a country
+like this, harass the foreigner who has to disburse money not his
+own, if he wish that his employers be not shamefully and
+outrageously imposed upon.&nbsp; In my last epistle to you I
+stated that I had been asked 100 roubles per ream for such paper
+as we wanted.&nbsp; I likewise informed you that I believed that
+it was possible to procure it for 35 roubles, notwithstanding our
+Society had formerly paid 40 roubles for worse paper than the
+samples I was in possession of.&nbsp; Now I have always been of
+opinion that in the expending of money collected for sacred
+purposes, it behoves the agent to be extraordinarily circumspect
+and sparing.&nbsp; I therefore was determined, whatever trouble
+it might cost me, to procure for the Society unexceptionable
+paper at a yet more reasonable rate than 35 roubles.&nbsp; I was
+aware that an acquaintance of mine, a young Dane, was
+particularly intimate with one of the first printers of this
+city, who is accustomed to purchase vast quantities of paper
+every month for his various publications.&nbsp; I gave this young
+gentleman a specimen of the paper I required, and desired him (he
+was under obligations to me) to inquire of his friend, <i>as if
+from curiosity</i>, the least possible sum per ream at which
+<i>the printer himself</i> (who from his immense demand for paper
+should necessarily obtain it cheaper than any one else) could
+expect to purchase the article in question.&nbsp; The answer I
+received within a day or two was 25 roubles.&nbsp; Upon hearing
+this I prevailed upon my acquaintance to endeavour to persuade
+his friend to bespeak the paper at 25 roubles, and to allow me,
+notwithstanding I was a perfect stranger, to have it at that
+price.&nbsp; All this was brought about.&nbsp; I was introduced
+to the printer, Mr Pluchard, by the Dane, Mr Hasfeldt, and
+between the former gentleman and myself a contract was made to
+the effect that by the end of October he should supply me with
+450 reams of Chinese paper at 25 roubles per ream, the first
+delivery to be made on the 1st of August; for as my order given
+at an advanced period of the year, when all the paper
+manufactories were at full work towards the executing of orders
+already received, it was but natural that I should verify the old
+apophthegm, &lsquo;Last come, last served.&rsquo;&nbsp; As no
+orders are attended to in Russia unless money be advanced upon
+them, I deposited in the hands of Mr Pluchard the sum of 2000
+roubles, receiving his receipt for that amount.</p>
+<p>Having arranged this most important matter to my satisfaction,
+I turned my attention to the printing process.&nbsp; I accepted
+the offer of Messrs Schultz &amp; Beneze to compose and print the
+Manchu Testament at the rate of 25 roubles per sheet [of four
+pages], and caused our fount of type to be conveyed to their
+office.&nbsp; I wish to say here a few words respecting the state
+in which these types came into my possession.&nbsp; I found them
+in a kind of warehouse, or rather cellar.&nbsp; They had been
+originally confined in two cases; but these having burst, the
+type lay on the floor trampled amidst mud and filth.&nbsp; They
+were, moreover, not improved by having been immersed within the
+waters of the inundation of &rsquo;27 [1824].&nbsp; I caused them
+all to be collected and sent to their destination, where they
+were purified and arranged&mdash;a work of no small time and
+difficulty, at which I was obliged to assist.&nbsp; Not finding
+with the type what is called &lsquo;Durchschuss&rsquo; by the
+printers here, consisting of leaden wedges of about six ounces
+weight each, which form the spaces between the lines, I ordered
+120 pounds weight of those at a rouble a pound, being barely
+enough for three sheets. <a name="citation129"></a><a
+href="#footnote129" class="citation">[129]</a>&nbsp; I had now to
+teach the compositors the Manchu alphabet, and to distinguish one
+character from another.&nbsp; This occupied a few days, at the
+end of which I gave them the commencement of St Matthew&rsquo;s
+Gospel to copy.&nbsp; They no sooner saw the work they were
+called upon to perform than there were loud murmurs of
+dissatisfaction, and . . . &lsquo;It is quite impossible to do
+the like,&rsquo; was the cry&mdash;and no wonder.&nbsp; The
+original printed Gospel had been so interlined and scribbled upon
+by the author, in a hand so obscure and irregular, that,
+accustomed as I was to the perusal of the written Manchu, it was
+not without the greatest difficulty that I could decipher the new
+matter myself.&nbsp; Moreover, the corrections had been so
+carelessly made that they themselves required far more correction
+than the original matter.&nbsp; I was therefore obliged to be
+continually in the printing-office, and to do three parts of the
+work myself.&nbsp; For some time I found it necessary to select
+every character with my own fingers, and to deliver it to the
+compositor, and by so doing I learnt myself to compose.&nbsp; We
+continued in this way till all our characters were exhausted, for
+no paper had arrived.&nbsp; For two weeks and more we were
+obliged to pause, the want of paper being insurmountable.&nbsp;
+At the end of this period came six reams; but partly from the
+manufacturers not being accustomed to make this species of paper,
+and partly from the excessive heat of the weather, which caused
+it to dry too fast, only one ream and a half could be used, and
+this was not enough for one sheet; the rest I refused to take,
+and sent back.&nbsp; The next week came fifteen reams.&nbsp; This
+paper, from the same causes, was as bad as the last.&nbsp; I
+selected four reams, and sent the rest back.&nbsp; But this paper
+enabled us to make a beginning, which we did not fail to do,
+though we received no more for upwards of a fortnight, which
+caused another pause.&nbsp; At the end of that time, owing to my
+pressing remonstrances and entreaties, a regular supply of about
+twelve reams per week of most excellent paper commenced.&nbsp;
+This continued until we had composed the last five sheets of St
+Matthew, when some paper arrived, which in my absence was
+received by Mr Beneze, who, without examining it, as was his
+duty, delivered it to the printers to use in the printing of the
+said sheets, who accordingly printed upon part of it.&nbsp; But
+the next day, when my occupation permitted me to see what they
+were about, I observed that the last paper was of a quality very
+different from that which had been previously sent.&nbsp; I
+accordingly instantly stopped the press, and, notwithstanding
+eight reams had been printed upon, I sent all the strange paper
+back, and caused Mr Beneze to recompose three sheets, which had
+been broken up, at his own expense.&nbsp; But this caused the
+delay of another week.</p>
+<p>This last circumstance made me determine not to depend in
+future for paper on one manufactory alone.&nbsp; I therefore
+stated to Mr P[luchard] that, as his people were unable to
+furnish me with the article fast enough, I should apply to others
+for 250 reams, and begged him to supply me with the rest as fast
+as possible.&nbsp; He made no objection.&nbsp; Thereupon I
+prevailed upon my most excellent friend, Baron Schilling, to
+speak to his acquaintance, State-Councillor Alquin, who is
+possessed of a paper-factory, on the subject.&nbsp; M. Alquin, as
+a personal favour to Baron Schilling (whom, I confess, I was
+ashamed to trouble upon such an affair, and should never have
+done so had not zeal for the cause induced me), consented to
+furnish me with the required paper on the same terms as Mr
+P.&nbsp; At present there is not the slightest risk of the
+progress of our work being retarded&mdash;at present, indeed, the
+path is quite easy; but the trouble, anxiety, and misery which
+have till lately harassed me, alone in a situation of great
+responsibility, have almost reduced me to a skeleton.</p>
+<p>My dearest Sir, do me the favour to ask our excellent
+Committee, Would it have answered any useful purpose if, instead
+of continuing to struggle with difficulties and using my utmost
+to overcome them, I had written in the following strain&mdash;and
+what else could I have written if I had written at
+all?&mdash;&lsquo;I was sent out to St Petersburg to assist Mr
+Lipovzoff in the editing of the Manchu Testament.&nbsp; That
+gentleman, who holds three important Situations under the Russian
+Government, and who is far advanced in years, has neither time,
+inclination, nor eyesight for the task, and I am apprehensive
+that my strength and powers unassisted are incompetent to
+it&rsquo; (praised be the Lord, they were not!), &lsquo;therefore
+I should be glad to return home.&nbsp; Moreover, the compositors
+say they are unaccustomed to compose in an unknown tongue from
+such scribbled and illegible copy, and they will scarcely assist
+me to compose.&nbsp; Moreover, the working printers say (several
+went away in disgust) that the paper on which they have to print
+is too thin to be wetted, and that to print on dry requires a
+twofold exertion of strength, and that they will not do such work
+for double wages, for it ruptures them.&rsquo;&nbsp; Would that
+have been a welcome communication to the Committee?&nbsp; Would
+that have been a communication suited to the public?&nbsp; I was
+resolved &lsquo;to do or die,&rsquo; and, instead of distressing
+and perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write nothing
+until I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I now
+can; <a name="citation132a"></a><a href="#footnote132a"
+class="citation">[132a]</a> and to bring about that result I have
+spared neither myself nor my own money.&nbsp; I have toiled in a
+close printing-office the whole day, during ninety degrees of
+heat, for the purpose of setting an example, and have bribed
+people to work when nothing but bribes would induce them so to
+do.</p>
+<p>I am obliged to say all this in self-justification.&nbsp; No
+member of the Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable
+respecting what I have undergone but for the question,
+&lsquo;What has Mr Borrow been about?&rsquo;&nbsp; I hope and
+trust that question is now answered to the satisfaction of those
+who do Mr Borrow the honour to employ him.&nbsp; In respect to
+the expense attending the editing of such a work as the New
+Testament in Manchu, I beg leave to observe that I have obtained
+the paper, the principal source of expense, at fifteen roubles
+per ream less than the Society formerly paid for it&mdash;that is
+to say, at nearly half the price.</p>
+<p>As St Matthew&rsquo;s Gospel has been ready for some weeks, it
+is high time that it should be bound; for if that process be
+delayed, the paper will be dirtied and the work injured.&nbsp; I
+am sorry to inform you that book-binding in Russia is incredibly
+dear, <a name="citation132b"></a><a href="#footnote132b"
+class="citation">[132b]</a> and that the expenses attending the
+binding of the Testament would amount, were the usual course
+pursued, to two-thirds of the entire expenses of the work.&nbsp;
+Various book-binders to whom I have applied have demanded one
+rouble and a half for the binding of every section of the work,
+so that the sum required for the binding of one Testament alone
+would be twelve roubles.&nbsp; Doctor Schmidt assured me that one
+rouble and forty copecks, or, according to the English currency,
+fourteenpence halfpenny, were formerly paid for the binding of
+every individual copy of St Matthew&rsquo;s Gospel.</p>
+<p>I pray you, my dear Sir, to cause the books to be referred to,
+for I wish to know if that statement be correct.&nbsp; In the
+meantime arrangements have to be made, and the Society will have
+to pay for each volume of the Testament the comparatively small
+sum of forty-five copecks, or fourpence halfpenny, whereas the
+usual price here for the most paltry covering of the most paltry
+pamphlet is fivepence.&nbsp; Should it be demanded how I have
+been able to effect this, my reply is that I have had little hand
+in the matter.&nbsp; A nobleman who honours me with particular
+friendship, and who is one of the most illustrious ornaments of
+Russia and of Europe, has, at my request, prevailed on his own
+book-binder, over whom he has much influence, to do the work on
+these terms.&nbsp; That nobleman is Baron Schilling.</p>
+<p>Commend me to our most respected Committee.&nbsp; Assure them
+that in whatever I have done or left undone, I have been
+influenced by a desire to promote the glory of the Trinity and to
+give my employers ultimate and permanent satisfaction.&nbsp; If I
+have erred, it has been from a defect of judgment, and I ask
+pardon of God and them.&nbsp; In the course of a week I shall
+write again, and give a further account of my proceedings, for I
+have not communicated one-tenth of what I have to impart; but I
+can write no more now.&nbsp; It is two hours past midnight; the
+post goes away to-morrow, and against that morrow I have to
+examine and correct three sheets of St Mark&rsquo;s Gospel, which
+lie beneath the paper on which I am writing.&nbsp; With my best
+regards to Mr Brandram,</p>
+<p>I remain, dear Sir,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Most truly yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">G. <span
+class="smcap">Borrow</span>.</p>
+<p>Rev. <span class="smcap">Joseph Jowett</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Closely following upon this letter, and without waiting for a
+reply, Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett, 13th/25th October,
+enclosing a certificate from Mr Lipovzoff, which read:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Testifio:&mdash;Dominum Burro ab initio
+usque ad hoc tempus summa cum diligentia et studio in re
+Mantshurica laborasse, Lipovzoff.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He also reported progress as regards the printing, and
+promised (D.V.) that the entire undertaking should be completed
+by the first of May; but the letter was principally concerned
+with the projected expedition to Kiakhta, to distribute the books
+he was so busily occupied in printing.&nbsp; He repeated his
+former arguments, urging the Committee to send an agent to
+Kiakhta.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am a person of few words,&rdquo; he
+assured Mr Jowett, &ldquo;and will therefore state without
+circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent.&nbsp; I
+speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the
+Russian Steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I
+might easily improve.&rdquo;&nbsp; As regards the danger to
+himself of such a hazardous undertaking, the conversion of the
+Tartar would never be achieved without danger to someone.&nbsp;
+He had become acquainted with many of the Tartars resident in St
+Petersburg, whose language he had learned through conversing with
+his servant (a native of Bucharia [Bokhara]), and he had become
+&ldquo;much attached to them; for their conscientiousness,
+honesty, and fidelity are beyond all praise.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To this further offer Mr Jowett replied:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Be not disheartened, even though the
+Committee postpone for the present the consideration of your
+enterprising, not to say intrepid, proposal.&nbsp; Thus much,
+however, I may venture to say: that the offer is more likely to
+be accepted now, than when you first made it.&nbsp; If, when the
+time approaches for executing such a plan, you give us reason to
+believe that a more mature consideration of it in all its
+bearings still leaves you in hope of a successful result, and in
+heart for making the attempt, my own opinion is that the offer
+will ultimately be accepted, and that very cordially.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<br />
+NOVEMBER 1834&ndash;SEPTEMBER 1835</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> was an unconventional
+editor.&nbsp; He foresaw the interminable delays likely to arise
+from allowing workmen to incorporate his corrections in the
+type.&nbsp; To obviate these, he first corrected the proof, then,
+proceeding to the printing office, he made with his own hands the
+necessary alterations in the type.&nbsp; This involved only two
+proofs, the second to be submitted to Mr Lipovzoff, instead of
+some half a dozen that otherwise would have been necessary.&nbsp;
+During these days Borrow was ubiquitous.&nbsp; Even the binder
+required his assistance, &ldquo;for everything goes wrong without
+a strict surveillance.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had passed through <i>the</i> crisis in his
+career.&nbsp; Stricken with fever, which was followed by an
+attack of the &ldquo;Horrors&rdquo; (only to be driven away by
+port wine), he had scarcely found time in which to eat or
+sleep.&nbsp; He had emerged triumphantly from the ordeal, and if
+he had &ldquo;almost killed Beneze and his lads&rdquo;<a
+name="citation135a"></a><a href="#footnote135a"
+class="citation">[135a]</a> with work, he had not spared
+himself.&nbsp; If he had to report, as he did, that &ldquo;my two
+compositors, whom I had instructed in all the mysteries of Manchu
+composition, are in the hospital, down with the brain
+fever,&rdquo; <a name="citation135b"></a><a href="#footnote135b"
+class="citation">[135b]</a> he himself had grown thin from the
+incessant toil.</p>
+<p>The simple manliness and restrained dignity of his
+justification had produced a marked effect upon the authorities
+at home.&nbsp; If the rebuke administered by Mr Jowett had been
+mild, his acknowledgment of the reply that it had called forth
+was most cordial and friendly.&nbsp; After assuring Borrow of the
+Committee&rsquo;s high satisfaction at the way in which its
+interests had been looked after, he proceeds sincerely to
+deprecate anything in his previous letter which may have caused
+Borrow pain, and continues:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Yet I scarcely know how to be sorry for
+what has been the occasion of drawing from you (what you might
+otherwise have kept locked up in your own breast) the very
+interesting story of your labours, vexations, disappointments,
+vigilance, address, perseverance, and successes.&nbsp; How you
+were able in your solitude to keep up your spirits in the face of
+so many impediments, apparently insurmountable, I know not . . .
+Do not fear that <i>we</i> should in any way interrupt your
+proceedings.&nbsp; We know our interest too well to interfere
+with an agent who has shown so much address in planning, and so
+much diligence in effecting, the execution of our
+wishes.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These encouraging words were followed by a request that he
+would keep a careful account of all extraordinary expenses, that
+they might be duly met by the Society:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I allude, you perceive, to such
+things,&rdquo; the letter goes on to explain, &ldquo;as your
+journies <i>huc et illuc</i> in quest of a better market, and to
+the occasional bribes to disheartened workmen.&nbsp; In all
+matters of this kind the Society is clearly your
+debtor.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow replied with a flash of his old
+independent spirit: &ldquo;I return my most grateful thanks for
+this most considerate intimation, which, nevertheless, I cannot
+avail myself of, as, according to one of the articles of my
+agreement, my salary of &pound;200 was to cover all extra
+expenses.&nbsp; Petersburg is doubtless the dearest capital in
+Europe, and expenses meet an individual, especially one situated
+as I have been, at every turn and corner; but an agreement is not
+to be broken on that account.&rdquo; <a name="citation136"></a><a
+href="#footnote136" class="citation">[136]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>That the Committee, even before this proof of his ability, had
+been well pleased with their engagement of Borrow is shown by the
+acknowledgment made in the Society&rsquo;s Thirtieth Annual
+Report: &ldquo;Mr Borrow has not disappointed the expectation
+entertained.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There were other words of encouragement to cheer him in his
+labours.&nbsp; His mother wrote in September of that year,
+telling him how, at a Bible Society&rsquo;s gathering at Norwich,
+which had lasted the whole of a week, his name &ldquo;was sounded
+through the Hall by Mr Gurney and Mr Cunningham&rdquo;; telling
+how he had left his home and his friends to do God&rsquo;s work
+in a foreign land, calling upon their fellow-citizens to offer up
+prayers beseeching the Almighty to vouchsafe to him health and
+strength that the great work he had undertaken might be
+completed.&nbsp; &ldquo;All this is very pleasing to me,&rdquo;
+added the proud old lady.&nbsp; &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From Mrs Clarke of Oulton Hall, with whom he kept up a
+correspondence, he heard how his name had been mentioned at many
+of the Society&rsquo;s meetings during the year, and how the Rev.
+Francis Cunningham had referred to him as &ldquo;one of the most
+extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present
+day.&rdquo;&nbsp; Even at that date, viz., before the receipt of
+the remarkable account of his labours, the members and officials
+of the Bible Society seem to have come to the conclusion that he
+had achieved far more than they had any reason to expect of
+him.&nbsp; Their subsequent approval is shown by the manner in
+which they caused his two letters of 8th/20th and 13th/25th
+October to be circulated among the influential members of the
+Society, until at last they had reached the Rev. F. Cunningham
+and Mrs Clarke.</p>
+<p>About the middle of January (old style) 1835, Borrow placed in
+the hands of Baron Schilling a copy of each of the four Gospels
+in Manchu, to be conveyed to the Bible Society by one of the
+couriers attached to the Foreign Department at St Petersburg; but
+they did not reach Earl Street until several weeks later.&nbsp;
+There were however, still the remaining four volumes to complete,
+and many more difficulties to overcome.</p>
+<p>One vexation that presented itself was a difference of opinion
+between Borrow and Lipovzoff, who &ldquo;thought proper, when the
+Father Almighty is addressed, to erase the personal and
+possessive pronouns <i>thou</i> or <i>thine</i>, as often as they
+occur, and in their stead to make use of the noun as the case may
+require.&nbsp; For example, &lsquo;O Father! thou art
+merciful&rsquo; he would render, &lsquo;O Father! the Father is
+merciful.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow protested, but Lipovzoff,
+who was &ldquo;a gentleman, whom the slightest contradiction
+never fails to incense to a most incredible degree,&rdquo; told
+him that he talked nonsense, and refused to concede anything. <a
+name="citation138a"></a><a href="#footnote138a"
+class="citation">[138a]</a>&nbsp; Lipovzoff, who had on his side
+the Chinese scholars and unlimited powers as official censor
+(from whose decree there was no appeal) over his own work,
+carried his point.&nbsp; He urged that &ldquo;amongst the Chinese
+and Tartars, none but the dregs of society were ever addressed in
+the second person; and that it would be most uncouth and indecent
+to speak of the Almighty as if He were a servant or a
+slave.&rdquo;&nbsp; This difficulty of the verbal ornament of the
+East was one that the Bible Society had frequently met with in
+the past.&nbsp; It was rightly considered as ill-fitting a
+translation of the words of Christ.&nbsp; Simplicity of diction
+was to be preserved at all costs, whatever might be the rule with
+secular books.&nbsp; Mr Jowett had warned Borrow to &ldquo;beware
+of confounding the two distinct ideas of translation and
+interpretation!&rdquo; <a name="citation138b"></a><a
+href="#footnote138b" class="citation">[138b]</a> and also
+informed him that &ldquo;the passion for honorific-abilitudinity
+is a vice of Asiatic languages, which a Scripture translator,
+above all others, ought to beware of countenancing.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation139a"></a><a href="#footnote139a"
+class="citation">[139a]</a></p>
+<p>Well might Borrow write to Mr Jowett, &ldquo;How I have been
+enabled to maintain terms of friendship and familiarity with Mr
+Lipovzoff, and yet fulfil the part which those who employ me
+expect me to fulfil, I am much at a loss to conjecture; and yet
+such is really the case.&rdquo; <a name="citation139b"></a><a
+href="#footnote139b" class="citation">[139b]</a>&nbsp; On the
+whole, however, the two men worked harmoniously together, the
+censor-translator being usually amenable to editorial reason and
+suggestion; and Borrow was able to assure Mr Jowett that with the
+exception of this one instance &ldquo;the word of God has been
+rendered into Manchu as nearly and closely as the idiom of a very
+singular language would permit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s mind continued to dwell upon the project of
+penetrating into China and distributing the Scriptures
+himself.&nbsp; He wrote again, repeating &ldquo;the assurance
+that I am ready to attempt anything which the Society may wish me
+to execute, and, at a moment&rsquo;s warning, will direct my
+course towards Canton, Pekin, or the court of the Grand
+Lama.&rdquo; <a name="citation139c"></a><a href="#footnote139c"
+class="citation">[139c]</a>&nbsp; The project had, however, to be
+abandoned.&nbsp; The Russian Government, desirous of maintaining
+friendly relations with China, declined to risk her displeasure
+for a missionary project in which Russia had neither interest nor
+reasonable expectation of gain.&nbsp; In agreeing to issue a
+passport such as Borrow desired, it stipulated that he should
+carry with him &ldquo;not one single Manchu Bible thither.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation139d"></a><a href="#footnote139d"
+class="citation">[139d]</a>&nbsp; In spite of this
+discouragement, Borrow wrote to Mr Jowett with regard to the
+Chinese programme, &ldquo;<i>I again repeat that I am at
+command</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation139e"></a><a
+href="#footnote139e" class="citation">[139e]</a></p>
+<p>This determination on Borrow&rsquo;s part to become a
+missionary filled his mother with alarm.&nbsp; She had only one
+son now, and the very thought of his going into wild and unknown
+regions seemed to her tantamount to his going to his death.&nbsp;
+Mrs Clarke also expressed strong disapproval of the
+project.&nbsp; &ldquo;I must tell you,&rdquo; she wrote,
+&ldquo;that your letter chilled me when I read your intention of
+going as a Missionary or Agent, with the Manchu Scriptures in
+your hand, to the Tartars, the land of incalculable
+dangers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By the middle of May 1835 Borrow saw the end of his labours in
+sight.&nbsp; On 3rd/15th May he wrote asking for instructions
+relative to the despatch of the bulk of the volumes, and also as
+to the disposal of the type.&nbsp; &ldquo;As for myself,&rdquo;
+he continues, &ldquo;I suppose I must return to England, as my
+task will be speedily completed.&nbsp; I hope the Society are
+convinced that I have served them faithfully, and that I have
+spared no labour to bring out the work, which they did me the
+honor of confiding to me, correctly and within as short a time as
+possible.&nbsp; At my return, if the Society think that I can
+still prove of utility to them, I shall be most happy to devote
+myself still to their service.&nbsp; I am a person full of faults
+and weaknesses, as I am every day reminded by bitter experience,
+but I am certain that my zeal and fidelity towards those who put
+confidence in me are not to be shaken.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation140"></a><a href="#footnote140"
+class="citation">[140]</a></p>
+<p>On 15th/27th June he reported the printing completed and six
+out of the eight volumes bound, and that as soon as the remaining
+two volumes were ready, he intended to take his departure from St
+Petersburg; but a new difficulty arose.&nbsp; The East had laid a
+heavy hand upon St Petersburg.&nbsp; &ldquo;To-morrow, please
+God!&rdquo; met the energetic Westerner at every turn.&nbsp; The
+bookbinder delayed six weeks because he could not procure some
+paper he required.&nbsp; But the real obstacle to the despatch of
+the books was the non-arrival of the Government sanction to their
+shipment.&nbsp; Nothing was permitted to move either in or out of
+the sacred city of the Tsars without official permission.&nbsp;
+Probably those responsible for the administration of affairs had
+never in their experience been called upon to deal with a man
+such as Borrow.&nbsp; To apply to him the customary rules of
+procedure was to bring upon &ldquo;the House of Interior
+Affairs&rdquo; a series of visits and demands that must have left
+it limp with astonishment.</p>
+<p>On 16th/28th July Borrow wrote to the Bible Society, &ldquo;I
+herewith send you a bill of lading for six of the eight parts of
+the New Testament, which I have at last obtained permission to
+send away, after having paid sixteen visits to the House of
+Interior Affairs.&rdquo; <a name="citation141a"></a><a
+href="#footnote141a" class="citation">[141a]</a>&nbsp; He
+expresses a hope that in another fortnight he will have
+despatched the remaining two volumes and have &ldquo;bidden adieu
+to Russia&rdquo;; but it was dangerous to anticipate the official
+course of events in Russia.&nbsp; Even to the last Borrow was
+tormented by red tape.&nbsp; Early in August the last two volumes
+were ready for shipment to England; but he could not obtain the
+necessary permission.&nbsp; He was told that he ought never to
+have printed the work, in spite of the license that had been
+granted, and that grave doubts existed in the official mind as to
+whether or no he really were an agent of the Bible Society.&nbsp;
+At length Borrow lost patience and told the officials that during
+the week following the books would be despatched, with or without
+permission, and he warned them to have a care how they
+acted.&nbsp; These strong measures seem to have produced the
+desired result.</p>
+<p>Despite his many occupations on behalf of the Bible Society,
+Borrow found time in which to translate into Russian the first
+three Homilies of the Church of England, and into Manchu the
+Second.&nbsp; His desire was that the Homily Society should cause
+these translations to be printed, and in a letter to the Rev.
+Francis Cunningham he strove to enlist his interest in the
+project, offering the translations without fee to the Society if
+they chose to make use of them. <a name="citation141b"></a><a
+href="#footnote141b" class="citation">[141b]</a>&nbsp; As
+&ldquo;a zealous, though most unworthy, member of the Anglican
+Church,&rdquo; he found that his &ldquo;cheeks glowed with shame
+at seeing dissenters, English and American, busily employed in
+circulating Tracts in the Russian tongue, whilst the members of
+the Church were following their secular concerns, almost
+regardless of things spiritual in respect to the Russian
+population.&rdquo; <a name="citation142a"></a><a
+href="#footnote142a" class="citation">[142a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow also translated into English &ldquo;one of the sacred
+books of Boudh, or Fo,&rdquo; from Baron Schilling de
+Canstadt&rsquo;s library.&nbsp; The principal occupation of his
+leisure hours, however, was a collection of translations, which
+he had printed by Schultz &amp; Beneze, and published (3rd/ 15th
+June 1835) under the title of <i>Targum</i>, <i>or Metrical
+Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects</i>. <a
+name="citation142b"></a><a href="#footnote142b"
+class="citation">[142b]</a>&nbsp; In a prefatory note, the
+collection is referred to as &ldquo;selections from a huge and
+undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years
+devoted to philological pursuits.&rdquo;&nbsp; Three months later
+he published another collection entitled <i>The Talisman</i>,
+<i>From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin</i>.&nbsp; <i>With Other
+Pieces</i>. <a name="citation143a"></a><a href="#footnote143a"
+class="citation">[143a]</a>&nbsp; There were seven poems in all,
+two after Pushkin, one from the Malo-Russian, one from
+Mickiewicz, and three &ldquo;ancient Russian Songs.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Again the printers were Schultz &amp; Beneze.&nbsp; Each of these
+editions appears to have been limited to one hundred copies. <a
+name="citation143b"></a><a href="#footnote143b"
+class="citation">[143b]</a></p>
+<p>Writing in the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, <a
+name="citation143c"></a><a href="#footnote143c"
+class="citation">[143c]</a> J. P. H[asfeldt]
+says:&mdash;&ldquo;The work is a pearl in literature, and, like
+pearls, derives value from its scarcity, for the whole edition
+was limited to about a hundred copies.&rdquo;&nbsp; W. B. Donne
+admired the translations immensely, considering &ldquo;the
+language and rhythm as vastly superior to Macaulay&rsquo;s
+<i>Lays of Ancient Rome</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation143d"></a><a
+href="#footnote143d" class="citation">[143d]</a></p>
+<p>Whilst the last two volumes of the Manchu New Testament were
+waiting for paper (probably for end-papers), Borrow determined to
+pay a hurried visit to Moscow, &ldquo;by far the most remarkable
+city it has ever been my fortune to see.&rdquo;&nbsp; One of his
+principal objects in visiting the ancient capital of Russia was
+to see the gypsies, who flourished there as they flourished
+nowhere else in Europe.&nbsp; They numbered several thousands,
+and many of them inhabited large and handsome houses, drove in
+their carriages, and were &ldquo;distinguishable from the genteel
+class of the Russians only . . . by superior personal advantages
+and mental accomplishments.&rdquo; <a name="citation143e"></a><a
+href="#footnote143e" class="citation">[143e]</a>&nbsp; For this
+unusual state of prosperity the women were responsible,
+&ldquo;having from time immemorial cultivated their vocal powers
+to such an extent that, although in the heart of a country in
+which the vocal art has arrived at greater perfection than in any
+other part of the world, the principal Gypsy choirs in Moscow are
+allowed by the general voice of the public to be unrivalled and
+to bear away the palm from all competitors.&nbsp; It is a fact
+notorious in Russia that the celebrated Catalani was so filled
+with admiration for the powers of voice displayed by one of the
+Gypsy songsters, who, after the former had sung before a splendid
+audience at Moscow, stepped forward and with an astonishing burst
+of melody ravished every ear, that she [Catalani] tore from her
+own shoulders a shawl of immense value which had been presented
+to her by the Pope, and embracing the Gypsy, compelled her to
+accept it, saying that it had been originally intended for the
+matchless singer, which she now discovered was not
+herself.&rdquo; <a name="citation144a"></a><a
+href="#footnote144a" class="citation">[144a]</a></p>
+<p>These Russian gypsy singers lived luxurious lives and
+frequently married Russian gentry or even the nobility.&nbsp; It
+was only the successes, however, who achieved such distinction,
+and there were &ldquo;a great number of low, vulgar, and
+profligate females who sing in taverns, or at the various gardens
+in the neighbourhood, and whose husbands and male connections
+subsist by horse-jobbing and such kinds of low traffic.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation144b"></a><a href="#footnote144b"
+class="citation">[144b]</a></p>
+<p>One fine evening Borrow hired a calash and drove out to Marina
+Rotze, &ldquo;a kind of sylvan garden,&rdquo; about one and a
+half miles out of Moscow, where this particular class of Romanys
+resorted.&nbsp; &ldquo;Upon my arriving there,&rdquo; he writes,
+&ldquo;the Gypsies swarmed out of their tents and from the little
+<i>tracteer</i> or tavern, and surrounded me.&nbsp; Standing on
+the seat of the calash, I addressed them in a loud voice in the
+dialect of the English Gypsies, with which I have some slight
+acquaintance.&nbsp; A scream of wonder instantly arose, and
+welcomes and greetings were poured forth in torrents of musical
+Romany, amongst which, however, the most pronounced cry was:
+<i>ah kak mi toute karmuma</i> <a name="citation145a"></a><a
+href="#footnote145a" class="citation">[145a]</a>&mdash;&lsquo;Oh
+how we love you&rsquo;; for at first they supposed me to be one
+of their brothers, who, they said, were wandering about in
+Turkey, China, and other parts, and that I had come over the
+great <i>pawnee</i>, or water, to visit them.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation145b"></a><a href="#footnote145b"
+class="citation">[145b]</a></p>
+<p>On several other occasions during his stay at Moscow, Borrow
+went out to Marina Rotze, to hold converse with the
+gypsies.&nbsp; He &ldquo;spoke to them upon their sinful manner
+of living,&rdquo; about Christianity and the advent of Christ, to
+which the gypsies listened with attention, but apparently not
+much profit.&nbsp; The promise that they would soon be able to
+obtain the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in their own tongue
+interested them far more on account of the pleasurable
+strangeness of the idea, than from any anticipation that they
+might derive spiritual comfort from such writings.</p>
+<p>Returning to St Petersburg from Moscow, after four-days&rsquo;
+absence, Borrow completed his work, settled up his affairs, bade
+his friends good-bye, and on 28th August/9th September left for
+Cronstadt to take the packet for L&uuml;beck.&nbsp; The
+authorities seem to have raised no objection to his
+departure.&nbsp; His passport bore the date 28th August O/S (the
+actual day he left) and described him as &ldquo;of stature,
+tall&mdash;hair, grey&mdash;face, oval&mdash;forehead,
+medium&mdash;eyebrows, blonde&mdash;eyes, brown&mdash;nose and
+mouth, medium&mdash;chin, round.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s work at St Petersburg gave entire satisfaction
+to the Bible Society.&nbsp; The Official Report for the year 1835
+informed the members that&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The printing of the Manchu New Testament in
+St Petersburg is now drawing to a conclusion.&nbsp; Mr G. Borrow,
+who has had to superintend the work, has in every way afforded
+satisfaction to the Committee.&nbsp; They have reason to believe
+that his acquirements in the language are of the most respectable
+order; while the devoted diligence with which he has laboured,
+and the skill he has shown in surmounting difficulties, and
+conducting his negotiations for the advantage of the Society,
+justly entitle him to this public acknowledgment of his
+services.&rdquo; <a name="citation146a"></a><a
+href="#footnote146a" class="citation">[146a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of the actual work itself John Hasfeldt justly wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I can only say, that it is a beautiful
+edition of an oriental work&mdash;that it is printed with great
+care on a fine imitation of Chinese paper, made on purpose.&nbsp;
+At the outset, Mr Borrow spent weeks and months in the printing
+office to make the compositors acquainted with the intricate
+Manchu types; and that, as for the contents, I am assured by
+well-informed persons, that this translation is remarkable for
+the correctness and fidelity with which it has been
+executed.&rdquo; <a name="citation146b"></a><a
+href="#footnote146b" class="citation">[146b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The total cost to the Society of his labours in connection
+with the transcription of Puerot&rsquo;s MS., and printing and
+binding one thousand copies of Lipovzoff&rsquo;s New Testament
+had reached the very considerable sum of &pound;2600.&nbsp; What
+the amount would have been if Borrow had not proved a prince of
+bargainers, it is impossible to imagine.&nbsp; The entire edition
+was sent to Earl Street, and eventually distributed in China as
+occasion offered.&nbsp; An edition of the Gospels in this version
+has recently been reprinted, and is still in use among certain
+tribes in Mongolia.</p>
+<p>Borrow arrived in London somewhere about 20th September (new
+style), after an absence of a little more than two years.&nbsp;
+He went to St Petersburg &ldquo;prejudiced against the country,
+the government, and the people; the first is much more agreeable
+than is generally supposed; the second is seemingly the best
+adapted for so vast an empire; and the third, even the lowest
+classes, are in general kind, hospitable, and benevolent.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation147"></a><a href="#footnote147"
+class="citation">[147]</a></p>
+<p>On 23rd September Borrow was still in London writing his
+report to the General Committee upon his recent labours.&nbsp; In
+all probability he left immediately afterwards for Norwich, there
+to await events.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X<br />
+OCTOBER 1835&ndash;JANUARY 1836</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> had strong hopes that the
+Bible Society would continue to employ him.&nbsp; Mr Brandram had
+written (5th June 1835) that the Committee &ldquo;will not very
+willingly suffer themselves to be deprived of your
+services.&nbsp; From Russia Borrow had written to his mother: <a
+name="citation148"></a><a href="#footnote148"
+class="citation">[148]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;They [the Bible Society] place great
+confidence in me, and I am firmly resolved to do all in my power
+to prove that they have not misplaced that confidence.&nbsp; I
+dare say that when I return home they will always be happy to
+employ me to edit their Bibles, and there is no employment in the
+whole world which I should prefer and for which I am better
+fitted.&nbsp; I shall, moreover, endeavour to get
+ordained.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On another occasion he wrote, also to his mother:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I hope that the Bible Society will employ
+me upon something new, for I have of late led an active life, and
+dread the thought of having nothing to do except studying as
+formerly, and I am by no means certain that I could sit down to
+study now.&nbsp; I can do anything if it is to turn to any
+account; but it is very hard to dig holes in the sand and fill
+them up again, as I used to do.&nbsp; However, I hope God will
+find me something on which I can employ myself with credit and
+profit.&nbsp; I should like very much to get into the Church,
+though I suppose that that, like all other professions, is
+overstocked.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mrs Borrow reminded him that he had a good home ready to
+receive him, and a mother grown lonely with long waiting.&nbsp;
+She told him, among other things, that she had spent none of the
+money that he had so generously and unsparingly sent her.</p>
+<p>Borrow certainly had every reason to expect further
+employment.&nbsp; He had proved himself not only a thoroughly
+qualified editor; but had discovered business qualities that must
+have astonished and delighted the General Committee.&nbsp; Above
+all he had brought to a most successful conclusion a venture
+that, but for his ability and address, would in all probability
+have failed utterly.&nbsp; The application for permission to
+proceed with the distribution had, it is true, been unsuccessful;
+but there was, as Mr Brandram wrote, the &ldquo;seed laid up in
+the granary; but &lsquo;it is not yet written&rsquo; that the
+sowers are to go forth to sow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After remaining for a short time with his mother at Norwich,
+Borrow appears to have paid a visit to his friends the Skeppers
+of Oulton.&nbsp; Old Mrs Skepper, Mrs Clarke&rsquo;s mother, had
+just died, and it is a proof of Borrow&rsquo;s intimacy with the
+family that he should be invited to stay with them whilst they
+were still in mourning.&nbsp; Although there is no record of the
+date when he arrived at Oulton, he is known to have been there on
+9th October, when he addressed a Bible Society meeting, about
+which he wrote the following delectable postscript to a letter he
+addressed to Mr Brandram: <a name="citation149"></a><a
+href="#footnote149" class="citation">[149]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There has been a Bible meeting at Oulton,
+in Suffolk, to which I was invited.&nbsp; The speaking produced
+such an effect, that some of the most vicious characters in the
+neighbourhood have become weekly subscribers to the Branch
+Society.&nbsp; So says the Chronicle of Norfolk in its
+report.&rdquo;&nbsp; The actual paragraph read:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will doubtless afford satisfaction to the Christian
+public to learn that many poor individuals in this neighbourhood,
+who previous to attending this meeting were averse to the cause
+or indifferent to it, had their feelings so aroused by what was
+communicated to them, that they have since voluntarily subscribed
+to the Bible Society, actuated by the hope of becoming humbly
+instrumental in extending the dominion of the true light, and of
+circumscribing the domains of darkness and of Satan.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On returning to the quiet of the old Cathedral city, Borrow
+had an opportunity of resting and meditating upon the events of
+the last two years; but he soon became restless and tired of
+inaction. <a name="citation150a"></a><a href="#footnote150a"
+class="citation">[150a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;I am weary of doing
+nothing, and am sighing for employment,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation150b"></a><a href="#footnote150b"
+class="citation">[150b]</a> he wrote.&nbsp; He had impatiently
+awaited some word from Earl Street, where, seemingly, he had
+discussed various plans for the future, including a journey to
+Portugal and Spain, as well as the printing in Armenian of an
+edition of the New Testament.&nbsp; Hearing nothing from Mr
+Jowett, he wrote begging to be excused for reminding him that he
+was ready to undertake any task that might be allotted to
+him.</p>
+<p>On the day following, he received a letter from Mr Brandram
+telling of how a resolution had been passed that he should go to
+Portugal.&nbsp; Then the writer&rsquo;s heart misgave him.&nbsp;
+In his mind&rsquo;s eye he saw Borrow set down at Oporto.&nbsp;
+What would he do?&nbsp; Fearful that the door was not
+sufficiently open to justify the step, he had suggested the
+suspension of the resolution.&nbsp; Borrow was asked what he
+himself thought.&nbsp; What did he think of China, and could he
+foresee any prospect for the distribution of the Scriptures
+there?&nbsp; &ldquo;Favour us with your thoughts,&rdquo; Mr
+Brandram wrote.&nbsp; &ldquo;Experimental agency in a Society
+like ours is a formidable undertaking.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow
+replied the same day, <a name="citation150c"></a><a
+href="#footnote150c" class="citation">[150c]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As you ask me to favour you with my
+thoughts, I certainly will; for I have thought much upon the
+matters in question, and the result I will communicate to you in
+a very few words.&nbsp; I decidedly approve (and so do all the
+religious friends whom I have communicated it to) of the plan of
+a journey to Portugal, and am sorry that it has been suspended,
+though I am convinced that your own benevolent and excellent
+heart was the cause, unwilling to fling me into an undertaking
+which you supposed might be attended with peril and
+difficulty.&nbsp; Therefore I wish it to be clearly understood
+that I am perfectly willing to undertake the expedition, nay, to
+extend it into Spain, to visit the town and country, to discourse
+with the people, especially those connected with institutions for
+infantine education, and to learn what ways and opportunities
+present themselves for conveying the Gospel into those benighted
+countries.&nbsp; I will moreover undertake, with the blessing of
+God, to draw up a small volume of what I shall have seen and
+heard there, which cannot fail to be interesting, and if
+patronised by the Society will probably help to cover the
+expenses of the expedition.&nbsp; On my return I can commence the
+Armenian Testament, and whilst I am editing that, I may be
+acquiring much vulgar Chinese from some unemployed Lascar or
+stray Cantonman whom I may pick up upon the wharves, and then . .
+. to China.&nbsp; I have no more to say, for were I to pen twenty
+pages, and I have time enough for so doing, I could communicate
+nothing which would make my views more clear.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The earnestness of this letter seems effectually to have
+dissipated Mr Brandram&rsquo;s scruples, for events moved forward
+with astonishing rapidity.&nbsp; Four days after the receipt of
+Borrow&rsquo;s letter, a resolution was adopted by the Committee
+to the following effect:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;That Mr Borrow be requested to proceed
+forthwith to Lisbon and Oporto for the purpose of visiting the
+Society&rsquo;s correspondents there, and of making further
+enquiries respecting the means and channels which may offer for
+promoting the circulation of the Holy Scriptures in
+Portugal.&rdquo; <a name="citation151"></a><a href="#footnote151"
+class="citation">[151]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr Brandram gave Borrow two letters of introduction, one to
+John Wilby, a merchant at Lisbon, and the other to the British
+Chaplain, the Rev. E. Whiteley.&nbsp; Having explained to Mr
+Whiteley how Borrow had recently been eventually going to be
+employed in St Petersburg in editing the Manchu New Testament, he
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We have some prospect of his eventually going to China; but
+having proved by experience that he possesses an order of talent
+remarkably suited to the purposes of our Society, we have felt
+unwilling to interrupt our connection with him with the
+termination of his engagement at St Petersburg.&nbsp; In the
+interval we have thought that he might advantageously visit
+Portugal, and strengthen your hands and those of other friends,
+and see whether he could not extend the promising opening at
+present existing.&nbsp; He has no specific instructions, though
+he is enjoined to confer very fully with yourself and Mr Wilby of
+Lisbon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have mentioned his recent occupation at St
+Petersburg, and you may perhaps think that there is little
+affinity between it and his present visit to Portugal.&nbsp; But
+Mr Borrow possesses no little tact in addressing himself to
+anything.&nbsp; With Portugal he is already acquainted, and
+speaks the language.&nbsp; He proposes visiting several of the
+principal cities and towns . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our correspondence about Spain is at this moment
+singularly interesting, and if it continues so, and the way seems
+to open, Mr Borrow will cross the frontier and go and enquire
+what can be done there.&nbsp; We believe him to be one who is
+endowed with no small portion of address and a spirit of
+enterprise.&nbsp; I recommend him to your kind attentions, and I
+anticipate your thanks for so doing, after you shall have become
+acquainted with him.&nbsp; Do not, however, be too hasty in
+forming your judgment.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This letter outlines very clearly what was in the minds of the
+Committee in sending Borrow to Portugal.&nbsp; He was to spy out
+the land and advise the home authorities in what direction he
+would be most likely to prove useful.&nbsp; He was in particular
+to direct his attention to schools, and was &ldquo;authorised to
+be liberal in <i>giving</i> New Testaments.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Furthermore, he was to be permitted to draw upon the
+Society&rsquo;s agents to the extent of one hundred pounds.</p>
+<p>The most significant part of this letter is the passage
+relating to China.&nbsp; It leaves no doubt that Borrow&rsquo;s
+reiterated requests to be employed in distributing the Manchu New
+Testament had appealed most strongly to the General
+Committee.&nbsp; Mr Brandram was evidently in doubt as to how
+Borrow would strike his correspondent as an agent of the Bible
+Society, hence his warning against a hasty judgment.&nbsp;
+Apparently this letter was never presented, as it was found among
+Borrow&rsquo;s papers, and Mr Whiteley had to form his opinion
+entirely unaided.</p>
+<p>On 6th November Borrow sailed from the Thames for Lisbon in
+the steamship <i>London Merchant</i>.&nbsp; The voyage was fair
+for the time of year, and was marked only by the tragic
+occurrence of a sailor falling from the cross-trees into the sea
+and being drowned.&nbsp; The man had dreamed his fate a few
+minutes previously, and had told Borrow of the circumstances on
+coming up from below. <a name="citation153"></a><a
+href="#footnote153" class="citation">[153]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow had scarcely been in Lisbon an hour before he heartily
+wished himself &ldquo;back in Russia . . . where I had left
+cherished friends and warm affections.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+Customs-house officers irritated him, first with their
+dilatoriness, then by the minuteness with which they examined
+every article of which he was possessed.&nbsp; Again, there was
+the difficulty of obtaining a suitable lodging, which when
+eventually found proved to be &ldquo;dark, dirty and exceedingly
+expensive without attendance.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr Wilby was in the
+country and not expected to return for a week.&nbsp; It would
+also appear that the British Chaplain was likewise away.&nbsp;
+Thus Borrow found himself with no one to advise him as to the
+first step he should take.&nbsp; This in itself was no very great
+drawback; but he felt very much a stranger in a city that struck
+him as detestable.</p>
+<p>Determined to commence operations according to the dictates of
+his own judgment, he first engaged a Portuguese servant that he
+might have ample opportunities of perfecting himself in the
+language.&nbsp; He was fortunate in his selection, for Antonio
+turned out an excellent fellow, who &ldquo;always served me with
+the greatest fidelity, and . . . exhibited an assiduity and a
+wish to please which afforded me the utmost satisfaction.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation154a"></a><a href="#footnote154a"
+class="citation">[154a]</a></p>
+<p>When Borrow arrived in Portugal, it was to find it gasping and
+dazed by eight years of civil war (1826&ndash;1834).&nbsp; In
+1807, when Junot invaded the country, the Royal House of Braganza
+had sailed for Brazil.&nbsp; In 1816 Dom Jo&#257;o succeeded to
+the thrones of Brazil and Portugal, and six years later he
+arrived in Portugal, leaving behind him as Viceroy his son Dom
+Pedro, who promptly declared himself Emperor of Brazil.&nbsp; Dom
+Jo&#257;o died in 1826, leaving, in addition to the self-styled
+Emperor of Brazil, another son, Miguel.&nbsp; Dom Pedro
+relinquished his claim to the throne of Portugal in favour of his
+seven years old daughter, Maria da Gloria, whose right was
+contested by her uncle Dom Miguel.&nbsp; In 1834 Dom Miguel
+resigned his imaginary rights to the throne by the Convention of
+Evora, and departed from the country that for eight years had
+been at war with itself, and for seven with a foreign
+invader.</p>
+<p>Borrow proceeded to acquaint himself with the state of affairs
+in Lisbon and the surrounding country, that he might transmit a
+full account to the Bible Society.&nbsp; He visited every part of
+the city, losing no opportunity of entering into conversation
+with anyone with whom he came in contact.&nbsp; The people he
+found indifferent to religion, the lower orders in
+particular.&nbsp; They laughed in his face when he enquired if
+ever they confessed themselves, and a muleteer on being asked if
+he reverenced the cross, &ldquo;instantly flew into a rage,
+stamped violently, and, spitting on the ground, said it was a
+piece of stone, and that he should have no more objection to spit
+upon it than the stones on which he trod.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation154b"></a><a href="#footnote154b"
+class="citation">[154b]</a></p>
+<p>Many of the people could read, as they proved when asked to do
+so from the Portuguese New Testament; but of all those whom he
+addressed none appeared to have read the Scriptures, or to know
+anything of what they contain.</p>
+<p>After spending four or five days at Lisbon, Borrow,
+accompanied by Antonio, proceeded to Cintra. <a
+name="citation155a"></a><a href="#footnote155a"
+class="citation">[155a]</a>&nbsp; Here he pursued the same
+method, also visiting the schools and enquiring into the nature
+of the religious instruction.&nbsp; During his stay of four days,
+he &ldquo;traversed the country in all directions, riding into
+the fields, where I saw the peasants at work, and entering into
+discourse with them, and notwithstanding many of my questions
+must have appeared to them very singular, I never experienced any
+incivility, though they frequently answered me with smiles and
+laughter.&rdquo; <a name="citation155b"></a><a
+href="#footnote155b" class="citation">[155b]</a></p>
+<p>From Cintra he proceeded on horseback to Mafra, a large
+village some three leagues distant.&nbsp; Everywhere he subjected
+the inhabitants to a searching cross-examination, laying bare
+their minds upon religious matters, experiencing surprise at the
+&ldquo;free and unembarrassed manner in which the Portuguese
+peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language
+in which they express their thoughts,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation155c"></a><a href="#footnote155c"
+class="citation">[155c]</a> although few could read or write.</p>
+<p>On the return journey from Mafra to Cintra he nearly lost his
+life, owing to the girth of his saddle breaking during his
+horse&rsquo;s exertions in climbing a hill.&nbsp; Borrow was cast
+violently to the ground; but fortunately on the right side,
+otherwise he would in all probability have been bruised to death
+by tumbling down the steep hill-side.&nbsp; As it was, he was
+dazed, and felt the effects of his mishap for several days.</p>
+<p>On his return to Lisbon, Borrow found that Mr Wilby was back,
+and he had many opportunities of taking counsel with him as to
+the best means to be adopted to further the Society&rsquo;s
+ends.&nbsp; He learned that four hundred copies of the Bible and
+the New Testament had arrived, and it was decided to begin
+operations at once.&nbsp; Mr Wilby recommended the booksellers as
+the best medium of distribution; but Borrow urged strongly that
+at least half of the available copies &ldquo;should be entrusted
+to colporteurs,&rdquo; who were to receive a commission upon
+every copy sold.&nbsp; To this Mr Wilby agreed, provided the
+operations of the colporteurs were restricted to Lisbon, as there
+was considerable danger in the country, where the priests were
+very powerful and might urge the people to mishandle, or even
+assassinate, the bearers of the Word.</p>
+<p>By nature Borrow was not addicted to half measures.&nbsp; His
+whole record as an agent of the Bible Society was of a series of
+determined onslaughts upon the obstacles animate and inanimate,
+that beset his path.&nbsp; Sometimes he took away the breath of
+his adversaries by the very vigour of his attack, and, like the
+old Northern leaders, whose deeds he wished to give to an uneager
+world in translated verse, he faced great dangers and achieved
+great ends.&nbsp; Recognising that the darkest region is most in
+need of light, he enquired of Mr Wilby in what province of
+Portugal were to be found the most ignorant and benighted people,
+and on being told the Alemtejo (the other side of the Tagus), he
+immediately announced his intention of making a journey through
+it, in order to discover how dense spiritual gloom could really
+be in an ostensibly Christian country.</p>
+<p>The Alemtejo was an unprepossessing country, consisting for
+the most part of &ldquo;heaths, broken by knolls and gloomy
+dingles, swamps and forests of stunted pine,&rdquo; with but few
+hills and mountains.&nbsp; The place was infested with banditti,
+and robberies, accompanied by horrible murders, were of constant
+occurrence.&nbsp; On 6th December, accompanied by his servant
+Antonio, Borrow set out for Evora, the principal town, formerly a
+seat of the dreaded Inquisition, which lies about sixty miles
+east of Lisbon.&nbsp; After many adventures, which he himself has
+narrated, including a dangerous crossing of the Tagus, and a
+meeting with Dom Geronimo Joz&eacute; d&rsquo;Azveto, secretary
+to the government of Evora, Borrow arrived at his destination,
+having spent two nights on the road.&nbsp; During the journey he
+had been constantly mindful of his mission; beside the embers of
+a bandit&rsquo;s fire he left a New Testament, and the huts that
+mark the spot where Dom Pedro and Dom Miguel met, he sweetened
+with some of &ldquo;the precious little tracts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He had brought with him to Evora twenty Testaments and two
+Bibles, half of which he left with an enlightened shopkeeper, to
+whom he had a letter of introduction.&nbsp; The other half he
+subsequently bestowed upon Dom Geronimo, who proved to be a man
+of great earnestness, deeply conscious of his countrymen&rsquo;s
+ignorance of true Christianity.&nbsp; Each day during his stay at
+Evora, Borrow spent two hours beside the fountain where the
+cattle were watered, entering into conversation with all who
+approached, the result being that before he left the town, he had
+spoken to &ldquo;about two hundred . . . of the children of
+Portugal upon matters connected with their eternal
+welfare.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sometimes his hearers would ask for proofs
+of his statements that they were not Christians, being ignorant
+of Christ and his teaching, and that the Pope was Satan&rsquo;s
+prime minister.&nbsp; He invariably replied by calling attention
+to their own ignorance of the Scripture, for if the priests were
+in reality Christ&rsquo;s ministers, why had they kept from their
+flocks the words of their Master?</p>
+<p>When not engaged at the fountain, Borrow rode about the
+neighbourhood distributing tracts.&nbsp; Fearful lest the people
+might refuse them if offered by his own hand, he dropped them in
+their favourite walks, in the hope that they would be picked up
+out of curiosity.&nbsp; He caused the daughter of the landlady of
+the inn at which he stopped to burn a copy of Volney&rsquo;s
+<i>Ruins of Empire</i>, because the author was an &ldquo;emissary
+of Satan,&rdquo; the girl standing by telling her beads until the
+book were entirely consumed.</p>
+<p>Borrow had been greatly handicapped through the lack of
+letters of introduction to influential people in Portugal.&nbsp;
+He wrote, therefore, to Dr Bowring, now M.P. for Kilmarnock,
+telling him of his wanderings among the rustics and banditti of
+Portugal, with whom he had become very popular; but, he
+continues:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As it is much more easy to introduce
+oneself to the cottage than the hall (though I am not utterly
+unknown in the latter), I want you to give or procure me letters
+to the most liberal and influential minds in Portugal.&nbsp; I
+likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office to Lord [Howard]
+de Walden.&nbsp; In a word, I want to make what interest I can
+towards obtaining the admission of the Gospel of Jesus into the
+public schools of Portugal, which are about to be
+established.&nbsp; I beg leave to state that this is <i>my
+plan</i> and no other person&rsquo;s, as I was merely sent over
+to Portugal to observe the disposition of the people, therefore I
+do not wish to be named as an Agent of the B.S., but as a person
+who has plans for the mental improvement of the Portuguese;
+should I receive <i>these letters</i> within the space of six
+weeks it will be time enough, for before setting up my machine in
+Portugal, I wish to lay the foundations of something similar in
+Spain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>P.S.&mdash;&ldquo;I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want
+letters something similar (there is impudence for you) for
+Madrid, <i>which I should like to have as soon as
+possible</i>.&nbsp; I do not much care at present for an
+introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I shall not commence
+operations seriously in Spain until I have disposed of
+Portugal.&nbsp; I will not apologise for writing to you in this
+manner, for you know me, but I will tell you one thing, which is,
+that the letter which you procured for me, on my going to St
+Petersburg, from Lord Palmerston, assisted me wonderfully; I
+called twice at your domicile on my return; the first time you
+were in Scotland&mdash;the second in France, and I assure you I
+cried with vexation.&nbsp; Remember me to Mrs Bowring, and God
+bless you.&rdquo; <a name="citation159a"></a><a
+href="#footnote159a" class="citation">[159a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In this letter Borrow gives another illustration of his
+shrewdness.&nbsp; He saw clearly the disadvantage of appealing
+for assistance as an agent of the Bible Society, a Protestant
+institution which was anathema in a Roman Catholic country,
+whereas if he posed merely as &ldquo;a gentleman who has plans
+for the mental improvement of the Portuguese,&rdquo; he could
+enlist the sympathetic interest of any and every broad-minded
+Portuguese mindful of his country&rsquo;s intellectual
+gloom.&nbsp; In response to this request Dr Bowring, writing from
+Brussels, sent two letters of introduction, one each for Lisbon
+and Madrid.</p>
+<p>After remaining at Evora for a week (8th to 17th December)
+Borrow returned to Lisbon, thoroughly satisfied with the results
+of his journey.&nbsp; The next fortnight he spent in a further
+examination of Lisbon, and becoming acquainted with the Jews of
+the city, by whom he was welcomed as a powerful rabbi.&nbsp; He
+favoured the mistake, with the result that in a few days he
+&ldquo;knew all that related to them and their traffic in
+Lisbon.&rdquo; <a name="citation159b"></a><a href="#footnote159b"
+class="citation">[159b]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s methods seem to have impressed Earl Street most
+favourably.&nbsp; In a letter of acknowledgment Mr Brandram
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We have been much interested by your two
+communications. <a name="citation159c"></a><a
+href="#footnote159c" class="citation">[159c]</a>&nbsp; They are
+both very painful in their details, and you develop a truly awful
+state of things.&nbsp; You are probing the wound, and I hope
+preparing the way for our pouring in by and by the healing balsam
+of the Scripture.&nbsp; We shall be anxious to hear from you
+again.&nbsp; We often think of you in your wanderings.&nbsp; We
+like your way of communicating with the people, meeting them in
+their own walks.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thoroughly convinced as to the irreligious state of Portugal,
+Borrow determined to set out for Spain, in order that he might
+examine into the condition of the people, and report to the Bible
+Society their state of preparedness to receive the
+Scriptures.&nbsp; On the afternoon of 1st January 1836 he set
+out, bound for Badajos, a hundred miles south of Lisbon.&nbsp;
+From Badajos he intended to take the diligence on to Madrid,
+which he decided to make his headquarters.</p>
+<p>Having taken leave of his servant Antonio (who had accompanied
+him as far as Ald&eacute;a Gall&eacute;ga) almost with tears,
+Borrow mounted a hired mule, and with no other companion than an
+idiot lad, who, when spoken to, made reply only with an uncouth
+laugh, he plunged once more into the dangerous and desolate
+Alemtejo on a four days&rsquo; journey &ldquo;over the most
+savage and ill-noted track in the whole kingdom.&rdquo;&nbsp; At
+first he was overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness, and
+experienced a great desire for someone with whom to talk.&nbsp;
+There was no one to be seen&mdash;he was hemmed in by desolation
+and despair.</p>
+<p>At Montem&ocirc;r Novo Borrow appears in a new light when he
+kisses his hand repeatedly to the tittering nuns who, with
+&ldquo;dusky faces and black waving hair,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation160a"></a><a href="#footnote160a"
+class="citation">[160a]</a> strove to obtain a glance of the
+stranger who, a few minutes previously, had dared to tell one of
+their number that he had come &ldquo;to endeavour to introduce
+the gospel of Christ into a country where it is not known.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation160b"></a><a href="#footnote160b"
+class="citation">[160b]</a></p>
+<p>One adventure befel him that might have ended in
+tragedy.&nbsp; Soon after leaving Array&oacute;los he overtook a
+string of carts conveying ammunition into Spain.&nbsp; One of the
+Portuguese soldiers of the guard began to curse foreigners in
+general and Borrow, whom he mistook for a Frenchmen, in
+particular, because &ldquo;the devil helps foreigners and hates
+the Portuguese.&rdquo;&nbsp; When about forty yards ahead of the
+advance guard, with which the discontented soldier marched,
+Borrow had the imprudence to laugh, with the result that the next
+moment two well-aimed bullets sang past his ears.&nbsp; Taking
+the hint, Borrow put spurs to his mule, and, followed by the
+terrified guide, soon outdistanced these official banditti.&nbsp;
+With great <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> he remarks, &ldquo;Oh, may
+I live to see the day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated
+in any civilised, or at least Christian country!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation161a"></a><a href="#footnote161a"
+class="citation">[161a]</a></p>
+<p>For two and a half days the idiot guide had met Borrow&rsquo;s
+most dexterous cross-examination with a determined silence; but
+on reaching a hill overlooking Estrem&oacute;z he suddenly found
+tongue, and, in an epic of inspiration, told of the wonderful
+hunting that was to be obtained on the Serre Dorso, the
+Alemtejo&rsquo;s finest mountain.&nbsp; &ldquo;He likewise
+described with great minuteness a wonderful dog, which was kept
+in the neighbourhood for the purpose of catching the wolves and
+wild boars, and for which the proprietor had refused twenty
+<i>moidores</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation161b"></a><a
+href="#footnote161b" class="citation">[161b]</a>&nbsp; From this
+it would appear that the idiocy of the guide was an armour to be
+assumed at will by one who preferred the sweetness of his own
+thoughts to the cross-questionings of his master&rsquo;s
+clients.</p>
+<p>At Elvas, which he reached on 5th January, Borrow showed very
+strongly one rather paradoxical side of his character.&nbsp;
+Never backward in his dispraise of Englishmen and things English,
+in particular those responsible for the administration of the
+nation&rsquo;s affairs, past and present, he demonstrated very
+clearly, in his expressions of indignation at the Portuguese
+attitude towards England, that he reserved this right of
+criticism strictly to himself.&nbsp; At the inn where he stayed,
+he thoroughly discomfited a Portuguese officer who dared to
+criticise the English Government for its attitude in connection
+with the Spanish civil war.&nbsp; When refused entrance to the
+fort, where he had gone in order to satisfy his curiosity, Borrow
+exclaims, &ldquo;This is one of the beneficial results of
+protecting a nation, and squandering blood and treasure in its
+defence.&rdquo; <a name="citation162a"></a><a
+href="#footnote162a" class="citation">[162a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow was essentially an Englishman and proud of his blood,
+prouder perhaps of that which came to him from Norfolk, <a
+name="citation162b"></a><a href="#footnote162b"
+class="citation">[162b]</a> and although permitting himself and
+his fellow-countrymen considerable license in the matter of
+caustic criticism of public men and things, there the matter must
+end.&nbsp; Let a foreigner, a Portuguese, dare to say a word
+against his, Borrow&rsquo;s, country, and he became subjected to
+either a biting cross-examination, or was denounced in eloquent
+and telling periods.&nbsp; &ldquo;I could not command
+myself,&rdquo; he writes in extenuation of his unchristian
+conduct in discomfiting the officer at Elvas, &ldquo;when I heard
+my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner.&nbsp; By
+whom?&nbsp; A Portuguese?&nbsp; A native of a country which has
+been twice liberated from horrid and detestable thraldom by the
+hands of Englishmen.&rdquo; <a name="citation162c"></a><a
+href="#footnote162c" class="citation">[162c]</a></p>
+<p>On 6th January 1836, <a name="citation162d"></a><a
+href="#footnote162d" class="citation">[162d]</a> having sent back
+the &ldquo;idiot&rdquo; guide with the two mules, Borrow
+&ldquo;spurred down the hill of Elvas to the plain, eager to
+arrive in old, chivalrous, romantic Spain,&rdquo; and having
+forded the stream that separates the two countries, he crossed
+the bridge over the Guadiana and entered the North Gate of
+Badajos, immortalised by Wellington and the British Army.&nbsp;
+He had reached Spain &ldquo;in the humble hope of being able to
+cleanse some of the foul stains of Popery from the minds of its
+children.&rdquo; <a name="citation162e"></a><a
+href="#footnote162e" class="citation">[162e]</a></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<br />
+JANUARY&ndash;OCTOBER 1836</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Borrow entered Spain she was
+in the throes of civil war.&nbsp; In 1814 British blood and
+British money had restored to the throne Ferdinand VII., who,
+immediately he found himself secure, and forgetting his pledges
+to govern constitutionally, dissolved the Cortes and became an
+absolute monarch.&nbsp; All the old abuses were revived,
+including the re-establishment of the Inquisition.&nbsp; For six
+years the people suffered their King&rsquo;s tyranny, then they
+revolted, with the result that Ferdinand, bending to the wind,
+accepted a re-imposition of the Constitution.&nbsp; In 1823 a
+French Army occupied Madrid in support of Ferdinand, who promptly
+reverted to absolutism.</p>
+<p>In 1829 Ferdinand married for the fourth time, and, on the
+birth of a daughter, declared that the Salic law had no effect in
+Spain, and the young princess was recognised as heir-apparent to
+the throne.&nbsp; This drew from his brother, Don Carlos, who
+immediately left the country, a protest against his exclusion
+from the succession.&nbsp; When his daughter was four years of
+age, Ferdinand died, and the child was proclaimed Queen as Isabel
+II.</p>
+<p>A bitter war broke out between the respective adherents of the
+Queen and her uncle Don Carlos.&nbsp; Prisoners and wounded were
+massacred without discrimination, and an uncivilised and
+barbarous warfare waged when Borrow crossed the Portuguese
+frontier &ldquo;to undertake the adventure of Spain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Spain had always appealed most strongly to Borrow&rsquo;s
+imagination.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In the day-dreams of my boyhood,&rdquo; he
+writes, &ldquo;Spain always bore a considerable share, and I took
+a particular interest in her, without any presentiment that I
+should, at a future time, be called upon to take a part, however
+humble, in her strange dramas; which interest, at a very early
+period, led me to acquire her noble language, and to make myself
+acquainted with the literature (scarcely worthy of the language),
+her history and traditions; so that when I entered Spain for the
+first time I felt more at home than I should otherwise have
+done.&rdquo; <a name="citation164a"></a><a href="#footnote164a"
+class="citation">[164a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Whilst standing at the door of the Inn of the Three Nations on
+the day following his arrival at Badajos, meditating upon the
+deplorable state of the country he had just entered, Borrow
+recognised in the face of one of two men who were about to pass
+him the unmistakable lineaments of Egypt.&nbsp; Uttering &ldquo;a
+certain word,&rdquo; he received the reply he expected and
+forthwith engaged in conversation with the two men, who both
+proved to be gypsies.&nbsp; These men spread the news abroad that
+staying at the Inn of the Three Nations was a man who spoke
+Romany.&nbsp; &ldquo;In less than half an hour the street before
+the inn was filled with the men, women, and children of
+Egypt.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow went out amongst them, and confesses
+that &ldquo;so much vileness, dirt, and misery I had never seen
+among a similar number of human beings; but worst of all was the
+evil expression of their countenances.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation164b"></a><a href="#footnote164b"
+class="citation">[164b]</a>&nbsp; He soon discovered that their
+faces were an accurate index to their hearts, which were capable
+of every species of villainy.&nbsp; The gypsies clustered round
+him, fingering his hands, face and clothes, as if he were a holy
+man.</p>
+<p>Gypsies had always held for Borrow a strange attraction, <a
+name="citation164c"></a><a href="#footnote164c"
+class="citation">[164c]</a> and he determined to prolong his stay
+at Badajos in order that he might have an opportunity of becoming
+&ldquo;better acquainted with their condition and manners, and
+above all to speak to them of Christ and His Word; for I was
+convinced, that should I travel to the end of the universe, I
+should meet with no people more in need of a little Christian
+exhortation.&rdquo; <a name="citation165a"></a><a
+href="#footnote165a" class="citation">[165a]</a></p>
+<p>Intimate though his acquaintance with the gypsies of other
+countries had been, Borrow was aghast at the depravity of those
+of Spain.&nbsp; The men were drunkards, brigands, and murderers;
+the women unchaste, and inveterate thieves.&nbsp; Their language
+was terrifying in its foulness.&nbsp; They seemed to have no
+religion save a misty glimmering of metempsychosis, which had
+come down to them through the centuries, and having been very
+wicked in this world they asked, with some show of reason, why
+they should live again.&nbsp; They were incorrigible heathens,
+keenly interested in the demonstration that their language was
+capable of being written and read, but untouched by the parables
+of Lazarus or the Prodigal Son, which Borrow read and expounded
+to them.&nbsp; &ldquo;Brother,&rdquo; exclaimed one woman,
+&ldquo;you tell us strange things, though perhaps you do not lie;
+a month since I would sooner have believed these tales, than that
+this day I should see one who could read Romany.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation165b"></a><a href="#footnote165b"
+class="citation">[165b]</a></p>
+<p>Neither by exhortation nor by translating into Romany a
+portion of the Gospel of St Luke could Borrow make any impression
+upon the minds of the gypsies, therefore when one of them,
+Antonio by name, announced that &ldquo;the affairs of
+Egypt&rdquo; called for his presence &ldquo;on the frontiers of
+Costumbra,&rdquo; and that he and Borrow might as well journey
+thus far together, he decided to avail himself of the
+opportunity.&nbsp; It was arranged that Borrow&rsquo;s luggage
+should be sent on ahead, for, as Antonio said, &ldquo;How the
+<i>Busn&eacute;</i> [the Spaniards] on the road would laugh if
+they saw two <i>Cal&eacute;s</i> [Gypsies] with luggage behind
+them.&rdquo; <a name="citation166a"></a><a href="#footnote166a"
+class="citation">[166a]</a>&nbsp; Thus it came about that an
+agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, mounted upon a
+most uncouth horse &ldquo;of a spectral white, short in the body,
+but with remarkably long legs&rdquo; and high in the withers, set
+out from Badajos on 16th January 1836, escorted by a smuggler
+astride a mule; for the affairs of Egypt on this occasion were
+the evasion of the Customs dues.</p>
+<p>Towards evening on the first day the curiously assorted pair
+arrived at M&eacute;rida, and proceeded to a large and ruinous
+house, a portion of which was occupied by some connections of the
+gypsy Antonio&rsquo;s.&nbsp; In the large hall of the old mansion
+they camped, and here, acting on the gypsy&rsquo;s advice, Borrow
+remained for three days.&nbsp; Antonio himself was absent from
+early morning until late at night, occupied with his own affairs.
+<a name="citation166b"></a><a href="#footnote166b"
+class="citation">[166b]</a></p>
+<p>The fourth night was spent in the forest by the campfire of
+some more of Antonio&rsquo;s friends.&nbsp; On one occasion, but
+for the fortunate possession of a passport, the affairs of Egypt
+would have involved Borrow in some difficulties with the
+authorities.&nbsp; At another time, for safety&rsquo;s sake, he
+had to part from Antonio and proceed on his way alone, picking up
+the <i>contrabandista</i> further on the road.</p>
+<p>When some distance beyond Jaraic&eacute;jo, it was discovered
+that the affairs of Egypt had ended disastrously in the
+discomfiture and capture of Antonio&rsquo;s friends by the
+authorities.&nbsp; The news was brought by the gypsy&rsquo;s
+daughter.&nbsp; Antonio must return at once, and as the steed
+Borrow was riding, which belonged to Antonio, would be required
+by him, Borrow purchased the daughter&rsquo;s donkey, and having
+said good-bye to the smuggler, he continued his journey
+alone.</p>
+<p>By way of Almar&aacute;z and Orop&eacute;sa Borrow eventually
+reached Talav&eacute;ra (24th Jan.).&nbsp; On the advice of a
+Toledo Jew, with whom he had become acquainted during the last
+stage of his journey, he decided to take the diligence from
+Talav&eacute;ra to Madrid, the more willingly because the Jew
+amiably offered to purchase the donkey.&nbsp; On the evening of
+25th Jan. Borrow accordingly took his place on the diligence, and
+reached the capital the next morning.</p>
+<p>On arriving at Madrid, Borrow first went to a Posada; but a
+few days later he removed to lodgings in the Calle de la Zarza
+(the Street of the Brambles),&mdash;&ldquo;A dark and dirty
+street, which, however, was close to the Puerta del Sol, the most
+central point of Madrid, into which four or five of the principal
+streets debouche, and which is, at all times of the year, the
+great place of assemblage for the idlers of the capital, poor or
+rich.&rdquo; <a name="citation167a"></a><a href="#footnote167a"
+class="citation">[167a]</a></p>
+<p>The capital did not at first impress Borrow very favourably.
+<a name="citation167b"></a><a href="#footnote167b"
+class="citation">[167b]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Madrid is a small
+town,&rdquo; he wrote to his mother, <a
+name="citation167c"></a><a href="#footnote167c"
+class="citation">[167c]</a> &ldquo;not larger than Norwich, but
+it is crammed with people, like a hive with bees, and it contains
+many fine streets and fountains . . .&nbsp; Everything in Madrid
+is excessively dear to foreigners, for they are made to pay six
+times more than natives . . .&nbsp; I manage to get on tolerably
+well, for I make a point of paying just one quarter of what I am
+asked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He suffered considerably from the frost and cold.&nbsp; From
+the snow-covered mountains that surround the city there descend
+in winter such cold blasts &ldquo;that the body is drawn up like
+a leaf.&rdquo; <a name="citation167d"></a><a href="#footnote167d"
+class="citation">[167d]</a>&nbsp; Then again there were the
+physical discomforts that he had to endure.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You cannot think,&rdquo; he wrote, <a
+name="citation168a"></a><a href="#footnote168a"
+class="citation">[168a]</a> &ldquo;what a filthy, uncivilised set
+of people the Spanish and Portuguese are.&nbsp; There is more
+comfort in an English barn than in one of their palaces; and they
+are rude and ill-bred to a surprising degree.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow was angry with Spain, possibly for being so unlike his
+&ldquo;dear and glorious Russia.&rdquo;&nbsp; He saw in it a
+fertile and beautiful country, inhabited by a set of beings that
+were not human, &ldquo;almost as bad as the Irish, with the
+exception that they are not drunkards.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation168b"></a><a href="#footnote168b"
+class="citation">[168b]</a>&nbsp; They were a nation of thieves
+and extortioners, who regarded the foreigner as their legitimate
+prey.&nbsp; Even his own servant was &ldquo;the greatest thief
+and villain that ever existed; who, if I would let him, would
+steal the teeth out of my head,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation168c"></a><a href="#footnote168c"
+class="citation">[168c]</a> and who seems actually to have
+destroyed some of his master&rsquo;s letters for the sake of the
+postage.&nbsp; Being forced to call upon various people whose
+addresses he did not know, Borrow found it necessary to keep the
+man, in spite of his thievish proclivities, for he was clever,
+and had he been dismissed his place would, in all probability,
+have been taken by an even greater rogue.</p>
+<p>At night he never went out, for the streets were thronged with
+hundreds of people of the rival factions, bent on &ldquo;cutting
+and murdering one another; . . . for every Spaniard is by nature
+a cruel, cowardly tiger.&nbsp; Nothing is more common than to
+destroy a whole town, putting man, woman, and child to death,
+because two or three of the inhabitants have been
+obnoxious.&rdquo; <a name="citation168d"></a><a
+href="#footnote168d" class="citation">[168d]</a>&nbsp; Thus he
+wrote to his mother, all-unconscious of the anxiety and alarm
+that he was causing her lest he, her dear George, should be one
+of the cut or murdered.</p>
+<p>Later, Borrow seems to have revised his opinion of Madrid and
+of its inhabitants.&nbsp; He confesses that of all the cities he
+has known Madrid interested him the most, not on account of its
+public buildings, squares or fountains, for these are surpassed
+in other cities; but because of its population.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Within a mud wall scarcely one league and a half in
+circuit, are contained two hundred thousand human beings,
+certainly forming the most extraordinary vital mass to be found
+in the entire world.&rdquo; <a name="citation169"></a><a
+href="#footnote169" class="citation">[169]</a>&nbsp; In the upper
+classes he had little interest.&nbsp; He mixed but little with
+them, and what he saw did not impress him favourably.&nbsp; It
+was the Spaniard of the lower orders that attracted him.&nbsp; He
+regarded this class as composed not of common beings, but of
+extraordinary men.&nbsp; He admired their spirit of proud
+independence, and forgave them their ignorance.&nbsp; His first
+impressions of Spain had been unfavourable because, as a
+stranger, he had been victimised by the amiable citizens, who
+were merely doing as their fathers had done before them.&nbsp;
+Once, however, he got to know them, he regarded with more
+indulgence their constitutional dishonesty towards the stranger,
+a weakness they possessed in common with the gypsies, and hailed
+them as &ldquo;extraordinary men.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s
+impulsiveness frequently led him to ill-considered and hasty
+conclusions, which, however, he never hesitated to correct, if he
+saw need for correction.</p>
+<p>The disappointment he experienced as regards Madrid and the
+Spaniards is not difficult to understand.&nbsp; He arrived quite
+friendless and without letters of introduction, to find the city
+given over to the dissensions and strifes of the supporters of
+Isabel II. and Don Carlos.&nbsp; His journey had been undertaken
+in &ldquo;the hope of obtaining permission from the Government to
+print the New Testament in the Castilian language, without the
+notes insisted on by the Spanish clergy, for circulation in
+Spain,&rdquo; and there seemed small chance of those responsible
+for the direction of affairs listening to the application of a
+foreigner for permission to print the unannotated
+Scriptures.&nbsp; For one thing, any acquiescence in such a
+suggestion would draw forth from the priesthood bitter reproaches
+and, most probably, active and serious opposition.&nbsp; It is
+only natural that despondency should occasionally seize upon him
+who sought to light the lamp of truth amidst such tempests.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p170b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"George Villiers, Fourth Earl of Clarendon.  British Minister at
+Madrid, 1833&ndash;1839.  From the engraving after Sir Francis
+Grant in the National Portrait Gallery"
+title=
+"George Villiers, Fourth Earl of Clarendon.  British Minister at
+Madrid, 1833&ndash;1839.  From the engraving after Sir Francis
+Grant in the National Portrait Gallery"
+ src="images/p170s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The man to approach was the premier, Juan &Aacute;lvarez y
+Mendiz&aacute;bal, <a name="citation170a"></a><a
+href="#footnote170a" class="citation">[170a]</a> a Christianised
+Jew.&nbsp; He was enormously powerful, and Borrow decided to
+appeal to him direct; for, armed with the approval of
+Mendiz&aacute;bal, no one would dare to interfere with his plans
+or proceedings.&nbsp; Borrow made several attempts to see
+Mendiz&aacute;bal, who &ldquo;was considered as a man of almost
+unbounded power, in whose hands were placed the destinies of the
+country.&rdquo;&nbsp; Without interest or letters of
+introduction, he found it utterly impossible to obtain an
+audience.&nbsp; Recollecting the assistance he had received from
+the Hon. J. D. Bligh at St Petersburg, Borrow determined to make
+himself known to the British Minister at Madrid, the Hon. George
+Villiers, <a name="citation170b"></a><a href="#footnote170b"
+class="citation">[170b]</a> and, &ldquo;with the freedom
+permitted to a British subject . . . ask his advice in the
+affair.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow was received with great kindness,
+and, after conversing upon various topics for some time, he
+introduced the subject of his visit.&nbsp; Mr Villiers willingly
+undertook to help him as far as lay in his power, and promised to
+endeavour to procure for him an audience with the Premier.&nbsp;
+In this he was successful, and Borrow had an interview with
+Mendiz&aacute;bal, who was almost inaccessible to all but the
+few.</p>
+<p>At eight o&rsquo;clock on the morning of 7th February Borrow
+presented himself at the palace, where Mendiz&aacute;bal resided,
+and after waiting for about three hours, was admitted to the
+presence of the Prime Minister of Spain, whom he
+found&mdash;&ldquo;A huge athletic man, somewhat taller than
+myself, who measure six foot two without my shoes.&nbsp; His
+complexion was florid, his features fine and regular, his nose
+quite aquiline, and his teeth splendidly white; though scarcely
+fifty years of age, his hair was remarkably grey.&nbsp; He was
+dressed in a rich morning gown, with a gold chain round his neck,
+and morocco slippers on his feet.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation171"></a><a href="#footnote171"
+class="citation">[171]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow began by assuring Mendiz&aacute;bal that he was
+labouring under a grave error in thinking that the Bible Society
+had sought to influence unduly the slaves of Cuba, that they had
+not sent any agents there, and they were not in communication
+with any of the residents.&nbsp; Mr Villiers had warned Borrow
+that the premier was very angry on account of reports that had
+reached him of the action in Cuba of certain people whom he
+insisted were sent there by the Bible Society.&nbsp; In vain
+Borrow suggested that the disturbers of the tranquillity of
+Spain&rsquo;s beneficent rule in the Island were in no way
+connected with Earl Street; he was several times interrupted by
+Mendiz&aacute;bal, who insisted that he had documentary
+proof.&nbsp; Borrow with difficulty restrained himself from
+laughing in the premier s face.&nbsp; He pointed out that the
+Committee was composed of quiet, respectable English gentlemen,
+who attended to their own concerns and gave a little of their
+time to the affairs of the Bible Society.</p>
+<p>On Borrow asking for permission to print at Madrid the New
+Testament in Spanish without notes, he was met with an
+unequivocal refusal.&nbsp; In spite of his arguments that the
+whole tenor of the work was against bloodshedding and violence,
+he could not shake the premier&rsquo;s opinion that it was
+&ldquo;an improper book.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At first Borrow had experienced some difficulty in explaining
+himself, on account of the Spaniard&rsquo;s habit of persistent
+interruption, and at last he was forced in self-defence to hold
+on in spite of Mendiz&aacute;bal&rsquo;s remarks.&nbsp; The
+upshot of the interview was that he was told to renew his
+application when the Carlists had been beaten and the country was
+at peace.&nbsp; Borrow then asked permission to introduce into
+Spain a few copies of the New Testament in the Catalan dialect,
+but was refused.&nbsp; He next requested to be allowed to call on
+the following day and submit a copy of the Catalan edition, and
+received the remarkable reply that the prime-minister refused his
+offer to call lest he should succeed in convincing him, and
+Mendiz&aacute;bal did not wish to be convinced.&nbsp; This seemed
+to show that the Mendiz&aacute;bal was something of a philosopher
+and a little of a humorist.</p>
+<p>With this Borrow had to be content, and after an hour&rsquo;s
+interview he withdrew.&nbsp; The premier was unquestionably in a
+difficult position.&nbsp; On the one hand, he no doubt desired to
+assist a man introduced to him by the representative of Great
+Britain, to whom he looked for assistance in suppressing Carlism;
+on the other hand, he had the priesthood to consider, and they
+would without question use every means of which they stood
+possessed to preserve the prohibition against the dissemination
+of the Scriptures, without notes, a prohibition that had become
+almost a tradition.</p>
+<p>But Borrow was not discouraged.&nbsp; He wrote in a most
+hopeful strain that he foresaw the speedy and successful
+termination of the Society&rsquo;s negotiations in the
+Peninsula.&nbsp; He looked forward to the time when only an agent
+would be required to superintend the engagement of colporteurs,
+and to make arrangements with the booksellers.&nbsp; He proceeds
+to express a hope that his exertions have given satisfaction to
+the Society.</p>
+<p>Borrow received an encouraging letter from Mr Brandram,
+telling him of the Committee&rsquo;s appreciation of his work,
+but practically leaving with him the decision as to his future
+movements.&nbsp; They were inclined to favour a return to Lisbon,
+but recognised that &ldquo;in these wondrous days opportunities
+may open unexpectedly.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the matter of the Gospel
+of St Luke in Spanish Romany, the publication of extracts was
+authorised, but there was no enthusiasm for the project.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We say,&rdquo; wrote Mr Brandram, &ldquo;<i>festina
+lente</i>.&nbsp; You will be doing well to occupy leisure hours
+with this work; but we are not prepared for printing anything
+beyond portions at present.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the meantime, however, an article in the Madrid newspaper,
+<i>El Espa&ntilde;ol</i>, upon the history, aims, and
+achievements of the British and Foreign Bible Society, had
+determined Borrow to remain on at Madrid for a few weeks at
+least.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Why should Spain, which has explored the
+New World, why should she alone be destitute of Bible
+Societies,&rdquo; asked the <i>Espa&ntilde;ol</i>.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Why should a nation eminently Catholic continue isolated
+from the rest of Europe, without joining in the magnificent
+enterprise in which the latter is so busily engaged?&rdquo; <a
+name="citation173a"></a><a href="#footnote173a"
+class="citation">[173a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This article fired Borrow, and with the promise of assistance
+from the liberal-minded <i>Espa&ntilde;ol</i>, he set to work
+&ldquo;to lay the foundation of a Bible Society at Madrid.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation173b"></a><a href="#footnote173b"
+class="citation">[173b]</a>&nbsp; As a potential head of the
+Spanish organization, Borrow&rsquo;s eyes were already directed
+towards the person of &ldquo;a certain Bishop, advanced in years,
+a person of great piety and learning, who has himself translated
+the New Testament&rdquo; <a name="citation173c"></a><a
+href="#footnote173c" class="citation">[173c]</a> and who was
+disposed to print and circulate it.</p>
+<p>Nothing, however, came of the project.&nbsp; Mr Brandram wrote
+to Borrow:&mdash;&ldquo;With regard to forming a Bible Society in
+Madrid, and appointing Dr Usoz Secretary, it is so out of our
+usual course that the Committee, for various reasons, cannot
+comply with your wishes&mdash;of the desirableness of forming
+such a Society at present, you and your friend must be the best
+judges.&nbsp; If it is to be an independent society, as I suppose
+must be the case,&rdquo; Mr Brandram continues, and the Bible
+Society&rsquo;s aid or that of its agent is sought, the new
+Society must be formed on the principles of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, admitting, &ldquo;on the one hand, general
+cooperation, and on the other, that it does not circulate
+Apocryphal Bibles.&rdquo;&nbsp; There was doubt at Earl Street as
+to whether the time was yet ripe; so the decision was very
+properly left with Borrow, and he was told that he &ldquo;need
+not fear to hold out great hopes of encouragement in the event of
+the formation of such a Society.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation174"></a><a href="#footnote174"
+class="citation">[174]</a></p>
+<p>A serious difficulty now arose in the resignation of
+Mendiz&aacute;bal (March 1836).&nbsp; Two of his friends and
+supporters, in the persons of Francisco de Isturitz and Alcala
+Galiano, seceded from his party, and, under the name of
+<i>moderados</i>, formed an opposition to their Chief in the
+Cortes.&nbsp; They had the support of the Queen Regent and
+General Cordova, whom Mendiz&aacute;bal had wished to remove from
+his position as head of the army on account of his great
+popularity with the soldiers, whose comforts and interests he
+studied.&nbsp; Isturitz became Premier, Galiano Minister of
+Marine (a mere paper title, as there was no navy at the time),
+and the Duke of Rivas Minister of the Interior.</p>
+<p>Conscious of the advantage of possessing powerful friends,
+especially in a country such as Spain, Borrow had used every
+endeavour to enlarge the circle of his acquaintance among men
+occupying influential positions, or likely to succeed those who
+at present filled them.&nbsp; The result was that he was able to
+announce to Mr Brandram that the new ministry, which had been
+formed, was composed &ldquo;entirely of <i>my</i> friends.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation175a"></a><a href="#footnote175a"
+class="citation">[175a]</a>&nbsp; With Galiano in particular he
+was on very intimate terms.&nbsp; Everything promised well, and
+the new Cabinet showed itself most friendly to Borrow and his
+projects, until the actual moment arrived for writing the
+permission to print the Scriptures in Spanish.&nbsp; Then doubts
+arose, and the decrees of the Council of Trent loomed up, a
+threatening barrier, in the eyes of the Duke of Rivas and his
+secretary.</p>
+<p>So hopeful was Borrow after his first interview with the Duke
+that he wrote:&mdash;&ldquo;I shall receive the permission, the
+Lord willing, in a few days . . . The last skirts of the cloud of
+papal superstition are vanishing below the horizon of Spain;
+whoever says the contrary either knows nothing of the matter or
+wilfully hides the truth.&rdquo; <a name="citation175b"></a><a
+href="#footnote175b" class="citation">[175b]</a></p>
+<p>At Earl Street the good news about the article in the
+<i>Espa&ntilde;ol</i> gave the liveliest satisfaction.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Surely a new and wonderful thing in Spain,&rdquo; wrote Mr
+Brandram <a name="citation175c"></a><a href="#footnote175c"
+class="citation">[175c]</a> in a letter in which he urged Borrow
+to &ldquo;guard against becoming too much committed to one
+political party,&rdquo; and asked him to write more frequently,
+as his letters were always most welcome.&nbsp; This letter
+reached Madrid at a time when Borrow found himself absolutely
+destitute.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For the last three weeks,&rdquo; he writes, <a
+name="citation175d"></a><a href="#footnote175d"
+class="citation">[175d]</a> &ldquo;I have been without money,
+literally without a farthing.&rdquo;&nbsp; Everything in Madrid
+was so dear.&nbsp; A month previously he had been forced to pay
+&pound;12, 5s. for a suit of clothes, &ldquo;my own being so worn
+that it was impossible to appear longer in public with
+them.&rdquo; <a name="citation175e"></a><a href="#footnote175e"
+class="citation">[175e]</a>&nbsp; He had written to Mr Wilby, but
+in all probability his letter had gone astray, the post to
+Estremadura having been three times robbed.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+money may still come,&rdquo; he continues, <a
+name="citation176a"></a><a href="#footnote176a"
+class="citation">[176a]</a> &ldquo;but I have given up all hopes
+of it, and I am compelled to write home, though what I am to do
+till I can receive your answer I am at a loss to conceive . . .
+whatever I undergo, I shall tell nobody of my situation, it might
+hurt the Society and our projects here.&nbsp; I know enough of
+the world to be aware that it is considered as the worst of
+crimes to be without money.&rdquo; <a name="citation176b"></a><a
+href="#footnote176b" class="citation">[176b]</a></p>
+<p>For weeks Borrow devoted himself to the task of endeavouring
+to obtain permission to print the Scriptures in Spanish.&nbsp;
+The Duke of Rivas referred him to his secretary, saying,
+&ldquo;He will do for you what you want!&rdquo;&nbsp; But the
+secretary retreated behind the decrees of the Council of
+Trent.&nbsp; Then Mr Villiers intervened, saw the Duke and gave
+Borrow a letter to him.&nbsp; Again the Council of Trent proved
+to be the obstacle.&nbsp; Galiano took up the matter and escorted
+Borrow to the Bureau of the Interior, and had an interview with
+the Duke&rsquo;s secretary.&nbsp; When Galiano left, there
+remained nothing for the conscientious secretary to do but to
+write out the formal permission, all else having been
+satisfactorily settled; but no sooner had Galiano departed, than
+the recollection of the Council of Trent returned to the
+secretary with terrifying distinctness, and no permission was
+given.</p>
+<p>Tired of the Council of Trent and the Duke&rsquo;s secretary,
+Borrow would sometimes retire to the banks of the canal and there
+loiter in the sun, watching the gold and silver fish basking on
+the surface of its waters, or gossiping with the man who sold
+oranges and water under the shade of the old water-tower.&nbsp;
+Once he went to see an execution&mdash;anything to drive from his
+mind the conscientious secretary and the Council of Trent, the
+sole obstacles to the realisation of his plans.</p>
+<p>Borrow informed Mr Brandram at the end of May that the Cabinet
+was unanimously in favour of granting his request; nothing
+happened.&nbsp; There seems no doubt that the Cabinet&rsquo;s
+policy was one of subterfuge.&nbsp; It could not afford to offend
+the British Minister, nor could it, at that juncture, risk the
+bitter hostility of the clergy, consequently it promised and
+deferred.&nbsp; A petition to the Ecclesiastical Committee of
+Censors, although strongly backed by the Civil Governor of Madrid
+(within whose department lay the censorship), produced no better
+result.&nbsp; There was nothing heard but &ldquo;To-morrow,
+please God!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Foiled for the time being in his constructive policy, Borrow
+turned his attention to one of destruction.&nbsp; He had already
+announced to the Bible Society that the authority of the Pope was
+in a precarious condition.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Little more than a breath is required to
+destroy it,&rdquo; he writes, <a name="citation177"></a><a
+href="#footnote177" class="citation">[177]</a> &ldquo;and I am
+almost confident that in less than a year it will be
+disowned.&nbsp; I am doing whatever I can in Madrid to prepare
+the way for an event so desirable.&nbsp; I mix with the people,
+and inform them who and what the Pope is, and how disastrous to
+Spain his influence has been.&nbsp; I tell them that the
+indulgences, which they are in the habit of purchasing, are of no
+more intrinsic value than so many pieces of paper, and were
+merely invented with the view of plundering them.&nbsp; I
+frequently ask: &lsquo;Is it possible that God, who is good,
+would sanction the sale of sin? and, supposing certain things are
+sinful, do you think that God, for the sake of your money, would
+permit you to perform them?&rsquo;&nbsp; In many instances my
+hearers have been satisfied with this simple reasoning, and have
+said that they would buy no more indulgences.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr Brandram promptly wrote warning Borrow against becoming
+involved in any endeavour to hasten the fall of the Pope.&nbsp;
+Although deeply interested in what their agent had to say, there
+was a strong misgiving at headquarters that for a few moments
+Borrow had &ldquo;forgotten that our hopes of the fall of &mdash;
+are founded on the simple distribution of the Scriptures,&rdquo;
+<a name="citation178a"></a><a href="#footnote178a"
+class="citation">[178a]</a> and he was told that, as their agent,
+he must not pursue the course that he described.&nbsp; The
+warning was carefully worded, so that it might not wound
+Borrow&rsquo;s feelings or lessen his enthusiasm.</p>
+<p>Borrow had found that the climate of Madrid did not agree with
+him.&nbsp; It had proved very trying during the winter; but now
+that summer had arrived the heat was suffocating and the air
+seemed to be filled with &ldquo;flaming vapours,&rdquo; and even
+the Spaniards would &ldquo;lie gasping and naked upon their brick
+floors.&rdquo; <a name="citation178b"></a><a href="#footnote178b"
+class="citation">[178b]</a>&nbsp; In spite of the heat, however,
+he was occupied &ldquo;upon an average ten hours every day,
+dancing attendance on one or another of the Ministers.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation178c"></a><a href="#footnote178c"
+class="citation">[178c]</a></p>
+<p>Sometimes the difficulties that he had to contend with reduced
+him almost to despair of ever obtaining the permission he
+sought.&nbsp; &ldquo;Only those,&rdquo; he writes, <a
+name="citation178d"></a><a href="#footnote178d"
+class="citation">[178d]</a> &ldquo;who have been in the habit of
+dealing with Spaniards, by whom the most solemn promises are
+habitually broken, can form a correct idea of my reiterated
+disappointments, and of the toil of body and agony of spirit
+which I have been subjected to.&nbsp; One day I have been told,
+at the Ministry, that I had only to wait a few moments and all I
+wished would be acceded to; and then my hopes have been blasted
+with the information that various difficulties, which seemed
+insurmountable, had presented themselves, whereupon I have
+departed almost broken-hearted; but the next day I have been
+summoned in a great hurry and informed that &lsquo;all was
+right,&rsquo; and that on the morrow a regular authority to print
+the Scriptures would be delivered to me, but by that time fresh
+and yet more terrible difficulties had occurred&mdash;so that I
+became weary of my life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr Villiers evidently saw through the Spanish Cabinet&rsquo;s
+policy of delay; for he spoke to the ministers collectively and
+individually, strongly recommending that the petition be
+granted.&nbsp; He further pointed out the terrible condition of
+the people, who lacked religious instruction of any kind, and
+that a nation of atheists would not prove very easy to
+govern.&nbsp; It may have been these arguments, or, what is more
+likely, a desire on the part of the Cabinet to please the
+representative of Great Britain, in any case a greater
+willingness was now shown to give the necessary permission.&nbsp;
+Measures were accordingly taken to evade the law and protect the
+printer into whose hands the work was to be entrusted, until an
+appropriate moment arrived for repealing the existing
+statute.</p>
+<p>Borrow forwarded to Earl Street the following interesting
+letter that he had received from Mr Villiers, which confirms his
+words as to the keen interest taken by the British Minister in
+the endeavour to obtain the permission to print the New Testament
+in Spanish</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>I have had a long conversation with Mr Isturitz upon the
+subject of printing the Testament, in which he showed himself to
+be both sagacious and liberal.&nbsp; He assured me that the
+matter should have his support whenever the Duque de Ribas
+brought it before the Cabinet, and that as far as he was
+concerned the question <i>might be considered as settled</i>.</p>
+<p>You are quite welcome to make any use you please of this note
+with the D. de Ribas or Mr Olivan. <a name="citation179a"></a><a
+href="#footnote179a" class="citation">[179a]</a></p>
+<p>I am, Dear Sir,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Yours faithfully,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Villiers</span>.</p>
+<p><i>June</i> 23<i>rd</i> [1836].</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was unquestionably Borrow&rsquo;s personality that was
+responsible for Mr Villiers&rsquo; interest in the scheme, as
+when Lieutenant Graydon <a name="citation179b"></a><a
+href="#footnote179b" class="citation">[179b]</a> had applied to
+him on a previous occasion he declined to interfere.</p>
+<p>At Borrow&rsquo;s suggestion the President of the Bible
+Society, Lord Bentley, wrote to Mr Villiers thanking him for the
+services he had rendered in connection with the Spanish
+programme.&nbsp; It was characteristic of Borrow that he added to
+his letter as a reason for his request, that &ldquo;I may be
+again in need of Mr V&rsquo;s. assistance before I leave
+Spain.&rdquo; <a name="citation180"></a><a href="#footnote180"
+class="citation">[180]</a>&nbsp; Borrow was always keenly alive
+to the advantage of possessing influential friends who would be
+likely to assist him in his labours for the Society.&nbsp; He was
+not a profound admirer of the Society of Jesus for nothing, and
+although he would scorn to exercise tact in regard to his own
+concerns, he was fully prepared to make use of it in connection
+with those of the Bible Society.&nbsp; He was a Jesuit at heart,
+and would in all probability have preferred a good compositor who
+had been guilty of sacrilege to a bad one who had not.&nbsp; He
+saw that besides being something of a diplomatist, an agent of
+the Bible Society had also to be a good business man.&nbsp; He
+has been called tactless, until the word seems to have become
+permanently identified with his name; how unjustly is shown by a
+very hasty examination of his masterly diplomacy, both in Russia
+and Spain.&nbsp; Diplomacy, as Borrow understood it, was the art
+of being persuasive when persuasion would obtain for him his
+object, and firm, even threatening, when strong measures were
+best calculated to suit his ends.&nbsp; It is only the fool who
+defines tact as the gentle art of pleasing everybody.&nbsp;
+Diplomacy is the art of getting what you want at the expense of
+displeasing as few people as possible.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The affair is settled&mdash;thank God!!! and we may
+begin to print whenever we think proper.&rdquo;&nbsp; With these
+words Borrow announces the success of his enterprise.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Perhaps you have thought,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;that
+I have been tardy in accomplishing the business which brought me
+to Spain; but to be able to form a correct judgment you ought to
+be aware of all the difficulties which I have had to encounter,
+and which I shall not enumerate.&nbsp; I shall content myself
+with observing that for a thousand pounds I would not undergo
+again all the mortifications and disappointments of the last two
+months.&rdquo; <a name="citation181a"></a><a href="#footnote181a"
+class="citation">[181a]</a></p>
+<p>There were moments when Borrow forgot the idiom of Earl Street
+and reverted to his old, self-confident style, which had so
+alarmed some of the excellent members of the Committee.&nbsp; He
+had achieved a great triumph, how great is best shown by the
+suggestion made by the prime minister that if determined to avail
+himself of the permission that had been obtained, he had better
+employ &ldquo;the confidential printer of the Government, who
+would keep the matter secret; as in the present state of affairs
+he [the prime minister] would not answer for the consequences if
+it were noised abroad.&rdquo; <a name="citation181b"></a><a
+href="#footnote181b" class="citation">[181b]</a>&nbsp; By giving
+the license to print the New Testament without notes, the Cabinet
+was assuming a very grave responsibility.&nbsp; All this shows
+how great was the influence of the British Minister upon the
+Isturitz Cabinet, and how considerable that of Borrow upon the
+British Minister.</p>
+<p>Now that his object was gained, there was nothing further to
+keep Borrow in Spain, and he accordingly asked for instructions,
+suggesting that, as soon as the heats were over, Lieutenant
+Graydon might return to Madrid and take charge, &ldquo;as nothing
+very difficult remains to be accomplished, and I am sure that Mr
+Villiers, at my entreaty, would extend to him the patronage with
+which he has honoured me.&rdquo; <a name="citation181c"></a><a
+href="#footnote181c" class="citation">[181c]</a>&nbsp; In
+conclusion he announced himself as ready to do &ldquo;whatever
+the Bible Society may deem expedient.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation181d"></a><a href="#footnote181d"
+class="citation">[181d]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow now began to suffer from the reaction after his great
+exertions.&nbsp; He became so languid as scarcely to be able to
+hold a pen.&nbsp; He had no books, and conversation was
+impossible, for the heat had driven away all who could possibly
+escape, among them his acquaintances, and he frequently
+remembered with a sigh the happy days spent in St Petersburg.</p>
+<p>A few days later (25th July) he wrote proposing as a member of
+the Bible Society Dr Luis de Usoz y Rio, &ldquo;a person of great
+respectability and great learning.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation182a"></a><a href="#footnote182a"
+class="citation">[182a]</a>&nbsp; Dr Usoz, who was subsequently
+to be closely associated with Borrow in his labours in Spain, was
+a man of whom he was unable to &ldquo;speak in too high terms of
+admiration; he is one of the most learned men in Spain, and is
+become in every point a Christian according to the standard of
+the New Testament.&rdquo; <a name="citation182b"></a><a
+href="#footnote182b" class="citation">[182b]</a></p>
+<p>Dr Usoz also addressed a letter to the Society asking to be
+considered as a correspondent and entrusted with copies of the
+Scriptures, which he was convinced he could circulate in every
+province of Spain.&nbsp; The advantage of having one of the
+editors of the principal newspaper of Spain on the side of the
+Society did not fail to appeal to Borrow.&nbsp; Dr Usoz not only
+became a member of the Bible Society, but earned from Borrow a
+splendid tribute in the Preface to <i>The Bible in Spain</i>.</p>
+<p>Before advantage could be taken of the hardly earned
+permission to print the New Testament in Madrid, the Revolution
+of La Granja <a name="citation182c"></a><a href="#footnote182c"
+class="citation">[182c]</a> broke out, resulting in the
+proclamation of the Constitution of 1812, by which the press
+became free.&nbsp; In Madrid chaos reigned as a result.&nbsp;
+Borrow himself has given a vivid account of how Quesada, by his
+magnificent courage, quelled for the time being the revolution,
+how the ministers fled, how eventually the heroic tyrant was
+recognised and killed, and, finally, how, at a celebrated
+coffee-house in Madrid, Borrow saw the victorious Nationals drink
+to the Constitution from a bowl of coffee, which had first been
+stirred with one of the mutilated hands of the hated Quesada. <a
+name="citation183a"></a><a href="#footnote183a"
+class="citation">[183a]</a></p>
+<p>Now that no obstacle stood in the way of the printing of the
+Spanish New Testament, Borrow was requested to return to England
+that he might confer with the authorities at Earl Street.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You may now consider yourself under marching orders to
+return home as soon as you have made all the requisite
+arrangements; . . . you have done, we are persuaded, a good and
+great work,&rdquo; <a name="citation183b"></a><a
+href="#footnote183b" class="citation">[183b]</a> Mr Brandram
+wrote.&nbsp; It was thought by the Committee that the advantages
+to be derived from a conference with Borrow would be well worth
+the expense involved in his having to return again to Spain.</p>
+<p>To this request for his immediate presence in London Borrow
+replied:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I shall make the provisional engagement as
+desired [as regards the printing of the New Testament] and shall
+leave Madrid as soon as possible; but I must here inform you,
+that I shall find much difficulty in returning to England, as all
+the provinces are disturbed in consequence of the Constitution of
+1812 having been proclaimed, and the roads are swarming with
+robbers and banditti.&nbsp; It is my intention to join some
+muleteers, and attempt to reach Granada, from whence, if
+possible, I shall proceed to Malaga or Gibraltar, and thence to
+Lisbon, where I left the greatest part of my baggage.&nbsp; Do
+not be surprised, therefore, if I am tardy in making my
+appearance; it is no easy thing at present to travel in
+Spain.&nbsp; But all these troubles are for the benefit of the
+Cause, and must not be repined at.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation183c"></a><a href="#footnote183c"
+class="citation">[183c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Leaving Madrid on 20th August, Borrow was at Granada on the
+30th, as proved by the Visitors&rsquo; Book, in which he signed
+himself</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;George Borrow Norvicensis.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The real object of this visit appears to have been his desire
+to study more closely the Spanish gypsies.&nbsp; From Granada he
+proceeded to Malaga.&nbsp; Neither place can be said to be on the
+direct road to England; but the disturbed state of the country
+had to be taken into consideration, and it was a question not of
+the shortest road but the safest.</p>
+<p>On his return to London, early in October, Borrow wrote a
+report <a name="citation184"></a><a href="#footnote184"
+class="citation">[184]</a> upon his labours, roughly sketching
+out his work since he left Badajos.&nbsp; He repeated his view
+that the Papal See had lost its power over Spain, and that the
+present moment was a peculiarly appropriate one in which to
+spread the light of the Gospel over the Peninsula.&nbsp;
+Forgetting the thievish propensities of the race, he wrote
+glowingly of the Spaniards and their intellectual equipment, the
+clearness with which they expressed themselves, and the elegance
+of their diction.&nbsp; The mind of the Spaniard was a garden run
+to waste, and it was for the British and Foreign Bible Society to
+cultivate it and purge it of the rank and bitter weeds.</p>
+<p>He foresaw no difficulty whatever in disposing of 5000 copies
+of the New Testament in a short time in the capital and
+provincial towns, in particular Cadiz and Seville where the
+people were more enlightened.&nbsp; He was not so confident about
+the rural districts, where those who assured him that they were
+acquainted with the New Testament said that it contained hymns
+addressed to the Virgin which were written by the Pope.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<br />
+NOVEMBER 1836&ndash;MAY 1837</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> remained in England for a
+month (3rd October/4th November), during which time he conferred
+with the Committee and Officials at Earl Street as to the future
+programme in Spain.&nbsp; On 4th November, having sent to his
+mother &pound;130 of the &pound;150 he had drawn as salary, and
+promising to write to Mr Brandram from Cadiz, he sailed from
+London in the steamer <i>Manchester</i>, bound for Lisbon and
+Cadiz.</p>
+<p>In a letter to his mother, he describes his fellow passengers
+as invalids fleeing from the English winter.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some of
+them are three parts gone with consumption,&rdquo; he writes,
+&ldquo;some are ruptured, some have broken backs; I am the only
+sound person in the ship, which is crowded to suffocation.&nbsp;
+I am in a little hole of a berth where I can scarcely breathe,
+and every now and then wet through.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The horrors of the voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon he has
+described with terrifying vividness; <a
+name="citation185a"></a><a href="#footnote185a"
+class="citation">[185a]</a> how the engines broke down and the
+vessel was being driven on to Cape Finisterre; how all hope had
+been abandoned, and the Captain had told the passengers of their
+impending fate; how the wind suddenly &ldquo;<i>veered right
+about</i>, and pushed us from the horrible coast faster than it
+had previously driven us towards it.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation185b"></a><a href="#footnote185b"
+class="citation">[185b]</a></p>
+<p>During the whole of that terrible night Borrow had remained on
+deck, all the other passengers having been battened down
+below.&nbsp; He was almost drowned in the seas that broke over
+the vessel, and, on one occasion, was struck down by a water cask
+that had broken away from its lashings.&nbsp; Even after he had
+escaped Cape Finisterre, the ordeal was not over; for the ship
+was in a sinking condition, and fire broke out on board.&nbsp;
+Eventually the engines were repaired, the fire extinguished, and
+Lisbon was reached on the 13th, where Borrow landed with his
+water-soaked luggage, and found on examination that the greater
+part of his clothes had been ruined.&nbsp; In spite of this
+experience, he determined to continue his voyage to Cadiz in the
+<i>Manchester</i>, probably for reasons of economy, indifferent
+to the fact that she was utterly unseaworthy, and that most of
+the other passengers had abandoned her.&nbsp; During his enforced
+stay in Lisbon, whilst the ship was being patched up, Borrow saw
+Mr Wilby and made enquiry into the state of the Society&rsquo;s
+affairs in Portugal.&nbsp; Many changes had taken place and the
+country was in a distracted state.</p>
+<p>After a week&rsquo;s delay at Lisbon the <i>Manchester</i>
+continued her voyage to Cadiz, where she arrived without further
+mishap on the 21st.&nbsp; During this voyage a fellow passenger
+with Borrow was the Marqu&eacute;s de Santa Coloma.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;According to the expression of the Marqu&eacute;s, when
+they stepped on to the quay at Cadiz, Borrow looked round, saw
+some Gitanos lounging there, said something that the
+Marqu&eacute;s could not understand, and immediately &lsquo;that
+man became <i>une grappe de Gitanos</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; They hung
+round his neck, clung to his knees, seized his hands, kissed his
+feet, so that the Marqu&eacute;s hardly liked to join his comrade
+again after such close embraces by so dirty a company.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation186"></a><a href="#footnote186"
+class="citation">[186]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow now found himself in his allotted field&mdash;unhappy,
+miserable, distracted Spain.&nbsp; Gomez, the Carlist leader, had
+been sweeping through Estremadura like a pestilence, and Borrow
+fully expected to find Seville occupied by his banditti; but
+Carlists possessed no terrors for him.&nbsp; Unless he could do
+something to heal the spiritual wounds of the wretched country,
+he assured Mr Brandram, he would never again return to
+England.</p>
+<p>On 1st December Mr Brandram wrote to Borrow expressing deep
+sympathy with all he had been through, and adding: &ldquo;If you
+go forward . . . we will help you by prayer.&nbsp; If you retreat
+we shall welcome you cordially.&rdquo;&nbsp; He appears to have
+written before consulting with the Committee, who, on hearing of
+the actual state of affairs in Spain, became filled with
+misgiving and anxiety for the safety of their agent, who seemed
+to be destitute of fear.&nbsp; Mr Brandram had been content for
+Borrow to go forward if he so decided, but, as he wrote later,
+&ldquo;your prospective dangers, while they created an absorbing
+interest, were viewed in different lights by the
+Committee,&rdquo; who thought they had &ldquo;no right to commit
+you to such perils.&nbsp; My own feeling was that, while I could
+not urge you forward, there were peculiarities in your history
+and character that I would not keep you back if you were minded
+to go.&nbsp; A few felt with me&mdash;most, however, thought that
+you should have been restrained.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation187"></a><a href="#footnote187"
+class="citation">[187]</a>&nbsp; It was decided therefore to
+forbid him to proceed on his hazardous adventure, and accordingly
+a letter was addressed to him care of the British Consul at
+Cadiz.&nbsp; If Borrow received this he disregarded the
+instructions it contained.</p>
+<p>Cadiz proved to be in a state of great confusion.&nbsp; It was
+reported that numerous bands of Carlists were in the
+neighbourhood, and the whole city was in a state of ferment in
+consequence.&nbsp; In the coffee-houses the din of tongues was
+deafening; would-be orators, sometimes as many as six at one
+time, sprang up upon chairs and tables and ventilated their
+political views.&nbsp; The paramount, nay, the only, interest was
+not in the words of Christ; but the probable doings of the
+Carlists.</p>
+<p>On the night of his arrival Borrow was taken ill with what, at
+the time, he thought to be cholera, and for some time in the
+little &ldquo;cock-loft or garret&rdquo; that had been allotted
+to him at the over-crowded French hotel, he was &ldquo;in most
+acute pain, and terribly sick,&rdquo; drinking oil mixed with
+brandy.&nbsp; For two days he was so exhausted as to be able to
+do nothing.</p>
+<p>On the morning of the 24th he embarked in a small Spanish
+steamer bound for Seville, which was reached that same
+night.&nbsp; The sun had dissipated the melancholy and stupor
+left by his illness, and by the time he arrived at Seville he was
+repeating Latin verses and fragments of old Spanish ballads to a
+brilliant moon.&nbsp; The condition of affairs at Seville was as
+bad if not worse than at Cadiz.&nbsp; There was scarcely any
+communication with the capital, the diligences no longer ran, and
+even the fearless <i>arrieros</i> (muleteers) declined to set
+out.&nbsp; Famine, plunder and murder were let loose over the
+land.&nbsp; Bands of banditti robbed, tortured and slew in the
+name of Don Carlos.&nbsp; They stripped the peasantry of all they
+possessed, and the poor wretches in turn became brigands and
+preyed upon those weaker than themselves.&nbsp; Through all this
+Borrow had to penetrate in order to reach Madrid.&nbsp; Had the
+road been familiar to him he would have performed the journey
+alone, dressed either as a beggar or as a gypsy.&nbsp; It is
+obvious that he appreciated the hazardous nature of the journey
+he was undertaking, for he asked Mr Brandram, in the event of his
+death, to keep the news from old Mrs Borrow as long as possible
+and then to go down to Norwich and break it to her himself.</p>
+<p>At Seville Borrow encountered Baron Taylor, <a
+name="citation188"></a><a href="#footnote188"
+class="citation">[188]</a> whom he states that he had first met
+at Bayonne (during the &ldquo;veiled period&rdquo;), and later in
+Russia, beside the Bosphorus, and finally in the South of
+Ireland.&nbsp; Than Baron Taylor there was no one for whom Borrow
+entertained &ldquo;a greater esteem and regard . . .&nbsp; There
+is a mystery about him which, wherever he goes, serves not a
+little to increase the sensation naturally created by his
+appearance and manner.&rdquo; <a name="citation189"></a><a
+href="#footnote189" class="citation">[189]</a>&nbsp; Borrow was
+much attracted to this mysterious personage, about whom nothing
+could be asserted &ldquo;with downright positiveness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From Seville Borrow proceeded to Cordoba, accompanied by
+&ldquo;an elderly person, a Genoese by birth,&rdquo; whose
+acquaintance he had made and whom he hoped later to employ in the
+distribution of the Testaments.&nbsp; Borrow had hired a couple
+of miserable horses.&nbsp; The Genoese had not been in the saddle
+for some thirty years, and he was an old man and timid.&nbsp; His
+horse soon became aware of this, and neither whip nor spur could
+persuade it to exert itself.&nbsp; When approaching night
+rendered it necessary to make a special effort to hasten forward,
+the bridle of the discontented steed had to be fastened to that
+of its fellow, which was then urged forward &ldquo;with spur and
+cudgel.&rdquo;&nbsp; Both the Genoese and his mount protested
+against such drastic measures, the one by entreaties to be
+permitted to dismount, the other by attempting to fling itself
+down.&nbsp; The only notice Borrow took of these protests was to
+spur and cudgel the more.</p>
+<p>On the night of the third day the party arrived at Cordoba,
+and was cordially welcomed by the Carlist innkeeper, who,
+although avowing himself strictly neutral, confessed how great
+had been his pleasure at welcoming the Carlists when they
+occupied the City a short time before.&nbsp; It was at this inn
+that Borrow explained to the elderly Genoese, who had
+indiscreetly resented his host&rsquo;s disrespectful remarks
+about the young Queen Isabel, how he invariably managed to
+preserve good relations with all sorts of factions.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;My good man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am invariably of the
+politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose
+roof I sleep; at least I never say anything which can lead them
+to suspect the contrary; by pursuing which system I have more
+than once escaped a bloody pillow, and having the wine I drank
+spiced with sublimate.&rdquo; <a name="citation190a"></a><a
+href="#footnote190a" class="citation">[190a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow remained at Cordoba much longer than he had intended,
+because of the reports that reached him of the unsafe condition
+of the roads.&nbsp; He sent back the old Genoese with the horses,
+and spent the time in thoroughly examining the town and making
+acquaintances among its inhabitants.&nbsp; At length, after a
+stay of ten or eleven days, despairing of any improvement in the
+state of the country, he continued his journey in the company of
+a <i>contrabandista</i>, temporarily retired from the smuggling
+trade, from whom he hired two horses for the sum of forty-two
+dollars.&nbsp; Borrow allowed no compunction to assail him as to
+the means he employed when he was thoroughly convinced as to the
+worthiness of the end he had in view.&nbsp; To further his
+projects he would cheerfully have travelled with the Pope
+himself.</p>
+<p>The journey to Madrid proved dismal in the extreme.&nbsp; The
+<i>contrabandista</i> was sullen and gloomy, despite the fact
+that his horses had been insured against loss and the handsome
+fee he was to receive for his services.&nbsp; The
+Despe&ntilde;aperros in the Sierra Morena through which Borrow
+had to pass, had, even in times of peace, a most evil reputation;
+but by great good luck for Borrow, the local banditti had during
+the previous day &ldquo;committed a dreadful robbery and murder
+by which they sacked 40,000 <i>reals</i>.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation190b"></a><a href="#footnote190b"
+class="citation">[190b]</a>&nbsp; They were in all probability
+too busily occupied in dividing their spoil to watch for other
+travellers.&nbsp; Another factor that was much in Borrow&rsquo;s
+favour was a change in the weather.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Suddenly the Lord breathed forth a frozen
+blast,&rdquo; Borrow writes, &ldquo;the severity of which was
+almost intolerable.&nbsp; No human being but ourselves ventured
+forth.&nbsp; We traversed snow-covered plains, and passed through
+villages and towns to all appearance deserted.&nbsp; The robbers
+kept close to their caves and hovels, but the cold nearly killed
+us.&nbsp; We reached Aranjuez late on Christmas day, and I got
+into the house of an Englishman, where I swallowed nearly a pint
+of brandy: <a name="citation191a"></a><a href="#footnote191a"
+class="citation">[191a]</a> it affected me no more than warm
+water.&rdquo; <a name="citation191b"></a><a href="#footnote191b"
+class="citation">[191b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow arrived at Madrid on 26th December, having almost by a
+miracle avoided death or capture by the human wolves that
+infested the country.&nbsp; He took up his quarters at 16 Calle
+de Santiago at the house of Maria D&iacute;az, who was to prove
+so loyal a friend during many critical periods of his work in
+Spain.&nbsp; His first care was to call upon the British
+Minister, and enquire if he considered it safe to proceed with
+the printing without special application to the new
+Government.&nbsp; Mr Villiers&rsquo; answer is interesting, as
+showing how thoroughly he had taken Borrow under his
+protection.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;You obtained the permission of the
+Government of Isturitz,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;which was a
+much less liberal one than the present; I am a witness to the
+promise made to you by the former Ministers, which I consider
+sufficient; you had best commence and complete the work as soon
+as possible without any fresh application, and should anyone
+attempt to interrupt you, you have only to come to me, whom you
+may command at any time.&rdquo; <a name="citation191c"></a><a
+href="#footnote191c" class="citation">[191c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Having saved the Bible Society 9000 <i>reals</i> in its paper
+bill alone, <a name="citation191d"></a><a href="#footnote191d"
+class="citation">[191d]</a> Borrow proceeded to arrange for the
+printing.&nbsp; He had already opened negotiations with Charles
+Wood, who was associated with Andr&eacute;as Borr&eacute;go, <a
+name="citation192a"></a><a href="#footnote192a"
+class="citation">[192a]</a> the most fashionable printer in
+Madrid, who not only had the best printing-presses in Spain, but
+had been specially recommended by Isturitz.&nbsp; It had been
+tentatively arranged that an edition of 5000 copies of the New
+Testament should be printed from the version of Father Felipe
+Scio de San Miguel, confessor to Ferdinand VII., without notes or
+commentaries, and delivered within three months.</p>
+<p>Remembering the advice of Isturitz, Borrow determined to
+entrust the work to Borr&eacute;go, including the binding.&nbsp;
+He was the Government printer, and, furthermore, enjoyed the good
+opinion of Mr Villiers.&nbsp; Having persuaded Borr&eacute;go to
+reduce his price to 10 <i>reals</i> a sheet, he placed the
+order.&nbsp; It was agreed that the work should be completed in
+ten weeks from 20th January.</p>
+<p>Each sheet was to be passed by Borrow.&nbsp; As a matter of
+fact he read every word three times; but in order to insure
+absolute accuracy, he engaged the services of Dr Usoz, &ldquo;the
+first scholar in Spain,&rdquo; <a name="citation192b"></a><a
+href="#footnote192b" class="citation">[192b]</a> who was to be
+responsible for the final revision, leaving the question of the
+remuneration to the generosity of the Bible Society.&nbsp; The
+result of all this care was that, according to Borrow the edition
+exhibited scarcely one typographical error. <a
+name="citation192c"></a><a href="#footnote192c"
+class="citation">[192c]</a></p>
+<p>The question of systematic distribution had next to be
+considered.&nbsp; After much musing and cogitation, Borrow came
+to the conclusion that the only satisfactory method was for him
+to &ldquo;ride forth from Madrid into the wildest parts of
+Spain,&rdquo; where the word is most wanted and where it seems
+next to an impossibility to introduce it, and this he proposed to
+the Committee.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I will take with me 1200 copies,&rdquo; he
+wrote, <a name="citation193"></a><a href="#footnote193"
+class="citation">[193]</a> &ldquo;which I will engage to dispose
+of for little or much to the wild people of the wild regions
+which I intend to visit; as for the rest of the edition, it must
+be disposed of, if possible, in a different way&mdash;I may say
+the usual way; part must be entrusted to booksellers, part to
+colporteurs, and a dep&ocirc;t must be established at
+Madrid.&nbsp; Such work is every person&rsquo;s work, and to
+anyone may be confided the execution of it; it is a mere affair
+of trade.&nbsp; What I wish to be employed in is what, I am well
+aware, no other individual will undertake to do: namely, to
+scatter the Word upon the mountains, amongst the valleys and the
+inmost recesses of the worst and most dangerous parts of Spain,
+where the people are more fierce, fanatic and, in a word,
+Carlist.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the same letter Borrow shows how thoroughly he understood
+his own character when he wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I shall not feel at all surprised should it
+[the plan] be disapproved of all-together; but I wish it to be
+understood that in that event I could do nothing further than see
+the work through the press, as I am confident that whatever
+ardour and zeal I at present feel in the cause would desert me
+immediately, and that I should neither be able nor willing to
+execute anything which might be suggested.&nbsp; I wish to engage
+in nothing which would not allow me to depend entirely on
+myself.&nbsp; It would be heart-breaking to me to remain at
+Madrid expending the Society&rsquo;s money, with almost the
+certainty of being informed eventually by the booksellers and
+their correspondents that the work has no sale.&nbsp; In a word,
+to make sure that some copies find their way among the people, I
+must be permitted to carry them to the people myself.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He goes on to inform Mr Brandram that in anticipation of the
+acquiescence of the Committee in his schemes, he has purchased,
+for about &pound;12, one of the smuggler&rsquo;s horses, which he
+has preferred to a mule, on account of the expense of the popular
+hybrid, and also because of its enormous appetite, to satisfy
+which two pecks of barley and a proportionate amount of straw are
+required each twenty-four hours, as the beast must be fed every
+four hours, day and night.&nbsp; Thus the members of the
+Committee learned something about the ways of the mule.</p>
+<p>The response to this suggestion was a resolution passed by the
+Sub-Committee for General Purposes, by which Borrow was permitted
+to enter into correspondence with the principal booksellers and
+other persons favourable to the dissemination of the
+Scriptures.&nbsp; In a covering letter <a
+name="citation194a"></a><a href="#footnote194a"
+class="citation">[194a]</a>&nbsp; Mr Brandram very pertinently
+enquired, &ldquo;Can the people in these wilds read?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Whilst not wishing to put a final negative to the proposal, the
+Secretary asked if there were no middle course.&nbsp; Could
+Borrow not establish a dep&ocirc;t at some principal place, and
+from it make excursions occupying two or three days each,
+&ldquo;instead of devoting yourself wholly to the wild
+people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow assured Mr Brandram that he had misunderstood.&nbsp;
+The care of &ldquo;the wild people&rdquo; was only to be
+incidental on his visits to towns and villages to establish
+dep&ocirc;ts or agencies.&nbsp; &ldquo;On my way,&rdquo; he
+wrote, &ldquo;I intended to visit the secret and secluded spots
+amongst the rugged hills and mountains, and to talk to the
+people, after my manner, of Christ.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation194b"></a><a href="#footnote194b"
+class="citation">[194b]</a></p>
+<p>It was on 3rd April that Borrow had received the letter from
+Earl Street authorising him &ldquo;to undertake the tour
+suggested . . . for the purpose of circulating the Spanish New
+Testament in some of the principal cities of Spain.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He was requested to write as frequently as possible, giving an
+account of his adventures.&nbsp; At the same time Mr Brandram
+wrote: &ldquo;You will perceive by the Resolution that nearly all
+your requests are complied with.&nbsp; You have authority to go
+forth with your horses, and may you have a prosperous journey . .
+.&nbsp; Pray for wisdom to discern between presumptuousness and
+want of Faith.&rdquo; <a name="citation195a"></a><a
+href="#footnote195a" class="citation">[195a]</a></p>
+<p>The printing of the 5000 copies of the New Testament in
+Spanish was completed early in April, but there was considerable
+delay over the binding.&nbsp; The actual date of publication was
+1st May.&nbsp; The work had been well done, and was
+&ldquo;allowed by people who have perused it, and with no
+friendly feeling, to be one of the most correct works that have
+ever issued from the press in Spain, and to be an exceedingly
+favourable specimen of typography and paper.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation195b"></a><a href="#footnote195b"
+class="citation">[195b]</a></p>
+<p>In addition to the <i>contrabandista&rsquo;s</i> horse, Borrow
+had acquired &ldquo;a black Andalusian stallion of great size and
+strength, and capable of performing a journey of a hundred
+leagues in a week&rsquo;s time.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation195c"></a><a href="#footnote195c"
+class="citation">[195c]</a>&nbsp; In spite of his unbroken state,
+Borrow decided to purchase the animal, relying upon &ldquo;a
+cargo of bibles&rdquo; to reduce him to obedience.&nbsp; It was
+with this black Andalusian that he created a sensation by riding
+about Madrid, &ldquo;with a Russian skin for a saddle, and
+without stirrups.&nbsp; Altogether making so conspicuous a figure
+that [the Marqu&eacute;s de] Santa Coloma hesitated, and it
+needed all his courage to be seen riding with him.&nbsp; At this
+period Borrow spent a good deal of money and lived very freely
+(i.e., luxuriously) in Spain.&nbsp; From the point of view of the
+Marqu&eacute;s, a Spanish Roman Catholic, Borrow was excessively
+bigoted, and fond of attacking Roman Catholics and
+Catholicism.&nbsp; He evidently, however, liked him as a
+companion; but he says Borrow never, as far as he saw or could
+learn, spoke of religion to his Gypsy friends, and that he soon
+noticed his difference of attitude towards them.&nbsp; He was
+often going to the British Embassy, and he thinks was considered
+a great bore there.&rdquo; <a name="citation195d"></a><a
+href="#footnote195d" class="citation">[195d]</a></p>
+<p>The unanimous advice of Borrow&rsquo;s friends, Protestant and
+Roman Catholic, was &ldquo;that for the present I should proceed
+with the utmost caution, but without concealing the object of my
+mission.&rdquo; <a name="citation196a"></a><a
+href="#footnote196a" class="citation">[196a]</a>&nbsp; He was to
+avoid offending people&rsquo;s prejudices and endeavour
+everywhere to keep on good terms with the clergy, &ldquo;at least
+one-third of whom are known to be anxious for the dissemination
+of the Word of God, though at the same time unwilling to separate
+themselves from the discipline and ceremonials of Rome.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation196b"></a><a href="#footnote196b"
+class="citation">[196b]</a></p>
+<p>Thus equipped with sage counsel, Borrow was just about to
+start upon his journey into the North, when he found it necessary
+to dismiss his servant owing to misconduct.&nbsp; This caused
+delay.&nbsp; Through Mr O&rsquo;Shea, the banker, he got to know
+Antonio Buchini, the Greek of Constantinople, who, of all the
+strange characters Borrow had met he considered &ldquo;the most
+surprising.&rdquo; <a name="citation196c"></a><a
+href="#footnote196c" class="citation">[196c]</a>&nbsp;
+Antonio&rsquo;s vices were sufficiently obvious to discourage
+anyone from attempting to discover his virtues.&nbsp; He loved
+change, quarrelled with everybody, masters, mistresses, and
+fellow-servants.&nbsp; Borrow engaged him; but looked to the
+future with misgiving.&nbsp; Antonio unquestionably had his bad
+points; yet he was a treasure compared with the Spaniard whom he
+succeeded.&nbsp; This man was much given to drink and was always
+engaged in some quarrel.&nbsp; He drew his terrible knife, such
+as all Spaniards carry, upon all who offended him.&nbsp; On one
+occasion Borrow saved from his wrath a poor maid-servant who had
+incurred his ire by burning a herring she was toasting for
+him.&nbsp; Antonio&rsquo;s virtues comprised an unquestioned
+honesty and devotion, and on the whole he was a desirable servant
+in a country where such virtues were extremely rare.</p>
+<p>It was not until 15th May that Borrow, accompanied by Antonio,
+was able to get away from Madrid.&nbsp; A few days previously he
+had contracted &ldquo;a severe cold which terminated in a
+shrieking, disagreeable cough.&rdquo;&nbsp; This, following on a
+fortnight&rsquo;s attack of influenza, proved difficult to shake
+off.&nbsp; Finding himself scarcely able to stand, he at length
+appealed to a barber-surgeon, who drew 16 oz. of blood, assuring
+his patient that on the following day he would be well enough to
+start.</p>
+<p>That same evening Mr Villiers sent round to Borrow&rsquo;s
+lodgings informing him that he had decided to help him by every
+means in his power.&nbsp; He announced his intention of
+purchasing a large number of the Testaments, and despatching them
+to the various British Consuls in Spain, with instructions
+&ldquo;to employ all the means which their official situation
+should afford them to circulate the books in question, and to
+assure their being noticed.&rdquo; <a name="citation197a"></a><a
+href="#footnote197a" class="citation">[197a]</a>&nbsp; They were
+also to render every assistance in their power to Borrow
+&ldquo;as a friend of Mr Villiers, and a person in the success of
+whose enterprise he himself took the warmest interest.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation197b"></a><a href="#footnote197b"
+class="citation">[197b]</a>&nbsp; Mr Villiers&rsquo; interest in
+Borrow&rsquo;s mission seems to have led him into a diplomatic
+indiscretion.&nbsp; Borrow himself confesses that he could
+scarcely believe his ears.&nbsp; Although assured of the British
+Minister&rsquo;s friendly attitude, he &ldquo;could never expect
+that he would come forward in so noble, and to say the least of
+it, considering his high diplomatic situation, so bold and
+decided a manner.&rdquo; <a name="citation197c"></a><a
+href="#footnote197c" class="citation">[197c]</a>&nbsp; This act
+of friendliness becomes a personal tribute to Borrow, when it is
+remembered that at first Mr Villiers had been by no means well
+disposed towards the Bible Society.</p>
+<p>Before leaving Madrid, Borrow had circularised all the
+principal booksellers, offering to supply the New Testament at
+fifteen <i>reals</i> a copy, the actual cost price; but he was
+not sanguine as to the result, for he found the Spaniard
+&ldquo;short-sighted and . . . so utterly unacquainted with the
+rudiments of business.&rdquo; <a name="citation198"></a><a
+href="#footnote198" class="citation">[198]</a>&nbsp;
+Advertisements had been inserted in all the principal newspapers
+stating that the booksellers of Madrid were now in a position to
+supply the New Testament in Spanish, unencumbered by obscuring
+notes and comments.&nbsp; Borrow also provided for an
+advertisement to be inserted each week during his absence, which
+he anticipated would be about five months.&nbsp; After that he
+knew not what would happen&mdash;there was always China.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+MAY&ndash;OCTOBER 1837</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> prediction of the
+surgeon-barber was fulfilled; by the next morning the fever and
+cough had considerably abated, although the patient was still
+weak from loss of blood.&nbsp; This, however, did not hinder him
+from mounting his black Andalusian, and starting upon his initial
+journey of distribution.&nbsp; On arriving at Salamanca, his
+first objective, he immediately sought out the principal
+bookseller and placed with him copies of the New Testament.&nbsp;
+He also inserted an advertisement in the local newspaper, stating
+that the volume was the only guide to salvation; at the same time
+he called attention to the great pecuniary sacrifices that the
+Bible Society was making in order to proclaim Christ
+crucified.&nbsp; This advertisement he caused to be struck off in
+considerable numbers as bills and posted in various parts of the
+town, and he even went so far as to affix one to the porch of the
+church.&nbsp; He also distributed them as he progressed through
+the villages. <a name="citation199"></a><a href="#footnote199"
+class="citation">[199]</a></p>
+<p>From Salamanca (10th June) Borrow journeyed to Valladolid, and
+from thence to Le&oacute;n, <a name="citation200a"></a><a
+href="#footnote200a" class="citation">[200a]</a> (a hotbed of
+Carlism), where the people were ignorant and brutal and refused
+to the stranger a glass of water, unless he were prepared to pay
+for it.&nbsp; At Le&oacute;n he was seized by a fever that
+prostrated him for a week.&nbsp; He also experienced marked
+antagonism from the clergy, who threatened every direful
+consequence to whosoever read or purchased &ldquo;the accursed
+books&rdquo; which he brought.&nbsp; A more serious evidence of
+their displeasure was shown by the action they commenced in the
+ecclesiastical court against the bookseller whom Borrow had
+arranged with to act as agent for his Testaments.&nbsp; The
+bookseller himself did not mend matters by fixing upon the doors
+of the cathedral itself one of the advertisements that he had
+received with the books.</p>
+<p>When sufficiently recovered to travel, Borrow proceeded to
+Astorga, which he reached with the utmost difficulty owing to bad
+roads and the fierce heat.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We were compelled to take up our
+abode,&rdquo; he writes, <a name="citation200b"></a><a
+href="#footnote200b" class="citation">[200b]</a> &ldquo;in a
+wretched hovel full of pigs&rsquo; vermin and misery, and from
+this place I write, for this morning I felt myself unable to
+proceed on my journey, being exhausted with illness, fatigue and
+want of food, for scarcely anything is to be obtained; but I
+return God thanks and glory for being permitted to undergo these
+crosses and troubles for His Word&rsquo;s sake.&nbsp; I would not
+exchange my present situation, unenviable as some may think it,
+for a throne.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thus Borrow wrote when burning with fever, after having just
+been told to vacate his room at the <i>posada</i>, and having his
+luggage flung into the yard to make room for the occupants of the
+&ldquo;waggon&rdquo; from Madrid to Coru&ntilde;a.</p>
+<p>From Astorga he proceeded by way of Puerto de Manzan&aacute;l,
+Bembibre, Cacab&eacute;los, Villafranca, Puerto de
+Fuencebad&oacute;n and Nog&aacute;les, &ldquo;through the wildest
+mountains and wildernesses&rdquo; to Lugo.</p>
+<p>Owing to the unsafety of the roads, it was customary for
+travellers to attach themselves to the Grand Post, which was
+always guarded by an escort.&nbsp; At Nog&aacute;les Borrow
+joined the mail courier; but as a rule he was too independent,
+too much in a hurry, and too indifferent to danger to wait for
+such protection against the perils of the robber-infested
+roads.&nbsp; He has given the following graphic account &ldquo;of
+the grand post from Madrid to Coru&ntilde;a, attended by a
+considerable escort, and an immense number of travellers . . . We
+were soon mounted and in the street, amidst a confused throng of
+men and quadrupeds.&nbsp; The light of a couple of flambeaus,
+which were borne before the courier, shone on the arms of several
+soldiers, seemingly drawn up on either side of the road; the
+darkness, however, prevented me from distinguishing objects very
+clearly.&nbsp; The courier himself was mounted on a little shaggy
+pony; before and behind him were two immense portmanteaus, or
+leather sacks, the ends of which nearly touched the ground.&nbsp;
+For about a quarter of an hour there was much hubbub, shouting,
+and trampling, at the end of which period the order was given to
+proceed.&nbsp; Scarcely had we left the village when the
+flambeaus were extinguished, and we were left in almost total
+darkness.&nbsp; In this manner we proceeded for several hours, up
+hill and down dale, but generally at a very slow pace.&nbsp; The
+soldiers who escorted us from time to time sang patriotic songs .
+. . At last the day began to break, and I found myself amidst a
+train of two or three hundred people, some on foot, but the
+greater part mounted, either on mules or the pony mares: I could
+not distinguish a single horse except my own and
+Antonio&rsquo;s.&nbsp; A few soldiers were thinly scattered along
+the road.&rdquo; <a name="citation201"></a><a href="#footnote201"
+class="citation">[201]</a></p>
+<p>After about a week&rsquo;s stay at Lugo, Borrow again attached
+himself to the Grand Post; but tiring of its slow and deliberate
+progress, he decided to push on alone, and came very near to
+falling a prey to the banditti.&nbsp; He was suddenly confronted
+by two of the fraternity, who presented their carbines,
+&ldquo;which they probably intended to discharge into my body,
+but they took fright at the noise of Antonio&rsquo;s horse, who
+was following a little way behind.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation202"></a><a href="#footnote202"
+class="citation">[202]</a></p>
+<p>The night was spent at Betanzos, where the black Andalusian
+was stricken with &ldquo;a deep, hoarse cough.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Remembering a prophetic remark that had been made by a roadside
+acquaintance to the effect that &ldquo;the man must be mad who
+brings a horse to Galicia, and doubly so he who brings an
+<i>entero</i>,&rdquo; Borrow, determined to have the animal bled,
+sent for a farrier, meanwhile rubbing down his steed with a quart
+of <i>anis</i> brandy.&nbsp; The farrier demanded an ounce of
+gold for the operation, which decided Borrow to perform it
+himself.&nbsp; With a large fleam that he possessed, he twice
+bled the Andalusian, to the astonishment of the discomfited
+farrier, and saved its valuable life, also an ounce of
+gold.&nbsp; Next day he and Antonio walked to Coru&ntilde;a,
+leading their horses.</p>
+<p>At Coru&ntilde;a were five hundred copies of the New Testament
+that had been sent on from Madrid.&nbsp; So far Borrow had
+himself disposed of sixty-five copies, irrespective of those sold
+at Lugo and other places by means of the advertisement.&nbsp;
+These books were all sold at prices ranging from 10 to 12
+<i>reals</i> each.&nbsp; Borrow made a special point of this,
+&ldquo;to give a direct lie to the assertion&rdquo; that the
+Bible Society, having no vent for the Bibles and New Testaments
+it printed, was forced either to give them away or sell them by
+auction, when they were purchased as waste paper.</p>
+<p>The condition of the roads at that period was so bad, on
+account of robbers and Carlists, that it was forbidden to anyone
+to travel along the thoroughfare leading to Santiago unless in
+company with the mail courier and his escort of soldiers.&nbsp;
+Unfortunately for Borrow his black Andalusian was not of a
+companionable disposition, and to bring him near other horses was
+to invite a fierce contest.&nbsp; On the rare occasions that he
+did travel with the Grand Post, Borrow was frequently involved in
+difficulties on account of the <i>entero&rsquo;s</i> unsociable
+nature; but as he was deeply attached to the noble beast, he
+retained him and suffered dangers rather than give up the
+companion of many an adventure.</p>
+<p>Some idea may be obtained of the state of rural Spain in 1837,
+when the highways teemed with &ldquo;patriots&rdquo; bent upon
+robbing friend and foe alike and afterwards assassinating or
+mutilating their victims, from a story that Borrow tells of how a
+viper-catcher, who was engaged in pursuing his calling in the
+neighbourhood of Orense, fell into the hands of these miscreants,
+who robbed and stripped him.&nbsp; They then pinioned his hands
+behind him and drew over his head the mouth of the bag containing
+the <i>living</i> vipers, which they fastened round his neck and
+listened with satisfaction to the poor wretch&rsquo;s
+cries.&nbsp; The reptiles stung their victim to madness, and
+after having run raving through several villages he eventually
+fell dead. <a name="citation203a"></a><a href="#footnote203a"
+class="citation">[203a]</a></p>
+<p>Making Coru&ntilde;a his headquarters, Borrow proceeded to
+Santiago, &ldquo;travelling with the courier or weekly
+post,&rdquo; and from thence to Padr&oacute;n, Pontevedra, and
+Vigo.&nbsp; At Vigo he was apprehended as a spy, but immediately
+released.&nbsp; It was whilst at Santiago that he repeated an
+experiment he had previously made at Valladolid.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I . . . sallied forth,&rdquo; he writes, <a
+name="citation203b"></a><a href="#footnote203b"
+class="citation">[203b]</a> &ldquo;alone and on horseback, and
+bent my course to a distant village; on my arrival, which took
+place just after the <i>siesta</i> or afternoon&rsquo;s nap had
+concluded, I proceeded . . . to the market place, where I spread
+a horse-cloth on the ground, upon which I deposited my
+books.&nbsp; I then commenced crying with a loud voice:
+&lsquo;Peasants, peasants, I bring you the Word of God at a cheap
+price.&nbsp; I know you have but little money, but I bring it you
+at whatever you can command, at four or three <i>reals</i>,
+according to your means.&rsquo;&nbsp; I thus went on till a crowd
+gathered round me, who examined the books with attention, many of
+them reading aloud, but I had not long to wait; . . . my cargo
+was disposed of almost instantaneously, and I mounted my horse
+without a question being asked me, and returned to my temporary
+abode lighter than I came.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow did not repeat the experiment for fear of giving
+offence to the clergy.&nbsp; The new means of distribution was to
+be used only as a last resource.</p>
+<p>Arriving at Padr&oacute;n on the return journey, Borrow found
+that he had only one book left.&nbsp; He determined to send
+Antonio forward with the horses to await him at Coru&ntilde;a,
+whilst he made an excursion to Cape Finisterre.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It would be,&rdquo; he says,
+&ldquo;difficult to assign any plausible reason for the ardent
+desire which I entertained to visit this place; but I remembered
+that last year I had escaped almost by a miracle from shipwreck
+and death on the rocky sides of this extreme point of the Old
+World, and I thought that to convey the Gospel to a place so wild
+and remote might perhaps be considered an acceptable pilgrimage
+in the eyes of my Maker.&rdquo; <a name="citation204a"></a><a
+href="#footnote204a" class="citation">[204a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Hiring a guide and a pony, he reached the Cape, after
+surmounting tremendous difficulties, and on arrival he and his
+guide were arrested as Carlist spies. <a
+name="citation204b"></a><a href="#footnote204b"
+class="citation">[204b]</a>&nbsp; In all probability he would
+have been shot, such was the certainty of the <i>Alcalde</i> that
+he was a spy, had not the professional hero of the place come
+forward and, after having cross-examined him as to his knowledge
+of &ldquo;knife&rdquo; and &ldquo;fork,&rdquo; the only two
+English words the Spaniard knew, pronounced him English, and
+eventually conveyed him to the <i>Alcalde</i> of Convucion, who
+released him.&nbsp; On the man who had saved him Borrow privately
+bestowed a gratuity, and publicly the copy of the New Testament
+that had led to the expedition.&nbsp; He then returned to
+Coru&ntilde;a, by his journey having accomplished &ldquo;what has
+long been one of the ardent wishes of my heart.&nbsp; I have
+carried the Gospel to the extreme point of the Old World.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation205a"></a><a href="#footnote205a"
+class="citation">[205a]</a></p>
+<p>The black Andalusian was totally unfitted for the long
+mountainous journey into the Asturias that Borrow now planned to
+undertake, and he decided to dispose of him.&nbsp; He was greatly
+attached to the creature, notwithstanding his vicious habits and
+the difficulties that arose out of them.&nbsp; Now the
+<i>entero</i> would be engaged in a deadly struggle with some
+gloomy mule; again, by rushing among a crowd outside a
+<i>posada</i>, he would do infinite damage and earn for his
+master and himself an evil name.&nbsp; Borrow thus announces to
+the Bible Society the sale of its property: &ldquo;This animal
+cost the Society about 2000 <i>reals</i> at Madrid; I, however,
+sold him for 3000 at Coru&ntilde;a, notwithstanding that he has
+suffered much from the hard labour which he had been subjected to
+in our wanderings in Galicia, and likewise from bad
+provender.&rdquo; <a name="citation205b"></a><a
+href="#footnote205b" class="citation">[205b]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow next set out upon an expedition to Orviedo in the
+Asturias, <a name="citation205c"></a><a href="#footnote205c"
+class="citation">[205c]</a> then in daily expectation of being
+attacked by the Carlists.&nbsp; It was at Orviedo that he
+received a striking tribute from a number of Spanish
+gentlemen.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A strange adventure has just occurred to
+me,&rdquo; he wrote. <a name="citation205d"></a><a
+href="#footnote205d" class="citation">[205d]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+am in the ancient town of Orviedo, in a very large, scantily
+furnished and remote room of an ancient <i>posada</i>, formerly a
+palace of the Counts of Santa Cruz, it is past ten at night and
+the rain is descending in torrents.&nbsp; I ceased writing on
+hearing numerous footsteps ascending the creeking stairs which
+lead to my apartment&mdash;the door was flung open, and in walked
+nine men of tall stature, marshalled by a little hunchbacked
+personage.&nbsp; They were all muffled in the long cloaks of
+Spain, but I instantly knew by their demeanour that they were
+<i>caballeros</i>, or gentlemen.&nbsp; They placed themselves in
+a rank before the table where I was sitting; suddenly and
+simultaneously they all flung back their cloaks, and I perceived
+that every one bore a book in his hand, a book which I knew full
+well.&nbsp; After a pause, which I was unable to break, for I sat
+lost in astonishment and almost conceived myself to be visited by
+apparitions, the hunchback advancing somewhat before the rest,
+said, in soft silvery tones, &lsquo;<i>Se&ntilde;or</i> Cavalier,
+was it you who brought this book to the Asturias?&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+now supposed that they were the civil authorities of the place
+come to take me into custody, and, rising from my seat, I
+exclaimed: &lsquo;It certainly was I, and it is my glory to have
+done so; the book is the New Testament of God; I wish it was in
+my power to bring a million.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I heartily wish
+so too,&rsquo; said the little personage with a sigh; &lsquo;be
+under no apprehension, Sir Cavalier, these gentlemen are my
+friends.&nbsp; We have just purchased these books in the shop
+where you have placed them for sale, and have taken the liberty
+of calling upon you in order to return you our thanks for the
+treasure you have brought us.&nbsp; I hope you can furnish us
+with the Old Testament also!&rsquo;&nbsp; I replied that I was
+sorry to inform him that at present it was entirely out of my
+power to comply with his wish, as I had no Old Testaments in my
+possession, but I did not despair of procuring some speedily from
+England. <a name="citation206"></a><a href="#footnote206"
+class="citation">[206]</a>&nbsp; He then asked me a great many
+questions concerning my Biblical travels in Spain and my success,
+and the views entertained by the Society in respect to Spain,
+adding that he hoped we should pay particular attention to the
+Asturias, which he assured me was the best ground in the
+Peninsula for our labour.&nbsp; After about half an hour&rsquo;s
+conversation, he suddenly said in the English language,
+&lsquo;Good night, Sir,&rsquo; wrapped his cloak around him and
+walked out as he had come.&nbsp; His companions, who had hitherto
+not uttered a word, all repeated, &lsquo;Good night, Sir,&rsquo;
+and adjusting their cloaks followed him.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This anecdote greatly impressed the General Committee.&nbsp;
+Mr Brandram wrote (15th November 1837): &ldquo;We were all deeply
+interested with your ten gentlemen of Orviedo.&nbsp; I have
+introduced them at several meetings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Whilst at Orviedo, Borrow began to be very uneasy about the
+state of affairs at the capital.&nbsp; &ldquo;Madrid,&rdquo; he
+wrote, <a name="citation207"></a><a href="#footnote207"
+class="citation">[207]</a> &ldquo;is the dep&ocirc;t of our
+books, and I am apprehensive that in the revolutions and
+disturbances which at present seem to threaten it, our whole
+stock may perish.&nbsp; True it is that in order to reach Madrid
+I should have to pass through the midst of the Carlist hordes,
+who would perhaps slay or make me prisoner; but I am at present
+so much accustomed to perilous adventure, and have hitherto
+experienced so many fortunate escapes, that the dangers which
+infest the route would not deter me a moment from
+venturing.&nbsp; But there is no certain intelligence, and Madrid
+may be in safety or on the brink of falling.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Another factor that made him desirous of returning to the
+capital was that, ever since leaving Coru&ntilde;a, he had been
+afflicted with a dysentery and, later, with ophthalmia, which
+resulted from it, and he was anxious to obtain proper medical
+advice.&nbsp; He determined, however, first to carry out his
+project of visiting Santand&eacute;r, which he reached by way of
+Villa Viciosa, Colunga, Riba de Sella, Ll&aacute;nes, Colombres,
+San Vicente, Santillana.&nbsp; It was at Santand&eacute;r that he
+encountered the unfortunate Flinter, <a name="citation208"></a><a
+href="#footnote208" class="citation">[208]</a> as brave with his
+sword as with his tongue.</p>
+<p>Instructions had been given in a letter to Borr&eacute;go to
+forward to Santand&eacute;r two hundred copies of the New
+Testament; but, much to Borrow&rsquo;s disappointment, he found
+that they had not arrived.&nbsp; He thought that either they had
+fallen into the hands of the Carlists, or his letter of
+instruction had miscarried: as a matter of fact they did not
+leave Madrid until 30th October, the day before Borrow arrived at
+the capital.&nbsp; Thus his journey was largely wasted.&nbsp; It
+would be folly to remain at Santand&eacute;r, where, in spite of
+the strictest economy, his expenses amounted to two pounds a day,
+whilst a further supply of books was obtained.&nbsp; Accordingly
+he determined to make for Madrid without further delay.</p>
+<p>Purchasing a small horse, and notwithstanding that he was so
+ill as scarcely to be able to support himself; indifferent to the
+fact that the country between Santand&eacute;r and Madrid was
+overrun with Carlists, whose affairs in Castile had not
+prospered; too dispirited to collect his thoughts sufficiently to
+write to Mr Brandram, he set out, accompanied by Antonio,
+&ldquo;determined to trust, as usual, in the Almighty and to
+venture.&rdquo;&nbsp; Physical ailments, however, did not in any
+way cause him to forget why he had come to Santand&eacute;r, and
+before leaving he made tentative arrangements with the
+booksellers of the town as to what they should do in the event of
+his being able to send them a supply of Testaments.</p>
+<p>That journey of a hundred leagues was a nightmare.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Robberies, murders, and all kinds of atrocity were
+perpetrated before, behind, and on both sides&rdquo; of them; but
+they passed through it all as if travelling along an English
+highway.&nbsp; Even when met at the entrance of the Black Pass by
+a man, his face covered with blood, who besought him not to enter
+the pass, where he had just been robbed of all he possessed,
+Borrow, without making reply, proceeded on his way.&nbsp; He was
+too ill to weigh the risks, and Antonio followed cheerfully
+wherever his master went.&nbsp; Madrid was reached on 31st
+October. <a name="citation209a"></a><a href="#footnote209a"
+class="citation">[209a]</a>&nbsp;&nbsp; The next day Borrow wrote
+to Mr Brandram: &ldquo;People say we have been very lucky;
+Antonio says, &lsquo;It was so written&rsquo;; but I say, Glory
+be to the Lord for His mercies vouchsafed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The expedition to the Northern Provinces had occupied five and
+a half months.&nbsp; Every kind of fatigue had been experienced,
+dangers had been faced, even courted, and every incident of the
+road turned to further the end in view&mdash;the distribution of
+the Scriptures in Spain.&nbsp; The countryside had proved itself
+ignorant and superstitious, and the towns eager, not for the Word
+of God but &ldquo;for stimulant narratives, and amongst too many
+a lust for the deistical writings of the French, especially for
+those of Talleyrand, which have been translated into Spanish and
+published by the press of Barcelona, and for which I was
+frequently pestered.&rdquo; <a name="citation209b"></a><a
+href="#footnote209b" class="citation">[209b]</a>&nbsp; Antonio
+had proved himself a unique body-servant and companion, and if
+with a previous employer he had valued his personal comfort so
+highly as to give notice because his mistress&rsquo;s pet quail
+disturbed his slumbers, he was nevertheless utterly indifferent
+to the hardships and discomforts that he endured when with
+Borrow, and always proved cheerful and willing.</p>
+<p>Borrow had &ldquo;by private sale disposed of one hundred and
+sixteen Testaments to individuals entirely of the lower classes,
+namely, muleteers, carmen, <i>contrabandistas</i>, etc.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation209c"></a><a href="#footnote209c"
+class="citation">[209c]</a>&nbsp; He had dared to undertake what
+perhaps only he was capable of carrying to a successful issue;
+for, left alone to make his own plans and conduct the campaign
+along his own lines, Borrow has probably never been equalled as a
+missionary, strange though the term may seem when applied to
+him.&nbsp; His fear of God did not hinder him from making other
+men fear God&rsquo;s instrument, himself.&nbsp; His fine capacity
+for affairs, together with what must have appeared to the clergy
+of the districts through which he passed his outrageous daring,
+conspired to his achieving what few other men would have thought,
+and probably none were capable of undertaking.&nbsp; A missionary
+who rode a noble, black Andalusian stallion, who could use a
+fleam as well as a blacksmith&rsquo;s hammer, who could ride
+barebacked, and, above all, made men fear him as a physical
+rather than a spiritual force, was new in Spain, as indeed
+elsewhere.&nbsp; The very novelty of Borrow&rsquo;s methods,
+coupled with the daring and unconventional independence of the
+man himself, ensured the success of his mission.&nbsp; There was
+something of the Camel-Driver of Mecca about his missionary
+work.&nbsp; He saw nothing anomalous in being possessed of a
+strong arm as well as a Christian spirit.&nbsp; He would
+endeavour to win over the ungodly; but woe betide them if they
+should attempt to pit their strength against his.&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s own comment upon his journey in the Northern
+Provinces was, &ldquo;Insignificant are the results of
+man&rsquo;s labours compared with the swelling ideas of his
+presumption; something, however, had been effected by the journey
+which I had just concluded.&rdquo; <a name="citation210"></a><a
+href="#footnote210" class="citation">[210]</a></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+NOVEMBER 1837&ndash;APRIL 1838</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Great</span> changes had taken place in
+Madrid during Borrow&rsquo;s absence.&nbsp; The Carlists had
+actually appeared before its gates, although they had
+subsequently retired.&nbsp; Liberalism had been routed and a
+<i>Moderado</i> Cabinet, under the leadership of Count Ofalia,
+ruled the city and such part of the country as was sufficiently
+complaisant as to permit itself to be ruled.&nbsp; As the
+<i>Moderados</i> represented the Court faction, Borrow saw that
+he had little to expect from them.&nbsp; He was unacquainted with
+any of the members of the Cabinet, and, what was far more serious
+for him, the relations between the new Government and Sir George
+Villiers <a name="citation211"></a><a href="#footnote211"
+class="citation">[211]</a> were none too cordial, as the British
+Minister had been by no means favourable to the new ministry.</p>
+<p>Having written to Mr Brandram telling of his arrival in
+Madrid, &ldquo;begging pardon for all errors of commission and
+omission,&rdquo; and confessing himself &ldquo;a frail and
+foolish vessel,&rdquo; that had &ldquo;accomplished but a slight
+portion of what I proposed in my vanity,&rdquo; Borrow proceeded
+to disprove his own assertion.&nbsp; He found the affairs of the
+Bible Society in a far from flourishing condition.&nbsp; The
+Testaments had not sold to any considerable extent, for which
+&ldquo;only circumstances and the public poverty&rdquo; were the
+cause, as Dr Usoz explained.</p>
+<p>To awaken interest in his campaign, Borrow planned to print a
+thousand advertisements, which were to be posted in various parts
+of the city, and to employ colporteurs to vend the books in the
+streets.&nbsp; He despatched consignments of books to towns he
+had visited that required them, and in the enthusiasm of his
+eager and active mind foresaw that, &ldquo;as the circle widens
+in the lake into which a stripling has cast a pebble, so will the
+circle of our usefulness continue widening, until it has embraced
+the whole vast region of Spain.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation212a"></a><a href="#footnote212a"
+class="citation">[212a]</a></p>
+<p>It soon became evident that there was to be a very strong
+opposition.&nbsp; A furious attack upon the Bible Society was
+made in a letter addressed to the editors of <i>El
+Espa&ntilde;ol</i> on 5th November, prefixed to a circular of the
+Spiritual Governor of Valencia, forbidding the purchase or
+reading of the London edition of Father Scio&rsquo;s Bible.&nbsp;
+The letter described the Bible Society as &ldquo;an infernal
+society,&rdquo; and referred in passing to &ldquo;its accursed
+fecundity.&rdquo;&nbsp; It also strongly resented the omission of
+the Apocrypha from the Scio Bible.&nbsp; Borrow promptly replied
+to this attack in a letter of great length, and entirely silenced
+his antagonist, whom he described to Mr Brandram (20th Nov.) as
+&ldquo;an unprincipled benefice-hunting curate.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You will doubtless deem it too warm and fiery,&rdquo; he
+writes, referring to his reply, &ldquo;but tameness and
+gentleness are of little avail when surrounded by the vassal
+slaves of bloody Rome.&rdquo; <a name="citation212b"></a><a
+href="#footnote212b" class="citation">[212b]</a>&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s response to the &ldquo;benefice-hunting
+curate&rdquo; not only silenced him, but was listened to by the
+General Committee of the Society &ldquo;with much
+pleasure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The cause of the trouble in Valencia lay with the other agent
+of the Bible Society in Spain, Lieutenant James Newenham Graydon,
+R.N., who first took up the work of distributing the Scriptures
+at Gibraltar in 1835.&nbsp; Here he became associated with the
+Rev. W. H. Rule, of the Wesleyan Methodist Society.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The Lieutenant, who seems to have combined the personal
+charm of the Irish gentleman with some of the perfervid
+incautiousness of the Keltic temperament, finding himself
+unemployed at Gibraltar, resolved to do what lay in his power for
+the spiritual enlightenment of Spain.&nbsp; Without receiving a
+regular commission from any society, he took up single-handed the
+task which he had imposed upon himself.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation213a"></a><a href="#footnote213a"
+class="citation">[213a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow had first met Lieutenant Graydon at Madrid, in the
+summer of 1836, where he saw him two or three times.&nbsp; When
+Graydon left, on account of the heat, Borrow had removed to
+Graydon&rsquo;s lodgings as being more comfortable than his
+own.&nbsp; The prohibition in Valencia was directly due to the
+indiscretion and incaution of Graydon.&nbsp; The Vicar-General of
+the province gave as a reason for his action, an advertisement
+that had appeared in the <i>Diario Comercial</i> of Valencia,
+undertaking to supply Bibles gratis to those who could not afford
+to buy them.&nbsp; For this advertisement Graydon was admonished
+by the General Committee, which refused to entertain his plea
+that, being unpaid, he was not, strictly speaking, an agent of
+the Bible Society.&nbsp; He was given to understand that as the
+Society was responsible for his acts he must be guided by its
+views and wishes.</p>
+<p>The next occasion on which Borrow came into conflict with this
+impulsive missionary free-lance was in March 1838, when he heard
+from the Rev. W. H. Rule that Graydon was on his way to
+Andalusia.&nbsp; Borrow immediately wrote to Mr Brandram that he,
+acting on the advice of Sir George Villiers, had already planned
+an expedition into that province, and furthermore that he had
+despatched there a number of Testaments.&nbsp; He explained to Mr
+Brandram that he was apprehensive &ldquo;of the re-acting at
+Seville of the Valencian Drama, which I have such unfortunate
+cause to rue, as I am the victim on whom an aggravated party have
+wreaked their vengeance, and for the very cogent reason that I
+was within their reach.&rdquo; <a name="citation213b"></a><a
+href="#footnote213b" class="citation">[213b]</a>&nbsp; On this
+occasion Graydon was instructed not to start upon his projected
+journey, although Mr Brandram gave the order much against his own
+inclination. <a name="citation214a"></a><a href="#footnote214a"
+class="citation">[214a]</a></p>
+<p>One great difficulty that Borrow had to contend with was the
+apathy of the Madrid booksellers, who &ldquo;gave themselves no
+manner of trouble to secure the sale, and even withheld [the]
+advertisements from the public.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation214b"></a><a href="#footnote214b"
+class="citation">[214b]</a>&nbsp; This determined him to open a
+shop himself, and, accordingly, towards the end of November, he
+secured premises in the Calle del Principe, one of the main
+thoroughfares, for which he agreed to pay a rent of eight
+<i>reals</i> a day.&nbsp; He furnished the premises handsomely,
+with glass cases and chandeliers, and caused to be painted in
+large yellow characters the sign &ldquo;Despacho de la Sociedad
+B&iacute;blica y Estrangera&rdquo; (Dep&ocirc;t of the Biblical
+and Foreign Society).&nbsp; He engaged a Gallegan (Jos&eacute;
+Calzado, whom he called Pepe) as salesman, and on 27th November
+formally opened his new premises.&nbsp; Customers soon presented
+themselves; but many were disappointed on finding that they could
+not obtain the Bible.&nbsp; &ldquo;I could have sold ten times
+the amount of what I did,&rdquo; Borrow writes.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+<i>must</i> therefore be furnished with Bibles instanter; send me
+therefore the London edition, bad as it is, say 500
+copies.&rdquo; <a name="citation214c"></a><a href="#footnote214c"
+class="citation">[214c]</a></p>
+<p>To facilitate the passing of these books through the customs,
+Borrow suggested that they should be consigned to the British
+Consul at Cadiz, who was friendly to the Society and &ldquo;would
+have sufficient influence to secure their admission into
+Spain.&nbsp; But the most advisable way,&rdquo; he goes on to
+explain with great guile, &ldquo;would be to pack them in two
+chests, placing at the top Bibles in English and other languages,
+for there is a demand, viz., 100 English, 100 French, 50 German,
+50 Hebrew, 50 Greek, 10 Modern Greek, 10 Persian, 20
+Arabic.&nbsp; <i>Pray do not fail</i>.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation215a"></a><a href="#footnote215a"
+class="citation">[215a]</a></p>
+<p>When Sir George Villiers first obtained from Isturitz
+permission for Borrow to print and sell the New Testament in
+Spanish without notes, he had cautioned him &ldquo;to use the
+utmost circumspection, and in order to pursue his vocation with
+success, to avoid offending popular prejudices, which would not
+fail to be excited against a Protestant and a Foreigner engaged
+in the propagation of the Gospel.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation215b"></a><a href="#footnote215b"
+class="citation">[215b]</a>&nbsp; This warning the British
+Minister had repeated frequently since.&nbsp; It was without
+consulting Sir George that Borrow opened his dep&ocirc;t, and
+&ldquo;imprudently painted upon the window that it was the
+Dep&ocirc;t of the London (sic) Bible Society for the sale of
+Bibles.&nbsp; I told him,&rdquo; Sir George writes &ldquo;that
+such a measure would render the interference of the Authorities
+inevitable, and so it turned out.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation215c"></a><a href="#footnote215c"
+class="citation">[215c]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow now lost the services of the faithful Antonio, who, on
+the last day of the year, informed him that he had become
+unsettled and dissatisfied with everything at his master&rsquo;s
+lodgings, including the house, the furniture, and the landlady
+herself.&nbsp; Therefore he had hired himself out to a count for
+four dollars a month less than he was receiving from Borrow,
+because he was &ldquo;fond of change, though it be for the
+worse.&nbsp; <i>Adieu</i>, <i>mon maitre</i>,&rdquo; he said in
+parting; &ldquo;may you be as well served as you deserve.&nbsp;
+Should you chance, however, to have any pressing need <i>de mes
+soins</i>, send for me without hesitation, and I will at once
+give my new master warning.&rdquo;&nbsp; A few days later Borrow
+engaged a Basque, named Francisco, who &ldquo;to the strength of
+a giant joined the disposition of a lamb,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation216a"></a><a href="#footnote216a"
+class="citation">[216a]</a> and who had been strongly recommended
+to him.</p>
+<p>On his return from a hurried visit to Toledo, Borrow found his
+<i>Despacho</i> succeeding as well as could be expected.&nbsp; To
+call attention to his premises he now took an extremely daring
+step.&nbsp; He caused to be printed three thousand copies of an
+advertisement on paper yellow, blue, and crimson, &ldquo;with
+which I almost covered the sides of the streets&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;and besides this inserted notices in all the journals and
+periodicals, employing also a man, after the London fashion, to
+parade the streets with a placard, to the astonishment of the
+populace.&rdquo; <a name="citation216b"></a><a
+href="#footnote216b" class="citation">[216b]</a>&nbsp; The result
+of this move, Borrow declared, was that every man, woman and
+child in Madrid became aware of the existence of his
+<i>Despacho</i>, as well they might.&nbsp; In spite of this
+commercial enterprise, the first month&rsquo;s trading showed a
+sale of only between seventy and eighty New Testaments, and ten
+Bibles, <a name="citation216c"></a><a href="#footnote216c"
+class="citation">[216c]</a> these having been secured from a
+Spanish bookseller who had brought them secretly from Gibraltar,
+but who was afraid to sell them himself.&nbsp; Mr
+Brandram&rsquo;s comment upon the letter from Borrow telling of
+the posters was that its contents had &ldquo;afforded us no
+little merriment.&nbsp; The idea of your placards and
+placard-bearers in Madrid is indeed a novel one.&nbsp; It cannot
+but be effectual in giving publicity.&nbsp; I sincerely hope it
+may not be prejudicial.&rdquo; <a name="citation216d"></a><a
+href="#footnote216d" class="citation">[216d]</a></p>
+<p>When in England, at the end of 1836, Borrow had been
+authorised by the Bible Society to find &ldquo;a person competent
+to translate the Scriptures in Basque.&rdquo;&nbsp; On
+27<i>th</i> February 1837, he wrote telling Mr Brandram that he
+had become &ldquo;acquainted with a gentleman well versed in that
+dialect, of which I myself have some knowledge.&rdquo;&nbsp; Dr
+Oteiza, the domestic physician of the Marqu&eacute;s de
+Salvatierra, was accordingly commissioned to proceed with the
+work, for which, when completed, he was paid the sum of
+&ldquo;&pound;8 and a few odd shillings.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow
+reported to Mr Brandram (7th June 1837):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have examined it with much attention, and
+find it a very faithful version.&nbsp; The only objection which
+can be brought against it is that Spanish words are frequently
+used to express ideas for which there are equivalents in Basque;
+but this language, as spoken at present in Spain, is very
+corrupt, and a work written entirely in the Basque of
+Larramendi&rsquo;s Dictionary would be intelligible to very
+few.&nbsp; I have read passages from it to men of Guipuscoa, who
+assured me that they had no difficulty in understanding it, and
+that it was written in the colloquial style of the
+province.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow had &ldquo;obtained a slight acquaintance&rdquo; with
+Basque when a youth, which he lost no opportunity of extending by
+mingling with Biscayans during his stay in the Peninsula.&nbsp;
+He also considerably improved himself in the language by
+conversing with his Basque servant Francisco.&nbsp; Borrow now
+decided to print the Gitano and Basque versions of St Luke, which
+he accordingly put in hand; but as the compositors were entirely
+ignorant of both languages, he had to exercise the greatest care
+in reading the proofs.</p>
+<p>During his stay in Spain he had found time to translate into
+the dialect of the Spanish gypsies the greater part of the New
+Testament. <a name="citation217a"></a><a href="#footnote217a"
+class="citation">[217a]</a>&nbsp; His method had been somewhat
+original.&nbsp; Believing that there is &ldquo;no individual,
+however wicked and hardened, who is utterly
+<i>godless</i>,&rdquo; <a name="citation217b"></a><a
+href="#footnote217b" class="citation">[217b]</a> he determined to
+apply his belief to the gypsies.&nbsp; To enlist their interest
+in the work, he determined to allow them to do the translating
+themselves.&nbsp; At one period of his residence in Madrid he was
+regularly visited by two gypsy women, and these he decided to
+make his translators; for he found the women far more amenable
+than the men.&nbsp; In spite of the fact that he had already
+translated into Gitano the New Testament, or the greater part of
+it, he would read out to the women from the Spanish version and
+let them translate it into Romany themselves, thus obtaining the
+correct gypsy idiom.&nbsp; The women looked forward to these
+gatherings and also to &ldquo;the one small glass of
+Malaga&rdquo; with which their host regaled them.&nbsp; They had
+got as far as the eighth chapter before the meetings ended.&nbsp;
+What was the moral effect of St Luke upon the minds of two
+gypsies?&nbsp; Borrow confessed himself sceptical; first, because
+he was acquainted with the gypsy character; second, because it
+came to his knowledge that one of the women &ldquo;committed a
+rather daring theft shortly afterwards, which compelled her to
+conceal herself for a fortnight.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation218a"></a><a href="#footnote218a"
+class="citation">[218a]</a>&nbsp; Borrow comforted himself with
+the reflection that &ldquo;it is quite possible, however, that
+she may remember the contents of those chapters on her
+death-bed.&rdquo; <a name="citation218b"></a><a
+href="#footnote218b" class="citation">[218b]</a>&nbsp; The
+translation of the remaining chapters was supplied from
+Borrow&rsquo;s own version begun at Badajos in 1836.</p>
+<p>It is not strange that Borrow should be regarded with
+suspicion by the Spaniards on account of his association with the
+Gitanos.&nbsp; Sometimes there would be as many as seventeen
+gypsies gathered together at his lodgings in the Calle de
+Santiago.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The people in the street in which I
+lived,&rdquo; he writes, <a name="citation218c"></a><a
+href="#footnote218c" class="citation">[218c]</a> &ldquo;seeing
+such numbers of these strange females continually passing in and
+out, were struck with astonishment, and demanded the
+reason.&nbsp; The answers which they obtained by no means
+satisfied them.&nbsp; &lsquo;Zeal for the conversion of
+souls&mdash;the souls too of
+Git&aacute;nas,&mdash;dispar&aacute;te! the fellow is a
+scoundrel.&nbsp; Besides he is an Englishman, and is not
+baptised; what cares he for souls?&nbsp; They visit him for other
+purposes.&nbsp; He makes base ounces, which they carry away and
+circulate.&nbsp; Madrid is already stocked with false
+money.&rsquo;&nbsp; Others were of the opinion that we met for
+the purposes of sorcery and abomination.&nbsp; The Spaniard has
+no conception that other springs of action exist than interest or
+villany.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was in reality endeavouring to convey to his
+&ldquo;little congregation,&rdquo; as he called them, some idea
+of abstract morality.&nbsp; He was bold enough &ldquo;to speak
+against their inveterate practices, thieving and lying, telling
+fortunes,&rdquo; etc., and at first experienced much
+opposition.&nbsp; About the result, he seems to have cherished no
+illusions; still, he wrote a hymn in their dialect which he
+taught his guests to sing.</p>
+<p>For some time past it had been obvious to Borrow that he was
+becoming more than ever unpopular with certain interested
+factions in Madrid, who looked upon his missionary labours with
+angry disapproval.&nbsp; The opening of his <i>Despacho</i> had
+caused a great sensation.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Priests and Bigots are
+teeming with malice and fury,&rdquo; he had written to Mr
+Brandram, <a name="citation219a"></a><a href="#footnote219a"
+class="citation">[219a]</a> &ldquo;which hitherto they have
+thought proper to exhibit only in words, as they know that all I
+do here is favoured by Mr Villiers <a name="citation219b"></a><a
+href="#footnote219b" class="citation">[219b]</a> (sic) . .
+.&nbsp; There is no attempt, however atrocious, which may not be
+expected from such people, and were it right and seemly for
+<i>me</i>, the most insignificant of worms, to make such a
+comparison, I would say that, like Paul at Ephesus, I am fighting
+with wild beasts.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was attacked in print and
+endeavours were made to incite the people against him as a
+sorcerer and companion of gypsies and witches.&nbsp; When he
+decided upon the campaign of the posters it would appear, at
+first glance, that in the claims of the merchant Borrow had
+entirely forgotten the obligations of the diplomatist.&nbsp; On
+the other hand, he may have foreseen that the priestly party
+would soon force the Government to action, and was desirous of
+selling all the books he could before this happened.&nbsp; His
+own words seem to indicate that this was the case.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;People who know me not,&rdquo; he wrote to
+Mr Brandram, &ldquo;nor are acquainted with my situation, may be
+disposed to call me rash; but I am far from being so, as I never
+adopt a venturous course when any other is open to me; but I am
+not a person to be terrified by any danger when I see that
+braving it is the only way to achieve an object.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation220"></a><a href="#footnote220"
+class="citation">[220]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Whatever may have been Borrow&rsquo;s motives, the crisis
+arrived on 12th January, when he received a peremptory order from
+the Civil Governor of Madrid (who had previously sent for and
+received two copies, to submit for examination to the
+Ecclesiastical Authorities) to sell no more of the New Testament
+in Spanish without notes.&nbsp; At that period the average sale
+was about twenty copies a day.&nbsp; &ldquo;The priests have at
+length &lsquo;swooped upon me,&rsquo;&rdquo; Borrow wrote to Mr
+Brandram, three days later.&nbsp; The order did not, however,
+take him unawares.</p>
+<p>Borrow saw that little assistance was to be expected from Sir
+George Villiers, who, for obvious reasons, was not popular with
+the Ofalia ministry, and, accepting the British Minister&rsquo;s
+advice, he promptly complied with the edict.&nbsp; He recognised
+that for the time being his enemies were paramount.&nbsp; He
+accuses the priests of employing the ruffian who, one night in a
+dark street, warned him to discontinue selling his &ldquo;Jewish
+books,&rdquo; or he would &ldquo;have a knife &lsquo;<i>nailed in
+his heart</i>&rsquo;&rdquo; to which he replied by telling the
+fellow to go home, say his prayers and inform his employers that
+he, Borrow, pitied them.&nbsp; It was a few days after this
+episode that Borrow received the formal notice of
+prohibition.</p>
+<p>Consoling himself with the fact that he was not ordered to
+close his <i>Despacho</i>, and refusing the advice that was
+tendered to him to erase from its windows the yellow-lettered
+sign, he determined to continue his campaign with the Bibles that
+were on their way to him, and the Gitano and Basque versions of
+St Luke as soon as they were ready.&nbsp; The prohibition
+referred only to the Spanish New Testament without notes, and in
+this Borrow took comfort.&nbsp; He had every reason to feel
+gratified; for, since opening the <i>Despacho</i>, he had sold
+nearly three hundred copies of the New Testament.</p>
+<p>At Earl Street it was undoubtedly felt that Borrow had to some
+extent precipitated the present crisis.&nbsp; On 8th February Mr
+Brandram wrote that, whilst there was no wish on the part of the
+Committee to censure him, they were not altogether surprised at
+what had occurred; for, when they first heard about them,
+&ldquo;some <i>did</i> think that your tri-coloured placards and
+placard-bearer were somewhat calculated to provoke what has
+occurred.&rdquo;&nbsp; In reply Borrow confessed that the view of
+the &ldquo;some&rdquo; gave him &ldquo;a pang, more especially as
+I knew from undoubted sources that nothing which I had done,
+said, or written, was the original cause of the arbitrary step
+which had been adopted in respect to me.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation221a"></a><a href="#footnote221a"
+class="citation">[221a]</a></p>
+<p>The printing of the Gitano and Basque editions of St Luke (500
+copies <a name="citation221b"></a><a href="#footnote221b"
+class="citation">[221b]</a> of each) was completed in March, and
+they were published respectively in March and April.&nbsp; The
+Gitano version attracted much attention.&nbsp; Some months later
+Borrow wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;No work printed in Spain ever caused so
+great and so general a sensation, not so much amongst the
+Gypsies, that peculiar people for whom it was intended, as
+amongst the Spaniards themselves, who, though they look upon the
+Roma with some degree of contempt as a low and thievish race of
+outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest in all that
+concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their
+practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to
+cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos, as they are popularly
+called, probably attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the
+lascivious dances of the females.&nbsp; The apparation,
+therefore, of the Gospel of St Luke at Madrid in the peculiar
+jargon of these people, was hailed as a strange novelty and
+almost as a wonder, and I believe was particularly instrumental
+in bruiting the name of the Bible Society far and wide through
+Spain, and in creating a feeling far from inimical towards it and
+its proceedings.&rdquo; <a name="citation222a"></a><a
+href="#footnote222a" class="citation">[222a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The little volume appears to have sold freely among the
+gypsies.&nbsp; &ldquo;Many of the men,&rdquo; Borrow says, <a
+name="citation222b"></a><a href="#footnote222b"
+class="citation">[222b]</a> &ldquo;understood it, and prized it
+highly, induced of course more by the language than the doctrine;
+the women were particularly anxious to obtain copies, though
+unable to read; but each wished to have one in her pocket,
+especially when engaged in thieving expeditions, for they all
+looked upon it in the light of a charm.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All endeavours to get the prohibition against the sale of the
+New Testament removed proved unavailing.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s
+great strength lay in the support he received from the British
+Minister, and, in all probability, this prevented his expulsion
+from Spain, which alone would have satisfied his enemies.&nbsp;
+At the request of Sir George Villiers, he drew up an account of
+the Bible Society and an exposition of its views, telling Count
+Ofalia, among other things, that &ldquo;the mightiest of earthly
+monarchs, the late Alexander of Russia, was so convinced of the
+single-mindedness and integrity of the British and Foreign Bible
+Society, that he promoted their efforts within his own dominions
+to the utmost of his ability.&rdquo;&nbsp; He pointed to the
+condition of Spain, which was &ldquo;overspread with the thickest
+gloom of heathenish ignorance, beneath which the fiends and
+demons of the abyss seem to be holding their ghastly
+revels.&rdquo;&nbsp; He described it as &ldquo;a country in which
+all sense of right and wrong is forgotten . . . where the name of
+Jesus is scarcely ever mentioned but in blasphemy, and His
+precepts [are] almost utterly unknown . . . [where] the few who
+are enlightened are too much occupied in the pursuit of lucre,
+ambition, or ungodly revenge to entertain a desire or thought of
+bettering the moral state of their countrymen.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+report, in which Borrow confesses that he &ldquo;made no attempts
+to flatter and cajole,&rdquo; must have caused the British
+Minister some diplomatic embarrassment when he read it; but it
+seems to have been presented, although, as is scarcely
+surprising, it appears to have been ineffectual in causing to be
+removed the ban against which it was written as a protest.</p>
+<p>The Prime Minister was in a peculiarly unpleasant
+position.&nbsp; On the one hand there was the British Minister
+using all his influence to get the prohibition rescinded; on the
+other hand were six bishops, including the primate, then resident
+in Madrid, and the greater part of the clergy.&nbsp; Count Ofalia
+applied for a copy of the Gipsy St Luke, and, seeing in this an
+opening for a personal appeal, Borrow determined to present the
+volume, specially and handsomely bound, in person, probably the
+last thing that Count Ofalia expected or desired.&nbsp; The
+interview produced nothing beyond the conviction in
+Borrow&rsquo;s mind that Spain was ruled by a man who possessed
+the soul of a mouse.&nbsp; Borrow had been received &ldquo;with
+great affability,&rdquo; thanked for his present, urged to be
+patient and peaceable, assured of the enmity of the clergy, and
+promised that an endeavour should be made to devise some plan
+that would be satisfactory to him.&nbsp; The two then
+&ldquo;parted in kindness,&rdquo; and as he walked away from the
+palace, Borrow wondered &ldquo;by what strange chance this poor
+man had become Prime Minister of a country like Spain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In reporting progress to the Bible Society on 17th March
+Borrow, after assuring Mr Brandram that he had &ldquo;brought
+every engine into play which it was in my power to
+command,&rdquo; asked for instructions.&nbsp; &ldquo;Shall I wait
+a little time longer in Madrid,&rdquo; he enquired; &ldquo;or
+shall I proceed at once on a journey to Andalusia and other
+places?&nbsp; I am in strength, health and spirits, thanks be to
+the Lord! and am at all times ready to devote myself, body and
+mind, to His cause.&rdquo; <a name="citation224a"></a><a
+href="#footnote224a" class="citation">[224a]</a>&nbsp; The
+decision of the Committee was that he should remain at
+Madrid.</p>
+<p>During the time that Borrow had been preparing his Dep&ocirc;t
+in Madrid, Lieutenant Graydon had been feverishly active in the
+South.&nbsp; On 19th April Borrow wrote to Mr
+Brandram:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Sir George Villiers has vowed to protect me
+and has stated so publicly . . . He has gone so far as to state
+to Ofalia and [Don Ramon de] Gamboa [the Civil Governor], that
+provided I be allowed to pursue my plans without interruption, he
+will be my bail (<i>fiador</i>) and answerable for everything I
+do, as he does me the honor to say that he knows me, and can
+confide in <i>my</i> discretion.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the same letter he begs the Society to be cautious and
+offer no encouragement to any disposed &ldquo;&lsquo;to run the
+muck&rsquo; (<i>sic</i>) (it is Sir George&rsquo;s expression)
+against the religious and political <i>institutions</i> of
+Spain&rdquo;; but &ldquo;the delicacy of the situation does not
+appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the
+Committee at home.&rdquo; <a name="citation224b"></a><a
+href="#footnote224b" class="citation">[224b]</a>&nbsp; They saw
+the astonishing success of Graydon in distributing the Scripture,
+and became infused with his enthusiasm, oblivious to the fact
+that the greater the enthusiasm the greater the possibilities of
+indiscretion.&nbsp; On the other hand Graydon himself saw only
+the glory of the Gospel.&nbsp; If he were indiscreet, it was
+because he was blinded by the success that attended his efforts,
+and he failed to see the clouds that were gathering. <a
+name="citation225"></a><a href="#footnote225"
+class="citation">[225]</a>&nbsp; Borrow saw the danger of
+Graydon&rsquo;s reckless evangelism, and although he himself had
+few good words for the pope and priestcraft, he recognised that a
+discreet veiling of his opinions was best calculated to further
+the ends he had in view.</p>
+<p>About this period Borrow became greatly incensed at the action
+of the Rev. W. H. Rule of Gibraltar in consigning to his care an
+ex-priest, Don Pascual Mann, who, it was alleged, had been
+persuaded to secede from Rome &ldquo;by certain promises and
+hopes held out&rdquo; to him.&nbsp; He had accordingly left his
+benefice and gone to Gibraltar to receive instruction at the
+hands of Mr Rule.&nbsp; On his return to Valencia his salary was
+naturally sequestrated, and he was reduced to want.&nbsp; When he
+arrived at Madrid it was with a letter (12th April) from Mr Rule
+to Borrow, in which it was stated that Mann was sent that he
+might &ldquo;endeavour to circulate the Holy Scriptures,
+Religious Tracts and books, and if possible prepare the minds of
+some with a view to the future establishment of a Mission in
+Madrid.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had commiserated with the unfortunate Mann, even to the
+extent of sending him 500 <i>reals</i> out of his own pocket; but
+on hearing that he was on his way to Madrid to engage in
+missionary work, he immediately wrote a letter of protest to Mr
+Brandram.&nbsp; He was angry at Mr Rule&rsquo;s conduct in
+saddling him with Mann, and that without any preliminary
+correspondence.&nbsp; He had entertained Mr Rule when in Madrid,
+had conversed with him about the unfortunate ex-priest; but there
+had never been any mention of his being sent to Madrid.&nbsp; Mr
+Rule, on the other hand, thought it had been arranged that Mann
+should be sent to Borrow.&nbsp; The whole affair appears to have
+arisen out of a misunderstanding.&nbsp; There was considerable
+danger to Borrow in Mann&rsquo;s presence in the capital; but it
+was not the thought of the danger that incensed him so much as
+what he conceived to be Mr Rule&rsquo;s unwarrantable conduct,
+and his own deeply-rooted objection to working with anyone
+else.&nbsp; Mr Brandram repudiated the suggestion that assistance
+had been promised Mann from London (although he authorised Borrow
+to give him ten pounds in his, Brandram&rsquo;s, name), and gave
+as an excuse for what Borrow described as the desertion of the
+ex-priest by those who were responsible for his conversion, that
+&ldquo;the man had returned of his own accord to Rome,&rdquo;
+Graydon vouching for the accuracy of the statement.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, Mann stated that he was persuaded to secede
+by promises made by Graydon and Rule, and induced to sign a
+document purporting to be a separation from the Roman
+Church.&nbsp; He further stated that he was abandoned because he
+refused to preach publicly against the Chapter of Valencia, which
+in all probability would have resulted in his imprisonment.&nbsp;
+Whatever the truth, there appears to have been some embarrassment
+among those responsible for bringing in the lost sheep as to what
+should be done with him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I hope that Mann&rsquo;s
+history will be a warning to many of our friends,&rdquo; Borrow
+wrote to Mr Rule and quoted the passage in his letter to Mr
+Brandram, <a name="citation226"></a><a href="#footnote226"
+class="citation">[226]</a> &ldquo;and tend to a certain extent to
+sober down the desire for doing what is called at home <i>smart
+things</i>, many of which terminate in a manner very different
+from the original expectations of the parties
+concerned.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr Brandram thought that Borrow was a
+little hard upon Graydon, and that he had not received
+&ldquo;with the due <i>grano salis</i> the statements of the
+unfortunate M.&rdquo;&nbsp; He intimated, nevertheless, that the
+Committee had no opening for Mann&rsquo;s services.</p>
+<p>That Borrow was justified in his anger is shown by the fact
+that, as he had foreseen, he reaped all the odium of Mann&rsquo;s
+conversion.&nbsp; The Bishop of Cordoba in Council branded him as
+&ldquo;a dangerous, pestilent person, who under the pretence of
+selling the Scriptures went about making converts, and moreover
+employed subordinates for the purpose of deluding weak and silly
+people into separation from the Mother Church.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation227a"></a><a href="#footnote227a"
+class="citation">[227a]</a></p>
+<p>Although Borrow was angry about the Mann episode, he did not
+allow his personal feelings to prevent him from ministering to
+the needs of the poor ex-priest &ldquo;as far as prudence will
+allow,&rdquo; when he fell ill.&nbsp; He even went the length of
+writing to Mr Rule, being wishful &ldquo;not to offend
+him.&rdquo;&nbsp; None the less he felt that he had not been well
+treated.&nbsp; To Mr Brandram he wrote reminding him &ldquo;that
+all the difficulty and danger connected with what has been
+accomplished in Spain have fallen to my share, I having been
+labouring on the flinty rock and sierra, and not in smiling
+meadows refreshed by sea breezes.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation227b"></a><a href="#footnote227b"
+class="citation">[227b]</a></p>
+<p>On 14th July 1838 Borrow made the last reference to the
+ex-priest in a letter to Mr Brandram: &ldquo;The unfortunate M.
+is dying of a galloping consumption, brought on by distress of
+mind.&nbsp; All the medicine in the world would not accomplish
+his cure.&rdquo; <a name="citation227c"></a><a
+href="#footnote227c" class="citation">[227c]</a></p>
+<p>The watchful eye of the law was still on Borrow, and fearful
+lest his stock of Bibles, of which 500 had arrived from
+Barcelona, and the Gypsy and Basque editions of St Luke should be
+seized, he hired a room where he stored the bulk of the
+books.&nbsp; He now advertised the two editions of St Luke, with
+the result that on 16th April a party of <i>Alguazils</i> entered
+the shop and took possession of twenty-five copies of the Romany
+Gospel of St Luke.</p>
+<p>On the publication of the Gypsy St Luke, a fresh campaign had
+been opened against Borrow, and accusations of sorcery were made
+and fears expressed as to the results of the publication of the
+book.&nbsp; Application was made by the priestly party to the
+Civil Governor, with the result that all the copies at the
+<i>Despacho</i> of the Basque and Gitano versions of St Luke had
+been seized.&nbsp; Borrow states that the <i>Alguazils</i>
+&ldquo;divided the copies of the gypsy volume among themselves,
+selling subsequently the greater number at a large price, the
+book being in the greatest demand.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation228a"></a><a href="#footnote228a"
+class="citation">[228a]</a>&nbsp; Thus the very officials
+responsible for the seizure and suppression of the Bible
+Society&rsquo;s books in Spain became &ldquo;unintentionally
+agents of an heretical society.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation228b"></a><a href="#footnote228b"
+class="citation">[228b]</a></p>
+<p>Disappointed at the smallness of the spoil, the authorities
+strove by artifice to discover if Borrow still had copies of the
+books in his possession.&nbsp; To this end they sent to the
+<i>Despacho</i> spies, who offered high prices for copies of the
+Gitano St Luke, in which their interest seemed specially to
+centre, to the exclusion of the Basque version.&nbsp; To these
+enquiries the same answer was returned, that at present no
+further books would be sold at the <i>Despacho</i>.</p>
+<p>As evidence of the high opinion formed of the Romany version
+of St Luke, the following story told by Borrow is
+amusing:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Shortly before my departure a royal edict
+was published, authorising all public libraries to provide
+themselves with copies of the said works [the Basque and Gypsy St
+Lukes] on account of their philological merit; whereupon on
+application being made to the Office [of the Civil Governor,
+where the books were supposed to be stored], it was discovered
+that the copies of the Gospel in Basque were safe and
+forthcoming, whilst every one of the sequestered copies of the
+Gitano Gospel had been plundered by hands unknown [to the
+authorities].&nbsp; The consequence was that I was myself applied
+to by the agents of the public libraries of Valencia and other
+places, who paid me the price of the copies which they received,
+assuring me at the same time that they were authorised to
+purchase them at whatever price which might be demanded.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation229a"></a><a href="#footnote229a"
+class="citation">[229a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s enemies acknowledged that the Gitano St Luke
+was a philological curiosity; but that it was impossible to allow
+it to pass into circulation without notes.&nbsp; How great a
+philological curiosity it actually was, is shown by the fact that
+the ecclesiastical authorities were unable to find anywhere a
+person, in whom they had confidence, capable of pronouncing upon
+it, consequently they could only condemn it on two counts of
+omission; firstly the notes, secondly the imprint of the printer
+from the title-page.</p>
+<p>The Basque version was by no means so popular; for one thing,
+&ldquo;It can scarcely be said to have been published,&rdquo;
+Borrow wrote, &ldquo;it having been prohibited, and copies of it
+seized on the second day of its appearance.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation229b"></a><a href="#footnote229b"
+class="citation">[229b]</a>&nbsp; Several orders were received
+from San Sebastian and other towns where Basque predominates,
+which could not be supplied on account of the prohibition.</p>
+<p>The official remonstrance from Sir George Villiers to Count
+Ofalia in respect of the seizure of the Gypsy and Basque Gospels
+is of great interest as showing, not only the British
+Minister&rsquo;s attitude towards Borrow, but how, and with what
+wrath, Borrow &ldquo;desisted from his meritorious
+task.&rdquo;&nbsp; The communication runs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Madrid</span>, 24<i>th</i> <i>April</i> 1838.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>It is my duty to request the attention of Your Excellency to
+an act of injustice committed against a British subject by the
+Civil Authorities of Madrid.</p>
+<p>It appears that on the 16th inst., two officers of Police were
+sent by the Civil Governor to a Shop, No. 25 Calle del Principe
+occupied by Mr Borrow, where they seized and carried away 25
+Copies of the Gospel of St Luke in the Gitano language, being the
+entire number exposed there for sale.</p>
+<p>Mr Borrow is an agent of the British Bible Society, who has
+for some time past been in Spain, and in the year 1836 obtained
+permission from the Government of Her Catholic Majesty to print,
+at the expense of the Society, Padre Scio&rsquo;s translation of
+the New Testament.&nbsp; He subsequently sold the work at a
+moderate price and had no reason to believe that in so doing he
+infringed any law of Spain or exposed himself to the
+animadversion of the Authorities, otherwise, from my knowledge of
+Mr Borrow&rsquo;s character, I feel justified in assuring Your
+Excellency that he would at once, although with regret, have
+desisted from his meritorious task of propagating the
+Gospel.&nbsp; Some months ago, however, the late Civil Governor
+of Madrid, after having sent for and examined a copy of the work,
+thought proper to direct that its further sale should be
+suspended, which order was instantly complied with.</p>
+<p>Mr Borrow is a man of great learning and research and master
+of many languages, and having translated the Gospel of St Luke
+into the Gitano, he presented a copy of it to Don Ramon Gamboa,
+the late Civil Governor, and announced his intention to advertise
+it for sale, to which no objection was made.</p>
+<p>Since that time neither Mr Borrow nor the persons employed by
+him received any communication from the present Civil Governor
+forbidding the sale of this work until it was seized in the
+manner I have above described to Your Excellency.</p>
+<p>I feel convinced that the mere statement of these facts
+without any commentary on my part will be sufficient to induce
+your Excellency to take steps for the indemnification of Mr
+Borrow, who is not only a very respectable British subject but
+the Agent of one of the most truly benevolent and philanthropic
+Societies in the world.</p>
+<p>I have, etc., etc., etc.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Villiers</span>.</p>
+<p>His Excellency Count Ofalia.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV<br />
+MAY 1&ndash;13, 1838</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> the morning of 30th April,
+whilst at breakfast, Borrow, according to his own account,
+received a visit from a man who announced that he was &ldquo;A
+Police Agent.&rdquo;&nbsp; He came from the Civil Governor, who
+was perfectly aware that he, Borrow, was continuing in secret to
+dispose of the &ldquo;evil books&rdquo; that he had been
+forbidden to sell.&nbsp; The man began poking round among the
+books and papers that were lying about, with the result that
+Borrow led his visitor by the arm down the three flights of
+stairs into the street, &ldquo;looking him steadfastly in the
+face the whole time,&rdquo; and subsequently sending down by his
+landlady the official&rsquo;s sombrero, which, in the
+unexpectedness of his departure, he had left behind him.</p>
+<p>The official report of Pedro Martin de Eugenio, the police
+agent in question, runs as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Madrid</span>, 30<i>th</i> <i>April</i> 1838.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Official Report
+of the Police Agent of the Language held by Mr Borrow</span>.</p>
+<p><i>Public Security</i>.&mdash;In virtue of an order from His
+Excellency the Civil Governor, <a name="citation231"></a><a
+href="#footnote231" class="citation">[231]</a> I went to seize
+the Copies Entitled the Gospel of St Luke, in the Shop Princes
+Street No. 25, belonging to Mr George Borrow, but not finding him
+there; I went to his lodgings, which are in St James Street, No.
+16, on the third floor and presenting the said order to Him He
+read it, and with an angry look threw it on the ground saying,
+that He had nothing to do with the Civil Governor, that He was
+authorised by His Ambassador to sell the Work in question, and
+that an English Stable Boy, is more than any Spanish Civil
+Governor, and that I had forcibly entered his house, to which I
+replied that I only went there to communicate the order to Him,
+as proprietor as he was of the said Shop, and to seize the Copies
+in it in virtue of that Order, and He answered I might do as I
+liked, that He should go to the House of His Ambassador, and that
+I should be responsible for the consequences; to which I replied
+that He had personally insulted the Civil Governor and all Spain,
+to which He answered in the same terms, holding the same language
+as above stated.</p>
+<p>All of which I communicate to you for the objects
+required.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The Police
+Agent</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Pedro Martin de Eugenio</span>. <a
+name="citation232a"></a><a href="#footnote232a"
+class="citation">[232a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow felt that the fellow had been sent to entrap him into
+some utterance that should justify his arrest.&nbsp; In any case
+a warrant was issued that same morning.&nbsp; The news caused
+Borrow no alarm; for one thing he was indifferent to danger, for
+another he was desirous of studying the robber language of Spain,
+and had already, according to his own statement, <a
+name="citation232b"></a><a href="#footnote232b"
+class="citation">[232b]</a> made an unsuccessful effort to obtain
+admission to the city prison.</p>
+<p>The official account of the interview between Borrow and the
+&ldquo;Police Agent&rdquo; is given in the following letter from
+the Civil Governor to Sir George Villiers:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>To the British Minister,&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Madrid</span>,
+30<i>th</i> <i>April</i> 1838.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>The Vicar of the Diocese having, on the 16th and 26th Instant,
+officially represented to me, that neither the publication nor
+the sale of the Gospel of St Luke translated into the romain, or
+Gitano Dialect ought to be permitted, until such time as the
+translation had been examined and approved by the competent
+Ecclesiastical Authority, in conformity with the Canonical and
+Civil regulations existing on the matter, I gave an order to a
+dependent of this civil administration, to present himself in the
+house of Mr George Borrow, a British Subject, charged by the
+London Bible Society with the publication of this work, and to
+seize all the Copies of it.&nbsp; In execution of this order my
+Warrant was yesterday morning <a name="citation233"></a><a
+href="#footnote233" class="citation">[233]</a> presented to the
+said Mr George Borrow; who, so far from obeying it, broke out in
+insults most offensive to my authority, threw the order on the
+ground with angry gestures, and grossly abused the bearer of it,
+and said that he had nothing to do with the Civil Governor.&nbsp;
+The detailed report in writing which has been made to me of this
+disageeeable occurrence could not but deeply affect me, being a
+question of a British Subject, to whom the Government of Her
+Catholic Majesty has always afforded the same protection as to
+its own.&nbsp; As Executor of the Law it is my duty to cause its
+decrees to be inviolably observed; and you will well understand,
+that both the Canonical as the Civil Laws now existing, in this
+kingdom, relative to writings and works published upon Dogmas,
+Morals, and holy and religious matters, are the same without
+distinction for the Subjects of all Countries residing in
+Spain.&nbsp; No one can be permitted to violate them with
+impunity, without detriment to the Laws themselves, to the Royal
+Authority and to the Evangelical Moral which is highly interested
+in preventing the propagation of doctrines which may be
+erroneous, and that the purity of the sublime maxims of our
+divine Faith should remain intact.</p>
+<p>In conformity with these undeniable principles, which are in
+the Laws of all civilised nations, you must acknowledge that the
+offensive conduct of Mr George Borrow, and his disobedience to a
+legitimate Authority sufficiently authorised the proceeding to
+his arrest . . .</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">I have, etc., etc.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Deigo de
+Entrena</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The &ldquo;Police Agent&rdquo; seems to have boasted that
+within twenty-four hours Borrow would be in prison; Borrow, on
+the other hand, determined to prove the &ldquo;Police
+Agent&rdquo; wrong.&nbsp; He therefore spent the rest of the day
+and the following night at a caf&eacute;. <a
+name="citation234a"></a><a href="#footnote234a"
+class="citation">[234a]</a>&nbsp; In the evening he received a
+visit from Maria Diaz, <a name="citation234b"></a><a
+href="#footnote234b" class="citation">[234b]</a> his landlady and
+also his strong adherent and friend, whom he had informed of his
+whereabouts.&nbsp; From her he learned that his lodgings had been
+searched and that the <i>alguazils</i>, who bore a warrant for
+his arrest, were much disappointed at not finding him.</p>
+<p>The next morning, 1st May, at the request of Sir George
+Villiers, Borrow called at the Embassy and narrated every
+circumstance of the affair, with the result that he was offered
+the hospitality of the Embassy, which he declined.&nbsp; Whilst
+in conversation with Mr Sothern, Sir George Villiers&rsquo;
+private secretary, Borrow&rsquo;s Basque servant Francisco rushed
+in with the news that the <i>alguazils</i> were again at his
+rooms searching among his papers, whereat Borrow at once left the
+Embassy, determined to return to his lodgings.&nbsp; Immediately
+afterwards he was arrested, <a name="citation234c"></a><a
+href="#footnote234c" class="citation">[234c]</a> within sight of
+the doors of the Embassy, and conducted to the office of the
+Civil Governor.&nbsp; Francisco in the meantime, acting on his
+master&rsquo;s instructions, conveyed to him in Basque that the
+<i>alguazils</i> might not understand, proceeded immediately to
+the British Embassy and informed Sir George Villiers of what had
+just taken place, with such eloquence and feeling that Mr Sothern
+afterwards remarked to Borrow, &ldquo;That Basque of yours is a
+noble fellow,&rdquo; and asked to be given the refusal of his
+services should Borrow ever decide to part with him.&nbsp; With
+his dependents Borrow was always extremely popular, even in
+Spain, where, according to Mr Sothern, a man&rsquo;s servant
+seemed to be his worst enemy.</p>
+<p>Borrow submitted quietly to his arrest and was first taken to
+the office of the Civil Governor (<i>Gefatura Politica</i>), and
+subsequently to the Carcel de la Corte, by two Salvaguardias,
+&ldquo;like a common malefactor.&rdquo;&nbsp; Here he was
+assigned a chamber that was &ldquo;large and lofty, but totally
+destitute of every species of furniture with the exception of a
+huge wooden pitcher, intended to hold my daily allowance of
+water.&rdquo; <a name="citation235"></a><a href="#footnote235"
+class="citation">[235]</a>&nbsp; For this special accommodation
+Borrow was to pay, otherwise he would have been herded with the
+common criminals, who existed in a state of foulness and
+misery.&nbsp; Acting on the advice of the <i>Alcayde</i>, Borrow
+despatched a note to Maria Diaz, with the result that when Mr
+Sothern arrived, he found the prisoner not only surrounded by his
+friends and furniture, but enjoying a comfortable meal, whereat
+he laughed heartily.</p>
+<p>Borrow learned that, immediately on hearing what had taken
+place, Sir George Villiers had despatched Mr Sothern to interview
+Se&ntilde;or Entrena, the Civil Governor, who rudely referred him
+to his secretary, and refused to hold any communication with the
+British Legation save in writing.&nbsp; Nothing further could be
+done that night, and on hearing that Borrow was determined to
+remain in durance, even if offered his liberty, now that he had
+been illegally placed there, Mr Sothern commended his
+resolution.&nbsp; The Government had put itself grievously in the
+wrong, and Sir George, who had already sent a note to Count
+Ofalia demanding redress, seemed desirous of making it as
+difficult for them as possible, now that they had perpetrated
+this wanton outrage on a British subject.&nbsp; He determined to
+make it a national affair.</p>
+<p>It is by no means certain that Borrow was anxious to leave the
+<i>Carcel de la Corte</i>, even with the apologies of Spain in
+his pocket.&nbsp; The prison afforded him unique opportunities
+for the study of criminal vagabonds.&nbsp; An entirely new phase
+of life presented itself to him, and, but for this arrest and his
+subsequent decision to involve the authorities in difficulties,
+<i>The Bible in Spain</i> would have lacked some of its most
+picturesque pages.&nbsp; It would have been strange if he had not
+encountered some old friend or acquaintance in the prison of the
+Spanish capital.&nbsp; At the <i>Carcel de la Corte</i> he found
+the notorious and immense Gitana, Aurora, who had fallen into the
+hands of the <i>Busn&eacute;</i> for defrauding a rather foolish
+widow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A great many people came to see me,&rdquo; Borrow wrote
+to his mother, &ldquo;amongst others, General Quiroga, the
+Military Governor, who assured me that all he possessed was at my
+service.&nbsp; The Gypsies likewise came, but were refused
+admittance.&rdquo;&nbsp; His dinner was taken to him from an inn,
+and Sir George Villiers sent his butler each day to make
+enquiries.&nbsp; There was, however, one very unpleasant feature
+of his prison life, the verminous condition of the whole
+building.&nbsp; In spite of having fresh linen taken to him each
+day, he suffered very much from what the polished Spaniard
+prefers to call <i>miseria</i>.</p>
+<p>Sir George Villiers took active and immediate steps, not only
+to secure Borrow&rsquo;s release, but to obtain an unqualified
+apology.&nbsp; Referring to the letter he had received from the
+Civil Governor (30th April), he expressed himself as convinced
+that &ldquo;a gentleman of Borrow&rsquo;s character and education
+was incapable of the conduct alleged,&rdquo; and had accordingly
+requested Mr Sothern to enquire into the matter and then to call
+upon the Civil Governor to explain in what manner he had been
+misinformed.&nbsp; As the Civil Governor refused to receive Mr
+Sothern, Sir George adds that he need trouble him no further, as
+the affair had been placed before Her Catholic Majesty&rsquo;s
+Government; but during his five years of office at the Court of
+Madrid, he proceeded, &ldquo;no circumstance has occurred likely
+to be more prejudicial to the relations between the two Countries
+than the insult and imprisonment to which a respectable
+Englishman has now been subjected upon the unsupported evidence
+of a Police Officer,&rdquo; acting under the orders of the Civil
+Governor.</p>
+<p>On 3rd May Sir George Villiers wrote again to Count Ofalia,
+reminding him that he had not received the letter from him that
+he had expected.&nbsp; In the course of a lengthy recapitulation
+of the occurrences of the past ten days, Sir George reminded
+Count Ofalia that, as a result of their interview on 30th April
+about the ill-usage of Borrow, the Count had written on 1st May
+to him a private letter stating that measures had been taken to
+release Borrow on <i>parole</i>, he to appear when necessary, and
+that if Sir George would abstain from making a written
+remonstrance, Count Ofalia would see that both he and Borrow
+received the ample satisfaction to which they were
+entitled.&nbsp; Borrow had been taken by two Guards &ldquo;like a
+Malefactor, to the Common Prison, where he would have been
+confined with Criminals of every description if he had not had
+money to pay for a Cell to Himself.&rdquo;&nbsp; The British
+Minister complained that every step that he had taken for
+Borrow&rsquo;s protection was followed by fresh insult, and he
+further intimated that Borrow refused to leave the prison until
+his character had been publicly cleared.</p>
+<p>The Spanish Government now found itself in a quandary.&nbsp;
+The British Minister was pressing for satisfaction, and he was
+too powerful and too important to the needs of Spain to be
+offended.&nbsp; The prisoner himself refused to be liberated,
+because he had been illegally arrested, inasmuch as he, a
+foreigner, had been committed to prison without first being
+conducted before the Captain-General of Madrid, as the law
+provided.&nbsp; Furthermore, Borrow advised the authorities that
+if they chose to eject him from the prison he would resist with
+all his bodily strength.&nbsp; In this determination he was
+confirmed by the British Minister.</p>
+<p>A Cabinet Council was held, at which Se&ntilde;or Entrena was
+present.&nbsp; The Premier explained the serious situation in
+which the ministry found itself, owing to the attitude assumed by
+the British Minister, and he remarked that the Civil Governor
+must respect the privileges of foreigners.&nbsp; Se&ntilde;or
+Entrena suggested that he should be relieved of his duties; but
+the majority of the Cabinet seems to have been favourable to
+him.&nbsp; The <i>Affaire Borrow</i> is said to have come up for
+debate even during a secret session of the Chamber.</p>
+<p>When Count Ofalia had called at the British Embassy (4th May)
+he was informed by Sir George Villiers that the affair had passed
+beyond the radius of a subordinate authority of the Government,
+and that he &ldquo;considered that great want of respect had been
+shown to me, as Her Majesty&rsquo;s Minister, and that an
+unjustifiable outrage had been committed upon a British
+Subject,&rdquo; <a name="citation238a"></a><a
+href="#footnote238a" class="citation">[238a]</a> and that the
+least reparation that he was disposed to accept was a written
+declaration that an injustice had been done, and the dismissal of
+the Police Officer. <a name="citation238b"></a><a
+href="#footnote238b" class="citation">[238b]</a></p>
+<p>The value of a British subject&rsquo;s freedom was brought
+home to the Spanish Government with astonishing swiftness and
+decision.&nbsp; The Civil Governor wrote to Sir George Villiers
+(3rd May), apparently at the instance of the distraught premier,
+discoursing sagely upon the Civil and Canon Laws of Spain, and
+adding that the 25 copies of the Gitano St Luke were seized,
+&ldquo;not as being confiscated, but as a deposit to be restored
+in due time.&rdquo;&nbsp; He concluded by hoping that he had
+convinced the British Minister of his good faith.</p>
+<p>In his reply, Sir George considered that the Civil Governor
+had been led to view the matter in a light that would not
+&ldquo;bear the test of impartial examination.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+result of this interchange of letters was twofold.&nbsp; Sir
+George dropped the correspondence with &ldquo;that Functionary
+[who] displays so complete a disregard for fact,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation239a"></a><a href="#footnote239a"
+class="citation">[239a]</a> and as Count Ofalia evaded the real
+question at issue, holding out &ldquo;slender hopes of the matter
+ending in the reparation which I considered to be peremptorily
+called for,&rdquo; <a name="citation239b"></a><a
+href="#footnote239b" class="citation">[239b]</a> he advised
+Borrow to claim protection from the Captain-General, the only
+authority competent to exercise any jurisdiction over him.&nbsp;
+The Captain-General Quiroga, jealous of his authority, entered
+warmly into the dispute and ordered the Civil Governor to hand
+over the case to him.&nbsp; There was now a danger of the
+<i>Affaire Borrow</i> being made a party question, in which case
+it would have been extremely difficult to settle.</p>
+<p>The intervention of the Captain-General rendered all the more
+obvious the illegality of the Civil Governor&rsquo;s action, and
+increased the embarrassment of Count Ofalia, who called on Sir
+George to ask him to have Borrow&rsquo;s memorial to the
+Captain-General withdrawn.&nbsp; He refused, and said the only
+way now to finish the affair was that &ldquo;His Excellency
+should in an official Note declare to me that Mr Borrow left the
+prison, where he had been improperly placed, with unstained
+honour,&mdash;that the Police Agent, upon whose testimony he had
+been arrested, should be dismissed,&mdash;that all expenses
+imposed upon Mr Borrow by his detention should be repaid him by
+the Government,&mdash;that Mr Borrow&rsquo;s not having availed
+himself of the &lsquo;Fuero Militar&rsquo; should not be
+converted into a precedent, or in any way be considered to
+prejudice that important right, and that Count Ofalia should add
+with reference to maintaining the friendly relations between
+Great Britain and Spain, that he hoped I would accept this
+satisfaction as sufficient.&rdquo; <a name="citation240a"></a><a
+href="#footnote240a" class="citation">[240a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow states that Sir George Villiers went to the length of
+informing Count Ofalia that unless full satisfaction were
+accorded Borrow, he would demand his passports and instruct the
+commanders of the British war vessels to desist from furnishing
+further assistance to Spain. <a name="citation240b"></a><a
+href="#footnote240b" class="citation">[240b]</a>&nbsp; There is,
+however, no record of this in the official papers sent by Sir
+George to the Foreign Office.&nbsp; What actually occurred was
+that, on 8th May, the British Minister, determined to brook no
+further delay, wrote a grave official remonstrance, in which he
+stated that, &ldquo;if the desire had existed to bring it to a
+close,&rdquo; the case of Borrow could have been settled.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Having up to the present moment,&rdquo; he proceeds,
+&ldquo;trusted that in Your Excellency&rsquo;s hands, this affair
+would be treated with all that consideration required by its
+nature and the consequences that may follow upon it . . . I have
+forborne from denouncing the whole extent of the illegality which
+has marked the proceedings of the case&rdquo; (viz., the Civil
+Governor&rsquo;s having usurped the right of the Captain-General
+of the Province in causing Borrow&rsquo;s arrest).&nbsp; In
+conclusion, Sir George states that he considers the</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;case of most pressing importance, for it
+may compromise the relations now existing between Great Britain
+and Spain.&nbsp; It is one that requires a complete satisfaction,
+for the honor of England and the future position of Englishmen in
+the Country are concerned; and the satisfaction, in order to be
+complete, required to be promptly given.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This disagreeable business,&rdquo; Sir George writes in
+another of his despatches, &ldquo;is rendered yet more so by the
+impossibility of defending with success all Mr Borrow&rsquo;s
+proceedings . . .&nbsp; His imprudent zeal likewise in announcing
+publicly that the Bible Society had a dep&ocirc;t of Bibles in
+Madrid, and that he was the Agent for their sale, irritated the
+Ecclesiastical Authorities, whose attention has of late been
+called to the proceedings of a Mr Graydon,&mdash;another agent of
+the Bible Society, who has created great excitement at Malaga
+(and I believe in other places) by publishing in the Newspapers
+that the Catholic Religion was not the religion of God, and that
+he had been sent from England to convert Spaniards to
+Protestantism.&nbsp; I have upon more than one occasion cautioned
+Mr Graydon, but in vain, to be more prudent.&nbsp; The Methodist
+Society of England is likewise endeavouring to establish a School
+at Cadiz, and by that means to make conversions.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Under all these circumstances it is not perhaps
+surprising that the Archbishop of Toledo and the Heads of the
+Church should be alarmed that an attempt at Protestant
+Propagandism is about to be made, or that the Government should
+wish to avert the evils of religious schism in addition to all
+those which already weigh upon the Country; and to these
+different causes it must, in some degree, be attributed that Mr
+Borrow has been an object of suspicion and treated with such
+extreme rigor.&nbsp; Still, however, they do not justify the
+course pursued by the Civil Governor towards him, or by the
+Government towards myself, and I trust Your Lordship will
+consider that in the steps I have taken upon the matter, I have
+done no more than what the National honor, and the security of
+Englishmen in this Country, rendered obligatory upon me.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation241a"></a><a href="#footnote241a"
+class="citation">[241a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Whilst Borrow was in the <i>Carcel de la Corte</i>, a grave
+complication had arisen in connection with the misguided
+Lieutenant Graydon.&nbsp; Borrow gives a strikingly dramatic
+account <a name="citation241b"></a><a href="#footnote241b"
+class="citation">[241b]</a> of Count Ofalia&rsquo;s call at the
+British Embassy.&nbsp; He is represented as arriving with a copy
+of one of Graydon&rsquo;s bills, which he threw down upon a table
+calling upon Sir George Villiers to read it and, as a gentleman
+and the representative of a great and enlightened nation, tell
+him if he could any longer defend Borrow and say that he had been
+ill or unfairly treated.&nbsp; According to the Foreign Office
+documents, Count Ofalia <i>wrote</i> to Sir George Villiers on
+5th May, <i>enclosing</i> a copy of an advertisement inserted by
+Lieutenant Graydon in the <i>Boletin Oficial de Malaga</i>,
+which, translated, runs as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The Individual in question most earnestly
+calls the greatest attention of each member of the great Spanish
+Family to this <i>divine</i> Book, in order that <i>through
+it</i> he may learn the chief cause, if not the <i>sole one</i>,
+of all his terrible afflictions and of his <i>only</i> remedy, as
+it is so clearly manifested in the Holy Scripture . . .&nbsp; A
+detestable system of superstition and fanaticism, <i>only greedy
+for money</i>, and not so either of the temporal or eternal
+felicity of man, has prevailed in Spain (as also in other
+Nations) during several Centuries, by the <i>absolute</i>
+exclusion of the true knowledge of the Great God and last Judge
+of Mankind: and thus it has been plunged into the most frightful
+calamities.&nbsp; There was a time in which precisely the same
+was read in the then <i>very little</i> Kingdom of England, but
+at length Her Sons recognising their imperative <i>Duty</i>
+towards God and their Neighbour, as also their unquestionable
+rights, and that since the world exists it has never been
+possible to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles,
+they destroyed the system and at the price of their blood chose
+the Bible.&nbsp; Oh that the unprejudiced and enlightened
+inhabitants not only of Malaga and of so many other Cities, but
+of all Spain, would follow so good an example.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation242a"></a><a href="#footnote242a"
+class="citation">[242a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The result of Graydon&rsquo;s advertisement was that
+&ldquo;the people flocked in crowds to purchase it [the Bible],
+so much so that 200 copies, all that were in Mr Graydon&rsquo;s
+possession at the time, were sold in the course of the day.&nbsp;
+The Bishop sent the Fiscal to stop the sale of the work, but
+before the necessary measures were taken they were all disposed
+of.&rdquo; <a name="citation242b"></a><a href="#footnote242b"
+class="citation">[242b]</a>&nbsp; In consequence Graydon
+&ldquo;was detained and under my [the Consul&rsquo;s]
+responsibility allowed to remain at large.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation243a"></a><a href="#footnote243a"
+class="citation">[243a]</a>&nbsp; A jury of nine all pronounced
+the article to contain &ldquo;matter subject to legal
+process&rdquo; <a name="citation243b"></a><a href="#footnote243b"
+class="citation">[243b]</a> but a second jury of twelve at the
+subsequent public trial &ldquo;unanimously absolved&rdquo;
+Graydon.</p>
+<p>Sir George Villiers acknowledged the letter from Count Ofalia
+(9th May) saying that he had written to Graydon warning him to be
+more cautious in future.&nbsp; He stated that from personal
+knowledge he could vouch for the purity of Lieutenant
+Graydon&rsquo;s intentions; but he regretted that he should have
+announced his object in so imprudent a manner as to give offence
+to the ministers of the Catholic religion of Spain.&nbsp; In a
+despatch to Lord Palmerston he states that he has not thought it
+in the interests of the Bible Society to defend this conduct of
+Graydon, &ldquo;whose zeal appears so little tempered by
+discretion,&rdquo; <a name="citation243c"></a><a
+href="#footnote243c" class="citation">[243c]</a> as he had
+written to Count Ofalia.&nbsp; &ldquo;Had I done so,&rdquo; he
+proceeds, &ldquo;and thereby tended to confirm some of the idle
+reports that are current, that England had a national object to
+serve in the propagation of Protestantism in Spain, it is not
+improbable that a legislative Enactment might have been
+introduced by some Member of the Cortes, which would be offensive
+to England, and render it yet more difficult than it is the task
+the Bible Society seems desirous to undertake in this
+Country.&rdquo; <a name="citation243d"></a><a
+href="#footnote243d" class="citation">[243d]</a>&nbsp; Sir George
+concludes by saying that he gave to &ldquo;these Agents the best
+advice and assistance in my power, but if by their acts they
+infringe the laws of the Country,&rdquo; it will be impossible to
+defend them.</p>
+<p>Sir George thought so seriously of the <i>Affaire Borrow</i>,
+as endangering the future liberty of Englishmen in Spain, that he
+went so far as to send a message to the Queen Regent, &ldquo;by a
+means which I always have at my disposal,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation244a"></a><a href="#footnote244a"
+class="citation">[244a]</a> in which he told her that he thought
+the affair &ldquo;might end in a manner most injurious to the
+continuance of friendly relations between the two
+Countries.&rdquo; <a name="citation244b"></a><a
+href="#footnote244b" class="citation">[244b]</a>&nbsp; He
+received a gracious assurance that he should have
+satisfaction.&nbsp; Later there reached him</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;a second message from the Queen Regent
+expressing Her Majesty&rsquo;s hope that Count Ofalia&rsquo;s
+Note [of 11th May] would be satisfactory to me, and stating that
+Her Ministers had so fully proved their incompetency by giving
+any just cause of complaint to the Minister of Her only real
+Friend and Ally, The Queen of England, that she should have
+dismissed them, were it not that the state of affairs in the
+Northern Provinces at this moment might be prejudiced by a change
+of Government, which Her Majesty said she knew no one more than
+myself would regret, but at the same time if I was not satisfied
+I had only to state what I required and it should be immediately
+complied with.&nbsp; My answer was confined to a grateful
+acknowledgement of Her Majesty&rsquo;s condescension and
+kindness.&nbsp; Count Ofalia has informed me that as President of
+the Council He had enjoined all his Colleagues never to take any
+step directly or indirectly concerning an Englishman without a
+previous communication with Him as to its propriety, and I
+therefore venture to hope that the case of Mr Borrow will not be
+unattended with ultimate advantage to British subjects in
+Spain.&rdquo; <a name="citation244c"></a><a href="#footnote244c"
+class="citation">[244c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The &ldquo;Note&rdquo; referred to by the Queen Regent in her
+message was Count Ofalia&rsquo;s acquiescence in Sir George
+Villiers&rsquo; demands, with the exception of the dismissal of
+the Police Officer.&nbsp; His communication runs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;11<i>th</i>
+<i>May</i> 1838.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;The affair of Mr
+Borrow is already decided by the Judge of First Instance and his
+decision has been approved by the Superior or Territorial Court
+of the Province.&nbsp; As I stated to you in my note of the
+fourth last, the foundation of the arrest of Mr Borrow, who was
+detained (and not committed), was an official communication from
+the Agent of Police, Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio, in which he
+averred that on intimating to Mr Borrow the written order of the
+Civil Governor relative to the seizure of a book which he had
+published and exposed for sale without complying with the forms
+prescribed by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws of Spain, he (Mr
+Borrow) had thrown on the floor the order of the Superior
+Authority of the Province and used offensive expressions with
+regard to the said Authority.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The judicial proceedings have had for their object the
+ascertainment of the fact.&nbsp; Mr Borrow has denied the truth
+of the statement and the Agent of Police, who it appears entered
+the lodgings of Mr Borrow without being accompanied by any one,
+has been unable to confirm by evidence what he alleged in his
+official report, or to produce the testimony of any one in
+support of it.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This being the case the judge has declared and the
+Territorial Court approved the superceding of the cause, putting
+Mr Borrow immediately at complete liberty, with the express
+declaration that the arrest he has suffered in no wise affects
+his honor and good fame, and that the &lsquo;<i>celador</i> of
+Public Security,&rsquo; Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio, be
+admonished for the future to proceed in the discharge of his duty
+with proper respect and circumspection according to the condition
+and character of the persons whom he has to address.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In accordance with the judicial decision and anxious to
+give satisfaction to Mr Borrow, correcting at the same time the
+fault of the Agent of Police in having presented himself without
+being accompanied by any person in order to effect the seizure in
+the lodging of Mr Borrow, Her Majesty has thought proper to
+command that the aforesaid Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio be
+suspended from his office for the space of Four Months, an order
+which I shall communicate to the Minister of the Interior, and
+that Mr Borrow be indemnified for the expenses which may have
+been incurred by his lodging in the apartment of the Alcaide
+(chief gaoler or Governor) for the days of his detention,
+although even before the expiration of 24 hours after his arrest
+he was permitted to return to his house under his word of honor
+during the judicial proceedings, as I stated to you in my note
+already cited.&nbsp; I flatter myself that in this determination
+you as well as your Government will see a fresh proof of the
+desire which animates that of H.M. the Queen Regent to maintain
+and draw closer the relation of friendship and alliance existing
+between the two countries.&nbsp; And with respect to the claim
+advanced by Mr Borrow, and of which you also make mention in Your
+Note of the 8th inst., I ought to declare to you that when the
+Judge of First Instance received official information of the said
+claim the business was already concluded in his tribunal, and
+consequently there was nothing to be done.&nbsp; Without, for
+this reason, there being understood any innovation with respect
+to the matter of privilege (<i>fuero</i>) according as it is now
+established.&rdquo; <a name="citation246a"></a><a
+href="#footnote246a" class="citation">[246a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was liberated with unsullied honour on 12th May, after
+twelve days&rsquo; imprisonment.&nbsp; He refused the
+compensation that Sir George Villiers had made a condition, and
+later wrote to the Bible Society asking that there might be
+deducted from the amount due to him the expenses of the twelve
+days.&nbsp; He states also that he refused to acquiesce in the
+dismissal of the Agent of Police, by which he doubtless means his
+suspension, giving as a reason that there might be a wife and
+family likely to suffer.&nbsp; In any case the man was only
+carrying out his instructions.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s reason for
+refusing the payment of his expenses was that he was unwilling to
+afford them, the Spanish Government, an opportunity of saying
+that after they had imprisoned an Englishman unjustly, and
+without cause, he condescended to receive money at their hands.
+<a name="citation246b"></a><a href="#footnote246b"
+class="citation">[246b]</a></p>
+<p>The greatest loss to Borrow, consequent upon his imprisonment,
+no government could make good.&nbsp; His faithful Basque,
+Francisco, had contracted typhus, or gaol fever, that was raging
+at the time, and died within a few days of his master&rsquo;s
+release.&nbsp; &ldquo;A more affectionate creature never
+breathed,&rdquo; Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram.&nbsp; The poor
+fellow, who, &ldquo;to the strength of a giant joined the
+disposition of a lamb . . . was beloved even in the <i>patio</i>
+of the prison, where he used to pitch the bar and wrestle with
+the murderers and felons, always coming off victor.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation247a"></a><a href="#footnote247a"
+class="citation">[247a]</a>&nbsp; The next day Antonio presented
+himself at Borrow&rsquo;s lodging, and without invitation or
+comment assumed the duties he had relinquished in order that he
+might enjoy the excitements of change.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who should
+serve you now but myself?&rdquo; he asked when questioned as to
+the meaning of his presence, &ldquo;N&rsquo;est pas que le sieur
+Fran&ccedil;ois est mort!&rdquo; <a name="citation247b"></a><a
+href="#footnote247b" class="citation">[247b]</a></p>
+<p>John Hasfeldt&rsquo;s comment on his friend&rsquo;s
+imprisonment was characteristic.&nbsp; In September 1838 he
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The very last I heard of you is that you
+have had the great good fortune to be stopping in the <i>carcel
+de corte</i> at Madrid, which pleasing intelligence I found in
+the <i>Preussiche Staats-Zeitung</i> this last spring.&nbsp; If
+you were fatter no doubt the monks would have got up an <i>Auto
+de F&eacute;</i> on your behalf, and you might easily have become
+a nineteenth-century martyr.&nbsp; Then your strange life would
+have been hawked about the streets of London for one penny,
+though you never obtained a fat living to eat and drink and take
+your ease after all the hardships you have endured.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+MAY&ndash;JULY 1838</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> was now to enter upon that
+lengthy dispute with the Bible Society that almost brought about
+an open breach, and eventually proved the indirect cause that led
+to the severance of their relations.&nbsp; Graydon&rsquo;s
+mistake lay in not contenting himself with printing and
+distributing the Scriptures, of which he succeeded in getting rid
+of an enormous quantity.&nbsp; He had advertised his association
+with the Bible Society and proclaimed Borrow as a colleague, and
+the authorities at Madrid were not greatly to blame for being
+unable to distinguish between the two men.&nbsp; Whereas Graydon
+and Rule, who was also extremely obnoxious to the Spanish Clergy,
+were safe at Gibraltar or generally within easy reach of it,
+Borrow was in the very midst of the enemy.&nbsp; He was not
+unnaturally furiously angry at the situation that he conceived to
+have been brought about by these evangelists in the south.&nbsp;
+He referred to Graydon as the Evil Genius of the Society&rsquo;s
+Cause in Spain.</p>
+<p>It may be felt that Borrow was a prejudiced witness, he had
+every reason for being so; but a despatch from Sir George
+Villiers to the Consul at Malaga shows clearly how the British
+Minister viewed Lieutenant Graydon&rsquo;s indiscretion:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;You will communicate Count Ofalia&rsquo;s
+note to Mr Graydon,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;and tell him from me
+that, feeling as I do a lively interest in the success of his
+mission, I cannot but regret that he should have published his
+opinions upon the Catholic religion and clergy in a form which
+should render inevitable the interference of ecclesiastical
+authority.&nbsp; I have no doubt that Mr Graydon, in the pursuit
+of the meritorious task he has undertaken, is ready to endure
+persecution, but he should bear in mind that it will not lead him
+to success in this country, where prejudices are so inveterate,
+and at this moment, when party spirit disfigures even the best
+intentions.&nbsp; Unless Mr Graydon proceeds with the utmost
+circumspection it will be impossible for me, with the prospect of
+good result, to defend his conduct with the Government, for no
+foreigner has a right, however laudable may be his object, to
+seek the attainment of that object by infringing the laws of the
+country in which he resides.&rdquo; <a name="citation249"></a><a
+href="#footnote249" class="citation">[249]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In writing to Mr Brandram, Borrow pointed out that although he
+had travelled extensively in Spain and had established many
+dep&ocirc;ts for the sale of the Scriptures, not one word of
+complaint had been transmitted to the Government.&nbsp; He had
+been imprisoned; but he had the authority of Count Ofalia for
+saying that it was not on account of his own, but rather of the
+action of others.&nbsp; Furthermore the Premier had advised him
+to endeavour to make friends among the clergy, and for the
+present at least make no further effort to promote the actual
+sale of the New Testament in Madrid.</p>
+<p>On the day following his release from prison (13th May)
+Borrow, after being sent for by the British Minister, wrote to Mr
+Brandram as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Sir George has commanded me . . . to write
+to the following effect:&mdash;Mr Graydon must leave Spain, or
+the Bible Society must publicly disavow that his proceedings
+receive their encouragement, unless they wish to see the Sacred
+book, which it is their object to distribute, brought into
+universal odium and contempt.&nbsp; He has lately been to Malaga,
+and has there played precisely the same part which he acted last
+year at Valencia, with the addition that in printed writings he
+has insulted the Spanish Government in the most inexcusable
+manner.&nbsp; A formal complaint of his conduct has been sent up
+from Malaga, and a copy of one of his writings.&nbsp; Sir George
+blushed when he saw it, and informed Count Ofalia that any steps
+which might be taken towards punishing the author would receive
+no impediment from him.&nbsp; I shall not make any observation on
+this matter farther than stating that I have never had any other
+opinion of Mr Graydon than that he is insane&mdash;insane as the
+person who for the sake of warming his own hands would set a
+street on fire.&nbsp; Sir George said to-day that he (Graydon)
+was the cause of my <i>harmless</i> shop being closed at Madrid
+and also of my imprisonment.&nbsp; The Society will of course
+communicate with Sir George on the subject, I wash my hands of
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 23rd May Borrow wrote again to Mr Brandram:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In the name of the <i>Most Highest</i> take
+steps for preventing that miserable creature Graydon from ruining
+us all.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s use of the term
+&ldquo;insane&rdquo; with regard to Graydon was fully
+justified.&nbsp; The Rev. W. H. Rule wrote to him on 14th
+May:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our worthy brother Graydon is, I suppose, in
+Granada.&nbsp; I overtook him in Cartagena, endured the process
+of osculation, saw him without rhime or reason wrangle with and
+publicly insult our Consul there.&nbsp; Had his company in the
+steamer to Almeria, much to my discomfort.&nbsp; Never was a man
+fuller of love and impudence, compounded in the most provoking
+manner.&nbsp; In Malaga, just as we were to part, he broke out
+into a strain highly disagreeable, and I therefore thought it a
+convenient occasion to tell him that I should have no more to do
+with him.&nbsp; I left him dancing and raving like an
+energumen.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This letter Borrow indiscreetly sent to Mr Brandram, much to
+Mr Rule&rsquo;s regret, who wrote to Mr Brandram, saying that
+whilst he had nothing to retract, he would not have written for
+the eyes of the Bible Society&rsquo;s Committee what he had
+written to Borrow.&nbsp; To Mr Rule Lieut. Graydon was &ldquo;a
+good man, or at least a well-meaning [one], who has not the
+balance of judgment and temper necessary for the situation he
+occupies.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was given to &ldquo;the promulgation of
+Millenianism,&rdquo; and to calling the Bible &ldquo;the true
+book of the Constitution.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mann had confirmed all the rumours current about
+Graydon.&nbsp; In order to remove from his shoulders &ldquo;the
+burden of obloquy,&rdquo; Borrow&rsquo;s first act on leaving
+prison was to publish in the <i>Correo Nacional</i> an
+advertisement disclaiming, in the name of the Bible Society, any
+writings which may have been circulated tending to lower the
+authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, in the eyes of the
+people.&nbsp; He denied that it was the Society&rsquo;s intention
+or wish to make proselytes from the Roman Catholic form of
+worship, and that it was at all times prepared to extend the hand
+of brotherhood to the Spanish clergy.&nbsp; This notice was
+signed &ldquo;George Borrow, Sole authorised Agent of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society in Spain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><i>El Gazeta Oficial</i> in commenting on the situation, saw
+in the anti-Catholic tracts circulated by Graydon &ldquo;part of
+the monstrous plan, whose existence can no longer be called in
+question, concocted by the enemies of all public order, for the
+purpose of inaugurating on our unhappy soil a <i>social</i>
+revolution, just as the political one is drawing to a
+close.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Government was urged to allow no longer
+these attacks upon the religion of the country.&nbsp; Rather
+illogically the article concludes by paying a tribute to the
+Bible Society, &ldquo;considered not under the religious but the
+social aspect.&rdquo;&nbsp; After praising its prudence for
+&ldquo;accommodating itself to the civil and ecclesiastical laws
+of each country, and by adopting the editions there
+current,&rdquo; it concludes with the sophisticated argument
+that, &ldquo;if the great object be the propagation of evangelic
+maxims, the notes are no obstacle, and by preserving them we
+fulfil our religious principle of not permitting to private
+reason the interpretation of the Sacred Word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The General Committee expressed themselves, somewhat
+enigmatically, it must be confessed, as in no way surprised at
+this article, being from past experience learned enough in the
+ways of Rome to anticipate her.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;That advertisement,&rdquo; Borrow wrote six
+months later in his Report that was subsequently withdrawn,
+&ldquo;gave infinite satisfaction to the liberal clergy.&nbsp; I
+was complimented for it by the Primate of Spain, who said I had
+redeemed my credit and that of the Society, and it is with some
+feeling of pride that I state that it choked and prevented the
+publication of a series of terrible essays against the Bible
+Society, which were intended for the Official Gazette, and which
+were written by the Licentiate Albert Lister, the editor of that
+journal, the friend of Blanco White, and the most talented man in
+Spain.&nbsp; These essays still exist in the editorial drawer,
+and were communicated to me by the head manager of the royal
+printing office, my respected friend and countryman Mr Charles
+Wood, whose evidence in this matter and in many others I can
+command at pleasure.&nbsp; In lieu of which essays came out a
+mild and conciliatory article by the same writer, which, taking
+into consideration the country in which it was written, and its
+peculiar circumstances, was an encouragement to the Bible Society
+to proceed, although with secrecy and caution; yet this article,
+sadly misunderstood in England, gave rise to communications from
+home highly mortifying to myself and ruinous to the Bible
+cause.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow had written from prison to Mr Brandram <a
+name="citation252"></a><a href="#footnote252"
+class="citation">[252]</a> telling him that it had &ldquo;pleased
+God to confer upon me the highest of mortal honors, the privilege
+of bearing chains for His sake.&rdquo;&nbsp; After describing how
+it had always been his practice, before taking any step, to
+consult with Sir George Villiers and receive his approval, and
+that the present situation had not been brought about by any
+rashness on his, Borrow&rsquo;s, part, he proceeds to convey the
+following curious piece of information that must have caused some
+surprise at Earl Street:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I will now state a fact, which speaks
+volumes as to the state of affairs at Madrid.&nbsp; My
+arch-enemy, the Archbishop of Toledo, the primate of Spain,
+wishes to give me the kiss of brotherly Peace.&nbsp; He has
+caused a message to be conveyed to me in my dungeon, assuring me
+that he has had no share in causing my imprisonment, which he
+says was the work of the Civil Governor, who was incited to the
+step by the Jesuits.&nbsp; He adds that he is determined to seek
+out my persecutors amongst the clergy, and to have them punished,
+and that when I leave prison he shall be happy to co-operate with
+me in the dissemination of the Gospel!!&nbsp; I cannot write much
+now, for I am not well, having been bled and blistered.&nbsp; I
+must, however, devote a few lines to another subject, but not one
+of rejoicing or Christian exultation.&nbsp; Mann arrived just
+after my arrest, and visited me in prison, and there favoured me
+with a scene of despair, abject despair, which nearly turned my
+brain.&nbsp; I despised the creature, God forgive me, but I
+pitied him; for he was without money and expected every moment to
+be seized like myself and incarcerated, and he is by no means
+anxious to be invested with the honors of martyrdom.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>That the Primate of Spain should have sent to Borrow such a
+message is surprising; but what is still more so is that six days
+later Borrow wrote telling Mr Brandram that he had asked a bishop
+to arrange an interview between him and the Archbishop of Toledo,
+and Sir George Villiers, who was present, begged the same
+privilege. <a name="citation253"></a><a href="#footnote253"
+class="citation">[253]</a>&nbsp; On 23rd May Borrow wrote again
+to Mr Brandram: &ldquo;I have just had an interview with the
+Archbishop.&nbsp; It was satisfactory to a degree I had not dared
+to hope for.&rdquo;&nbsp; In his next letter (25th May) he
+writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have had, as you are aware, an interview
+with the Archbishop of Toledo.&nbsp; I have not time to state
+particulars, but he said amongst other things, &lsquo;Be prudent,
+the Government are disposed to arrange matters amicably, and I am
+disposed to co-operate with them.&rsquo;&nbsp; At parting he
+shook me most kindly by the hand saying that he liked me.&nbsp;
+Sir George intends to visit him in a few days.&nbsp; He is an
+old, venerable-looking man, between seventy and eighty.&nbsp;
+When I saw him he was dressed with the utmost simplicity, with
+the exception of a most splendid amethyst ring, the lustre of
+which was truly dazzling.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this
+archiepiscopal condescension, if the interview were not indeed
+sought by Borrow, that it was a political move to pacify the
+wounded feelings of an outraged Englishman at a time when the
+goodwill of England was as necessary to the kingdom of Spain as
+the sun itself.</p>
+<p>The upshot of the Malaga Incident was that &ldquo;the Spanish
+Government resolved to put an end to Bible transactions in Spain,
+and forthwith gave orders for the seizure of all the Bibles and
+Testaments in the country, wherever they might be deposited or
+exposed for sale.&nbsp; They notified Sir George Villiers of the
+decision, expressly stating that the resolution was taken in
+consequence of the &lsquo;<i>Ocurrido en
+Malaga</i>.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation254a"></a><a
+href="#footnote254a" class="citation">[254a]</a>&nbsp; The letter
+in which Sir George Villiers was informed of the
+Government&rsquo;s decision runs as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Madrid</span>, 19<i>th</i> <i>May</i> 1838.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>I have the honor to inform You that in consequence of what has
+taken place at Malaga and other places, respecting the
+publication and sale of the Bible translated by Padre Scio, which
+are not complete (since they do not contain all the Books which
+the Catholic Church recognises as Canonical) nor even being
+complete could they be printed unless furnished with the Notes of
+the said Padre Scio, according to the existing regulations; Her
+Majesty has thought proper to prevent this publication and sale,
+but without insulting or molesting those British Subjects who for
+some time past have been introducing them into the Kingdom and
+selling them at the lowest prices, thinking they were conferring
+a benefit when in reality they were doing an injury.</p>
+<p>I have also to state to You that in order to carry this Royal
+determination into effect, orders have been issued to prohibit
+its being printed in Spain, in the vulgar tongue, unless it
+should be the entire Bible as recognised by the Catholic Church
+with corresponding Notes, preventing its admittance at the
+Frontiers, as is the case with books printed in Spanish abroad;
+that the Bibles exposed for public sale be seized and given to
+their owners in a packet marked and sealed, upon the condition of
+its being sent out of the country through the Custom Houses on
+the Frontier or at the Ports.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">I avail myself, etc., etc.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">The Count of
+Ofalia</span>. <a name="citation255a"></a><a href="#footnote255a"
+class="citation">[255a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow and Graydon were advised of this inhibition, and both
+ordered their establishments for the sale of books to be closed,
+thus showing that they were &ldquo;Gentlemen who are animated
+with due respect for the Laws of Spain.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation255b"></a><a href="#footnote255b"
+class="citation">[255b]</a>&nbsp; At Valladolid, Santiago,
+Orviedo, Pontevedra, Seville, Salamanca, and Malaga the decree
+was at once enforced.&nbsp; On learning that the books at his
+dep&ocirc;ts had all been seized, Borrow became apprehensive for
+the safety of his Madrid stock of New Testaments, some three
+thousand in number.&nbsp; He accordingly had them removed, under
+cover of darkness, to the houses of his friends.</p>
+<p>Borrow was not the man to accept defeat, and he wrote to Mr
+Brandram with great cheerfulness:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;This, however, gives me little uneasiness,
+for, with the blessing of God, I shall be able to repair all,
+always provided I am allowed to follow my own plans, and to avail
+myself of the advantages which have lately been
+opened&mdash;especially to cultivate the kind feeling lately
+manifested towards me by the principal Spanish clergy.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation255c"></a><a href="#footnote255c"
+class="citation">[255c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Later he wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Another bitter cup has been filled for my
+swallowing.&nbsp; The Bible Society and myself have been accused
+of blasphemy, sedition, etc.&nbsp; A collection of tracts has
+been seized in Murcia, in which the Catholic religion and its
+dogmas are handled with the most abusive severity; <a
+name="citation256a"></a><a href="#footnote256a"
+class="citation">[256a]</a> these books have been sworn to as
+having been left <i>by the Committee of the Bible Society whilst
+in that town</i>, and Count Ofalia has been called upon to sign
+an order for my arrest and banishment from Spain.&nbsp; Sir
+George, however, advises me to remain quiet and not to be
+alarmed, as he will answer for my innocence.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation256b"></a><a href="#footnote256b"
+class="citation">[256b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow strove to galvanise the General Committee into
+action.&nbsp; The Spanish newspapers were inflamed against the
+Society as a sectarian, not a Christian institution.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Zeal is a precious thing,&rdquo; he told Mr Brandram,
+&ldquo;when accompanied with one grain of common
+sense.&rdquo;&nbsp; The theme of his letters was the removal of
+Graydon.&nbsp; &ldquo;Do not be cast down,&rdquo; he writes;
+&ldquo;all will go well if the stumbling block [Graydon] be
+removed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s state of mind may well be imagined, and if by
+his impulsive letters he unwittingly harmed his own cause at Earl
+Street, he did so as a man whose liberty, perhaps his life even,
+was being jeopardised, although not deliberately, by another whom
+the reforming spirit seemed likely to carry to any excess.&nbsp;
+It must be admitted that for the time being Borrow had forgotten
+the idiom of Earl Street.</p>
+<p>The president (a bishop) of the body of ecclesiastics that was
+engaged in examining the Society&rsquo;s Spanish Bible,
+communicated with Borrow, through Mr Charles Wood, the suggestion
+that &ldquo;the Committee of the Bible Society should in the
+present exigency draw up an exposition of their views respecting
+Spain, stating what they are prepared to do and what they are not
+prepared to do; above all, whether in seeking to circulate the
+Gospel in this Country they harbour any projects hostile to the
+Government or the established religion; moreover, whether the
+late distribution of tracts was done by their connivance or
+authority, and whether they are disposed to sanction in future
+the publication in Spain of such a class of writings.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation257a"></a><a href="#footnote257a"
+class="citation">[257a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow was of the opinion that this should be done, although
+he would not take upon himself to advise the Committee upon such
+a point, he merely remarked that &ldquo;the Prelate in question
+is a most learned and respectable man, and one of the warmest of
+our friends.&rdquo; <a name="citation257b"></a><a
+href="#footnote257b" class="citation">[257b]</a>&nbsp; The
+Society very naturally declined to commit itself to any such
+undertaking.&nbsp; It would not have been quite logical or
+conceivable that a Protestant body should give a guarantee that
+it harboured no projects hostile to Rome.</p>
+<p>Undeterred by the official edict against the circulation in
+Spain of the Scriptures, Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram (14th
+June):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I should wish to make another Biblical tour
+this summer, until the storm be blown over.&nbsp; Should I
+undertake such an expedition, I should avoid the towns and devote
+myself entirely to the peasantry.&nbsp; I have sometimes thought
+of visiting the villages of the Alpujarra Mountains in Andalusia,
+where the people live quite secluded from the world; what do you
+think of my project?&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>All this time Borrow had heard nothing from Earl Street as to
+the effect being produced there by his letters.&nbsp; On 15th or
+16th June he received a long letter from Mr Brandram enclosing
+the Resolutions of the General Committee with regard to the
+crisis.&nbsp; They proved conclusively that the officials failed
+entirely to appreciate the state of affairs in Spain, and the
+critical situation of their paid and accredited agent, George
+Borrow.&nbsp; Their pride had probably been wounded by
+Borrow&rsquo;s impetuous requests, that might easily have
+appeared to them in the light of commands.&nbsp; It may have
+struck some that the Spanish affairs of the Society were being
+administered from Madrid, and that they themselves were being
+told, not what it was expedient to do, but what they <i>must</i>
+do.&nbsp; Another factor in the situation was the
+Committee&rsquo;s friendliness for their impulsive, unsalaried
+servant Lieut. Graydon, who was certainly a picturesque, almost
+melodramatic figure.&nbsp; In any case the letter from Mr
+Brandram that accompanied the Resolutions was couched in a strain
+of fair play to Graydon that became a thinly disguised
+partizanship.&nbsp; At the meeting of the Committee held on 28th
+May the following Resolutions had been adopted:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><i>First</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;That Mr Borrow be
+requested to inform Sir George Villiers that this Committee have
+written to Mr Graydon through their Secretary, desiring him to
+leave Spain on account of his personal safety.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><i>Second</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;That Mr Borrow be informed that in
+the absence of specific documents, this Committee cannot offer
+any opinion on the proceedings of Mr Graydon, and that therefore
+he be desired to obtain, either in original or copy, the
+objectionable papers alleged to have been issued by Mr Graydon
+and to transmit them hither.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><i>Third</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;That Mr Borrow be requested not to
+repeat the Advertisement contained in the <i>Corr&eacute;o
+Nacional</i> of the 17th inst., and that he be cautioned how he
+commits the Society by advertisements of a similar
+character.&nbsp; And further, that he be desired to state to Sir
+George Villiers that the advertisement in question was inserted
+by him on the spur of the moment, and without any opportunity of
+obtaining instructions from this Committee.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In justice to the Committee, it must be said that they did not
+appreciate the delicacy of the situation, being only Christians
+and not diplomatists.&nbsp; Perhaps they were unaware that the
+<i>whole of Spain was under martial law</i>, or if they were, the
+true significance of the fact failed to strike them.&nbsp; Mr
+Brandram&rsquo;s letter accompanying these Resolutions is little
+more than an amplification of the Committee&rsquo;s decision:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have, I assure you,&rdquo; he writes,
+&ldquo;endeavoured to place myself in your situation and enter
+into your feelings strongly excited by the irreparable mischief
+which you suppose Mr G. to have done to our cause so dear to
+you.&nbsp; Under the influence of these feelings you have written
+with, what appears to us, unmitigated severity of his
+conduct.&nbsp; But now, let me entreat you to enter into our
+feelings a little, and to consider what we owe to Mr
+Graydon.&nbsp; If we have at times thought him imprudent, we have
+seen enough in him to make us both admire and love him.&nbsp; He
+has ever approved himself as an upright, faithful, conscientious,
+indefatigable agent; one who has shrunk from no trials and no
+dangers; one who has gone through in our service many and
+extraordinary hardships.&nbsp; What have we against him at
+present?&nbsp; He has issued certain documents of a very
+offensive character, as is alleged.&nbsp; We have not seen them,
+neither does it appear that you have, but that you speak from the
+recollections of Mr Sothern.&rdquo; <a name="citation259"></a><a
+href="#footnote259" class="citation">[259]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The letter goes on to say that if it can be shown that Lieut.
+Graydon is acting in the same manner as he did in Valencia, for
+which he was admonished,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;he will assuredly be recalled on this
+ground.&nbsp; You wonder perhaps that we for a moment doubt the
+fact of his reiterated imprudence; but <i>audi alteram partem</i>
+must be our rule&mdash;and besides, on reviewing the Valencia
+proceedings, we draw a wide distinction.&nbsp; Had he been as
+free, as you suppose him to be, of the trammels of office in our
+service, many would say and think that he was prefectly at
+liberty to act and speak as he did of the Authorities, if he
+chose to take the consequences.&nbsp; Really in such a country it
+is no marvel if his Spirit has been stirred within him!&nbsp;
+Will you allow me to remind you of the strong things in your own
+letter to the Valencia ecclesiastic, the well pointed and oft
+repeated V&aelig;!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr Brandram points out that strong language is frequently the
+sword of the Reformer, and that there are times when it has the
+highest sanction; but</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;the judgment of all [the members of the
+Committee] will be that an Agent of the Bible Society is a
+Reformer, not by his preaching or denouncing, but by the
+distribution of the Bible.&nbsp; If Mr G&rsquo;s. conduct is no
+worse than it was in Valencia,&rdquo; the letter continues,
+rather inconsistently, in the light of the assurance in the early
+part that recall would be the punishment for another such lapse
+into indiscretion, &ldquo;you must not expect anything beyond a
+qualified disavowal of it, and that simply as unbecoming an Agent
+of such a Society as ours.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After what I have written, you will hardly feel
+surprised that our Committee could not quite approve of your
+Advertisement.&nbsp; We have ever regarded Mr Graydon as much our
+Agent as yourself.&nbsp; In three of our printed reports in
+succession we make no difference in speaking of you both.&nbsp;
+We are anxious to do nothing to weaken your hands at so important
+a crisis, and we conceive that the terms we have employed in our
+Resolution are the mildest we could have used.&nbsp; Do not
+insert the Advertisement a second time.&nbsp; Let it pass; let it
+be forgotten.&nbsp; If necessary we shall give the public
+intimation that Mr G. was, but is not our agent any longer.&nbsp;
+Remember, we entreat you, the very delicate position that such a
+manifesto places us in, as well as the effect which it may have
+on Mr Graydon&rsquo;s personal safety.&nbsp; We give you full
+credit for believing it was your duty, under the peculiar
+circumstances of the case, to take so decided and bold a step,
+and that you thought yourself fully justified by the distinction
+of salaried and unsalaried Agent, in speaking of yourself as the
+alone accredited Agent of the Society.&nbsp; Possibly when you
+reflect a little upon the matter you may view it in another
+light.&nbsp; There are besides some sentiments in the
+Advertisement which we cannot perhaps fully accord with . .
+.&nbsp; If to our poor friend there has befallen the saddest of
+all calamities to which you allude, should we not speak of him
+with all tenderness.&nbsp; If he be insane I believe much of it
+is to be attributed to that entire devotion with which he has
+devoted himself to our work.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>No complaint can be urged against the Committee for refusing
+to condemn one of their agents unheard, and without documentary
+evidence; but it was strange that they should pass resolutions
+that contained no word of sympathy with Borrow for his sufferings
+in a typhus-infested prison.&nbsp; It is even more strange that
+the covering letter should refer to Graydon&rsquo;s sufferings
+and hardships and the danger to his person, without apparently
+realising that Borrow <i>had actually</i> suffered what the
+Committee feared that Graydon <i>might</i> suffer.&nbsp; There is
+no doubt that Borrow&rsquo;s impulsive letters had greatly
+offended everybody at Earl Street, where Lieut. Graydon appears
+to have been extremely popular; and the few words of sympathy
+with Borrow that might have saved much acrimonious correspondence
+were neither resolved nor written.</p>
+<p>The other side of the picture is shown in a vigorous passage
+from Borrow&rsquo;s Report, which was afterwards withdrawn:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A helpless widow [the mother of Don Pascual
+Mann] was insulted, her liberty of conscience invaded, and her
+only son incited to rebellion against her.&nbsp; A lunatic
+[Lieut. Graydon] was employed as the <i>repartidor</i>, or
+distributor, of the Blessed Bible, who, having his head crammed
+with what he understood not, ran through the streets of Valencia
+crying aloud that Christ was nigh at hand and would appear in a
+short time, whilst advertisements to much the same effect were
+busily circulated, in which the name, the noble name, of the
+Bible Society was prostituted; whilst the Bible, exposed for sale
+in the apartment of a public house, served for little more than a
+decoy to the idle and curious, who were there treated with
+incoherent railings against the Church of Rome and Babylon in a
+dialect which it was well for the deliverer that only a few of
+the audience understood.&nbsp; But I fly from these details, and
+will now repeat the consequences of the above proceedings to
+myself; for I, I, and only I, as every respectable person in
+Madrid can vouch, have paid the penalty for them all, though as
+innocent as the babe who has not yet seen the light.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>If the General Committee at a period of anxiety and annoyance
+failed to pay tribute to Borrow&rsquo;s many qualities, the
+official historian of the Society makes good the omission when he
+describes him as &ldquo;A strange, impulsive, more or less
+inflammable creature as he must have occasionally seemed to the
+Secretaries and Editorial Superintendent, he had proved himself a
+man of exceptional ability, energy, tact, prudence&mdash;above
+all, a man whose heart was in his work.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation262"></a><a href="#footnote262"
+class="citation">[262]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s acknowledgment of the Resolutions was dated
+16th June.&nbsp; It ran:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have received your communication of the
+30th ult. containing the resolutions of the Committee, to which I
+shall of course attend.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Of your letter in general, permit me to state that I
+reverence the spirit in which it is written, and am perfectly
+disposed to admit the correctness of the views which it exhibits;
+but it appears to me that in one or two instances I have been
+misunderstood in the letters which I have addressed [to you] on
+the subject of Graydon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I bear this unfortunate gentleman no ill will, God
+forbid, and it will give me pain if he were reprimanded publicly
+or privately; moreover, I can see no utility likely to accrue
+from such a proceeding.&nbsp; All that I have stated hitherto is
+the damage which he has done in Spain to the cause and myself, by
+the&mdash;what shall I call it?&mdash;imprudence of his conduct;
+and the idea which I have endeavoured to inculcate is the
+absolute necessity of his leaving Spain instantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take now in good part what I am about to say, and O! do
+not misunderstand me!&nbsp; I owe a great deal to the Bible
+Society, and the Bible Society owes nothing to me.&nbsp; I am
+well aware and am always disposed to admit that it can find
+thousands more zealous, more active, and in every respect more
+adapted to transact its affairs and watch over its interests;
+yet, with this consciousness of my own inutility, I must be
+permitted to state that, linked to a man like Graydon, I can no
+longer consent to be, and that if the Society expect such a
+thing, I must take the liberty of retiring, perhaps to the wilds
+of Tartary or the Zingani camps of Siberia.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My name at present is become public property, no very
+enviable distinction in these unhappy times, and neither wished
+nor sought by myself.&nbsp; I have of late been subjected to
+circumstances which have rendered me obnoxious to the hatred of
+those who never forgive, the Bloody Church of Rome, which I have
+[no] doubt will sooner or later find means to accomplish my ruin;
+for no one is better aware than myself of its fearful resources,
+whether in England or Spain, in Italy or in any other part.&nbsp;
+I should not be now in this situation had I been permitted to act
+alone.&nbsp; How much more would have been accomplished, it does
+not become me to guess.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had as many or more difficulties to surmount in
+Russia than I originally had here, yet all that the Society
+expected or desired was effected, without stir or noise, and that
+in the teeth of an imperial <i>Ukase</i> which forbade the work
+which I was employed to superintend.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Concerning my late affair, I must here state that I was
+sent to prison on a charge which was subsequently acknowledged
+not only to be false but ridiculous; I was accused of uttering
+words disrespectful towards the <i>Gef&eacute; Politico</i> of
+Madrid; my accuser was an officer of the police, who entered my
+apartment one morning before I was dressed, and commenced
+searching my papers and flinging my books into disorder.&nbsp;
+Happily, however, the people of the house, who were listening at
+the door, heard all that passed, and declared on oath that so far
+from mentioning the <i>Gef&eacute; Politico</i>, I merely told
+the officer that he, the officer, was an insolent fellow, and
+that I would cause him to be punished.&nbsp; He subsequently
+confessed that he was an instrument of the Vicar General, and
+that he merely came to my apartment in order to obtain a pretence
+for making a complaint.&nbsp; He has been dismissed from his
+situation and the Queen [Regent] has expressed her sorrow at my
+imprisonment.&nbsp; If there be any doubt entertained on the
+matter, pray let Sir George Villiers be written to!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should be happy to hear what success attends our
+efforts in China.&nbsp; I hope a prudent conduct has been
+adopted; for think not that a strange and loud language will find
+favour in the eyes of the Chinese; and above all, I hope that we
+have not got into war with the Augustines and their followers,
+who, if properly managed, may be of incalculable service in
+propagating the Scriptures . . . <i>P.S.</i>&mdash;The Documents,
+or some of them, shall be sent as soon as possible.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Nine days later (25th June) Borrow wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I now await your orders.&nbsp; I wish to
+know whether I am at liberty to pursue the course which may seem
+to me best under existing circumstances, and which at present
+appears to be to mount my horses, which are neighing in the
+stable, and once more betake myself to the plains and mountains
+of dusty Spain, and to dispose of my Testaments to the muleteers
+and peasants.&nbsp; By doing so I shall employ myself usefully,
+and at the same time avoid giving offence.&nbsp; Better days will
+soon arrive, which will enable me to return to Madrid and reopen
+my shop, till then, however, I should wish to pursue my labours
+in comparative obscurity.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Replying to Borrow&rsquo;s letter of 16th June, Mr Brandram
+wrote (29th June): &ldquo;I trust we shall not easily forget your
+services in St Petersburg, but suffer me to remind you that when
+you came to the point of distribution your success ended.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation265a"></a><a href="#footnote265a"
+class="citation">[265a]</a>&nbsp; This altogether unworthy remark
+was neither creditable to the writer nor to the distinguished
+Society on whose behalf he wrote.&nbsp; Borrow had done all that
+a man was capable of to distribute the books.&nbsp; His reply was
+dignified and effective.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It was unkind and unjust to taunt me with
+having been unsuccessful in distributing the Scriptures.&nbsp;
+Allow me to state that no other person under the same
+circumstances would have distributed the tenth part; yet had I
+been utterly unsuccessful, it would have been wrong to check me
+with being so, after all I have undergone, and with how little of
+that are you acquainted.&rdquo; <a name="citation265b"></a><a
+href="#footnote265b" class="citation">[265b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In response, Mr Brandram wrote (28th July):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;You have considered that I have taunted you
+with want of success in St Petersburg.&nbsp; I thought that the
+way in which I introduced that subject would have prevented any
+such unpleasant and fanciful impression.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>That was all!&nbsp; It became evident to all at Earl Street
+that a conference between Borrow, the Officials and the General
+Committee was imperative if the air were to be cleared of the
+rancour that seemed to increase with each interchange of letters.
+<a name="citation265c"></a><a href="#footnote265c"
+class="citation">[265c]</a>&nbsp; Unless something were done, a
+breach seemed inevitable, a thing the Society did not appear to
+desire.&nbsp; When Borrow first became aware that he was wanted
+at Earl Street for the purpose of a personal conference, he in
+all probability conceived it to be tantamount to a recall, and he
+was averse from leaving the field to the enemy.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In the name of the Highest,&rdquo; he
+wrote, <a name="citation266"></a><a href="#footnote266"
+class="citation">[266]</a> &ldquo;I entreat you all to banish
+such a preposterous idea; a journey home (provided you intend
+that I should return to Spain) could lead to no result but
+expense and the loss of precious time.&nbsp; I have nothing to
+explain to you which you are not already perfectly well
+acquainted with by my late letters.&nbsp; I was fully aware at
+the time I was writing them that I should afford you little
+satisfaction, for the plain unvarnished truth is seldom
+agreeable; but I now repeat, and these are perhaps among the last
+words which I shall ever be permitted to pen, that I cannot
+approve, and I am sure no Christian can, of the system which has
+lately been pursued in the large sea-port cities of Spain, and
+which the Bible Society has been supposed to sanction,
+notwithstanding the most unreflecting person could easily foresee
+that such a line of conduct could produce nothing in the end but
+obloquy and misfortune.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow saw that his departure from Spain would be construed by
+his enemies as flight, and that their joy would be great in
+consequence.</p>
+<p>The Spanish authorities were determined if possible to rid the
+country of missionaries.&nbsp; The <i>Gazeta Oficial</i> of
+Madrid drew attention to the fact that in Valencia there had been
+distributed thousands of pamphlets &ldquo;against the religion we
+profess.&rdquo;&nbsp; Sir George Villiers enquired into the
+matter and found that there was no evidence that the pamphlets
+had been written, printed, or published in England; and when
+writing to Count Ofalia on the subject he informed him that the
+Bible Society distributed, not tracts or controversial writings,
+but the Scriptures.</p>
+<p>The next move on the part of the authorities was to produce
+sworn testimony from three people (all living in the same house,
+by the way) that they had purchased copies of &ldquo;the New
+Testament and other Biblical translations at the <i>Despacho</i>
+on 5th May.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow was in prison at the time, and
+his assistant denied the sale.&nbsp; Documents were also produced
+proving that the imprint on the title-page of the Scio New
+Testament was false, as at the time it was printed no such
+printer as Andr&eacute;as Borr&eacute;go (who by the way was the
+Government printer and at one time a candidate for cabinet rank)
+lived in Madrid.&nbsp; In drawing the British Minister&rsquo;s
+attention to these matters, Count Ofalia wrote (31st May):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It would be opportune if you would be
+pleased to advise Mr Borrow that, convinced of the inutility of
+his efforts for propagating here the translation in the vulgar
+tongue of Sacred Writings without the forms required by law, he
+would do much better in making use of his talents in some other
+class of scientifical or literary Works during his residence in
+Spain, giving up Biblical Enterprises, which may be useful in
+other countries, but which in this Kingdom are prejudicial for
+very obvious reasons.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+JULY&ndash;NOVEMBER 1838</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow&rsquo;s</span> spirit chafed under
+this spell of enforced idleness.&nbsp; His horses were neighing
+in the stable and &ldquo;Se&ntilde;or Antonio was neighing in the
+house,&rdquo; as Maria Diaz expressed it; and for himself, Borrow
+required something more actively stimulating than pen and ink
+encounters with Mr Brandram.&nbsp; He therefore determined to
+defy the prohibition and make an excursion into the rural
+districts of New Castile, offering his Testaments for sale as he
+went, and sending on supplies ahead.&nbsp; His first objective
+was Villa Seca, a village situated on the banks of the Tagus
+about nine leagues from Madrid.</p>
+<p>He was aware of the danger he ran in thus disregarding the
+official decree.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I will not conceal from you,&rdquo; he
+writes to Mr Brandram on 14th July, &ldquo;that I am playing a
+daring game, and it is very possible that when I least expect it
+I may be seized, tied to the tail of a mule, and dragged either
+to the prison of Toledo or Madrid.&nbsp; Yet such a prospect does
+not discourage me in the least, but rather urges me on to
+persevere; for I assure you, and in this assertion there lurks
+not the slightest desire to magnify myself and produce an effect,
+that I am eager to lay down my life in this cause, and whether a
+Carlist&rsquo;s bullet or a gaol-fever bring my career to an end,
+I am perfectly indifferent.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He was not averse from martyrdom; but he objected to being
+precipitated into it by another man&rsquo;s folly.&nbsp; In his
+interview with Count Ofalia, he had been solemnly warned that if
+a second time he came within the clutches of the authorities he
+might not escape so easily, and had replied that it was &ldquo;a
+pleasant thing to be persecuted for the Gospel&rsquo;s
+sake.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In his decision to make Villa Seca his temporary headquarters,
+Borrow had been influenced by the fact that it was the home of
+Maria Diaz, his friend and landlady.&nbsp; Her husband was there
+working on the land, Maria herself living in Madrid that her
+children might be properly educated.&nbsp; Borrow left Madrid on
+10th July, and on his arrival at Villa Seca he was cordially
+welcomed by Juan Lopez, the husband of Maria Diaz, who continued
+to use her maiden name, in accordance with Spanish custom.&nbsp;
+Lopez subsequently proved of the greatest possible assistance in
+the work of distribution, shaming both Borrow and Antonio by his
+energy and powers of endurance.</p>
+<p>The inhabitants of Villa Seca and the surrounding villages of
+Bargas, Coveja, Villa Luenga, Mocejon, Yuncl&eacute;r eagerly
+bought up &ldquo;the book of life,&rdquo; and each day the three
+men rode forth in heat so great that &ldquo;the very
+<i>arrieros</i> frequently fall dead from their mules, smitten by
+a sun-stroke.&rdquo; <a name="citation269a"></a><a
+href="#footnote269a" class="citation">[269a]</a></p>
+<p>It was in Villa Seca that Borrow found &ldquo;all that gravity
+of deportment and chivalry of disposition which Cervantes is said
+to have sneered away&rdquo; <a name="citation269b"></a><a
+href="#footnote269b" class="citation">[269b]</a> and there were
+to be heard &ldquo;those grandiose expressions which, when met
+with in the romances of chivalry, are scoffed at as ridiculous
+exaggerations.&rdquo; <a name="citation269c"></a><a
+href="#footnote269c" class="citation">[269c]</a>&nbsp; Borrow so
+charmed the people of the district with the elaborate formality
+of his manner, that he became convinced that any attempt to
+arrest or do him harm would have met with a violent resistance,
+even to the length of the drawing of knives in his defence.</p>
+<p>In less than a week some two hundred Testaments had been
+disposed of, and a fresh supply had to be obtained from
+Madrid.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s methods had now changed.&nbsp; He
+had, of necessity, to make as little stir as possible in order to
+avoid an unenviable notoriety.&nbsp; He carefully eschewed
+advertisements and handbills, and limited himself almost entirely
+to the simple statement that he brought to the people &ldquo;the
+words and life of the Saviour and His Saints at a price adapted
+to their humble means.&rdquo; <a name="citation270a"></a><a
+href="#footnote270a" class="citation">[270a]</a></p>
+<p>It is interesting to note in connection with this period of
+Borrow&rsquo;s activities in Spain, that in 1908 one of the sons
+of Maria Diaz and Juan Lopez was sought out at Villa Seca by a
+representative of the Bible Society, and interrogated as to
+whether he remembered Borrow.&nbsp; Eduardo Lopez (then
+seventy-four years of age) stated that he was a child of eight <a
+name="citation270b"></a><a href="#footnote270b"
+class="citation">[270b]</a> when Borrow lived at the house of his
+mother; yet he remembers that &ldquo;<i>El
+ingl&eacute;s</i>&rdquo; was tall and robust, with fair hair
+turning grey.&nbsp; Eduardo and his young brother regarded Borrow
+with both fear and respect; for, their father being absent, he
+used to punish them for misdemeanours by setting them on the
+table and making them remain perfectly quiet for a considerable
+time.&nbsp; The old man remembered that Borrow had two horses
+whom he called &ldquo;la Jaca&rdquo; and &ldquo;el
+Mondr&aacute;gon,&rdquo; and that he used to take to the house of
+Maria Diaz &ldquo;his trunk full of books which were beautifully
+bound.&rdquo;&nbsp; He remembered Borrow&rsquo;s Greek servant,
+&ldquo;Antonio Guchino&rdquo; (the Antonio Buchini of <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i>), who spoke very bad Spanish.</p>
+<p>The most interesting of Eduardo Lopez&rsquo; recollections of
+Borrow was that he &ldquo;often recited a chant which nobody
+understood,&rdquo; and of which the old man could remember only
+the following fragment:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Sed un la in la en la la<br />
+Sino Mokhamente de resu la.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It has been suggested, <a name="citation271a"></a><a
+href="#footnote271a" class="citation">[271a]</a> and with every
+show of probability, that &ldquo;this is the Moslem
+<i>kalimah</i> or creed which he had heard sung from the
+minarets&rdquo;:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;La illaha illa allah<br />
+Wa Muhammad rasoul allah.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow recognised that he must not stay very long in any one
+place, and accordingly it was his intention, as soon as he had
+supplied the immediate wants of the Sagra (the plain) of Toledo,
+&ldquo;to cross the country to Aranjuez, and endeavour to supply
+with the Word the villages on the frontier of La Mancha.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation271b"></a><a href="#footnote271b"
+class="citation">[271b]</a>&nbsp; As he was on the point of
+setting out, however, he received two letters from Mr Brandram,
+which decided him to return immediately to Madrid instead of
+pursuing his intended route.</p>
+<p>Borrow was informed that if, after consulting with Sir George
+Villiers, it was thought desirable that he should leave Madrid,
+he was given a free hand to do so.&nbsp; Furthermore, the
+President of the Bible Society (Lord Bexley), with whom Mr
+Brandram had consulted, was of the opinion that Borrow should
+return home to confer with the Committee.&nbsp; It was clear from
+the correspondence that nothing short of an interview could
+remove the very obvious feeling of irritation that existed
+between Borrow and the Society.&nbsp; In his reply (23rd July),
+Borrow showed a dignity and calmness of demeanour that had been
+lacking from his previous letters; and it most likely produced a
+far more favourable effect at Earl Street than the impassioned
+protests of the past two months:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;My answer will be very brief;&rdquo; he
+wrote, &ldquo;as I am afraid of giving way to my feelings; I
+hope, however, that it will be to the purpose.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is broadly hinted in yours of the 7th that I have
+made false statements in asserting that the Government, in
+consequence of what has lately taken place, had come to the
+resolution of seizing the Bible dep&ocirc;ts in various parts of
+this country.&nbsp; [Borrow had written to Mr Brandram on 25th
+June, &ldquo;The Society are already aware of the results of the
+visit of our friend to Malaga; all their Bibles and Testaments
+having been seized throughout Spain, with the exception of my
+stock in Madrid.&rdquo;]</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In reply I beg leave to inform you that by the first
+courier you will receive from the British Legation at Madrid the
+official notice from Count Ofalia to Sir George Villiers of the
+seizures already made, and the motives which induced the
+Government to have recourse to such a measure.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The following seizures have already been made, though
+some have not as yet been officially announced:&mdash;The
+Society&rsquo;s books at Orviedo, Pontevedra, Salamanca,
+Santiago, Seville, and Valladolid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It appears from your letters that the dep&ocirc;ts in
+the South of Spain have escaped.&nbsp; I am glad of it, although
+it be at my own expense.&nbsp; I see the hand of the Lord
+throughout the late transactions.&nbsp; He is chastening me; it
+is His pleasure that the guilty escape and the innocent be
+punished.&nbsp; The Government gave orders to seize the Bible
+dep&ocirc;ts throughout the country on account of the late scenes
+at Malaga and Valencia&mdash;I have never been there, yet only
+<i>my</i> dep&ocirc;ts are meddled with, as it appears!&nbsp; The
+Lord&rsquo;s will be done, blessed be the name of the Lord!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will write again to-morrow, I shall have then
+arranged my thoughts, and determined on the conduct which it
+becomes a Christian to pursue under these circumstances.&nbsp;
+Permit me, in conclusion, to ask you:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have you not to a certain extent been partial in this
+matter?&nbsp; Have you not, in the apprehension of being
+compelled to blame the conduct of one who has caused me
+unutterable anxiety, misery and persecution, and who has been the
+bane of the Bible cause in Spain, refused to receive the
+information which it was in <i>your</i> power to command?&nbsp; I
+called on the Committee and yourself from the first to apply to
+Sir George Villiers; no one is so well versed as to what has
+lately been going as himself; but no.&nbsp; It was God&rsquo;s
+will that I, who have risked all and lost <i>almost</i> all in
+the cause, be taunted, suspected, and the sweat of agony and
+tears which I have poured out be estimated at the value of the
+water of the ditch or the moisture which exudes from rotten dung;
+but I murmur not, and hope I shall at all times be willing to bow
+to the dispensations of the Almighty.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir George Villiers has returned to England for a short
+period; you have therefore the opportunity of consulting
+him.&nbsp; I <i>will not</i> leave Spain until the whole affair
+has been thoroughly sifted.&nbsp; I shall then perhaps appear and
+bid you an eternal farewell. <a name="citation273a"></a><a
+href="#footnote273a" class="citation">[273a]</a>&nbsp; Four
+hundred Testaments have been disposed of in the Sagra of
+Toledo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>P.S.</i>&mdash;I am just returned from the Embassy,
+where I have had a long interview with that admirable person Lord
+Wm. Hervey [Charg&eacute; d&rsquo;Affaires during Sir George
+Villiers&rsquo; absence].&nbsp; He has requested me to write him
+a letter on the point in question, which with the official
+documents he intends to send to the Secretary of State in order
+to be laid before the Bible Society.&nbsp; He has put into my
+hands the last communication from Ofalia <a
+name="citation273b"></a><a href="#footnote273b"
+class="citation">[273b]</a> it relates to the seizure of
+<i>my</i> depots at Malaga, Pontevedra, etc.&nbsp; I have not
+opened it, but send it for your approval.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is pleasant to record that the Sub-Committee expressed
+itself as unable to see in Mr Brandram&rsquo;s letter what Borrow
+saw.&nbsp; There was no intention to convey the impression that
+he had made false statements, and regret was expressed that he
+had thought it necessary to apply to the Embassy for confirmation
+of what he had written.&nbsp; All this Mr Brandram conveyed in a
+letter dated 6th August.&nbsp; He continues: &ldquo;I am now in
+full possession of all that Mr Graydon has done, and find it
+utterly impossible to account for that very strong feeling that
+you have imbibed against him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On 20th July Mr Brandram had written that, after consulting
+with two or three members of the Committee, they all confirmed a
+wish already expressed that their Agent should not continue to
+expose himself to such dangers.&nbsp; If, however, he still saw
+the way open before him,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;as so pleasantly represented in your letter
+. . . you need not think of returning . . . Do allow me to
+suggest to you,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;to drop allusion to
+Mr Graydon in your letters.&nbsp; His conduct is not regarded
+here as you regard it.&nbsp; I could fancy, but perhaps it is all
+fancy, that you have him in your eye when you tell us that you
+have eschewed handbills and advertisements.&nbsp; Time has been
+when you have used them plentifully . . .&nbsp; Sir George
+Villiers is in England&mdash;but I do not know that we shall seek
+an interview with him&mdash;We are afraid of being hampered with
+the trammels of office.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Committee, however, did not endorse Mr Brandram&rsquo;s
+view as to Borrow continuing in Spain, and further, they did
+&ldquo;not see it right,&rdquo; the secretary wrote (6th August),
+&ldquo;after the confidential communication in which you have
+been in with the Government, that you should be acting now in
+such open defiance of it, and putting yourself in such extreme
+jeopardy.&rdquo;&nbsp; Later Borrow made reference to the remark
+about the handbills.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It would have been as well,&rdquo; he
+wrote, &ldquo;if my respected and revered friend, the writer, had
+made himself acquainted with the character of my advertisements
+before he made that observation.&nbsp; There is no harm in an
+advertisement, if truth, decency and the fear of God are
+observed, and I believe my own will be scarcely found deficient
+in any of these three requisites.&nbsp; It is not the use of a
+serviceable instrument, but its abuse that merits reproof, and I
+cannot conceive that advertising was abused by me when I informed
+the people of Madrid that the New Testament was to be purchased
+at a cheap price in the <i>Calle del Principe</i>.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation275"></a><a href="#footnote275"
+class="citation">[275]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Elsewhere he referred to these same advertisements as
+&ldquo;mild yet expressive.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In spite of the strained state of his relations with the Bible
+Society, Borrow had no intention of remaining in Madrid brooding
+over his wrongs.&nbsp; Encouraged by the success that had
+attended his efforts in the Sagra of Toledo, and indifferent to
+the fact that his renewed activity was known at Toledo, where it
+was causing some alarm, he determined to proceed to Aranjuez,
+and, on his arrival there, to be guided by events as to his
+future movements.&nbsp; Accordingly about 28th July he set out
+attended by Antonio and Lopez, who had accompanied him from Villa
+Seca to Madrid, proceeding in the direction of La Mancha, and
+selling at every village through which they passed from twenty to
+forty Testaments.&nbsp; At Aranjuez they remained three days,
+visiting every house in the town and disposing of about eighty
+books.&nbsp; It was no unusual thing to see groups of the poorer
+people gathered round one of their number who was reading aloud
+from a recently purchased Testament.</p>
+<p>Feeling that his enemies were preparing to strike, Borrow
+determined to push on to the frontier town of Oca&ntilde;a,
+beyond which the clergy had only a nominal jurisdiction on
+account of its being in the hands of the Carlists.&nbsp; Lopez
+was sent on with between two and three hundred Testaments, and
+Borrow, accompanied by Antonio, followed later by a shorter route
+through the hills.&nbsp; As they approached the town, a man, a
+Jew, stepped out from the porch of an empty house and barred
+their way, telling them that Lopez had been arrested at
+Oca&ntilde;a that morning as he was selling Testaments in the
+streets, and that the authorities were now waiting for Borrow
+himself.</p>
+<p>Seeing that no good could be done by plunging into the midst
+of his enemies, who had their instructions from the
+<i>corregidor</i> of Toledo, Borrow decided to return to
+Aranjuez.&nbsp; This he did, on the way narrowly escaping
+assassination at the hands of three robbers.&nbsp; The next
+morning he was rejoined by Lopez, who had been released.&nbsp; He
+had sold 27 Testaments, and 200 had been confiscated and
+forwarded to Toledo.&nbsp; The whole party then returned to
+Madrid.</p>
+<p>The unfortunate affair at Oca&ntilde;a by no means discouraged
+Borrow.&nbsp; It was his intention &ldquo;with God&rsquo;s
+leave&rdquo; to &ldquo;fight it out to the last.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+saw that his only chance of distributing his store of Testaments
+lay in visiting the smaller villages before the order to
+confiscate his books arrived from Toledo.&nbsp; His enemies were
+numerous and watchful; but Borrow was as cunning as a gypsy and
+as far-seeing as a Jew.&nbsp; Thinking that his notoriety had not
+yet crossed the Guadarrama mountains and penetrated into Old
+Castile, he decided to anticipate it.&nbsp; Lopez was sent ahead
+with a donkey bearing a cargo of Testaments, his instructions
+being to meet Borrow and Antonio at La Granja.&nbsp; Failing to
+find Lopez at the appointed place, Borrow pushed on to Segovia,
+where he received news that some men were selling books at
+Abades, to which place he proceeded with three more donkeys laden
+with books that had been consigned to a friend at Segovia.&nbsp;
+At Abades Lopez was discovered busily occupied in selling
+Testaments.</p>
+<p>Hearing that an order was about to be sent from Segovia to
+Abades for the confiscation of his Testaments, Borrow immediately
+left the town, donkeys, Testaments and all, and for
+safety&rsquo;s sake passed the night in the fields.&nbsp; The
+next day they proceeded to the village of Labajos.&nbsp; A few
+days after their arrival the Carlist leader Balmaceda, at the
+head of his robber cavalry, streamed down from the pine woods of
+Soria into the southern part of Old Castile, Borrow &ldquo;was
+present at all the horrors which ensued&mdash;the sack of
+Arrevalo, and the forcible entry into Marrin Mu&ntilde;oz and San
+Cyprian.&nbsp; Amidst these terrible scenes we continued our
+labours undaunted.&rdquo; <a name="citation277a"></a><a
+href="#footnote277a" class="citation">[277a]</a>&nbsp; He
+witnessed what &ldquo;was not the war of men or even cannibals .
+. . it seemed a contest of fiends from the infernal
+pit.&rdquo;&nbsp; Antonio became seized with uncontrollable fear
+and ran away to Madrid.&nbsp; Lopez soon afterwards disappeared,
+and, left alone, Borrow suffered great anxiety as to the fate of
+the brave fellow.&nbsp; Hearing that he was in prison at
+Vilallos, about three leagues distant, and in spite of the fact
+that Balmaceda&rsquo;s cavalry division was in the neighbourhood,
+Borrow mounted his horse and set off next day (22nd Aug.)
+alone.&nbsp; He found on his arrival at Vilallos, that Lopez had
+been removed from the prison to a private house.&nbsp;
+Disregarding an order from the <i>corregidor</i> of Avila that
+only the books should be confiscated and that the vendor should
+be set at liberty, the <i>Alcalde</i>, at the instigation of the
+priest, refused to liberate Lopez.&nbsp; It had been hinted to
+the unfortunate man that on the arrival of the Carlists he was to
+be denounced as a liberal, which would mean death.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Taking these circumstances into consideration,&rdquo;
+Borrow wrote, <a name="citation277b"></a><a href="#footnote277b"
+class="citation">[277b]</a> &ldquo;I deemed it my duty as a
+Christian and a gentleman to rescue my unfortunate servant from
+such lawless hands, and in consequence, defying opposition, I
+bore him off, though perfectly unarmed, through a crowd of at
+least one hundred peasants.&nbsp; On leaving the place I shouted
+&lsquo;Viva Isabella Segunda.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In this affair Borrow had, not only the approval of Lord
+William Hervey, but of Count Ofalia also.&nbsp; In all
+probability the Bible Society has never had, and never will have
+again, an agent such as Borrow, who on occasion could throw aside
+the cloak of humility and grasp a two-edged sword with which to
+discomfit his enemies, and who solemnly chanted the creed of
+Islam whilst engaged as a Christian missionary.&nbsp; There was
+something magnificent in his Christianity; it savoured of the
+Crusades in its pre-Reformation virility.&nbsp; Martyrdom he
+would accept if absolutely necessary; but he preferred that if
+martyrs there must be they should be selected from the ranks of
+the enemy, whilst he, George Borrow, represented the strong arm
+of the Lord.</p>
+<p>After the Vilallos affair, Borrow returned to Madrid, crossing
+the Guadarramas alone and with two horses.&nbsp; &ldquo;I nearly
+perished there,&rdquo; he wrote to Mr Brandram (1st Sept.),
+&ldquo;having lost my way in the darkness and tumbled down a
+precipice.&rdquo;&nbsp; The perilous journey north had resulted
+in the sale of 900 Testaments, all within the space of three
+weeks and amidst scenes of battle and bloodshed.</p>
+<p>On his return to Madrid, Borrow found awaiting him the
+Resolution of the General Committee (6th Aug.), recalling him
+&ldquo;without further delay.&rdquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I will set out for England as soon as
+possible,&rdquo; he wrote in reply; <a name="citation278"></a><a
+href="#footnote278" class="citation">[278]</a> &ldquo;but I must
+be allowed time.&nbsp; I am almost dead with fatigue, suffering
+and anxiety; and it is necessary that I should place the
+Society&rsquo;s property in safe and sure custody.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 1st September he wrote to Mr Brandram that he should
+&ldquo;probably be in England within three weeks.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Shortly after this he was attacked with fever, and confined to
+his bed for ten days, during which he was frequently
+delirious.&nbsp; When the fever departed, he was left very weak
+and subject to a profound melancholy.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I bore up against my illness as long as I
+could,&rdquo; he wrote, <a name="citation279a"></a><a
+href="#footnote279a" class="citation">[279a]</a> &ldquo;but it
+became too powerful for me.&nbsp; By good fortune I obtained a
+decent physician, a Dr Hacayo, who had studied medicine in
+England, and aided by him and the strength of my constitution I
+got the better of my attack, which, however, was a dreadfully
+severe one.&nbsp; I hope my next letter will be from
+Bordeaux.&nbsp; I cannot write more at present, for I am very
+feeble.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The actual date that Borrow left Madrid is not known.&nbsp; He
+himself gave it as 31st August, <a name="citation279b"></a><a
+href="#footnote279b" class="citation">[279b]</a> which is
+obviously inaccurate, as on 19th September he wrote to Mr
+Brandram: &ldquo;I am now better, and hope in a few days to be
+able to proceed to Saragossa, which is the only road
+open.&rdquo;&nbsp; He travelled leisurely by way of the Pyrenees,
+through France to Paris, where he spent a fortnight.&nbsp; Of
+Paris he was very fond; &ldquo;for, leaving all prejudices aside,
+it is a magnificent city, well supplied with sumptuous buildings
+and public squares, unequalled by any town in Europe.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation279c"></a><a href="#footnote279c"
+class="citation">[279c]</a>&nbsp; Having bought a few rare books
+he proceeded to Boulogne, &ldquo;and thence by steamboat to
+London,&rdquo; <a name="citation279d"></a><a href="#footnote279d"
+class="citation">[279d]</a> where in all probability he arrived
+towards the end of October.</p>
+<p>He had &ldquo;long talks on Spanish affairs&rdquo; <a
+name="citation279e"></a><a href="#footnote279e"
+class="citation">[279e]</a> with his friends at Earl Street,
+where personal interviews seem to have brought about a much
+better feeling.&nbsp; The General Committee requested Borrow to
+put into writing his views as to the best means to be adopted for
+the future distribution of the Scriptures in Spain.&nbsp; He
+accordingly wrote a statement, <a name="citation280"></a><a
+href="#footnote280" class="citation">[280]</a> a fine, vigorous
+piece of narrative, putting his case so clearly and convincingly
+as to leave little to be said for the unfortunate Graydon.&nbsp;
+He expressed himself as &ldquo;eager to be carefully and
+categorically questioned.&rdquo;&nbsp; This Report appears
+subsequently to have been withdrawn, probably on the advice of
+Borrow&rsquo;s friends, who saw that its uncompromising bluntness
+of expression would make it unacceptable to the General
+Committee.&nbsp; It was certainly presented to and considered by
+the Sub-Committee.&nbsp; Another document was drawn up entitled,
+&ldquo;Report of Mr Geo. Borrow on Past and Future Operations in
+Spain.&rdquo;&nbsp; This reached Earl Street on 28th
+November.&nbsp; In it Borrow states that as the inhabitants of
+the cities had not shown themselves well-disposed towards the
+Scriptures, it would be better to labour in future among the
+peasantry.&nbsp; It was his firm conviction, he wrote,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;that every village in Spain will purchase
+New Testaments, from twenty to sixty, according to its
+circumstances.&nbsp; During the last two months of his sojourn in
+Spain he visited about forty villages, and in only two instances
+was his sale less than thirty copies in each . . . If it be
+objected to the plan which he has presumed to suggest that it is
+impossible to convey to the rural districts of Spain the book of
+life without much difficulty and danger, he begs leave to observe
+that it does not become a real Christian to be daunted by either
+when it pleases his Maker to select him as an instrument; and
+that, moreover, if it be not written that a man is to perish by
+wild beasts or reptiles he is safe in the den even of the
+Cockatrice as in the most retired chamber of the King&rsquo;s
+Palace; and that if, on the contrary, he be doomed to perish by
+them, his destiny will overtake him notwithstanding all the
+precautions which he, like a blind worm, may essay for his
+security.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In conclusion Borrow calls attention, without suggesting
+intimate alliance and co-operation, to the society of the
+liberal-minded Spanish ecclesiastics, which has been formed for
+the purpose of printing and circulating the Scriptures in Spanish
+<i>without commentary or notes</i>.&nbsp; This had reference to a
+movement that was on foot in Madrid, supported by the Primate and
+the Bishops of Vigo and Joen, to challenge the Government in
+regard to its attempt to prevent the free circulation of the
+Scriptures.&nbsp; It was held that nowhere among the laws of
+Spain is it forbidden to circulate the Scriptures either with or
+without annotations.&nbsp; The only prohibition being in the
+various Papal Bulls.&nbsp; Charles Wood was chosen as &ldquo;the
+ostensible manager of the concern&rdquo;; but had it not been for
+the trouble in the South, Borrow would have been the person
+selected.</p>
+<p>It would have been in every way deplorable had Borrow severed
+his connection with the Bible Society as a result of the Graydon
+episode.&nbsp; Borrow had been impulsive and indignant in his
+letters to Earl Street, Mr Brandram, on the other hand, had been
+&ldquo;a little partial,&rdquo; and on one or two occasions must
+have written hastily in response to Borrow&rsquo;s letters.&nbsp;
+There is no object in administering blame or directing reproaches
+when the principals in a quarrel have made up their differences;
+but there can be no question that the failure of the Officials
+and Committee of the Bible Society to appreciate the situation in
+Spain retarded their work in that country very
+considerably.&nbsp; This fact is now generally recognised.&nbsp;
+Mr Canton has admirably summed up the situation when he says:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Borrow had his faults, but insincerity and
+lack of zeal in the cause he had espoused were not among
+them.&nbsp; Both Sir George Villiers and his successor [during
+Sir George&rsquo;s visit to England], Lord William Hervey, were
+satisfied with the propriety of his conduct.&nbsp; Count Ofalia
+himself recognised his good faith&mdash;&lsquo;<i>cuia buena
+f&eacute; me es conocida</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; To see his plans
+thwarted, his work arrested, the objects of the Society
+jeopardised, and his own person endangered by the indiscretion of
+others, formed, if not a justification, at least a sufficient
+excuse for the expression of strong feeling.&nbsp; On the other
+hand, it was difficult for those at home to ascertain the actual
+facts of the case, to understand the nicety of the situation, and
+to arrive at an impartial judgment.&nbsp; Mr Brandram, who in any
+case would have been displeased with Borrow&rsquo;s unrestrained
+speech, appears to have suspected that his statements were not
+free from exaggeration, and that his discretion was not wholly
+beyond reproach.&nbsp; Happily the tension caused by this painful
+episode was relieved by Lieut. Graydon&rsquo;s withdrawal to
+France in June.&rdquo; <a name="citation282"></a><a
+href="#footnote282" class="citation">[282]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+DECEMBER 1838&ndash;MAY 1839</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> 14th December 1838 it was
+resolved by the General Committee of the Bible Society that
+Borrow should proceed once more to Spain to dispose of such
+copies of the Scriptures as remained on hand at Madrid and other
+dep&ocirc;ts established by him in various parts of the
+country.&nbsp; He left London on the 21st, and sailed from
+Falmouth two days later, reaching Cadiz on the 31st, after a
+stormy passage, and on 2nd January he arrived at Seville,
+&ldquo;rather indisposed with an old complaint,&rdquo; probably
+&ldquo;the Horrors.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In such stirring times to be absent from the country, even for
+so short a period as two months, meant that on his return the
+traveller found a new Spain.&nbsp; Borrow learned that the Duke
+of Frias had succeeded Count Ofalia in September.&nbsp; The Duke
+had advised the British Ambassador in November that the Spanish
+authorities were possessed of a quantity of Borrow&rsquo;s Bibles
+(?New Testaments) that had been seized and taken to Toledo, and
+that if arrangements were not made for them to be taken out of
+Spain they would be destroyed.&nbsp; Sir George Villiers had
+replied that Mr Borrow, who was then out of the country, had been
+advised of the Duke&rsquo;s notification, and as soon as word was
+received from him, the Duke should be communicated with.&nbsp;
+Then the Duke of Frias in turn passed out of office and was
+succeeded by another, and so, politically, change followed
+change.</p>
+<p>The Government, however, had no intention of putting itself in
+the wrong a second time.&nbsp; Great Britain&rsquo;s friendship
+was of far too great importance to the country to be jeopardised
+for the mere gratification of imprisoning George Borrow.&nbsp; An
+order had been sent out to all the authorities that an embargo
+was to be placed upon the books themselves; but those
+distributing them were not to be arrested or in any way
+harmed.</p>
+<p>At Seville he found evidences of the activity of the
+Government in the news that of the hundred New Testaments that he
+had left with his correspondent there, seventy-six had been
+seized during the previous summer.&nbsp; Hearing that the books
+were in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Governor, Borrow
+astonished that &ldquo;fierce, persecuting Papist by calling to
+make enquiries concerning them.&rdquo;&nbsp; The old man treated
+his visitor to a stream of impassioned invective against the
+Bible Society and its agent, expressing his surprise that he had
+ever been permitted to leave the prison in Madrid.&nbsp; Seeing
+that nothing was to be gained, although he had an absolute right
+to the books, provided he sent them out of the country, Borrow
+decided not to press the matter.</p>
+<p>On the night of 12th Jan. 1839, he left Seville with the Mail
+Courier and his escort bound for Madrid, where he arrived on the
+16th without accident or incident, although the next Courier
+traversing the route was stopped by banditti.&nbsp; It was during
+this journey, whilst resting for four hours at Manzanares, a
+large village in La Mancha, that he encountered the blind girl
+who had been taught Latin by a Jesuit priest, and whom he named
+&ldquo;the Manchegan Prophetess.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation284"></a><a href="#footnote284"
+class="citation">[284]</a>&nbsp; In telling Mr Brandram of the
+incident, Borrow tactlessly remarked, &ldquo;what wonderful
+people are the Jesuits; when shall we hear of an English rector
+instructing a beggar girl in the language of Cicero?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Mr Brandram clearly showed that he liked neither the remark,
+which he took as personal, nor the use of the term
+&ldquo;prophetess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On reaching Madrid a singular incident befell Borrow.&nbsp; On
+entering the arch of the <i>posada</i> called La Reyna, he found
+himself encircled by a pair of arms, and, on turning round, found
+that they belonged to the delinquent Antonio, who stood before
+his late master &ldquo;haggard and ill-dressed, and his eyes
+seemed starting from their sockets.&rdquo;&nbsp; The poor fellow,
+who was entirely destitute, had, on the previous night, dreamed
+that he saw Borrow arrive on a black horse, and, in consequence,
+had spent the whole day in loitering about outside the
+<i>posada</i>.&nbsp; Borrow was very glad to engage him again, in
+spite of his recent cowardice and desertion.&nbsp; Borrow once
+more took up his abode with the estimable Maria Diaz, and one of
+his first cares was to call on Lord Clarendon (Sir George
+Villiers had succeeded his uncle as fourth earl), by whom he was
+kindly received.</p>
+<p>A week later, there arrived from Lopez at Villa Seca his
+&ldquo;largest and most useful horse,&rdquo; the famous Sidi
+Habismilk (My Lord the Sustainer of the Kingdom), &ldquo;an
+Arabian of high caste . . . the best, I believe, that ever issued
+from the desert,&rdquo; <a name="citation285a"></a><a
+href="#footnote285a" class="citation">[285a]</a> Lopez wrote,
+regretting that he was unable to accompany &ldquo;The Sustainer
+of the Kingdom&rdquo; in person, being occupied with agricultural
+pursuits, but he sent a relative named Victoriano to assist in
+the work of distributing the Gospel.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s plan was to make Madrid his headquarters, with
+Antonio in charge of the supplies, and visit all the villages and
+hamlets in the vicinity that had not yet been supplied with
+Testaments.&nbsp; He then proposed to turn eastward to a distance
+of about thirty leagues.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have been very passionate in
+prayer,&rdquo; he writes, <a name="citation285b"></a><a
+href="#footnote285b" class="citation">[285b]</a> &ldquo;during
+the last two or three days; and I entertain some hope that the
+Lord has condescended to answer me, as I appear to see my way
+with considerable clearness.&nbsp; It may, of course, prove a
+delusion, and the prospects which seem to present themselves may
+be mere palaces of clouds, which a breath of wind is sufficient
+to tumble into ruin; therefore bearing this possibility in mind
+it behoves me to beg that I may be always enabled to bow meekly
+to the dispensations of the Almighty, whether they be of favour
+or severity.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr Brandram&rsquo;s comment on this portion of Borrow&rsquo;s
+letter is rather suggestive of deliberate fault-finding.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;May your &lsquo;passionate&rsquo; prayers
+be answered,&rdquo; he writes. <a name="citation286"></a><a
+href="#footnote286" class="citation">[286]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+see I remark your unusual word&mdash;very significant it is, but
+one rather fitted for the select circle where
+&lsquo;passion&rsquo; is understood in its own full
+sense&mdash;and not in the restricted meaning attached to it
+ordinarily.&nbsp; Perhaps you will not often meet with a better
+set of men than those who assembled in Earl Street, but they may
+not always be open to the force of language, and so unwonted a
+phrase may raise odd feelings in their minds.&nbsp; Do not be in
+a passion, will you, for the freedom of my remarks.&nbsp; You
+will perhaps suppose remarks were made in Committee.&nbsp; This
+does not happen to be the case, though I fully anticipated
+it.&nbsp; Mr Browne, Mr Jowett and myself had first privately
+devoured your letter, and we made our remarks.&nbsp; We could
+relish such a phrase.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Sometimes there was a suggestion of spite in Mr
+Brandram&rsquo;s letters.&nbsp; He was obviously unfriendly
+towards Borrow during the latter portion of his agency.&nbsp; It
+was clear that the period of Borrow&rsquo;s further association
+with the Bible Society was to be limited.&nbsp; If he replied at
+all to this rather unfair criticism, he must have done so
+privately to Mr Brandram, as there is no record of his having
+referred to it in any subsequent letters among the
+Society&rsquo;s archives.</p>
+<p>All unconscious that he had so early offended, Borrow set out
+upon his first journey to distribute Testaments among the
+villages around Madrid.&nbsp; Dressed in the manner of the
+peasants, on his head a <i>montera</i>, a species of leathern
+helmet, with jacket and trousers of the same material, and
+mounted on Sidi Habismilk, he looked so unlike the conventional
+missionary that the housewife may be excused who mistook him for
+a pedlar selling soap.</p>
+<p>In some villages where the people were without money, they
+received Testaments in return for refreshing the
+missionaries.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is this right?&rdquo; Borrow enquires
+of Mr Brandram.&nbsp; The village priests frequently proved of
+considerable assistance; for when they pronounced the books good,
+as they sometimes did, the sale became extremely brisk.&nbsp;
+After an absence of eight days, Borrow returned to Madrid.&nbsp;
+Shortly afterwards, when on the eve of starting out upon another
+expedition to Guadalajara and the villages of Alcarria, he
+received a letter from Victoriano saying that he was in prison at
+Fuente la Higuera, a village about eight leagues distant.&nbsp;
+Acting with his customary energy and decision, Borrow obtained
+from an influential friend letters to the Civil Governor and
+principal authorities of Guadalajara.&nbsp; He then despatched
+Antonio to the rescue, with the result that Victoriano was
+released, with the assurance that those responsible for his
+detention should be severely punished.</p>
+<p>Whilst Victoriano was in prison, Borrow and Antonio had been
+very successful in selling Testaments and Bibles in Madrid,
+disposing of upwards of a hundred copies, but entirely to the
+poor, who &ldquo;receive the Scriptures with gladness,&rdquo;
+although the hearts of the rich were hard.&nbsp; The work in and
+about Madrid continued until the middle of March, when Borrow
+decided to make an excursion as far as Talavera.&nbsp; The first
+halt was made at the village of Naval Carnero.&nbsp; Soon after
+his arrival orders came from Madrid warning the <i>alcaldes</i>
+of every village in New Castile to be on the look out for the
+tall, white-haired heretic, of whom an exact description was
+given, who to-day was in one place and to-morrow twenty leagues
+distant.&nbsp; No violence was to be offered either to him or to
+his assistants; but he and they were to be baulked in their
+purpose by every legitimate means.</p>
+<p>Foiled in the rural districts, Borrow instantly determined to
+change his plan of campaign.&nbsp; He saw that he was less likely
+to attract notice in the densely-populated capital than in the
+provinces.&nbsp; He therefore galloped back to Madrid, leaving
+Victoriano to follow more leisurely.&nbsp; He rejoiced at the
+alarm of the clergy.&nbsp; &ldquo;Glory to God!&rdquo; he
+exclaims, &ldquo;they are becoming thoroughly alarmed, and with
+much reason.&rdquo; <a name="citation288a"></a><a
+href="#footnote288a" class="citation">[288a]</a>&nbsp; The
+&ldquo;reason&rdquo; lay in the great demand for Testaments and
+Bibles.&nbsp; A new binding-order had to be given for the balance
+of the 500 Bibles that had arrived in sheets, or such as had been
+left of them by the rats, who had done considerable damage in the
+Madrid storehouse.</p>
+<p>It was at this juncture that Borrow&rsquo;s extensive
+acquaintance with the lower orders proved useful.&nbsp; Selecting
+eight of the most intelligent from among them, including five
+women, he supplied them with Testaments and instructions to vend
+the books in all the parishes of Madrid, with the result that in
+the course of about a fortnight 600 copies were disposed of in
+the streets and alleys.&nbsp; A house to house canvass was
+instituted with remarkable results, for manservant and
+maidservant bought eagerly of the books.&nbsp; Antonio excelled
+himself and made some amends for his flight from Labajos, when,
+like a torrent, the Carlist cavalry descended upon it.&nbsp; Dark
+Madrid was becoming illuminated with a flood of Scriptural
+light.&nbsp; In two of its churches the New Testament was
+expounded every Sunday evening.&nbsp; Bibles were particularly in
+demand, a hundred being sold in about three weeks.&nbsp; The
+demand exceeded the supply.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Marques de Santa
+Coloma,&rdquo; Borrow wrote, &ldquo;has a large family, but every
+individual of it, old or young, is now in possession of a Bible
+and likewise of a Testament.&rdquo; <a name="citation288b"></a><a
+href="#footnote288b" class="citation">[288b]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow appears to have enlisted the aid of other distributors
+than the eight colporteurs.&nbsp; One of his most zealous agents
+was an ecclesiastic, who always carried with him beneath his gown
+a copy of the Bible, which he offered to the first person he
+encountered whom he thought likely to become a purchaser.&nbsp;
+Yet another assistant was found in a rich old gentleman of
+Navarre, who sent copies to his own province.</p>
+<p>One night after having retired to bed, Borrow received a visit
+from a curious, hobgoblin-like person, who gave him grave,
+official warning that unless he present himself before the
+<i>corregidor</i> on the morrow at eleven <span
+class="GutSmall">A.M.</span>, he must be prepared to take the
+consequences.&nbsp; The hour chosen for this intimation was
+midnight.&nbsp; On the next day at the appointed time Borrow
+presented himself before the <i>corregidor</i>, who announced
+that he wished to ask a question.&nbsp; The question related to a
+box of Testaments that Borrow had sent to Naval Carnero, which
+had been seized and subsequently claimed on Borrow&rsquo;s behalf
+by Antonio.&nbsp; In Spain they have the dramatic instinct.&nbsp;
+If it strike the majestic mind of a <i>corregidor</i> at midnight
+that he would like to see a citizen or a stranger on the morrow
+about some trifling affair, time or place are not permitted to
+interfere with the conveyance of the intimation to the citizen or
+stranger to present himself before the gravely austere official,
+who will carry out the interrogation with a solemnity becoming a
+capital charge.</p>
+<p>By the middle of April barely a thousand Testaments remained;
+these Borrow determined to distribute in Seville.&nbsp; Sending
+Antonio, the Testaments and two horses with the convoy, Borrow
+decided to risk travelling with the Mail Courier.&nbsp; For one
+thing, he disliked the slowness of a convoy, and for another the
+insults and irritations that travellers had to put up with from
+the escort, both officers and men.&nbsp; His original plan had
+been to proceed by Estremadura; but a band of Carlist robbers had
+recently made its appearance, murdering or holding at ransom
+every person who fell into its clutches.&nbsp; Borrow
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I therefore deem it wise to avoid, if
+possible, the alternative of being shot or having to pay one
+thousand pounds for being set at liberty . . . It is moreover
+wicked to tempt Providence systematically.&nbsp; I have already
+thrust myself into more danger than was, perhaps, strictly
+necessary, and as I have been permitted hitherto to escape, it is
+better to be content with what it has pleased the Lord to do for
+me up to the present moment, than to run the risk of offending
+Him by a blind confidence in His forbearance, which may be
+over-taxed.&nbsp; As it is, however, at all times best to be
+frank, I am willing to confess that I am what the world calls
+exceedingly superstitious; perhaps the real cause of my change of
+resolution was a dream, in which I imagined myself on a desolate
+road in the hands of several robbers, who were hacking me with
+their long, ugly knives.&rdquo; <a name="citation290"></a><a
+href="#footnote290" class="citation">[290]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the same letter, which was so to incur Mr Brandram&rsquo;s
+disapproval, Borrow tells of the excellent results of his latest
+plan for disposing of Bibles and Testaments, three hundred and
+fifty of the former having been sold since he reached
+Spain.&nbsp; He goes on to explain and expound the difficulties
+that have been met and overcome, and hopes that his friends at
+Earl Street will be patient, as it may not be in his power to
+send &ldquo;for a long time any flattering accounts of operations
+commenced there.&rdquo;&nbsp; In conclusion, he assures Mr
+Brandram that from the Church of Rome he has learned one thing,
+&ldquo;<i>Ever to expect evil</i>, <i>and ever to hope for
+good</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nothing could have been more unfortunate than the effect
+produced upon Mr Brandram&rsquo;s mind by this letter.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I scarcely know what to say,&rdquo; he
+writes.&nbsp; &ldquo;You are in a very peculiar country; you are
+doubtless a man of very peculiar temperament, and we must not
+apply common rules in judging either of yourself or your
+affairs.&nbsp; What, <i>e.g.</i>, shall we say to your confession
+of a certain superstitiousness?&nbsp; It is very frank of you to
+tell us what you need not have told; but it sounded very odd when
+read aloud in a large Committee.&nbsp; Strangers that know you
+not would carry away strange ideas . . . In bespeaking our
+patience, there is an implied contrast between your own mode of
+proceeding and that adopted by others&mdash;a contrast this a
+little to the disadvantage of others, and savouring a little of
+the praise of a personage called number one . . . Perhaps my
+vanity is offended, and I feel as if I were not esteemed a person
+of sufficient discernment to know enough of the real state of
+Spain . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bear with me now in my criticisms on your second letter
+[that of 2nd May].&nbsp; You narrate your perilous journey to
+Seville, and say at the beginning of the description: &lsquo;My
+usual wonderful good fortune accompanying us.&rsquo;&nbsp; This
+is a mode of speaking to which we are not well accustomed; it
+savours, some of our friends would say, a little of the
+profane.&nbsp; Those who know you will not impute this to
+you.&nbsp; But you must remember that our Committee Room is
+public to a great extent, and I cannot omit expressions as I go
+reading on.&nbsp; Pious sentiments may be thrust into letters
+<i>ad nauseam</i>, and it is not for that I plead; but is there
+not a <i>via media</i>?&nbsp; &ldquo;We are odd people, it may
+be, in England; we are not fond of prophets or
+&lsquo;prophetesses&rsquo; [a reference to her of La Mancha about
+whom Borrow had previously been rebuked].&nbsp; I have not turned
+back to your former description of the lady whom you have a
+second time introduced to our notice.&nbsp; Perhaps my wounded
+pride had not been made whole after the infliction you before
+gave it by contrasting the teacher of the prophetess with English
+rectors.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow replied to this letter from Seville on 28th June, and
+there are indications that before doing so he took time to
+deliberate upon it.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Think not, I pray you,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;that any observation of yours respecting style, or any
+peculiarities of expression which I am in the habit of exhibiting
+in my correspondence, can possibly awaken in me any feeling but
+that of gratitude, knowing so well as I do the person who offers
+them, and the motives by which he is influenced.&nbsp; I have
+reflected on those passages which you were pleased to point out
+as objectionable, and have nothing to reply further than that I
+have erred, that I am sorry, and will endeavour to mend, and
+that, moreover, I have already prayed for assistance to do
+so.&nbsp; Allow me, however, to offer a word, not in excuse but
+in explanation of the expression &lsquo;wonderful good
+fortune&rsquo; which appeared in a former letter of mine.&nbsp;
+It is clearly objectionable, and, as you very properly observe,
+savours of pagan times.&nbsp; But I am sorry to say that I am
+much in the habit of repeating other people&rsquo;s sayings
+without weighing their propriety.&nbsp; The saying was not mine;
+but I heard it in conversation and thoughtlessly repeated
+it.&nbsp; A few miles from Seville I was telling the Courier of
+the many perilous journeys which I had accomplished in Spain in
+safety, and for which I thank the Lord.&nbsp; His reply was,
+&lsquo;La mucha suerte de Usted tambien nos ha acompa&ntilde;ado
+en este viage.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thus ended another unfortunate misunderstanding between
+secretary and agent.</p>
+<p>Borrow had taken considerable risk in making the journey to
+Seville with the Courier.&nbsp; The whole of La Mancha was
+overrun with the Carlist-banditti, who, &ldquo;whenever it
+pleases them, stop the Courier, burn the vehicle and letters,
+murder the paltry escort which attends, and carry away any chance
+passenger to the mountains, where an enormous ransom is demanded,
+which if not paid brings on the dilemma of four shots through the
+head, as the Spaniards say.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Courier&rsquo;s
+previous journey over the same route had ended in the murder of
+the escort and the burning of the coach, the Courier himself
+escaping through the good offices of one of the bandits, who had
+formerly been his postilion.&nbsp; Borrow was shown the
+blood-soaked turf and the skull of one of the soldiers.&nbsp; At
+Manzanares, Borrow invited to breakfast with him the Prophetess
+who was so unpopular at Earl Street.&nbsp; Continuing the
+journey, he reached Seville without mishap, and a few days later
+Antonio arrived with the horses.&nbsp; It was found that the two
+cases of Testaments that had been forwarded from Madrid had been
+stopped at the Seville Customs House, and Borrow had recourse to
+subterfuge in order to get them and save his journey from being
+in vain.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;For a few dollars,&rdquo; he tells Mr
+Brandram (2nd May), &ldquo;I procured a <i>fiador</i> or person
+who engaged <i>that the chests</i> should be carried down the
+river and embarked at San Lucar for a foreign land.&nbsp;
+Yesterday I hired a boat and sent them down, but on the way I
+landed in a secure place all the Testaments which I intend for
+this part of the country.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The <i>fiador</i> had kept to the letter of his undertaking,
+and the chests were duly delivered at San Lucar; but a
+considerable portion of their contents, some two hundred
+Testaments, had been abstracted, and these had to be smuggled
+into Seville under the cloaks of master and servant.&nbsp; The
+officials appear to have treated Borrow with the greatest
+possible courtesy and consideration, and they told him that his
+&ldquo;intentions were known and honored.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had great hopes of achieving something for the
+Gospel&rsquo;s sake in Seville; but the operation would be a
+delicate one.&nbsp; To Mr Brandram he wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Consider my situation here.&nbsp; I am in a
+city by nature very Levitical, as it contains within it the most
+magnificent and splendidly endowed cathedral of any in
+Spain.&nbsp; I am surrounded by priests and friars, who know and
+hate me, and who, if I commit the slightest act of indiscretion,
+will halloo their myrmidons against me.&nbsp; The press is closed
+to me, the libraries are barred against me, I have no one to
+assist me but my hired servant, no pious English families to
+comfort or encourage me, the British subjects here being ranker
+papists and a hundred times more bigoted than the Spanish
+themselves, the Consul, a <i>renegade Quaker</i>.&nbsp; Yet
+notwithstanding, with God&rsquo;s assistance, I will do much,
+though silently, burrowing like the mole in darkness beneath the
+ground.&nbsp; Those who have triumphed in Madrid, and in the two
+Castiles, where the difficulties were seven times greater, are
+not to be dismayed by priestly frowns at Seville.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation293"></a><a href="#footnote293"
+class="citation">[293]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On arriving at Seville Borrow had put up at the <i>Posada de
+la Reyna</i>, in the Calle Gimios, and here on 4th May (he had
+arrived about 24th April) he encountered Lieut.-Colonel Elers
+Napier.&nbsp; Borrow liked nothing so well as appearing in the
+<i>r&ocirc;le</i> of a mysterious stranger.&nbsp; He loved
+mystery as much as a dramatic moment.&nbsp; His admiration of
+Baron Taylor was largely based upon the innumerable conjectures
+as to who it was that surrounded his puzzling personality with
+such an air of mystery.&nbsp; That May morning Colonel Napier,
+who was also staying at the <i>Posada de la Reyna</i>, was
+wandering about the galleries overlooking the <i>patio</i>.&nbsp;
+He writes:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;whilst occupied in moralising over the
+dripping water spouts, I observed a tall, gentlemanly-looking man
+dressed in a <i>semarra</i> [<i>zamarra</i>, a sheepskin jacket
+with the wool outside] leaning over the balustrades and
+apparently engaged in a similar manner with myself . . .&nbsp;
+From the stranger&rsquo;s complexion, which was fair, but with
+brilliant black eyes, I concluded he was not a Spaniard; in
+short, there was something so remarkable in his appearance that
+it was difficult to say to what nation he might belong.&nbsp; He
+was tall, with a commanding appearance; yet, though apparently in
+the flower of manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged with the
+winter of either age or sorrow as to be nearly snow white.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation294a"></a><a href="#footnote294a"
+class="citation">[294a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Colonel Napier was thoroughly mystified.&nbsp; The stranger
+answered his French in &ldquo;the purest Parisian Accent&rdquo;;
+yet he proved capable of speaking fluent English, of giving
+orders to his Greek servant in Roma&iuml;c, of conversing
+&ldquo;in good Castillian with &lsquo;mine host&rsquo;,&rdquo;
+and of exchanging salutations in German with another resident at
+the <i>fonda</i>.&nbsp; Later the Colonel had the gratification
+of startling the Unknown by replying to some remark of his in
+Hindi; but only momentarily, for he showed himself
+&ldquo;delighted on finding I was an Indian, and entered freely,
+and with depth and acuteness, on the affairs of the East, most of
+which part of the world he had visited.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation294b"></a><a href="#footnote294b"
+class="citation">[294b]</a></p>
+<p>No one could give any information about &ldquo;the mysterious
+Unknown,&rdquo; who or what he was, or why he was
+travelling.&nbsp; It was known that the police entertained
+suspicions that he was a Russian spy, and kept him under strict
+observation.&nbsp; Whatever else he was, Colonel Napier found him
+&ldquo;a very agreeable companion.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation295"></a><a href="#footnote295"
+class="citation">[295]</a></p>
+<p>On the following morning (a Sunday) Colonel Napier and his
+Unknown set out on horseback on an excursion to the ruins of
+Italica.&nbsp; As they sat on a ruined wall of the Convent of San
+Isidoro, contemplating the scene of ruin and desolation around,
+&ldquo;the &lsquo;Unknown&rsquo; began to feel the vein of poetry
+creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting
+with great emphasis and effect&rdquo; some lines that the scene
+called up to his mind.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I had been too much taken up with the
+scene,&rdquo; Colonel Napier continues, &ldquo;the verses, and
+the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling, to
+notice the approach of a slight female figure, beautiful in the
+extreme, but whose tattered garments, raven hair, swarthy
+complexion and flashing eyes proclaimed to be of the wandering
+tribe of <i>Gitanos</i>.&nbsp; From an intuitive sense of
+politeness, she stood with crossed arms and a slight smile on her
+dark and handsome countenance until my companion had ceased, and
+then addressed us in the usual whining tone of
+supplication&mdash;&lsquo;<i>Caballeritos</i>, <i>una
+limosnita</i>!&nbsp; <i>Dios se la pagar&aacute; &aacute;
+ustedes</i>!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Gentlemen, a little charity; God
+will repay it to you!&rsquo;&nbsp; The gypsy girl was so pretty
+and her voice so sweet, that I involuntarily put my hand in my
+pocket.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Stop!&rsquo; said the Unknown.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do
+you remember what I told you about the Eastern origin of these
+people?&nbsp; You shall see I am
+correct.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Come here, my pretty child,&rsquo;
+said he in Moultanee, &lsquo;and tell me where are the rest of
+your tribe.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The girl looked astounded, replied in the same tongue,
+but in broken language; when, taking him by the arm, she said in
+Spanish, &lsquo;Come, cabellero&mdash;come to one who will be
+able to answer you&rsquo;; and she led the way down amongst the
+ruins, towards one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild
+beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less
+savage.&nbsp; The sombre walls of the gloomy abode were illumined
+by a fire the smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in
+the mossy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red
+glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of two men,
+and a decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in some
+culinary preparations.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of
+the party, and a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of
+the &lsquo;faja&rsquo; [a sash in which the Spaniard carries a
+formidable clasp-knife] caused in me, at least, anything but a
+comfortable sensation; but their hostile intentions, if ever
+entertained, were immediately removed by a wave of the hand from
+our conductress, who, leading my companion towards the sibyl,
+whispered something in her ear.&nbsp; The old crone appeared
+incredulous.&nbsp; The &lsquo;Unknown&rsquo; uttered one word;
+but that word had the effect of magic; she prostrated herself at
+his feet, and in an instant, from an object of suspicion he
+became one of worship to the whole family, to whom, on taking
+leave, he made a handsome present, and departed with their united
+blessings, to the astonishment of myself and what looked very
+like terror in our Spanish guide.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and as
+soon as we mounted our horses, exclaimed&mdash;&lsquo;Where, in
+the name of goodness, did you pick up your acquaintance with the
+language of those extraordinary people?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Some years ago, in Moultan,&rsquo; he
+replied.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;And by what means do you possess such apparent
+influence over them?&rsquo;&nbsp; But the &lsquo;Unknown&rsquo;
+had already said more than he perhaps wished on the
+subject.&nbsp; He drily replied that he had more than once owed
+his life to gypsies, and had reason to know them well; but this
+was said in a tone which precluded all further queries on my
+part.&nbsp; The subject was never again broached, and we returned
+in silence to the fonda . . .&nbsp; This is a most extraordinary
+character, and the more I see of him the more am I puzzled.&nbsp;
+He appears acquainted with everybody and everything, but
+apparently unknown to every one himself.&nbsp; Though his figure
+bespeaks youth&mdash;and by his own account his age does not
+exceed thirty [he would be thirty-six in the following
+July]&mdash;yet the snows of eighty winters could not have
+whitened his locks more completely than they are.&nbsp; But in
+his dark and searching eye there is an almost supernatural
+penetration and lustre, which, were I inclined to superstition,
+might induce me to set down its possessor as a second
+Melmoth.&rdquo; <a name="citation297"></a><a href="#footnote297"
+class="citation">[297]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+MAY&ndash;DECEMBER 1839</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> confesses that he was at a
+loss to know how to commence operations in Seville.&nbsp; He was
+entirely friendless, even the British Consul being unapproachable
+on account of his religious beliefs.&nbsp; However, he soon
+gathered round him some of those curious characters who seemed
+always to gravitate towards him, no matter where he might be, or
+with what occupied.&nbsp; Surely the Scriptures never had such a
+curious assortment of missionaries as Borrow employed?&nbsp; At
+Seville there was the gigantic Greek, Dionysius of Cephalonia;
+the &ldquo;aged professor of music, who, with much stiffness and
+ceremoniousness, united much that was excellent and
+admirable&rdquo;; <a name="citation298"></a><a
+href="#footnote298" class="citation">[298]</a> the Greek
+bricklayer, Johannes Chysostom, a native of Morea, who might at
+any time become &ldquo;the Masaniello of Seville.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+With these assistants Borrow set to work to throw the light of
+the Gospel into the dark corners of the city.</p>
+<p>Soon after arriving at Seville, he decided to adopt a new plan
+of living.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;On account of the extreme dearness of every
+article at the <i>posada</i>,&rdquo; he wrote to Mr Brandram on
+12th June, &ldquo;where, moreover, I had a suspicion that I was
+being watched [this may have reference to the police suspicion
+that he was a Russian spy], I removed with my servant and horses
+to an empty house in a solitary part of the town . . .&nbsp; Here
+I live in the greatest privacy, admitting no person but two or
+three in whom I had the greatest confidence, who entertain the
+same views as myself, and who assist me in the circulation of the
+Gospel.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The house stood in a solitary situation, occupying one side of
+the Plazuela de la Pila Seca (the Little Square of the Empty
+Trough).&nbsp; It was a two-storied building and much too large
+for Borrow&rsquo;s requirements.&nbsp; Having bought the
+necessary articles of furniture, he retired behind the shutters
+of his Andalusian mansion with Antonio and the two horses.&nbsp;
+He lived in the utmost seclusion, spending a large portion of his
+time in study or in dreamy meditation.&nbsp; &ldquo;The people
+here complain sadly of the heat,&rdquo; he writes to Mr Brandram
+(28th June 1839), &ldquo;but as for myself, I luxuriate in it,
+like the butterflies which hover about the <i>macetas</i>, or
+flowerpots, in the court.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the cool of the evening
+he would mount Sidi Habismilk and ride along the <i>Dehesa</i>
+until the topmost towers of the city were out of sight, then,
+turning the noble Arab, he would let him return at his best
+speed, which was that of the whirlwind.</p>
+<p>Throughout his work in Spain Borrow had been seriously
+handicapped by being unable to satisfy the demand for Bibles that
+met him everywhere he went.&nbsp; In a letter (June) from Maria
+Diaz, who was acting as his agent in Madrid, <a
+name="citation299"></a><a href="#footnote299"
+class="citation">[299]</a> the same story is told.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The binder has brought me eight
+Bibles,&rdquo; she writes, &ldquo;which he has contrived to make
+up out of <i>the sheets gnawn by the rats</i>, and which would
+have been necessary even had they amounted to eight thousand (y
+era necesario se puvi&egrave;ran vuelto 8000), because the people
+are innumerable who come to seek more.&nbsp; Don Santiago has
+been here with some friends, who insisted upon having a part of
+them.&nbsp; The Aragonese Gentleman has likewise been, he who
+came before your departure, and bespoke twenty-four; he now wants
+twenty-five.&nbsp; I begged them to take Testaments, but they
+would not.&rdquo; <a name="citation300"></a><a
+href="#footnote300" class="citation">[300]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Greek bricklayer proved a most useful agent.&nbsp; His
+great influence with his poor acquaintances resulted in the sale
+of many Testaments.&nbsp; More could have been done had it not
+been necessary to proceed with extreme caution, lest the
+authorities should take action and seize the small stock of books
+that remained.</p>
+<p>When he took and furnished the large house in the little
+square, there had been in Borrow&rsquo;s mind another reason than
+a desire for solitude and freedom from prying eyes.&nbsp;
+Throughout his labours in Spain he had kept up a correspondence
+with Mrs Clarke of Oulton, who, on 15th March, had written
+informing him of her intention to take up her abode for a short
+time at Seville.</p>
+<p>For some time previously Mrs Clarke had been having trouble
+about her estate.&nbsp; Her mother (September 1835) and father
+(February 1836) were both dead, and her brother Breame had
+inherited the estate and she the mortgage together with the
+Cottage on Oulton Broad.&nbsp; Breame Skepper died (May 1837),
+leaving a wife and six children.&nbsp; In his will he had
+appointed Trustees, who demanded the sale of the Estate and
+division of the money, which was opposed by Mrs Clarke as
+executrix and mortgagee.&nbsp; Later it was agreed between the
+parties that the Estate should be sold for &pound;11,000 to a Mr
+Joseph Cator Webb, and an agreement to that effect was
+signed.&nbsp; Anticipating that the Estate would increase in
+value, and apparently regretting their bargain, the Trustees
+delayed carrying out their undertaking, and Mr Webb filed a bill
+in Chancery to force them to do so.&nbsp; Mrs Clarke&rsquo;s
+legal advisers thought it better that she should disappear for a
+time.&nbsp; Hence her letter to Borrow, in replying to which
+(29th March), he expresses pleasure at the news of his
+friend&rsquo;s determination &ldquo;to settle in Seville for a
+short time&mdash;which, I assure you, I consider to be the most
+agreeable retreat you can select . . . for <i>there</i> the
+growls of your enemies will scarcely reach you.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+goes on to tell her that he laughed outright at the advice of her
+counsellor not to take a house and furnish it.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Houses in Spain are let by the day: and in
+a palace here you will find less furniture than in your cottage
+at Oulton.&nbsp; Were you to furnish a Spanish house in the style
+of cold, wintry England, you would be unable to breathe.&nbsp; A
+few chairs, tables, and mattresses are all that is required, with
+of course a good stock of bed-linen . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bring with you, therefore, your clothes, plenty of
+bed-linen, etc., half-a-dozen blankets, two dozen knives and
+forks, a mirror or two, twelve silver table spoons, and a large
+one for soup, tea things and urn (for the Spaniards never drink
+tea), a few books, but not many,&mdash;and you will have occasion
+for nothing more, or, if you have, you can purchase it here as
+cheap as in England.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s ideas of domestic comfort were those of the old
+campaigner.&nbsp; For all that, he showed himself very thorough
+in the directions he gave as to how and where Mrs Clarke should
+book her passage and obtain &ldquo;a passport for yourself and
+Hen.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Henrietta her daughter, now nearly twenty
+years of age), and the warning he gave that no attempt should be
+made to go ashore at Lisbon, &ldquo;a very dangerous
+place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On 7th June Mrs Clarke and her daughter Henrietta sailed from
+London on board the steam-packet <i>Royal Tar</i> bound for
+Cadiz, where they arrived on the 16th, and, on the day following,
+entered into possession of their temporary home where Borrow was
+already installed, safe for the time from Mr Webb&rsquo;s
+Chancery bill.&nbsp; It was no doubt to Mrs and Miss Clarke that
+Borrow referred when he wrote to Mr Brandram <a
+name="citation301"></a><a href="#footnote301"
+class="citation">[301]</a> saying that &ldquo;two or three ladies
+of my acquaintance occasionally dispose of some [Testaments]
+amongst their friends, but they say that they experience some
+difficulty, the cry for Bibles being great.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow continued to reside at 7 Plazuela de la Pila Seca, and
+Mrs Clarke and Henrietta soon learned something of the
+vicissitudes and excitements of a missionary&rsquo;s life.&nbsp;
+On Sunday, 8th July, as Borrow &ldquo;happened to be reading the
+Liturgy,&rdquo; he received a visit from &ldquo;various
+<i>alguacils</i>, headed by the <i>Alcade del Barrio</i>, or
+headborough, who made a small seizure of Testaments and Gypsy
+Gospels which happened to be lying about.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation302"></a><a href="#footnote302"
+class="citation">[302]</a>&nbsp; This circumstance convinced
+Borrow of the good effect of his labours in and around
+Seville.</p>
+<p>The time had now arrived, however, when the whole of the
+smuggled Testaments had been disposed of, and there was no object
+in remaining longer in Seville, or in Spain for that
+matter.&nbsp; There were books at San Lucar that might without
+official opposition be shipped out of the country, and Borrow
+therefore determined to see what could be done towards
+distributing them among the Spanish residents on the Coast of
+Barbary.&nbsp; This done, he hoped to return to Spain and dispose
+of the 900 odd Testaments lying at Madrid.&nbsp; On 18th July he
+wrote to Mr Brandram:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I should wish to be permitted on my return
+from my present expedition to circulate some in La Mancha.&nbsp;
+The state of that province is truly horrible; it appears peopled
+partly with spectres and partly with demons.&nbsp; There is
+famine, and such famine; there is assassination and such
+unnatural assassination [another of Borrow&rsquo;s phrases that
+must have struck the Committee as odd].&nbsp; There you see
+soldiers and robbers, ghastly lepers and horrible and uncouth
+maimed and blind, exhibiting their terrible nakedness in the
+sun.&nbsp; I was prevented last year in carrying the Gospel
+amongst them.&nbsp; May I be more successful this.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Antonio had been dismissed, his master being &ldquo;compelled
+to send [him] back to Madrid . . . on account of his many
+irregularities,&rdquo; and in consequence it was alone, on the
+night of 31st July, that Borrow set out upon his
+expedition.&nbsp; From Seville he took the steamer to Bonanza,
+from whence he drove to San Lucar, where he picked up a chest of
+New Testaments and a small box of St Luke&rsquo;s Gospel in
+Gitano, with a pass for them to Cadiz.&nbsp; It proved expensive,
+this claiming of his own property, for at every step there was
+some fee to be paid or gratuity to be given.&nbsp; The last
+payment was made to the Spanish Consul at Gibraltar, who claimed
+and received a dollar for certifying the arrival of books he had
+not seen.</p>
+<p>Borrow was instinctively a missionary, even a great
+missionary.&nbsp; At the Customs House of San Lucar some
+questions were asked about the books contained in the cases, and
+he seized the occasion to hold an informal missionary meeting,
+with the officials clustered round him listening to his
+discourse.&nbsp; One of the cases had to be opened for
+inspection, and the upshot of it was that, to the very officials
+whose duty it was to see that the books were not distributed in
+Spain, Borrow sold a number of copies, not only of the Spanish
+Testament, but of the Gypsy St Luke.&nbsp; Such was the power of
+his personality and the force of his eloquence.</p>
+<p>From San Lucar Borrow returned to Bonanza and again took the
+boat, which landed him at Cadiz, where he was hospitably
+entertained by Mr Brackenbury, the British Consul, who gave him a
+letter of introduction to Mr Drummond Hay, the Consul-General at
+Tangier.&nbsp; On 4th August he proceeded to Gibraltar.&nbsp; It
+was not until the 8th, however, that he was able to cross to
+Tangier, where he was kindly received by Mr Hay, who found for
+him a very comfortable lodging.</p>
+<p>Taking the Consul&rsquo;s advice, Borrow proceeded with
+extreme caution.&nbsp; For the first fortnight of his stay he
+made no effort to distribute his Testaments, contenting himself
+with studying the town and its inhabitants, occasionally speaking
+to the Christians in the place (principally Spanish and Genoese
+sailors and their families) about religious matters, but always
+with the greatest caution lest the two or three friars, who
+resided at what was known as the Spanish Convent, should become
+alarmed.&nbsp; Again Borrow obtained the services of a curious
+assistant, a Jewish lad named Hayim Ben Attar, who carried the
+Testaments to the people&rsquo;s houses and offered them for
+sale, and this with considerable success.&nbsp; On 4th September
+Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The blessed book is now in the hands of
+most of the Christians of Tangier, from the lowest to the
+highest, from the fisherman to the consul.&nbsp; One dozen and a
+half were carried to Tetuan on speculation, a town about six
+leagues from hence; they will be offered to the Christians who
+reside there.&nbsp; Other two dozen are on their way to distant
+Mogadore.&nbsp; One individual, a tavern keeper, has purchased
+Testaments to the number of thirty, which he says he has no doubt
+he can dispose of to the foreign sailors who stop occasionally at
+his house.&nbsp; You will be surprised to hear that several
+amongst the Jews have purchased copies of the New Testament with
+the intention, as they state, of improving themselves in Spanish,
+but I believe from curiosity.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>During his stay in Tangier, Borrow had some trouble with the
+British Vice-Consul, who seems to have made himself extremely
+offensive with his persistent offers of service.&nbsp; His face
+was &ldquo;purple and blue&rdquo; and in whose blood-shot eyes
+there was an expression &ldquo;much like that of a departed tunny
+fish or salmon,&rdquo; and he became so great an annoyance that
+Borrow made a complaint to Mr Drummond Hay.&nbsp; This is one of
+the few instances of Borrow&rsquo;s experiencing difficulty with
+any British official, for, as a rule, he was extremely
+popular.&nbsp; In this particular instance, however, the
+Vice-Consul was so obviously seeking to make profit out of his
+official position, that there was no other means open to Borrow
+than to make a formal complaint.</p>
+<p>In the case of Mr Drummond Hay, he obtained the friendship of
+a &ldquo;true British gentleman.&rdquo;&nbsp; At first the Consul
+had been reserved and distant, and apparently by no means
+inclined to render Borrow any service in the furtherance of his
+mission; but a few days sufficed to bring him under the influence
+of Borrow&rsquo;s personal magnetism, and he ended by assuring
+him that he would be happy to receive the Society&rsquo;s
+commands, and would render all possible assistance, officially or
+otherwise, to the distribution of the Scriptures &ldquo;in Fez or
+Morocco.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow was thoroughly satisfied with the result of his five
+weeks&rsquo; stay in Tangier.&nbsp; He reached Cadiz on his way
+to Seville on 21st Sept., after undergoing a four days&rsquo;
+quarantine at Tarifa, when he wrote to Mr Brandram (29th
+Sept.):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am very glad that I went to Tangier, for
+many reasons.&nbsp; In the first place, I was permitted to
+circulate many copies of God&rsquo;s Word both among the Jews and
+the Christians, by the latter of whom it was particularly wanted,
+their ignorance of the most vital points of religion being truly
+horrible.&nbsp; In the second place, I acquired a vast stock of
+information concerning Africa and the state of its
+interior.&nbsp; One of my principal Associates was a black slave
+whose country was only three days&rsquo; journey from Timbuctoo,
+which place he had frequently visited.&nbsp; The Soos men also
+told me many of the secrets of the land of wonders from which
+they come, and the Rabbis from Fez and Morocco were no less
+communicative.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow had started upon his expedition to the Barbary Coast
+without any definite instructions from Earl Street.&nbsp; On 29th
+July the Sub-Committee had resolved that as his mission to Spain
+was &ldquo;nearly attained by the disposal of the larger part of
+the Spanish Scriptures which he went out to distribute,&rdquo;
+the General Committee be recommended to request him to take
+measures for selling or placing in safe custody all copies
+remaining on hand and returning to England &ldquo;without loss of
+time.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was adopted on 5th Aug.; but before it
+received the formal sanction of the General Committee Mr Browne
+had written (29th July) to Borrow acquainting him with the
+feeling of the Sub-Committee, thinking that he ought to have
+early intimation of what was taking place.&nbsp; This letter
+Borrow found awaiting him at Cadiz on his return from
+Tangier.&nbsp; He replied immediately (21st Sept.):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Had I been aware of that resolution before
+my departure for Tangier I certainly should not have gone; my
+expedition, however, was the result of much reflection.&nbsp; I
+wished to carry the Gospel to the Christians of the Barbary
+shore, who were much in want of it; and I had one hundred and
+thirty Testaments at San Lucar, which I could only make available
+by exportation.&nbsp; The success which it has pleased the Lord
+to yield me in my humble efforts at distribution in Barbary will,
+I believe, prove the best criterion as to the fitness of the
+enterprise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I stated in my last communication to Mr Brandram the
+plan which I conceived to be the best for circulating that
+portion of the edition of the New Testament which remains unsold
+at Madrid, and I scarcely needed a stimulant in the execution of
+my duty.&nbsp; At present, however, I know not what to do; I am
+sorrowful, disappointed and unstrung.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish to return to England as soon as possible; but I
+have books and papers at Madrid which are of much importance to
+me and which I cannot abandon, this perhaps alone prevents me
+embarking in the next packet.&nbsp; I have, moreover, brought
+with me from Tangier the Jewish youth [Hayim Ben Attar], who so
+powerfully assisted me in that place in the work of
+distribution.&nbsp; I had hoped to have made him of service in
+Spain, he is virtuous and clever . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am almost tempted to ask whether some strange, some
+unaccountable delusion does not exist: what should induce me to
+stay in Spain, as you appear to suppose I intend?&nbsp; I may,
+however, have misunderstood you.&nbsp; I wish to receive a fresh
+communication as soon as possible, either from yourself or Mr
+Brandram; in the meantime I shall go to Seville, to which place
+and to the usual number pray direct.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It would appear that the Bible Society had become aware of
+Borrow&rsquo;s <i>m&eacute;nage</i> at Seville, and concluded
+that he meant to take up his abode in Spain more or less
+permanently.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s next plan was to order a chest of Testaments to
+be sent to La Mancha, where he had friends, then to mount his
+horse and proceed there in person.&nbsp; With the assistance of
+his Jewish body-servant he hoped to circulate many copies before
+the authorities became aware of his presence.&nbsp; Later he
+would proceed to Madrid, put his affairs in order, and make for
+France by way of Saragossa (where he hoped to accomplish some
+good), and then&mdash;home.</p>
+<p>In September a circular signed by Lord Palmerston was received
+by all the British Consuls in Spain, strictly forbidding them
+&ldquo;to afford the slightest countenance to religious agents.
+<a name="citation307a"></a><a href="#footnote307a"
+class="citation">[307a]</a>&nbsp; What was the cause of this last
+blow?&rdquo; <a name="citation307b"></a><a href="#footnote307b"
+class="citation">[307b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow rather unfortunately
+enquired of Mr Brandram.&nbsp; The Consul at Cadiz, Mr
+Brackenbury, explained it, according to Borrow, as due to
+&ldquo;an ill-advised application made to his Lordship to
+interfere with the Spanish Government on behalf of a certain
+individual <a name="citation307c"></a><a href="#footnote307c"
+class="citation">[307c]</a> [Lieut. Graydon] whose line of
+conduct needs no comment.&rdquo; <a name="citation307d"></a><a
+href="#footnote307d" class="citation">[307d]</a>&nbsp; After
+pointing out that once the same consuls had received from a
+British Ambassador instructions to further, in their official
+capacity, the work of the Bible Society, he concludes with the
+following remark, as ill-advised as it is droll: &ldquo;When dead
+flies fall into the ointment of the apothecary they cause it to
+send forth an unpleasant savour.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation308a"></a><a href="#footnote308a"
+class="citation">[308a]</a></p>
+<p>It must have been obvious to both Borrow and Mr Brandram that
+matters were rapidly approaching a crisis.&nbsp; Mr Brandram
+seems to have been almost openly hostile, and draws
+Borrow&rsquo;s attention to the fact that after all his
+distributions have been small.&nbsp; Borrow replies by saying
+that the fault did not rest with him.&nbsp; Had he been able to
+offer Bibles instead of Testaments for sale, the circulation
+would have been ten times greater.&nbsp; He expresses it as his
+belief that had he received 20,000 Bibles he could have sold them
+all in Madrid during the Spring of 1839.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When the Bible Society has no further
+occasion for my poor labours,&rdquo; he wrote <a
+name="citation308b"></a><a href="#footnote308b"
+class="citation">[308b]</a> somewhat pathetically, &ldquo;I hope
+it will do me justice to the world.&nbsp; I have been its
+faithful and zealous servant.&nbsp; I shall on a future occasion
+take the liberty of addressing you as a friend respecting my
+prospects.&nbsp; I have the materials of a curious book of
+travels in Spain; I have enough metrical translations from all
+languages, especially the Celtic and Sclavonic, to fill a dozen
+volumes; and I have formed a vocabulary of the Spanish Gypsy
+tongue, and also a collection of the songs and poetry of the
+Gitanos, with introductory essays.&nbsp; Perhaps some of these
+literary labours might be turned to account.&nbsp; I wish to
+obtain honourably and respectably the means of visiting China or
+particular parts of Africa.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is clear from this that Borrow saw how unlikely it was that
+his association with the Bible Society would be prolonged beyond
+the present commission.&nbsp; For one thing Spain was, to all
+intents and purposes, closed to the unannotated Scriptures.&nbsp;
+Something might be done in the matter of surreptitious
+distribution; but that had its clearly defined limitations, as
+the authorities were very much alive to the danger of the light
+that Borrow sought to cast over the gloom of ignorance and
+superstition.</p>
+<p>At Earl Street it was clearly recognised that Borrow&rsquo;s
+work in Spain was concluded.&nbsp; On 1st November the
+Sub-Committee resolved that it could &ldquo;not recommend to the
+General Committee to engage the further services of Mr Borrow
+until he shall have returned to this country from his Mission in
+Spain.&rdquo;&nbsp; Again, on 10th January following, it
+recommends the General Committee to recall him &ldquo;without
+further delay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Although he had been officially recalled, nothing was further
+from Borrow&rsquo;s intentions than to retire meekly from the
+field.&nbsp; He intended to retreat with drums sounding and
+colours flying, fighting something more than a rearguard
+action.&nbsp; This man&rsquo;s energy and resource were
+terrible&mdash;to the authorities!&nbsp; Seville he felt was
+still a fruitful ground, and sending to Madrid for further
+supplies of Testaments, he commenced operations.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Everything was accomplished with the utmost secrecy, and
+the blessed books obtained considerable circulation.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation309"></a><a href="#footnote309"
+class="citation">[309]</a>&nbsp; Agents were sent into the
+country and he went also himself, &ldquo;in my accustomed
+manner,&rdquo; until all the copies that had arrived from the
+capital were put into circulation.&nbsp; He then rested for a
+while, being in need of quiet, as he was indisposed.</p>
+<p>By this action Borrow was incurring no little risk.&nbsp; The
+Canons of the Cathedral watched him closely.&nbsp; Their hatred
+amounted &ldquo;almost to a frenzy,&rdquo; and Borrow states that
+scarcely a day passed without some accusation of other being made
+to the Civil Governor, all of which were false.&nbsp; People whom
+he had never seen were persuaded to perjure themselves by
+swearing that he had sold or given them books.&nbsp; The same
+system was carried on whilst he was in Africa, because the
+authorities refused to believe that he was out of Spain.</p>
+<p>There now occurred another regrettable incident, and Borrow
+once more suffered for the indiscretion of those whom he neither
+knew nor controlled.&nbsp; To Mr Brandram he wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Some English people now came to Seville and
+distributed tracts in a very unguarded manner, knowing nothing of
+the country or the inhabitants.&nbsp; They were even so unwise as
+<i>to give tracts instead of money on visiting public
+buildings</i>, <i>etc.</i> [!].&nbsp; These persons came to me
+and requested my co&ouml;peration and advice, and likewise
+introductions to people spiritually disposed amongst the
+Spaniards, to all which requests I returned a decided
+negative.&nbsp; But I foresaw all.&nbsp; In a day or two I was
+summoned before the Civil Governor, or, as he was once called,
+the <i>Corregidor</i>, of Seville, who, I must say, treated me
+with the utmost politeness and indeed respect; but at the same
+time he informed me that he had (to use his own expression)
+terrible orders from Madrid concerning me if I should be
+discovered in the act of distributing the Scriptures or any
+writings of a religious tendency; he then taxed me with having
+circulated both lately, especially tracts; whereupon I told him
+that I had never distributed a tract since I had been in Spain
+nor had any intention of doing so.&nbsp; We had much conversation
+and parted in kindness.&rdquo; <a name="citation310"></a><a
+href="#footnote310" class="citation">[310]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>For a few days nothing happened; then, determined to set out
+on an expedition to La Mancha (the delay had been due to the
+insecure state of the roads), Borrow sent his passport (24th
+Nov.) for signature to the <i>Alcalde del Barrio</i>.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;This fellow,&rdquo; Borrow informs Mr
+Brandram, &ldquo;is the greatest ruffian in Seville, and I have
+on various occasions been insulted by him; he pretends to be a
+liberal, but he is of no principle at all, and as I reside within
+his district he has been employed by the Canons of the Cathedral
+to vex and harrass me on every possible occasion.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the following letter, addressed to the British
+<i>Charg&eacute; d&rsquo;Affaires</i> (the Hon. G. S. S.
+Jerningham), Borrow gives a full account of what transpired
+between him and the <i>Alcalde</i> of Seville:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>I beg leave to lay before you the following statement of
+certain facts which lately occurred at Seville, from which you
+will perceive that the person of a British Subject has been
+atrociously outraged, the rights and privileges of a foreigner in
+Spain violated, and the sanctuary of a private house invaded
+without the slightest reason or shadow of authority by a person
+in the employ of the Spanish Government.</p>
+<p>For some months past I have been a resident at Seville in a
+house situated in a square called the &ldquo;Plazuela de la Pila
+Seca.&rdquo;&nbsp; In this house I possess apartments, the
+remainder being occupied by an English Lady and her daughter, the
+former of whom is the widow of an officer of the highest
+respectability who died in the naval service of Great
+Britain.&nbsp; On the twenty-fourth of last November, I sent a
+servant, a Native of Spain, to the Office of the
+&ldquo;<i>Ayuntamiento</i>&rdquo; of Seville for the purpose of
+demanding my passport, it being my intention to set out the next
+day for Cordoba.&nbsp; The &ldquo;<i>Ayuntamiento</i>&rdquo;
+returned for answer that it was necessary that the ticket of
+residence (<i>Billete de residencia</i>) which I had received on
+sending in the Passport should be signed by the <i>Alcalde</i> of
+the district in which I resided, to which intimation I instantly
+attended.&nbsp; I will here take the liberty of observing that on
+several occasions during my residence at Seville, I have
+experienced gross insults from this <i>Alcalde</i>, and that more
+than once when I have had occasion to leave the Town, he has
+refused to sign the necessary document for the recovery of the
+passport; he now again refused to do so, and used coarse language
+to the Messenger; whereupon I sent the latter back with money to
+pay any fees, lawful or unlawful, which might be demanded, as I
+wished to avoid noise and the necessity of applying to the
+Consul, Mr Williams; but the fellow became only more
+outrageous.&nbsp; I then went myself to demand an explanation,
+and was saluted with no inconsiderable quantity of abuse.&nbsp; I
+told him that if he proceeded in this manner I would make a
+complaint to the Authorities through the British Consul.&nbsp; He
+then said if I did not instantly depart he would drag me off to
+prison and cause me to be knocked down if I made the slightest
+resistance.&nbsp; I dared him repeatedly to do both, and said
+that he was a disgrace to the Government which employed him, and
+to human nature.&nbsp; He called me a vile foreigner.&nbsp; We
+were now in the street and a mob had collected, whereupon I
+cried: &ldquo;Viva Inglaterra y viva la
+Constitucion.&rdquo;&nbsp; The populace remained quiet,
+notwithstanding the exhortations of the <i>Alcalde</i> that they
+would knock down &ldquo;the foreigner,&rdquo; for he himself
+quailed before me as I looked him in the face, defying him.&nbsp;
+At length he exclaimed, with the usual obscene Spanish oath,
+&ldquo;I will make you lower your head&rdquo; (Yo te har&eacute;
+abajar la cabeza), and ran to a neighbouring guard-house and
+requested the assistance of the Nationals in conducting me to
+prison.&nbsp; I followed him and delivered myself up at the first
+summons, and walked to the prison without uttering a word; not so
+the <i>Alcalde</i>, who continued his abuse until we arrived at
+the gate, repeatedly threatening to have me knocked down if I
+moved to the right or left.</p>
+<p>I was asked my name by the Authorities of the prison, which I
+refused to give unless in the presence of the Consul of my
+Nation, and indeed to answer any questions.&nbsp; I was then
+ordered to the <i>Patio</i>, or Courtyard, where are kept the
+lowest thieves and assassins of Seville, who, having no money,
+cannot pay for better accommodation, and by whom I should have
+been stripped naked in a moment as a matter of course, as they
+are all in a state of raging hunger and utter destitution.&nbsp;
+I asked for a private cell, which I was told I might have if I
+could pay for it.&nbsp; I stated my willingness to pay anything
+which might be demanded, and was conducted to an upper ward
+consisting of several cells and a corridor; here I found six or
+seven Prisoners, who received me very civilly, and instantly
+procured me paper and ink for the purpose of writing to the
+Consul.&nbsp; In less than an hour Mr Williams arrived and I told
+him my story, whereupon he instantly departed in order to demand
+redress of the Authorities.&nbsp; The next morning the
+<i>Alcalde</i>, without any authority from the Political [Civil]
+Governor of Seville, and unaccompanied by the English Consul, as
+the law requires in such cases, and solely attended by a common
+<i>Escribano</i>, went to the house in which I was accustomed to
+reside and demanded admission.&nbsp; The door was opened by my
+Moorish Servant, Hayim Ben-Attar, whom he commanded instantly to
+show the way to my apartments.&nbsp; On the Servant&rsquo;s
+demanding by what authority he came, he said, &ldquo;Cease
+chattering&rdquo; (Deje cuentos), &ldquo;I shall give no account
+to you; show me the way; if not, I will take you to prison as I
+did your master: I come to search for prohibited
+books.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Moor, who being in a strange land was
+somewhat intimidated, complied and led him to the rooms occupied
+by me, when the <i>Alcalde</i> flung about my books and papers,
+finding nothing which could in the slightest degree justify his
+search, the few books being all either in Hebrew or Arabic
+character (they consisted of the Mitchna and some commentaries on
+the Coran); he at last took up a large knife which lay on a chair
+and which I myself purchased some months previous at Santa Cruz
+in La Mancha as a curiosity&mdash;the place being famous for
+those knives&mdash;and expressed his determination to take it
+away as a prohibited article.&nbsp; The <i>Escribano</i>,
+however, cautioned him against doing so, and he flung it
+down.&nbsp; He now became very vociferous and attempted to force
+his way into some apartments occupied by the Ladies, my friends;
+but soon desisted and at last went away, after using some
+threatening words to my Moorish Servant.&nbsp; Late at night of
+the second day of my imprisonment, I was set at liberty by virtue
+of an order of the Captain General, given on application of the
+British Consul, after having been for thirty hours imprisoned
+amongst the worst felons of Andalusia, though to do them justice
+I must say that I experienced from them nothing but kindness and
+hospitality.</p>
+<p>The above, Sir, is the correct statement of the affair which
+has now brought me to Madrid.&nbsp; What could have induced the
+<i>Alcalde</i> in question to practise such atrocious behaviour
+towards me I am at a loss to conjecture, unless he were
+instigated by certain enemies which I possess in Seville.&nbsp;
+However this may be, I now call upon you, as the Representative
+of the Government of which I am a Subject, to demand of the
+Minister of the Spanish Crown full and ample satisfaction for the
+various outrages detailed above.&nbsp; In conclusion, I must be
+permitted to add that I will submit to no compromise, but will
+never cease to claim justice until the culprit has received
+condign punishment.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">I am, etc., etc., etc.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Madrid</span> (no date).</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">Recorded 6th December [1839].&rdquo;
+<a name="citation313"></a><a href="#footnote313"
+class="citation">[313]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thus it happened that on 19th December Mr Brandram received
+the following letter:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Prison of Seville</span>, 25<i>th</i> <i>Nov.</i>
+1839.</p>
+<p>I write these lines, as you see, from the common prison of
+Seville, to which I was led yesterday, or rather dragged, neither
+for murder nor robbery nor debt, but simply for having
+endeavoured to obtain a passport for Cordoba, to which place I
+was going with my Jewish servant Hayim Ben-Attar.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>When questioned by the Vice-Consul as to his authority for
+searching Borrow&rsquo;s house, the <i>Alcalde</i> produced a
+paper purporting to be the deposition of an old woman to whom
+Borrow was alleged to have sold a Testament some ten days
+previously.&nbsp; The document Borrow pronounced a forgery and
+the statement untrue.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s fellow-prisoners treated him with unbounded
+kindness and hospitality, and he was forced to confess that he
+had &ldquo;never found himself amongst more quiet and
+well-behaved men.&rdquo;&nbsp; Nothing shows more clearly the
+power of Borrow&rsquo;s personality over rogues and vagabonds
+than the two periods spent in Spanish prisons&mdash;at Madrid and
+at Seville.&nbsp; Mr Brandram must have shuddered when he read
+Borrow&rsquo;s letter telling him by what manner of men he was
+surrounded.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;What is their history?&rdquo; he writes
+apropos of his fellow-prisoners.&nbsp; &ldquo;The handsome
+black-haired man, who is now looking over my shoulder, is the
+celebrated thief, Pelacio, the most expert housebreaker and
+dexterous swindler in Spain&mdash;in a word, the modern Guzman
+D&rsquo;alfarache.&nbsp; The brawny man who sits by the
+<i>brasero</i> of charcoal is Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda,
+who has committed a hundred murders.&nbsp; A fashionably dressed
+man, short and slight in person, is walking about the room: he
+wears immense whiskers and mustachios; he is one of that most
+singular race the Jews of Spain; he is imprisoned for
+counterfeiting money.&nbsp; He is an atheist; but, like a true
+Jew, the name which he most hates is that of Christ.&nbsp; Yet he
+is so quiet and civil, and they are all so quiet and civil, and
+it is that which most horrifies me, for quietness and civility in
+them seems so unnatural.&rdquo; <a name="citation315"></a><a
+href="#footnote315" class="citation">[315]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Such were the men who fraternised with an agent of a religious
+society and showed him not only civility but hospitality and
+kindness.&nbsp; It is open to question if they would have shown
+the same to any other unfortunate missionary.&nbsp; In all
+probability they recognised a fellow-vagabond, who was at much at
+issue with the social conventions of communities as they were
+with the laws of property.</p>
+<p>On this occasion the period of Borrow&rsquo;s imprisonment was
+brief.&nbsp; He was released late at night on 25th Nov., within
+thirty hours of his arrest, and he immediately set to work to
+think out a plan by which he could once more discomfit the
+Spanish authorities for this indignity to a British
+subject.&nbsp; He would proceed to Madrid without delay and put
+his case before the British Minister, at the same time he would
+&ldquo;make preparations for leaving Spain as soon as
+possible.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX<br />
+DECEMBER 1839&ndash;MAY 1840</h2>
+<p>It was probably about this time (1839) that</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The Marqu&eacute;s de Santa Coloma met
+Borrow again at Seville.&nbsp; He had great difficulty in finding
+him out; though he was aware of the street in which he resided,
+no one knew him by name.&nbsp; At last, by dint of inquiry and
+description, some one exclaimed, &lsquo;Oh! you mean el
+Brujo&rsquo; (the wizard), and he was directed to the
+house.&nbsp; He was admitted with great caution, and conducted
+through a lot of passages and stairs, till at last he was ushered
+into a handsomely furnished apartment in the
+&lsquo;<i>mirador</i>,&rsquo; where Borrow was living <i>with his
+wife and daughter</i>. . .&nbsp; It is evident . . . that, to his
+Spanish friends at least, he thus called Mrs Clarke and her
+daughter Henrietta his wife and daughter: and the Marqu&eacute;s
+de Santa Coloma evidently believed that the young lady was
+Borrow&rsquo;s <i>own</i> daughter, and not his step-daughter
+merely (!).&nbsp; At the time the roads from Seville to Madrid
+were very unsafe.&nbsp; Santa Coloma wished Borrow to join his
+party, who were going well armed.&nbsp; Borrow said he would be
+safe with his Gypsies.&nbsp; Both arrived without accident in
+Madrid; the Marqu&eacute;s&rsquo;s party first.&nbsp; Borrow, on
+his arrival, told Santa Coloma that his Gypsy chief had led him
+by by-paths and mountains; that they had not slept in a village,
+nor seen a town the whole way.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation316"></a><a href="#footnote316"
+class="citation">[316]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It must be confessed that Mr Webster was none too reliable a
+witness, and it seems highly improbable that Borrow would wish to
+pass Mrs Clarke off as his wife before their marriage.&nbsp; The
+fact of their occupying the same house may have seemed to their
+Spanish friends compromising, as it unquestionably was; but had
+he spoken of Mrs Clarke as his wife, it would have left her not a
+vestige of reputation.</p>
+<p>On arriving at Madrid Borrow found that Lord Clarendon&rsquo;s
+successor, Mr Arthur Aston, had not yet arrived, he therefore
+presented his complaint to the <i>Charg&eacute;
+d&rsquo;Affaires</i>, the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham, who had
+succeeded Mr Sothern as private secretary.&nbsp; Mr Sothern had
+not yet left Madrid to take up his new post as First Secretary at
+Lisbon, and therefore presented Borrow to Mr Jerningham, by whom
+he was received with great kindness.&nbsp; He assured Mr
+Jerningham that for some time past he had given up distributing
+the Scriptures in Spain, and he merely claimed the privileges of
+a British subject and the protection of his Government.&nbsp; The
+First Secretary took up the case immediately, forwarding
+Borrow&rsquo;s letter to Don Perez de Castro with a request for
+&ldquo;proper steps to be taken, should Mr Borrow&rsquo;s
+complaint . . . be considered by His Excellency as properly
+founded.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow himself was doubtful as to whether
+he would obtain justice, &ldquo;for I have against me,&rdquo; he
+wrote to Mr Brandram (24th December), &ldquo;the Canons of
+Seville; and all the arts of villany which they are so accustomed
+to practise will of course be used against me for the purpose of
+screening the ruffian who is their instrument. . . .&nbsp; I have
+been, my dear Sir, fighting with wild beasts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The rather quaint reply to Borrow&rsquo;s charges was not
+forthcoming until he had left Spain and was living at
+Oulton.&nbsp; It runs: <a name="citation317"></a><a
+href="#footnote317" class="citation">[317]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Madrid</span>, 11<i>th</i> <i>May</i> 1840.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>Under date of 20th December last, Mr Perez de Castro informed
+Mr Jerningham that in order to answer satisfactorily his note of
+8th December <i>re</i> complaint made by Borrow, he required a
+faithful report to be made.&nbsp; These have been stated by the
+Municipality of Seville to the Civil Governor of that City, and
+are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When Borrow meant to undertake his journey to Cadiz
+towards the end of last year, he applied to the section of public
+security for his Passport, for which purpose he ought to deliver
+his paper of residence which was given to him when he arrived at
+Seville.&nbsp; That paper he had not presented in its proper time
+to the <i>Alcalde</i> of his district, on which account this
+person had not been acquainted as he ought with his residence in
+the district, and as his Passport could not be issued in
+consequence of this document not being in order, Borrow
+addressed, through the medium of a Servant, to the house of the
+said district <i>Alcalde</i> that the defect might be
+remedied.&nbsp; That functionary refused to do so, founded on the
+reasons already stated; and for the purpose of overcoming his
+resistance he was offered a gratification, the Servant with that
+intent presenting half a dollar.&nbsp; The <i>Alcalde</i>, justly
+indignant, left his house to make the necessary complaint
+respecting their indecorous action when he met Borrow, who,
+surprised at the refusal of the <i>Alcalde</i>, expressed to him
+his astonishment, addressing insulting expressions not only
+against his person but against the authorities of Spain, who, he
+said, he was sure were to be bought at a very small
+price&mdash;crying on after this, Long live the Constitution,
+Death to the Religion, and Long live England.&nbsp; These and
+other insults gave rise to the <i>Alcalde</i> proceeding to his
+arrest and the assistance of the armed force of Veterans, and not
+of the National Militia, as Borrow supposed, making a detailed
+report to the Constitutional <i>Alcalde</i>, who forwarded it
+original to the Captain General of the Province as Judge
+Protector of Foreigners, leaving him under detention at his
+disposition.&nbsp; He did the same with another report
+transmitted by the said functionary, in which reference to a Lady
+who lived at the Gate of Xerez; he denounced Borrow as a seducer
+of youth in matters of Religion by facilitating to them the
+perusal of prohibited books, of which a copy, that was in the
+hands of the Ecclesiastical Governor, was likewise transmitted to
+the Captain General.&nbsp; These antecedents were sufficient to
+have authorised a summary to have been formed against Borrow, but
+the repeated supplications of the British Vice-Consul, Mr
+Williams, who among other things stated that Borrow laboured
+under fits of madness, had the effect of causing the above
+Constitutional <i>Alcalde</i> to forgive him the fault committed
+and recommend to the Captain General that the matter should be
+dropped, which was acceded to, and he was put at liberty.&nbsp;
+The above facts, official proofs of which exist in the Captain
+General&rsquo;s Office, clearly disprove the statement of Borrow,
+who ungrateful for the generous hospitality which he has
+received, and for the consideration displayed towards him on
+account of his infirmity, and out of deference to the request of
+the British Vice-Consul, makes an unfounded complaint against the
+very authorities who have used attentions towards him which he is
+certainly not deserving; it being worthy of remark, in order to
+prove the bad faith of his procedure, that in his own
+<i>expos&eacute;</i>, although he disfigures facts at pleasure,
+using a language little decorous, he confesses part of his
+faults, such as the offering of money <i>to pay</i>, as he says,
+&lsquo;<i>the legal or extra-legal dues that might be
+exacted</i>, and his having twice challenged the
+<i>Alcalde</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should consider myself wanting towards your
+enlightened sense of justice if, after the reasons given, I
+stopped to prove the just and prudent conduct of Seville
+authorities.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hope he will therefore be completely satisfied,
+especially after the want of exactitude on Borrow&rsquo;s
+part.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">From</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Evaristo Perez
+De Castro</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To Mr Aston. <a name="citation319"></a><a href="#footnote319"
+class="citation">[319]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And so the matter ended.&nbsp; The Spanish authorities knew
+that they no longer had a Sir George Villiers to deal with, and
+had recourse to that trump card of weak and vacillating
+diplomatists&mdash;delay.&nbsp; Whatever Borrow&rsquo;s offence,
+the method of his arrest and imprisonment was in itself
+unlawful.</p>
+<p>It was Borrow&rsquo;s intention on his return to England to
+endeavour to obtain an interview with some members of the House
+of Lords, in order to acquaint them with the manner in which
+Protestants were persecuted in Spain.&nbsp; They were debarred
+from the exercise of their religion from being married by
+Protestant rites, and the common privileges of burial were denied
+them.&nbsp; He was anxious for Protestant England, lest it should
+fall a victim to Popery.&nbsp; This fear of Rome was a very real
+one to Borrow.&nbsp; He marvelled at people&rsquo;s blindness to
+the danger that was threatening them, and he even went so far as
+to entreat his friends at Earl Street &ldquo;to drop all petty
+dissensions and to comport themselves like brothers&rdquo;
+against their common enemy the Pope.</p>
+<p>Unfortunately Borrow had shown to a number of friends one of
+his letters to Mr Brandram dealing with the Seville imprisonment,
+and had even allowed several copies of it to be taken &ldquo;in
+order that an incorrect account of the affair might not get
+abroad.&rdquo;&nbsp; The result was an article in a London
+newspaper containing remarks to the disparagement of other
+workers for the Gospel in Spain.&nbsp; Borrow disavowed all
+knowledge of these observations.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am not ashamed of the Methodists of
+Cadiz,&rdquo; he assures Mr Brandram, &ldquo;their conduct in
+many respects does them honor, nor do I accuse any one of
+fanaticism amongst our dear and worthy friends; but I cannot
+answer for the tittle-tattle of Madrid.&nbsp; Far be it from me
+to reflect upon any one, I am but too well aware of my own
+multitudinous imperfections and follies.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation320"></a><a href="#footnote320"
+class="citation">[320]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There is nothing more mysterious in Borrow&rsquo;s life than
+his years of friendship with Mrs Clarke.&nbsp; He was never a
+woman&rsquo;s man, but Mary Clarke seems to have awakened in him
+a very sincere regard.&nbsp; The m&eacute;nage at Seville was a
+curious one, and both Borrow and Mrs Clarke should have seen that
+it was calculated to make people talk.&nbsp; There may have been
+a tacit understanding between them.&nbsp; Everything connected
+with their relations and courtship is very mysterious.&nbsp; Dr
+Knapp is scarcely just to Borrow or gracious to the woman he
+married, when he implies that it was merely a business
+arrangement on both sides.&nbsp; Mrs Clarke&rsquo;s affairs
+required a man&rsquo;s hand to administer them, and Borrow was
+prepared to give the man&rsquo;s hand in exchange for an
+income.&nbsp; The engagement could scarcely have taken place in
+the middle of November 1839, as Dr Knapp states, for on the day
+of his arrest at Seville (24th Nov.) Borrow wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">My dear Mrs
+Clarke</span>,&mdash;Do not be alarmed, but I am at present in
+the prison, to which place the <i>Alcalde</i> del Barrio
+conducted me when I asked him to sign the Passport.&nbsp; If
+Phelipe is not already gone to the Consul, let Henrietta go now
+and show him this letter.&nbsp; When I asked the fellow his
+motives for not signing the Passport, he said if I did not go
+away he would carry me to prison.&nbsp; I dared him to do so, as
+I had done nothing; whereupon he led me here.&mdash;Yours
+truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This is obviously not the letter of a man recently engaged to
+the woman who is to become his wife.&nbsp; On the other hand,
+Borrow may have been writing merely for the Consul&rsquo;s
+eye.</p>
+<p>On hearing the news of the engagement old Mrs Borrow
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am not surprised, my dear Mrs Clarke, at
+what you tell me, though I knew nothing of it.&nbsp; It put me in
+mind of the Revd. Flethers; you know they took time to
+consider.&nbsp; So far all is well.&nbsp; I shall now resign him
+to your care, and may you love and cherish him as much as I have
+done.&nbsp; I hope and trust that each will try to make the other
+happy.&nbsp; You will always have my prayers and best
+wishes.&nbsp; Give my kind love to dear George and tell him he is
+never out of my thoughts.&nbsp; I have much to say, but I cannot
+write.&nbsp; I shall be glad to see you all safe and well.&nbsp;
+Give my love to Henrietta; tell her <i>I</i> can sing
+&lsquo;Gaily the Troubadour&rsquo;; I only want the
+&lsquo;guitar.&rsquo; <a name="citation321"></a><a
+href="#footnote321" class="citation">[321]</a> God bless you
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There is no doubt that a very strong friendship had existed
+between Mrs Clarke and Borrow during the whole time that he had
+been associated with the Bible Society.&nbsp; She it was who had
+been indirectly responsible for his introduction to Earl
+Street.&nbsp; It is idle to speculate what it was that led Mrs
+Clarke to select Seville as the place to which to fly from her
+enemies.&nbsp; There is, however, a marked significance in old
+Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;I am not surprised, my dear Mrs
+Clarke, at what you tell me.&rdquo;&nbsp; Whatever his mother may
+have seen, there appears to have been no thought of marriage in
+Borrow&rsquo;s mind when, on 29th September 1839, he wrote to Mr
+Brandram telling him of his wish to visit &ldquo;China or
+particular parts of Africa.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow paid many tributes to his wife, not only in his
+letters, but in print, every one of which she seems thoroughly to
+have merited.&nbsp; &ldquo;Of my wife,&rdquo; he writes, <a
+name="citation322"></a><a href="#footnote322"
+class="citation">[322]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;I will merely say that
+she is a perfect paragon of wives&mdash;can make puddings and
+sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in
+East Anglia.&rdquo;&nbsp; On another occasion he praises her for
+more general qualities, when he compares her to the good wife of
+the Triad, the perfect woman endowed with all the feminine
+virtues.&nbsp; His wife and &ldquo;old Hen.&rdquo; (Henrietta)
+were his &ldquo;two loved ones,&rdquo; and he subsequently shows
+in a score of ways how much they had become part of his life.</p>
+<p>After his return to Seville, early in January, Borrow
+proceeded to get his &ldquo;papers into some order.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+There seems no doubt that this meant preparing <i>The Zincali</i>
+for publication.&nbsp; In the excitement and enthusiasm of
+authorship, and the pleasant company of Mrs and Miss Clarke, he
+seems to have been divinely unconscious that he was under orders
+to proceed home.&nbsp; Week after week passed without news of
+their Agent in Spain reaching Earl Street, and the Officials and
+Committee of the Bible Society became troubled to account for his
+non-appearance.&nbsp; The last letter from him had been received
+on 13th January.&nbsp; Early in March Mr Jackson wrote to Mr
+Brackenbury asking for news of him.&nbsp; A letter to Mr Williams
+at Seville was enclosed, which Mr Brackenbury had discretionary
+powers to withhold if he were able to supply the information
+himself.&nbsp; Two letters that Borrow had addressed to the
+Society it appears had gone astray, and as &ldquo;one steamer . .
+. arrived after another and yet no news from Mr Borrow,&rdquo;
+some apprehension began to manifest itself lest misfortune had
+befallen him.&nbsp; On the other hand, Borrow had heard nothing
+from the Society for five months, the long silence making him
+&ldquo;very, very unhappy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In reply to Mr Brandram&rsquo;s letter Borrow
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I did not return to England immediately
+after my departure from Madrid for several reasons.&nbsp; First,
+there was my affair with the <i>Alcalde</i> still pending;
+second, I wished to get my papers into some order; third, I
+wished to effect a little more in the cause, though not in the
+way of distribution, as I have no books: moreover the house in
+which I resided was paid for and I was unwilling altogether to
+lose the money; I likewise dreaded an English winter, for I have
+lately been subjected to attacks, whether of gout or rheumatism I
+know not, which I believe were brought on by sitting, standing
+and sleeping in damp places during my wanderings in Spain.&nbsp;
+The <i>Alcalde</i> has lately been turned out of his situation,
+but I believe more on account of his being a Carlist than for his
+behaviour to me; that, however, is of little consequence, as I
+have long forgotten the affair.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation323a"></a><a href="#footnote323a"
+class="citation">[323a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There was no longer any reason for delay; the English winter
+was over, he had one book nearly ready for publication and two
+others in a state of forwardness.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I embark on the third of next month
+[April],&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;and you will probably see me
+by the 16th.&nbsp; I wish very much to spend the remaining years
+of my life in the northern parts of China, as I think I have a
+call for those regions, and shall endeavour by every honourable
+means to effect my purpose.&rdquo; <a name="citation323b"></a><a
+href="#footnote323b" class="citation">[323b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These words would seem to imply that his marriage with Mrs
+Clarke was by no means decided upon at the date he wrote,
+although during the previous month he had been in correspondence
+with Mr Brackenbury regarding Protestants in Spain being debarred
+from marrying.&nbsp; It is inconceivable that Mrs Clarke and her
+daughter contemplated living in the North of China; and equally
+unlikely that Mrs Clarke would marry a potential &ldquo;absentee
+landlord,&rdquo; or one who frankly confessed &ldquo;I hope yet
+to die in the cause of my Redeemer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sidi Habismilk had at first presented a grave problem; but Mr
+Brackenbury, who secured the passages on the steamer, arranged
+also for the Arab to be slung aboard the Steam-Packet.&nbsp; On
+3rd April the whole party, including Hayim Ben Attar and Sidi
+Habismilk, boarded the <i>Royal Adelaide</i> bound for
+London.</p>
+<p>Borrow never forgave Spain for its treatment of him, although
+some of the happiest years of his life had been spent
+there.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Spaniards are a stupid, ungrateful set of
+ruffians,&rdquo; he afterwards wrote, &ldquo;and are utterly
+incapable of appreciating generosity or forbearance.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He piled up invective upon the unfortunate country.&nbsp; It was
+&ldquo;the chosen land of the two fiends&mdash;assassination and
+murder,&rdquo; where avarice and envy were the prevailing
+passions.&nbsp; It was the &ldquo;country of error&rdquo;; yet at
+the same time &ldquo;the land of extraordinary
+characters.&rdquo;&nbsp; As he saw its shores sinking beneath the
+horizon, he was mercifully denied the knowledge that never again
+was he to be so happily occupied as during the five years he had
+spent upon its soil distributing the Scriptures, and using a
+British Minister as a two-edged sword.</p>
+<p>The party arrived in London on 16th April and put up at the
+Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street.&nbsp; On 23rd April, at St
+Peter&rsquo;s Church in Cornhill, the wedding took place.&nbsp;
+There were present as witnesses only Henrietta Clarke and John
+Pilgrim, the Norwich solicitor.&nbsp; In the Register the names
+appear as:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;George Henry Borrow&mdash;of full
+age&mdash;bachelor&mdash;gentleman&mdash;of the City of
+Norwich&mdash;son of Thomas Borrow&mdash;Captain in the Army.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mary Clarke&mdash;of full age&mdash;widow&mdash;of
+Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street&mdash;daughter of Edmund
+Skepper&mdash;Esquire.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 2nd May an announcement of the marriage appeared in <i>The
+Norfolk Chronicle</i>.&nbsp; A few days later the party left for
+Oulton Cottage, and Borrow became a landed proprietor on a small
+scale in his much-loved East Anglia.</p>
+<p>On 21st April Mr Brandram had written to Borrow the following
+letter:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">My dear
+Friend</span>,&mdash;Your later communications have been referred
+to our Sub-Committee for General Purposes.&nbsp; After what you
+said yesterday in the Committee, I am hardly aware that anything
+can arise out of them.&nbsp; The door seems shut.&nbsp; The
+Sub-Committee meet on Friday.&nbsp; Will you wish to make any
+communications to them as to any ulterior views that may have
+occurred to yourself?&nbsp; I do not myself at present see any
+sphere open to which your services in connection with our Society
+can be transferred. . . . With best wishes&mdash;Believe
+me&mdash;Yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">A. <span
+class="smcap">Brandram</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 24th April, the day after Borrow&rsquo;s wedding, the
+Sub-Committee duly met and</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Resolved that, upon mature consideration,
+it does not appear to this Sub-Committee that there is, at
+present, any opening for employing Mr Borrow beneficially as an
+Agent of the Society . . . and that it be recommended to the
+General Committee that the salary of Mr Borrow be paid up to the
+10th June next.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Bible Society&rsquo;s valediction, which appeared in the
+Thirty-Sixth Annual Report, read:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;G. Borrow, Esq., one of the gentlemen
+referred to in former Reports as having so zealously exerted
+themselves on behalf of Spain, has just returned home, hopeless
+of further attempts at present to distribute the Scriptures in
+that country.&nbsp; Mr B. has succeeded, by almost incredible
+pains, and at no small cost and hazard, in selling during his
+last visit a few hundred copies of the Bible, and most that
+remained of the edition of the New Testament printed in
+Madrid.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Thus ended George Borrow&rsquo;s activities on behalf of the
+British and Foreign Bible Society, and incidentally the seven
+happiest and most active years of his life.&nbsp; On the whole
+the association had been honourable to all concerned.&nbsp; There
+had been moments of irritation and mistakes on both sides.&nbsp;
+It would be foolish to accuse the Society of deliberately
+planting obstacles in the path of its own agent; but the
+unfortunate championing of Lieutenant Graydon was the result of a
+very grave error of judgment.&nbsp; Borrow had no personal
+friends among the Committee, to whom the impetuous zeal of
+Graydon was more picturesque than the grave and deliberate
+caution of Borrow.&nbsp; The Officials and Committee alike saw in
+Graydon the ideal Reformer, rushing precipitately towards
+martyrdom, exposing Anti-Christ as he ran.&nbsp; Had Borrow been
+content to allow others to plead his cause, the history of his
+relations with the Bible Society would, in all probability, have
+been different.&nbsp; He felt himself a grievously injured man,
+who had suffered from what he considered to be the insane antics
+of another, and he was determined that Earl Street should know
+it.&nbsp; On the other hand, Mr Brandram does not appear to have
+understood Borrow.&nbsp; He made no attempt to humour him, to
+praise him for what he had done and the way in which he had done
+it.&nbsp; Praise was meat and drink to Borrow; it compensated him
+for what he had endured and encouraged him to further
+effort.&nbsp; He hungered for it, and when it did not come he
+grew discouraged and thought that those who employed him were not
+conscious of what he was suffering.&nbsp; Hence the long accounts
+of what he had undergone for the Gospel&rsquo;s sake.</p>
+<p>During his six years in Spain he had distributed nearly 5000
+copies of the New Testament and 500 Bibles, also some hundreds of
+the Basque and Gypsy Gospel of St Luke.&nbsp; These figures seem
+insignificant beside those of Lieut. Graydon, who, on one
+occasion, sold as many as 1082 volumes in fourteen days, and in
+two years printed 13,000 Testaments and 3000 Bibles, distributing
+the larger part of them.&nbsp; During the year 1837 he circulated
+altogether between five and six thousand books.&nbsp; But there
+was no comparison between the work of the two men.&nbsp; Graydon
+had kept to the towns and cities on the south coast;
+Borrow&rsquo;s methods were different.&nbsp; He circulated his
+books largely among villages and hamlets, where the population
+was sparse and the opportunities of distribution small.&nbsp; He
+had gone out into the highways, risking his life at every turn,
+penetrating into bandit-infested provinces in the throes of civil
+war, suffering incredible hardships and fatigues and, never
+sparing himself.&nbsp; Both men were earnest and eager; but the
+Bible Society favoured the wrong man&mdash;at least for its
+purposes.&nbsp; But for Lieut. Graydon, Borrow would in all
+probability have gone to China, and what a book he would have
+written, at least what letters, about the sealed East!</p>
+<p>Borrow, however, had nothing to complain of.&nbsp; He had
+found occupation when he badly needed it, which indirectly was to
+bring him fame.&nbsp; He had been well paid for his services
+(during the seven years of his employment he drew some
+&pound;2300 in salary and expenses), his &pound;200 a year and
+expenses (in Spain) comparing very favourably with Mr
+Brandram&rsquo;s &pound;300 a year.</p>
+<p>He was loyal to the Bible Society, both in word and
+thought.&nbsp; He honourably kept to himself the story of the
+Graydon dispute.&nbsp; He spoke of the Society with enthusiasm,
+exclaiming, &ldquo;Oh! the blood glows in his veins! oh! the
+marrow awakes in his old bones when he thinks of what he
+accomplished in Spain in the cause of religion and civilisation
+with the colours of that society in his hat.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation328a"></a><a href="#footnote328a"
+class="citation">[328a]</a>&nbsp; In spite of the
+misunderstandings and the rebukes he could write fourteen years
+later that he &ldquo;bade it adieu with feelings of love and
+admiration.&rdquo; <a name="citation328b"></a><a
+href="#footnote328b" class="citation">[328b]</a>&nbsp; He
+&ldquo;had done with Spain for ever, after doing for her all that
+lay in the power of a lone man, who had never in this world
+anything to depend upon, but God and his own slight
+strength.&rdquo; <a name="citation328c"></a><a
+href="#footnote328c" class="citation">[328c]</a>&nbsp; In the
+preface to <i>The Bible in Spain</i> he pays a handsome tribute
+to both Rule and Graydon, thus showing that although he was a
+good hater, he could be magnanimous.</p>
+<p>It has been stated that, during a portion of his association
+with the Bible Society, Borrow acted as a foreign correspondent
+for <i>The Morning Herald</i>.&nbsp; Dr Knapp has very
+satisfactorily disproved the statement, which the Rev. Wentworth
+Webster received from the Marqu&eacute;s de Santa Coloma.&nbsp;
+Either the Marqu&eacute;s or Mr Webster is responsible for the
+statement that Borrow was wrecked, instead of nearly wrecked, off
+Cape Finisterre.&nbsp; As the Marqu&eacute;s was a passenger on
+the boat, the mistake must be ascribed to Mr Webster.&nbsp; The
+further statement that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona by
+Quesada is scarcely more credible than that about the
+wreck.&nbsp; His imprisonment could not very well have taken
+place, as stated, in 1837&ndash;9, because General Quesada was
+killed in 1836.&nbsp; Mention is made of this foreign
+correspondent rumour only because it has been printed and
+reprinted.&nbsp; It may be that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona
+during the &ldquo;Veiled Period&rdquo;; there is certainly one
+imprisonment (according to his own statement) unaccounted
+for.&nbsp; It is curious how the fact first became impressed upon
+the Marqu&eacute;s&rsquo; mind, unless he had heard it from
+Borrow.&nbsp; It is quite likely that he confused the date.</p>
+<p>It would be interesting to identify the two men whom Borrow
+describes in <i>Lavengro</i> as being at the offices of the Bible
+Society in Earl Street, when he sought to exchange for a Bible
+the old Apple-woman&rsquo;s copy of <i>Moll Flanders</i>.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;One was dressed in brown,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;and the
+other was dressed in black; both were tall men&mdash;he who was
+dressed in brown was thin, and had a particularly ill-natured
+countenance; the man dressed in black was bulky, his features
+were noble, but they were those of a lion.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation329a"></a><a href="#footnote329a"
+class="citation">[329a]</a>&nbsp; Again, in <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>, he makes the man in black say with reference to the
+Bible Society:&mdash;&ldquo;There is one fellow amongst them for
+whom we entertain a particular aversion: a big, burly parson,
+with the face of a lion, the voice of a buffalo, and a fist like
+a sledge-hammer.&rdquo; <a name="citation329b"></a><a
+href="#footnote329b" class="citation">[329b]</a>&nbsp; Who these
+two worthies were it is impossible to say with any degree of
+certainty.&nbsp; Caroline Fox describes Andrew Brandram no
+further than that he &ldquo;appeared before us once more with his
+shaggy eyebrows.&rdquo; <a name="citation329c"></a><a
+href="#footnote329c" class="citation">[329c]</a>&nbsp; Mr
+Brandram was not thin and his countenance was not
+ill-natured.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI<br />
+MAY 1840&ndash;MARCH 1841</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Early</span> in May, Borrow, his wife and
+step-daughter left London to take up their residence at Oulton,
+in Suffolk.&nbsp; After years of wandering and vagabondage he was
+to settle down as a landed proprietor.&nbsp; His income, or
+rather his wife&rsquo;s, amounted to &pound;450 per annum, and he
+must have saved a considerable sum out of the &pound;2300 he had
+drawn from the Bible Society, as his mother appears to have
+regarded the amounts he had sent to her as held in trust.&nbsp;
+He was therefore able to instal himself, Sidi Habismilk and the
+Jew of Fez upon his wife&rsquo;s small estate, with every
+prospect of enjoying a period of comfort and rest after his many
+years of wandering and adventure.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p330b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Oulton Cottage.  Photo. C. Wilson, Lowestroft"
+title=
+"Oulton Cottage.  Photo. C. Wilson, Lowestroft"
+ src="images/p330s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Oulton Cottage was ideally situated on the margin of the
+Broad.&nbsp; It was a one-storied building, with a dormer-attic
+above, hanging &ldquo;over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl,
+and girt with dark firs, through which the wind sighs sadly. <a
+name="citation330a"></a><a href="#footnote330a"
+class="citation">[330a]</a>&nbsp; A regular Patmos, an <i>ultima
+Thule</i>; placed in an angle of the most unvisited,
+out-of-the-way portion of England.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation330b"></a><a href="#footnote330b"
+class="citation">[330b]</a>&nbsp; A few yards from the
+water&rsquo;s edge stood the famous octagonal Summer-house that
+Borrow made his study.&nbsp; Here he kept his books, a veritable
+&ldquo;polyglot gentleman&rsquo;s&rdquo; library, consisting of
+such literary &ldquo;tools&rdquo; as a Lav-engro might be
+expected to possess.&nbsp; There were also books of travel and
+adventure, some chairs, a lounge and a table; whilst behind the
+door hung the sword and regimental coat of the sleeping warrior
+to whom his younger son had been an affliction of the spirit,
+because his mind pursued paths that appeared so strangely
+perilous.</p>
+<p>Here in this Summer-house Borrow wrote his books.&nbsp; Here
+when &ldquo;sickness was in the land, and the face of nature was
+overcast&mdash;heavy rain-clouds swam in the heavens&mdash;the
+blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround the lonely
+dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so
+quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated,&rdquo;
+Borrow shouted, &ldquo;&lsquo;Bring lights hither, O Hayim Ben
+Attar, son of the miracle!&rsquo;&nbsp; And the Jew of Fez
+brought in the lights,&rdquo; <a name="citation331a"></a><a
+href="#footnote331a" class="citation">[331a]</a> and his master
+commenced writing a book that was to make him famous.&nbsp; When
+tired of writing, he would sometimes sing &ldquo;strange words in
+a stentorian voice, while passers-by on the lake would stop to
+listen with astonishment and curiosity to the singular
+sounds.&rdquo; <a name="citation331b"></a><a href="#footnote331b"
+class="citation">[331b]</a></p>
+<p>Life at Oulton Cottage was delightfully simple.&nbsp; Borrow
+was a good host.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am rather hospitable than
+otherwise,&rdquo; <a name="citation331c"></a><a
+href="#footnote331c" class="citation">[331c]</a> he wrote, and
+thoroughly disliked anything in the nature of meanness.&nbsp;
+There was always a bottle of wine of a rare vintage for the
+honoured guest.&nbsp; Sometimes the host himself would hasten
+away to the little Summer-house by the side of the Broad to muse,
+his eyes fixed upon the military coat and sword, or to scribble
+upon scraps of paper that, later, were to be transcribed by Mrs
+Borrow.&nbsp; Borrow would spend his evenings with his wife and
+Henrietta, generally in reading until bedtime.</p>
+<p>In the Norwich days Borrow had formed an acquaintance with
+another articled-clerk named Harvey (probably one of his
+colleagues at Tuck&rsquo;s Court).&nbsp; They had kindred tastes,
+in particular a love of the open air and vigorous exercise.&nbsp;
+After settling at Oulton, the Borrows and the Harveys (then
+living at Bury St Edmunds) became very intimate, and frequently
+visited each other.&nbsp; Elizabeth Harvey, the daughter of
+Borrow&rsquo;s contemporary, has given an extremely interesting
+account of the home life of the Borrows.&nbsp; She has described
+how sometimes Borrow would sing one of his Romany songs,
+&ldquo;shake his fist at me and look quite wild.&nbsp; Then he
+would ask: &lsquo;Aren&rsquo;t you afraid of me?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;No, not at all,&rsquo; I would say.&nbsp; Then he would
+look just as gentle and kind, and say, &lsquo;God bless you, I
+would not hurt a hair of your head.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation332a"></a><a href="#footnote332a"
+class="citation">[332a]</a></p>
+<p>Miss Harvey has also given us many glimpses into
+Borrow&rsquo;s character.&nbsp; &ldquo;He was very fond of ghost
+stories,&rdquo; she writes, &ldquo;and believed in the
+supernatural.&rdquo; <a name="citation332b"></a><a
+href="#footnote332b" class="citation">[332b]</a>&nbsp; He enjoyed
+music of a lively description, one of his favourite compositions
+being the well-known &ldquo;Redowa&rdquo; polka, which he would
+frequently ask to have played to him again.</p>
+<p>As an eater Borrow was very moderate, he &ldquo;took very
+little breakfast but ate a very great quantity of dinner, and
+then had only a draught of cold water before going to bed . .
+.&nbsp; He was very temperate and would eat what was set before
+him, often not thinking of what he was doing, and he never
+refused what was offered him.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation332c"></a><a href="#footnote332c"
+class="citation">[332c]</a>&nbsp; On one occasion when he was
+dining with the Harveys, young Harvey, seeing Borrow engrossed in
+telling of his travels, handed him dish after dish in rapid
+succession, from all of which he helped himself, entirely
+unconscious of what he was doing.&nbsp; Finally his plate was
+full to overflowing, perceiving which he became very angry, and
+it was some time before he could be appeased.&nbsp; A practical
+joke made no appeal to him. <a name="citation332d"></a><a
+href="#footnote332d" class="citation">[332d]</a></p>
+<p>Elizabeth Harvey also tells how, when a cousin of hers was
+staying at Cromer, the landlady went to her one day and said,
+&ldquo;O, Miss, there&rsquo;s such a curious gentleman
+been.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know what to think of him, I asked him
+what he would like for dinner, and he said, &lsquo;Give me a
+piece of flesh.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;What sort of gentleman
+was it?&rdquo; enquired the cousin, and on hearing the
+description recognised George Borrow, and explained that the
+strange visitor merely wanted a rump-steak, a favourite dish with
+him.</p>
+<p>As he did not shoot or hunt, he obtained exercise either by
+riding or walking.&nbsp; At times &ldquo;he suffered from
+sleeplessness, when he would get up and walk to Norwich (25
+miles) and return the next night recovered&rdquo; <a
+name="citation333a"></a><a href="#footnote333a"
+class="citation">[333a]</a> yet Borrow has said that &ldquo;he
+always had the health of an elephant.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was proud of the Church and took great pleasure in showing
+to his friends the brasses it contained, including one bearing an
+effigy of Sir John Fastolf, whom he considered to be the original
+of Falstaff.&nbsp; He was also &ldquo;very fond of his
+trees.&nbsp; He quite fretted if by some mischance he lost
+one.&rdquo; <a name="citation333b"></a><a href="#footnote333b"
+class="citation">[333b]</a></p>
+<p>His methods with the country people round Oulton were
+calculated to earn for him a reputation for queerness.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Curiosity is the leading feature of my character&rdquo; <a
+name="citation333c"></a><a href="#footnote333c"
+class="citation">[333c]</a> he confessed, and the East Anglian
+looks upon curiosity in others with marked suspicion.&nbsp; It
+was impossible for Borrow to walk far without getting into
+conversation with someone or other.&nbsp; He delighted in getting
+people to tell their histories and experiences; &ldquo;when they
+used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or Suffolk) country men, he
+would say &lsquo;Why, that&rsquo;s a Danish word.&rsquo;&nbsp; By
+and bye the man would use another peculiar expression,
+&lsquo;Why, that&rsquo;s Saxon&rsquo;; a little further on
+another, &lsquo;Why, that&rsquo;s French.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he
+would add, &lsquo;Why, what a wonderful man you are to speak so
+many languages.&rsquo;&nbsp; One man got very angry, but Mr
+Borrow was quite unconscious that he had given any
+offence.&rdquo; <a name="citation334a"></a><a
+href="#footnote334a" class="citation">[334a]</a></p>
+<p>He took pleasure in puzzling people about languages.&nbsp;
+Elizabeth Harvey tells <a name="citation334b"></a><a
+href="#footnote334b" class="citation">[334b]</a> how he once put
+a book before her telling her to read it, and on her saying she
+could not, he replied, &ldquo;You ought; it&rsquo;s your own
+language.&rdquo;&nbsp; The volume was written in Saxon.&nbsp; Yet
+for all this he hated to hear foreign words introduced into
+conversation.&nbsp; When he heard such adulterations of the
+English language he would exclaim jocosely, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
+that, trying to come over me with strange languages?&rdquo; <a
+name="citation334c"></a><a href="#footnote334c"
+class="citation">[334c]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s first thoughts on settling down were of
+literature.&nbsp; He had material for several books, as he had
+informed Mr Brandram.&nbsp; Putting aside, at least for the
+present, the translations of the ballads and songs, he devoted
+himself to preparing for the press a book upon the Spanish
+Gypsies.&nbsp; During the five years spent in Spain he had
+gathered together much material.&nbsp; He had made notes in queer
+places under strange and curious conditions, &ldquo;in moments
+snatched from more important pursuits&mdash;chiefly in
+<i>ventas</i> and <i>posad&aacute;s</i>&rdquo; <a
+name="citation334d"></a><a href="#footnote334d"
+class="citation">[334d]</a>&mdash;whilst engaged in distributing
+the Gospel.&nbsp; It was a book of facts that he meant to write,
+not theories, and if he sometimes fostered error, it was because
+at the moment it was his conception of truth.&nbsp; Very little
+remained to do to the manuscript.&nbsp; Mrs. Borrow had performed
+her share of the work in making a fair copy for the
+printer.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s subsequent remark that the
+manuscript &ldquo;was written by a country amanuensis and
+probably contains many ridiculous errata,&rdquo; was scarcely
+gracious to the wife, who seems to have comprehended so well the
+first principle of wifely duty to an illustrious and, it must be
+admitted, autocratic genius&mdash;viz., self-extinction.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No man could endure a clever wife,&rdquo; Borrow once
+confided to the unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he
+had married one nevertheless.&nbsp; No woman whose cleverness had
+not reached the point of inspiration could have lived in intimate
+association with so capricious and masterful a man as George
+Borrow.&nbsp; John Hasfeldt, in sending his congratulations, had
+seemed to suggest that Borrow was one of those abstruse works of
+nature that require close and constant study.&nbsp; &ldquo;When
+your wife thoroughly knows you,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;she will
+smooth the wrinkles on your brow and you will be so cheerful and
+happy that your grey hair will turn black again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In November 1840 a tall athletic gentleman in black
+called upon Mr Murray, offering a manuscript for perusal and
+publication.&rdquo; <a name="citation335a"></a><a
+href="#footnote335a" class="citation">[335a]</a>&nbsp; Fifteen
+years before, the same &ldquo;tall athletic gentleman&rdquo; had
+called a dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of
+Northern and Welsh ballads, but &ldquo;never could see Glorious
+John.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow had determined to make another attempt
+to see John Murray, and this time he was successful.&nbsp; He
+submitted the manuscript of <i>The Zincali</i>, which Murray sent
+to Richard Ford <a name="citation335b"></a><a
+href="#footnote335b" class="citation">[335b]</a> that he might
+pronounce upon it and its possibilities.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have made
+acquaintance,&rdquo; Ford wrote to H. U. Addington, 14th Jan.
+1841, &ldquo;with an extraordinary fellow, <i>George Borrow</i>,
+who went out to Spain to convert the <i>gypsies</i>.&nbsp; He is
+about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will
+be.&nbsp; It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating
+Murray.&rdquo; <a name="citation335c"></a><a href="#footnote335c"
+class="citation">[335c]</a>&nbsp; On Ford&rsquo;s advice the book
+was accepted for publication, it being arranged that author and
+publisher should share the profits equally between them.</p>
+<p>On 17th April 1841 there appeared in two volumes <i>The
+Zincali</i>; <a name="citation336a"></a><a href="#footnote336a"
+class="citation">[336a]</a> <i>or</i>, <i>An Account of the
+Gypsies in Spain</i>.&nbsp; <i>With an original Collection of
+their Songs and Poetry</i>, <i>and a copious Dictionary of their
+Language</i>.&nbsp; By George Borrow, late Agent of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society in Spain.&nbsp; It was dedicated to the
+Earl of Clarendon, G.C.B. (Sir George Villiers), in
+&ldquo;remembrance of the many obligations under which your
+Lordship has placed me, by your energetic and effectual
+interference in time of need.&rdquo;&nbsp; The first edition of
+750 copies sufficed to meet the demand of two years.&nbsp; Ford,
+however, wrote to Murray: &ldquo;The book has created a great
+sensation far and wide.&nbsp; I was sure it would, and I hope you
+think that when I read the MS. my opinion and advice were
+sound.&rdquo; <a name="citation336b"></a><a href="#footnote336b"
+class="citation">[336b]</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p336b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Richard Ford.  From the painting by Antonio Chatelain"
+title=
+"Richard Ford.  From the painting by Antonio Chatelain"
+ src="images/p336s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p><i>The Zincali</i> had been begun at Badajos with the Romany
+songs or rhymes copied down as recited by his gypsy
+friends.&nbsp; To these he had subsequently added, being assisted
+by a French courier, Juan Antonio Bailly, who translated the
+songs into Spanish.&nbsp; These translations were originally
+intended to be published in a separate work, as was the
+Vocabulary, which forms part of <i>The Zincali</i>.&nbsp; Had
+Borrow sought to make two separate works of the
+&ldquo;Songs&rdquo; and &ldquo;Vocabulary,&rdquo; there is very
+considerable doubt if they would have fared any better than the
+everlasting Ab Gwilym; but either with inspiration, or acting on
+some one&rsquo;s wise counsel, he determined to subordinate them
+to an account of the Spanish Gypsies.</p>
+<p>As a piece of bookmaking <i>The Zincali</i> is by no means
+notable.&nbsp; Borrow himself refers to it (page 354) as
+&ldquo;this strange wandering book of mine.&rdquo;&nbsp; In
+construction it savours rather of the method by which it was
+originally inspired; but for all that it is fascinating reading,
+saturated with the atmosphere of vagabondage and the gypsy
+encampment.&nbsp; It was not necessarily a book for the scholar
+and the philologist, many of whom scorned it on account of its
+rather obvious carelessnesses and inaccuracies.&nbsp; Borrow was
+not a writer of academic books.&nbsp; He lacked the instinct for
+research which alone insures accuracy.</p>
+<p>It was particularly appropriate that Borrow&rsquo;s first book
+should be about the Gypsies, who had always exercised so strange
+an attraction for him that he could not remember the time
+&ldquo;when the very name of Gypsy did not awaken within me
+feelings hard to be described.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation337a"></a><a href="#footnote337a"
+class="citation">[337a]</a>&nbsp; His was not merely an interest
+in their strange language, their traditions, their folk-lore; it
+was something nearer and closer to the people themselves.&nbsp;
+They excited his curiosity, he envied their mode of life, admired
+their clannishness, delighted in their primitive customs.&nbsp;
+Their persistence in warring against the gentile appealed
+strongly to his instinctive hatred of &ldquo;gentility
+nonsense&rdquo;; and perhaps more than anything else, he envied
+them the stars and the sun and the wind on the heath.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Romany matters have always had a peculiar interest for
+me,&rdquo; <a name="citation337b"></a><a href="#footnote337b"
+class="citation">[337b]</a> he affirms over and over again in
+different words, and he never lost an opportunity of joining a
+party of gypsies round their camp-fire.&nbsp; His knowledge of
+the Romany people was not acquired from books.&nbsp; Apparently
+he had read very few of the many works dealing with the
+mysterious race he had singled out for his particular
+attention.&nbsp; With characteristic assurance he makes the
+sweeping assertion that &ldquo;all the books which have been
+published concerning them [the Gypsies] have been written by
+those who have introduced themselves into their society for a few
+hours, and from what they have seen or heard consider themselves
+competent to give the world an idea of the manners and customs of
+the mysterious Romany.&rdquo; <a name="citation338a"></a><a
+href="#footnote338a" class="citation">[338a]</a></p>
+<p>His attitude towards the race is curious.&nbsp; He recognised
+the Gypsies as liars, rogues, cheats, vagabonds, in short as the
+incarnation of all the vices; yet their fascination for him in no
+way diminished.&nbsp; He could mix with them, as with other
+vagabonds, and not become harmed by their broad views upon
+personal property, or their hundred and one tricks and
+dishonesties.&nbsp; He was a changed man when in their company,
+losing all that constraint that marked his intercourse with
+people of his own class.</p>
+<p>He had laboured hard to bring the light of the Gospel into
+their lives.&nbsp; He made them translate for him the Scriptures
+into their tongue; but it was the novelty of the situation, aided
+by the glass of Malaga wine he gave them, not the beauty of the
+Gospel of St Luke, that aroused their interest and
+enthusiasm.&nbsp; To this, Borrow&rsquo;s own eyes were
+open.&nbsp; &ldquo;They listened with admiration,&rdquo; he says;
+&ldquo;but, alas! not of the truths, the eternal truths, I was
+telling them, but to find that their broken jargon could be
+written and read.&rdquo; <a name="citation338b"></a><a
+href="#footnote338b" class="citation">[338b]</a></p>
+<p>On one occasion, having refused to one of his congregation the
+loan of two <i>barias</i> (ounces of gold), he proceeded to read
+to the whole assembly instead the Lord&rsquo;s Prayer and the
+Apostle&rsquo;s Creed in Romany.&nbsp; Happening to glance up, he
+found not a gypsy in the room, but squinted, &ldquo;the Gypsy
+fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted worst of all.&nbsp;
+Such are Gypsies.&rdquo; <a name="citation338c"></a><a
+href="#footnote338c" class="citation">[338c]</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p338b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"John Murray the Second.  The &ldquo;Glorious John&rdquo; of
+Lavengro.  From a portrait by H. W. Pickersgill, R.A., in the
+possession of Mr. Murray"
+title=
+"John Murray the Second.  The &ldquo;Glorious John&rdquo; of
+Lavengro.  From a portrait by H. W. Pickersgill, R.A., in the
+possession of Mr. Murray"
+ src="images/p338s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>It was indeed the novelty that appealed to them.&nbsp; They
+greeted with a shout of exultation the reading aloud a
+translation that they themselves had dictated; but they remained
+unmoved by the Christian teaching it contained.&nbsp; For all
+these discouragements Borrow persisted, and perhaps none of his
+efforts in Spain produced less result than this &ldquo;attempt to
+enlighten the minds of the Gitanos on the subject of
+religion.&rdquo; <a name="citation339"></a><a href="#footnote339"
+class="citation">[339]</a></p>
+<p>If the Gypsies were all that is evil, judged by conventional
+standards, they at least loyally stood by each other in the face
+of a common foe.&nbsp; Borrow knew Ambrose Petulengro to be a
+liar, a thief, in fact most things that it is desirable a man
+should not be; yet he was equally sure that under no
+circumstances would he forsake a friend to whom he stood
+pledged.&nbsp; There seems to be little doubt that Borrow&rsquo;s
+fame with the Gypsies spread throughout England and the
+Continent.&nbsp; &ldquo;Everybody as ever see&rsquo;d the
+white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow was by no means the first Romany Rye.&nbsp; From Andrew
+Boorde (15th-16th Century) down the centuries they are to be
+found, even to our day, in the persons of Mr Theodore
+Watts-Dunton and Mr John Sampson; but Borrow was the first to
+bring the cult of Gypsyism into popularity.&nbsp; Before he
+wrote, the general view of Gypsies was that they were
+uncomfortable people who robbed the clothes-lines and hen-roosts,
+told fortunes and incidentally intimidated the housewife if
+unprotected by man or dog.&nbsp; Borrow changed all this.&nbsp;
+The suspicion remained, so strongly in fact that he himself was
+looked at askance for consorting with such vagabonds; but with
+the suspicion was more than a spice of interest, and the Gypsies
+became epitomised and immortalised in the person of Jasper
+Petulengro.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s Gypsyism was as unscientific as
+his &ldquo;philology.&rdquo;&nbsp; Their language, their origin
+he commented on without first acquainting himself with the
+literature that had gathered round their name.&nbsp; Francis
+Hindes Groome, &ldquo;that perfect scholar-gypsy and
+gypsy-scholar,&rdquo; wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The meagreness of his knowledge of the
+Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out in his <i>Word Book of the
+Romany</i> (1874); there must have been over a dozen Englishmen
+who have known it far better than he.&nbsp; For his Spanish-Gypsy
+vocabulary in <i>The Zincali</i> he certainly drew largely either
+on Richard Bright&rsquo;s <i>Travels through Lower Hungary</i> or
+on Bright&rsquo;s Spanish authority, whatever that may have
+been.&nbsp; His knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies
+was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of
+their folk-lore practically <i>nil</i>.&nbsp; And yet I would put
+George Borrow above every other writer on the Gypsies.&nbsp; In
+<i>Lavengro</i> and, to a less degree, in its sequel, <i>The
+Romany Rye</i>, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom
+that is totally wanting in the works&mdash;mainly
+philological&mdash;of Pott, Liebich, Paspati, Miklosich, and
+their confr&egrave;res.&rdquo; <a name="citation340a"></a><a
+href="#footnote340a" class="citation">[340a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Groome was by no means partial to Borrow, as a matter of fact
+he openly taxed him <a name="citation340b"></a><a
+href="#footnote340b" class="citation">[340b]</a> with drawing
+upon Bright&rsquo;s <i>Travels in Hungary</i> (Edinburgh 1819)
+for the Spanish-Romany Vocabulary, and was strong in his
+denunciation of him as a <i>poseur</i>.</p>
+<p>Borrow scorned book-learning.&nbsp; Writing to John Murray,
+Junr. (21st Jan. 1843), about <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, he says,
+&ldquo;I was conscious that there was vitality in the book and
+knew that it must sell.&nbsp; I read nothing and drew entirely
+from my own well.&nbsp; I have long been tired of books; I have
+had enough of them,&rdquo; <a name="citation340c"></a><a
+href="#footnote340c" class="citation">[340c]</a> he wrote later,
+and this, taken in conjunction with another sentence, viz.,
+&ldquo;My favourite, I might say my only study, is man,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation340d"></a><a href="#footnote340d"
+class="citation">[340d]</a> explains not only Borrow&rsquo;s
+Gypsyism, but also his casual philology.&nbsp; Languages he
+mostly learned that he might know men.&nbsp; In youth he
+read&mdash;he had to do something during the long office hours,
+and he read Danish and Welsh literature; but he did not trouble
+himself much with the literary wealth of other countries, beyond
+dipping into it.&nbsp; He had a brain of his own, and preferred
+to form theories from the knowledge he had acquired first hand, a
+most excellent thing for a man of the nature of George Borrow,
+but scarcely calculated to advance learning.&nbsp; He hated
+anything academic.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I cannot help thinking,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;that it was fortunate for myself, who am, to a certain
+extent, a philologist, that with me the pursuit of languages has
+been always modified by the love of horses . . .&nbsp; I might,
+otherwise, have become a mere philologist; one of those beings
+who toil night and day in culling useless words for some <i>opus
+magnum</i> which Murray will never publish and nobody ever
+read&mdash;beings without enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a
+generous steed, cannot detect a good point in Pegasus
+himself.&rdquo; <a name="citation341"></a><a href="#footnote341"
+class="citation">[341]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This quotation clearly explains Borrow&rsquo;s attitude
+towards philology.&nbsp; As he told the
+<i>&eacute;migr&eacute;</i> priest, he hoped to become something
+more than a philologist.</p>
+<p>There was nothing in the sale of <i>The Zincali</i> to
+encourage Borrow to proceed with the other books he had partially
+prepared.&nbsp; Nearly seven weeks after publication, scarcely
+three hundred copies had been sold.&nbsp; In the spring of the
+following year (18th March) John Murray wrote: &ldquo;The sale of
+the book has not amounted to much since the first publication;
+but in recompense for this the Yankees have printed two editions,
+one for twenty pence <i>complete</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; As Borrow did
+not benefit from the sale of American editions, the news was not
+quite so comforting as it would have been had it referred to the
+English issue.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII<br />
+APRIL 1841&ndash;MARCH 1844</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> his wanderings in Portugal
+and Spain Borrow had carried out his intention of keeping a
+journal, from which on several occasions he sent transcriptions
+to Earl Street instead of recapitulating in his letters the
+adventures that befell him.&nbsp; Many of his letters went
+astray, which is not strange considering the state of the
+country.&nbsp; The letters and reports that Borrow wrote to the
+Bible Society, which still exist, may be roughly divided as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>From his introduction until the end of the Russian
+expedition</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">17.50</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Used for <i>The Bible in Spain</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">30.00</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Others written during the Spanish and Portuguese periods
+and not used for <i>The Bible in Spain</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">52.50</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100.00</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Thirty per cent, of the whole number of the letters was all
+that Borrow used for <i>The Bible in Spain</i>.&nbsp; In addition
+he had his Journal, and from these two sources he obtained all
+the material he required for the book that was to electrify the
+religious reading-public and make famous its writer.</p>
+<p>Between Borrow and Ford a warm friendship had sprung up, and
+many letters passed between them.&nbsp; Ford, who was busily
+engaged upon his Hand-Book, sought Borrow&rsquo;s advice upon a
+number of points, in particular about Gypsy matters.&nbsp; There
+was something of the same atmosphere in his letters as in those
+of John Hasfeldt: a frank, affectionate interest in Borrow and
+what affected him that it was impossible to resent.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;How I wish you had given us more about yourself,&rdquo; he
+wrote to Borrow <i>apropos</i> of <i>The Zincali</i>,
+&ldquo;instead of the extracts from those blunder-headed old
+Spaniards, who knew nothing about Gypsies!&nbsp; I shall give you
+. . . a hint to publish your whole adventures for the last twenty
+years.&rdquo;&nbsp; But Hayim Ben-Attar, son of the miracle, had
+already brought lights, and <i>The Bible in Spain</i> had been
+begun.</p>
+<p>Ford&rsquo;s counsel was invariably sound and sane.&nbsp; He
+advised <i>El Gitano</i>, as he sometimes called Borrow,
+&ldquo;to avoid Spanish historians and <i>poetry</i> like Prussic
+acid; to stick to himself, his biography and queer
+adventures,&rdquo; <a name="citation343"></a><a
+href="#footnote343" class="citation">[343]</a> to all of which
+Borrow promised obedience.&nbsp; Ford wrote to Borrow (Feb. 1841)
+suggesting that <i>The Bible in Spain</i> should be what it
+actually was.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am delighted to hear,&rdquo; he
+wrote, &ldquo;that you meditate giving us your travels in
+Spain.&nbsp; The more odd personal adventures the better, and
+still more so if <i>dramatic</i>; that is, giving the exact
+conversations.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In June 1841 Borrow received from Earl Street the originals of
+his letters to the Bible Society, and when he was eventually
+called upon to return them he retained a number, either through
+carelessness or by design.&nbsp; It was evidently understood that
+there should be no reference to any contentious matters.&nbsp;
+Borrow set to work with the aid of his &ldquo;Country
+Amanuensis&rdquo; to transcribe such portions of the
+correspondence as he required.&nbsp; The work proceeded
+slowly.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I still scribble occasionally for want of
+something better to do,&rdquo; he informs John Murray, Junr.
+(23rd Aug. 1841), and continues: &ldquo; . . . A queer book will
+be this same <i>Bible in Spain</i>, containing all my queer
+adventures in that queer country whilst engaged in distributing
+the Gospel, but neither learning, nor disquisitions, fine
+writing, or poetry.&nbsp; A book with such a title and of this
+description can scarcely fail of success.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Through a dreary summer and autumn he wrote on complaining
+that there was &ldquo;scarcely a gleam of sunshine.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Remote from the world &ldquo;with not the least idea of what is
+going on save in my immediate neighbourhood,&rdquo; he wrote
+merely to kill time.&nbsp; Such an existence was, to the last
+degree, uncongenial to a man who for years had been accustomed to
+sunshine and a life full of incident and adventure.</p>
+<p>He grew restless and ill-content.&nbsp; He had been as free as
+the wind, with occupation for brain and body.&nbsp; He was now,
+like Achilles, brooding in his tent, and over his mind there fell
+a shadow of unrest.&nbsp; As early as July 1841 he had thought of
+settling in Berlin and devoting himself to study.&nbsp; Hasfeldt
+suggested Denmark, the land of the Sagas.&nbsp; Later in the same
+year Africa had presented itself to Borrow as a possible retreat,
+but Ford advised him against it as &ldquo;the land from which few
+travellers return,&rdquo; and told him that he had much better go
+to Seville.&nbsp; Still later Constantinople was considered and
+then the coast of Barbary.&nbsp; Into his letters there crept a
+note of querulous complaint.&nbsp; John Hasfeldt besought him to
+remember how much he had travelled and he would find that he had
+wandered enough, and then he would accustom himself to rest.</p>
+<p>The manuscript of <i>The Bible in Spain</i> was completed
+early in January (1842) and despatched to John Murray, who sent
+it to Richard Ford.&nbsp; From the &ldquo;reader&rsquo;s
+report&rdquo; it is to be gathered that in addition to the
+manuscript Borrow sent also the letters that he had borrowed from
+the Bible Society.&nbsp; Ford refers to the story of the man
+stung to death by vipers <a name="citation344"></a><a
+href="#footnote344" class="citation">[344]</a> &ldquo;in the
+letter of the 16th August 1837,&rdquo; and advises that &ldquo;Mr
+Borrow should introduce it into his narrative.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+further recommends him &ldquo;to go carefully over the whole of
+his Letters, as it is very probable that other points of interest
+which they contain may have been omitted in the narrative.&nbsp;
+Some of the most interesting letters relate to journies not given
+in the MS.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The work when it reached Ford was apparently in a very rough
+state.&nbsp; In addition to many mistakes in spelling and
+grammar, a number of words were left blank.&nbsp; In a vast
+number of instances short sentences were run together.&nbsp; Mrs
+Borrow does not appear to have been a very successful amanuensis
+at this period.&nbsp; Perhaps the most interesting indication of
+how much the manuscript, as first submitted, differed from the
+published work is shown by one of Ford&rsquo;s
+criticisms:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In the narrative there are at present two
+breaks&mdash;one from about March 1836 to June 1837 [Chapters
+XIII.&ndash;XX.],&mdash;and the other from November 1837 to July
+1839 [Chapters XXXVI.&ndash;XLIX.]&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This represents a third of the book as finally printed.&nbsp;
+Ford objected to the sudden ending; but Borrow made no alteration
+in this respect.&nbsp; There were a number of other suggestions
+of lesser importance in this admirable piece of technical
+criticism.&nbsp; Ford disliked Borrow&rsquo;s striving to create
+an air of mystery as &ldquo;taking an unwarrantable liberty with
+the reader&rdquo;; he suggested a map and a short biographical
+sketch of the author, and especially the nature of his connection
+with the Bible Society.&nbsp; Finally he gives it as his opinion
+that it is neither necessary nor advisable to insert any of his
+letters to the Bible Society, either in the body of the book or
+as an Appendix.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of
+the book,&rdquo; Ford wrote; &ldquo;but in several of them the
+tone of the speakers, of those especially who are in humble life,
+is too correct and elevated, and therefore out of
+character.&nbsp; This takes away from their effect.&nbsp; I think
+it would be very advisable that Mr Borrow should go over them
+with reference to this point, simplifying a few of the turns of
+expression and introducing a few
+contractions&mdash;<i>don&rsquo;ts</i>, <i>can&rsquo;ts</i>,
+etc.&nbsp; This would improve them greatly.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This criticism applies to all Borrow&rsquo;s books, in
+particular to the passages dealing with the Gypsies, who, in
+spite of their love of high-sounding words, which they frequently
+misuse, do not speak with the academic precision of
+Borrow&rsquo;s works any more than do peers or princes or even
+pedagogues.&nbsp; Borrow met Ford&rsquo;s criticism with the
+assurance that &ldquo;the lower classes in Spain are generally
+elevated in their style and scarcely ever descend to
+vulgarity.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s first impulse appears to have been to disregard
+the suggestion that the two breaks should be filled in.&nbsp; On
+13th Jan. he wrote to John Murray, Junr.:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have received the MS. and likewise your
+kind letter . . . Pray thank the Gentleman who perused the MS. in
+my name for his suggestions, which I will attend to.&nbsp; [By
+this it is clear that Borrow was not told that Ford was
+&lsquo;the Gentleman.&rsquo;]&nbsp; I find that the MS. was full
+of trifling mistakes, the fault of my amanuensis; but I am going
+through it, and within three days shall have made all the
+necessary corrections.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>No man, of however sanguine a temperament, could seriously
+contemplate the mere transcription of some eighty thousand words,
+in addition to the correction of twice that amount of manuscript,
+within three days.&nbsp; Nine days later Borrow wrote again to
+John Murray, Junr.&nbsp; &ldquo;We are losing time; I have
+corrected seven hundred <i>consecutive</i> pages of MS., and the
+remaining two hundred will be ready in a fortnight.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+That he had taken so long was due to the fact that the greater
+part of the preceding week had been occupied with other and more
+exciting matters than correcting manuscript.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;During the last week,&rdquo; he continues,
+&ldquo;I have been chiefly engaged in horse-breaking.&nbsp; A
+most magnificent animal has found his way to this
+neighbourhood&mdash;a half-bred Arabian&mdash;he is at present in
+the hands of a low horse-dealer; he can be bought for eight
+pounds, but no person will have him; it is said that he kills
+everybody who mounts him.&nbsp; I have been <i>charming</i> him,
+and have so far succeeded that at present he does not fling me
+more than once in five minutes.&nbsp; What a contemptible trade
+is the Author&rsquo;s compared to that of the jockey.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was not until towards the end of February that the
+corrected manuscript of the first volume of <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i> reached Albemarle Street.&nbsp; Later and better
+counsels had apparently prevailed, and Borrow had become
+reconciled to filling up the breaks.</p>
+<p>Borrow had other occupations than preparing his manuscript for
+the printer&rsquo;s hands.&nbsp; He was ill and overwrought, and
+small things became magnified out of all proportion to their
+actual importance.&nbsp; There had been a dispute between
+Borrow&rsquo;s dog and that of the rector of Oulton, the Rev. E.
+P. Denniss, and as the place was small, the dogs met frequently
+and renewed their feud.&nbsp; Finally the masters of the animals
+became involved, and an interchange of frigid notes ensued.&nbsp;
+It appears that Borrow threatened to appeal to the Law and to the
+Bishop of the Diocese, and further seems to have suggested that
+in the interests of peace, the rector might do away with his own
+dog.&nbsp; The tone of the correspondence may be gathered from
+the following notes:&mdash;<a name="citation347"></a><a
+href="#footnote347" class="citation">[347]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Mr Denniss begs to acknowledge Mr
+Borrow&rsquo;s note, and is sorry to hear that his dog and Mr
+Borrow&rsquo;s have again fallen out.&nbsp; Mr Denniss learns
+from his servant that Mr D&rsquo;s dog was no more in fault than
+Mr B&rsquo;s, which latter is of a very quarrelsome and savage
+disposition, as Mr Denniss can himself testify, as well as many
+other people.&nbsp; Mr Denniss regrets that these two animals
+cannot agree when they meet, but he must decline acceding to Mr
+Borrow&rsquo;s somewhat arbitrary demand, conceiving he has as
+much right to retain a favourite, and in reality very harmless,
+animal, as Mr Borrow has to keep a dog which has once bitten Mr
+Denniss himself, and oftentimes attacked him and his
+family.&nbsp; Mr Borrow is at perfect liberty to take any measure
+he may deem advisable, either before the magistrates or the
+Bishop of the Diocese, as Mr Denniss is quite prepared to meet
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Oulton Rectory</span>, 22<i>nd</i>
+<i>April</i> 1842.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s reply (in the rough draft found among his
+papers after his death) ran:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Mr Borrow has received Mr Denniss&rsquo;
+answer to his note.&nbsp; With respect to Mr Denniss&rsquo;
+recrimination on the quarrelsome disposition of his harmless
+house-dog, Mr Borrow declines to say anything further.&nbsp; No
+one knows better than Mr Denniss the value of his own assertions
+. . . Circumstances over which Mr Borrow has at present no
+control will occasionally bring him and his family under the same
+roof with Mr Denniss; that roof, however, is the roof of the
+House of God, and the prayers of the Church of England are
+wholesome from whatever mouth they may proceed.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s most partisan admirer could not excuse the
+outrage to all decency contained in the last paragraph of his
+note, if indeed it were ever sent, in any other way than to plead
+the writer&rsquo;s ill-health.</p>
+<p>It had been arranged that <i>The Bible in Spain</i> should
+make its appearance in May.&nbsp; In July Borrow wrote showing
+some impatience and urging greater expedition.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;What are your intentions with respect to
+the <i>Bible in Spain</i>?&rdquo; he enquires of John
+Murray.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am a frank man, and frankness never
+offends me.&nbsp; Has anybody put you out of conceit with the
+book? . . .&nbsp; Tell me frankly and I will drink your health in
+Romany.&nbsp; Or would the appearance of the <i>Bible</i> on the
+first of October interfere with the avatar, first or second, of
+some very wonderful lion or Divinity, to whom George Borrow, who
+is <i>neither</i>, must of course give place?&nbsp; Be frank with
+me, my dear Sir, and I will drink your health in Romany and
+Madeira.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He goes on to offer to release John Murray from his
+&ldquo;share in the agreement&rdquo; and complete the book
+himself remitting to the printer &ldquo;the necessary money for
+the purchase of paper.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To Ford, who had acted as a sort of godfather to <i>The Bible
+in Spain</i>, it was &ldquo;a rum, very rum, mixture of gypsyism,
+Judaism, and missionary adventure,&rdquo; as he informed John
+Murray.&nbsp; He read it &ldquo;with great delight,&rdquo; and
+its publisher may &ldquo;depend upon it that the book will sell,
+which, after all, is the rub.&rdquo;&nbsp; He liked the
+sincerity, the style, the effect of incident piling on
+incident.&nbsp; It reminded him of <i>Gil Blas</i> with a touch
+of Bunyan.&nbsp; Borrow is &ldquo;such a <i>trump</i> . . . as
+full of meat as an egg, and a fresh-laid one.&rdquo;&nbsp; All
+this he tells John Murray, and concludes with the assurance,
+&ldquo;Borrow will lay you golden eggs, and hatch them after the
+ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and secure him in your coop,
+and beware how any poacher coaxes him with &lsquo;raisins&rsquo;
+or reasons out of the Albemarle preserve.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation349"></a><a href="#footnote349"
+class="citation">[349]</a></p>
+<p>Ford was never tired of applying new adjectives to Borrow and
+his work.&nbsp; He was &ldquo;an extraordinary fellow,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;this wild missionary,&rdquo; &ldquo;a queer
+chap.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow, on the other hand, cherished a sincere
+regard for the man who had shown such enthusiasm for his
+work.&nbsp; To John Murray, Junr., he wrote (4th April 1843):
+&ldquo;Pray remember me to Ford, who is no humbug and is one of
+the few beings that I care something about.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Throughout his correspondence with Borrow, Richard Ford showed
+a judgment and an appreciation of what the public would be likely
+to welcome that stamped him as a publishers&rsquo;
+&ldquo;reader&rdquo; by instinct.&nbsp; Such advice as he gave to
+Borrow in the following letter set up a standard of what a book,
+such as Borrow had it in his power to write, actually should
+be.&nbsp; It unquestionably influenced Borrow:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">10<i>th</i> <i>June</i>
+1842.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My advice again and again is to avoid all fine writing,
+all descriptions of mere scenery and trivial events.&nbsp; What
+the world wants are racy, real, genuine scenes, and the more out
+of the way the better.&nbsp; Poetry is utterly to be
+avoided.&nbsp; If Apollo were to come down from Heaven, John
+Murray would not take his best manuscript as a gift.&nbsp; Stick
+to yourself, to what you have seen, and the people you have mixed
+with.&nbsp; The more you give us of odd Jewish people the better
+. . .&nbsp; Avoid words, stick to deeds.&nbsp; Never think of how
+you express yourself; for good matter must tell, and no fine
+writing will make bad matter good.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t be afraid
+that what you may not think good will not be thought so by
+others.&nbsp; It often happens just the reverse . . . New facts
+seen in new and strange countries will please everybody; but old
+scenery, even Cintra, will not.&nbsp; We know all about that, and
+want something that we do not know . . . The grand thing is to be
+bold and to avoid the common track of the silver paper, silver
+fork, blue-stocking.&nbsp; Give us adventure, wild adventure,
+journals, thirty language book, sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, rambles,
+and the interior of Spanish prisons&mdash;the way you get in, the
+way you get out.&nbsp; No author has yet given us a Spanish
+prison.&nbsp; Enter into the iniquities, the fees, the slang,
+etc.&nbsp; It will be a little &agrave; la Thurtell, but you see
+the people like to have it so.&nbsp; Avoid rant and cant.&nbsp;
+Dialogues always tell; they are dramatic and give an air of
+reality.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><i>The Bible in Spain</i> was published 10th December, and one
+of the first copies that reached him was inscribed by the author
+to &ldquo;Ann Borrow.&nbsp; With her son&rsquo;s best love, 13th
+Decr. 1842.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From the critics there was praise and scarcely anything but
+praise.&nbsp; It was received as a work bearing the unmistakable
+stamp of genius.&nbsp; Lockhart himself reviewed it in <i>The
+Quarterly Review</i>, confessing the shame he felt at not having
+reviewed <i>The Zincali</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very good&mdash;very
+clever&mdash;very neatly done.&nbsp; Only one fault to
+find&mdash;too laudatory,&rdquo; was Borrow&rsquo;s comment upon
+this notice.</p>
+<p>And through the clamour and din of it all, old Mrs Borrow
+wrote to her daughter-in-law telling her of the call of an old
+friend, whom she had not seen for twenty-eight years, and who had
+come to talk with her of the fame of her son, &ldquo;the most
+remarkable man that Dereham ever produced.&nbsp; Capt. Girling is
+a man of few words, but when he <i>do</i> speak it is to some
+purpose.&rdquo;&nbsp; Ford wrote also (he was always writing
+impulsive, boyish letters) telling how Borrow&rsquo;s name would
+&ldquo;fill the trump of fame,&rdquo; and that &ldquo;Murray is
+in high bone&rdquo; about the book.&nbsp; Hasfeldt wrote, too,
+saying that he saw his &ldquo;friend &lsquo;tall George,&rsquo;
+wandering over the mountains until I ached in every joint with
+the vividness of his descriptions.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In all this chorus of praise there was the complaint of the
+<i>Dublin Review</i> that &ldquo;Borrow was a missionary sent out
+by a gang of conspirators against Christianity.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s comment upon this notice was that &ldquo;It is
+easier to call names and misquote passages in a dirty Review than
+to write <i>The Bible in Spain</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A second edition of <i>The Bible in Spain</i> was issued in
+January, to which the author contributed a preface, &ldquo;very
+funny, but wild,&rdquo; he assured John Murray, Junr., and he
+promised &ldquo;yet another preface for the third edition, should
+one be called for.&rdquo;&nbsp; The third edition appeared in
+March, the fourth in June, and the fifth in July.&nbsp; When the
+Fourth Edition was nearing completion Borrow wrote to Murray:
+&ldquo;Would it be as well to write a preface to this
+<i>fourth</i> edition with a tirade or two against the Pope, and
+allusions to the Great North Road?&rdquo;&nbsp; To which Murray
+replied, &ldquo;With due submission to you as author, I would
+suggest that you should not abuse the Pope in the new
+preface.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the flush of his success Borrow could afford to laugh at
+the few cavilling critics.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Let them call me a nonentity if they
+will,&rdquo; he wrote to John Murray, Junr. (13th March).&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I believe that some of those, who say I am a phantom,
+would alter their tone provided they were to ask me to a good
+dinner; bottles emptied and fowls devoured are not exactly the
+feats of a phantom.&nbsp; No!&nbsp; I partake more of the nature
+of a Brownie or Robin Goodfellow, goblins, &rsquo;tis true, but
+full of merriment and fun, and fond of good eating and
+drinking.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>America echoed back the praise and bought the book in
+thousands.&nbsp; Publishers issued editions in Philadelphia and
+New York; but Borrow did not participate in the profits, as there
+was then no copyright protection for English books in the United
+States of America.&nbsp; The <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> reported (27th
+May 1843) that 30,000 copies had been sold in America.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I really never heard of anything so infamous,&rdquo; wrote
+Borrow to his wife.&nbsp; The only thing that America gave him
+was praise and (in common with other countries) a place in its
+biographical dictionaries and encyclop&aelig;dias.&nbsp; <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i> was translated into French and German and
+subsequently (abridged) into Russian.</p>
+<p>What appeared to please Borrow most was Sir Robert
+Peel&rsquo;s reference to him in the House of Commons, although
+he regretted the scanty report of the speech given in the
+newspapers.&nbsp; Replying to Dr Bowring&rsquo;s (at that time
+Borrow&rsquo;s friend) motion &ldquo;for copies of the
+correspondence of the British Government with the Porte on the
+subject of the Bishop of Jerusalem,&rdquo; Sir Robert remarked:
+&ldquo;If Mr Borrow had been deterred by trifling obstacles, the
+circulation of the Bible in Spain would never have been advanced
+to the extent which it had happily attained.&nbsp; If he had not
+persevered he would not have been the agent of so much
+enlightment.&rdquo; <a name="citation352"></a><a
+href="#footnote352" class="citation">[352]</a></p>
+<p>There were many things that contributed to the instantaneous
+success of <i>The Bible in Spain</i>.&nbsp; Apart from the vivid
+picture that it gave of the indomitable courage and iron
+determination of a man commanding success, its literary
+qualities, and enthralling interest, its greatest commercial
+asset lay in its appeal to the Religious Public.&nbsp; Never,
+perhaps, had they been invited to read such a book, because never
+had the Bible been distributed by so amazing a missionary as
+George Borrow.&nbsp; <i>Gil Blas</i> with a touch of Bunyan, as
+Ford delightfully phrased it, and not too much Bunyan.&nbsp;
+Thieves, murderers, gypsies, bandits, prisons, wars&mdash;all
+knit together by the missionary work of a man who was <i>persona
+grata</i> with every lawless ruffian he encountered, and yet a
+sower of the seed.&nbsp; The Religious Public did not pause to
+ponder over the strangeness of the situation.&nbsp; They had
+fallen among thieves, and with breathless eagerness were prepared
+to enjoy to the full the novel experience.</p>
+<p>Here was a religious book full of the most exquisite material
+thrills without a suggestion of a spiritual moral.&nbsp;
+Criminals were encountered, their deeds rehearsed and the
+customary sermon upon the evils arising from wickedness
+absent.&nbsp; It was a stimulating drink to unaccustomed
+palates.&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i> sold in its
+thousands.</p>
+<p>The accuracy of the book has never been questioned; if it had,
+Borrow&rsquo;s letters to the Bible Society would immediately
+settle any doubt that might arise.&nbsp; If there be one incident
+in the work that appears invented, it is the story of Benedict
+Moll, the treasure-hunter; yet even that is authentic.&nbsp; In
+the following letter, dated 22nd June 1839, Rey Rom&eacute;ro,
+the bookseller of Santiago, refers to the unfortunate Benedict
+Moll:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The German of the <i>Treasure</i>,&rdquo;
+he writes, &ldquo;came here last year bearing letters from the
+Government for the purpose of discovering it.&nbsp; But, a few
+days after his arrival, they threw him into prison; from thence
+he wrote me, making himself known as the one you introduced to
+me; wherefore my son went to see him in prison.&nbsp; He told my
+son that you also had been arrested, but I could not credit
+it.&nbsp; A short time after, they took him off to Coru&ntilde;a;
+then they brought him back here again, and I do not know what has
+become of him since.&rdquo; <a name="citation353"></a><a
+href="#footnote353" class="citation">[353]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow now became the lion of the hour.&nbsp; He was
+f&ecirc;ted and feasted in London, and everybody wanted to meet
+the wonderful white-haired author of <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i>.&nbsp; One day he is breakfasting with the Prussian
+Ambassador, &ldquo;with princes and members of Parliament, I was
+the star of the morning,&rdquo; he writes to his wife.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I thought to myself &lsquo;what a
+difference!&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; Later he was present at a grand
+<i>soir&eacute;e</i>, &ldquo;and the people came in throngs to be
+introduced to me.&nbsp; To-night,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;I
+am going to the Bishop of Norwich, to-morrow to another place,
+and so on.&rdquo; <a name="citation354"></a><a
+href="#footnote354" class="citation">[354]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow had been much touched by the news of the death of Allan
+Cunningham (1785&ndash;1842).</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Only think, poor Allan Cunningham
+dead!&rdquo; he wrote to John Murray, Junr. (25th Nov.
+1842).&nbsp; &ldquo;A young man&mdash;only
+fifty-eight&mdash;strong and tall as a giant; might have lived to
+a hundred and one, but he bothered himself about the affairs of
+this world far too much.&nbsp; That statue shop was his bane;
+took to book making likewise, in a word too fond of
+Mammon&mdash;awful death&mdash;no preparation&mdash;came
+literally upon him like a thief in the dark.&nbsp; Am thinking of
+writing a short life of him; old friend&mdash;twenty years&rsquo;
+standing, knew a good deal about him; <i>Traditional Tales</i>
+his best work . . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pray send Dr Bowring a copy of Bible.&nbsp; Lives No.
+1, Queen Square, Westminster, another old friend.&nbsp; Send one
+to Ford&mdash;capital fellow.&nbsp; Respects to Mr M.&nbsp; God
+bless you.&nbsp; Feel quite melancholy, Ever yours.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In these Jinglelike periods Borrow pays tribute to the man who
+praised his Romantic Ballads and contributed a prefatory
+poem.&nbsp; He returned to the subject ten days later in another
+letter to John Murray, Junr.&nbsp; &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get poor
+Allan out of my head,&rdquo; he wrote.&nbsp; &ldquo;When I come
+up I intend to go and see his wife.&nbsp; What a
+woman!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fame did not dispel from Borrow&rsquo;s mind the old
+restlessness, the desire for action.&nbsp; He was still unwell,
+worried at the sight of &ldquo;Popery . . . springing up in every
+direction . . . <i>There&rsquo;s no peace in this
+world</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation355a"></a><a
+href="#footnote355a" class="citation">[355a]</a>&nbsp; A cold
+contracted by his wife distressed him to the point of complaining
+that &ldquo;there is little but trouble in this world; I am
+nearly tired of it.&rdquo; <a name="citation355b"></a><a
+href="#footnote355b" class="citation">[355b]</a>&nbsp; Exercise
+failed to benefit him.&nbsp; He was suffering from languor and
+nervousness.&nbsp; And through it all that Spartan woman who had
+committed the gravest of matrimonial errors, that of marrying a
+genius, soothed and comforted the sick lion, tired even of
+victory.</p>
+<p>Small things troubled him and honours awakened in him no
+enthusiasm.&nbsp; The <i>Times</i> in reviewing <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i> had inferred that he was not a member of the Church of
+England, <a name="citation355c"></a><a href="#footnote355c"
+class="citation">[355c]</a> and the statement &ldquo;must be
+contradicted.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Royal Institution was prepared to
+confer an honour upon him, and he could not make up his mind
+whether or not to accept it.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;What would the Institute expect me to
+write?&rdquo; he enquires of John Murray, Junr., 25th Feb.
+1843.&nbsp; &ldquo;(I have exhausted Spain and the
+Gypsies.)&nbsp; Would an essay on the Welsh language and
+literature suit, with an account of the Celtic tongues?&nbsp; Or
+would something about the ancient North and its literature be
+more acceptable? . . . Had it been the Royal Academy, I should
+have consented at once, and do hereby empower you to accept in my
+name any offer which may be made from that quarter.&nbsp; I
+should very much like to become an Academician, the thing would
+just suit me, more especially as &lsquo;they do not want
+<i>clever</i> men, but <i>safe</i> men.&rsquo;&nbsp; Now I am
+safe enough, ask the Bible Society, whose secrets I have kept so
+much to their satisfaction, that they have just accepted at my
+hands an English Gypsy Gospel <i>gratis</i>.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation356"></a><a href="#footnote356"
+class="citation">[356]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He declined an invitation to join the Ethnological
+Society.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Who are they?&rdquo; he enquires in the
+same letter.&nbsp; &ldquo;At present I am in great demand.&nbsp;
+A Bishop has just requested me to visit him.&nbsp; The worst of
+these Bishops is that they are all skinflints, saving for their
+families; their <i>cuisine</i> is bad and their Port-wine
+execrable, and as for their cigars&mdash;. . . &rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow strove to quiet his spirit by touring about Norfolk,
+&ldquo;putting up at dead of night in country towns and small
+villages.&rdquo;&nbsp; He returned to Oulton at the end of a
+fortnight, having tired himself and knocked up his horse.&nbsp;
+Even the news that a new edition of <i>The Bible in Spain</i> was
+required could not awaken in him any enthusiasm.&nbsp; He was
+glad the book had sold, as he knew it would, and he would like a
+rough estimate of the profits.&nbsp; A few days later he writes
+to John Murray, Junr., with reference to a new edition of <i>The
+Zincali</i>, saying that he finds &ldquo;that there is far more
+connection between the first and second volumes than he had
+imagined,&rdquo; and begging that the reprint may be the same as
+the first.&nbsp; &ldquo;It would take nearly a month to refashion
+the book,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;and I believe a
+month&rsquo;s mental labour at the present time would do me
+up.&rdquo;&nbsp; The weather in particular affected, him.&nbsp;
+For years he had been accustomed to sun-warmed Spain, and the
+gloom and greyness of England depressed him.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Strange weather this,&rdquo; he had written
+to John Murray (31st Dec. 1842)&mdash;&ldquo;very unwholesome I
+believe both for man and beast.&nbsp; Several people dead and
+great mortality amongst the cattle.&nbsp; Am intolerably well
+myself, but get but little rest&mdash;disagreeable
+dreams&mdash;digestion not quite so good as I could
+wish&mdash;been on the water system&mdash;won&rsquo;t
+do&mdash;have left it off, and am now taking lessons in
+singing.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Many men have earned the reputation of madness for less
+eccentric actions than taking lessons in singing as a cure for
+indigestion, after the failure of the water cure.</p>
+<p>Although he was receiving complimentary letters from all
+quarters and from people he had never even heard of, he seemed
+acutely unhappy.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I did wrong,&rdquo; he writes to his wife
+from London (29th May 1843), &ldquo;not to bring you when I came,
+for without you I cannot get on at all.&nbsp; Left to myself, a
+gloom comes upon me which I cannot describe.&nbsp; I will
+endeavour to be home on Thursday, as I wish so much to be with
+you, without whom there is no joy for me nor rest.&nbsp; You tell
+me to ask for <i>situations</i>, etc.&nbsp; I am not at all
+suited for them.&nbsp; My place seems to be in our own dear
+cottage, where, with your help, I hope to prepare for a better
+world . . . I dare say I shall be home on Thursday, perhaps
+earlier, if I am unwell; for the poor bird when in trouble has no
+one to fly to but his mate.&rdquo;&nbsp; And a few days later:
+&ldquo;I wish I had not left home.&nbsp; Take care of
+yourself.&nbsp; Kiss poor Hen.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>During his stay in London, Borrow sat to Henry Wyndham
+Phillips, R.A., for his portrait. <a name="citation357"></a><a
+href="#footnote357" class="citation">[357]</a>&nbsp; On 21st June
+John Murray wrote: &ldquo;I have seen your portrait.&nbsp;
+Phillips is going to saw off a bit of the panel, which will give
+you your proper and characteristic height.&nbsp; Next year you
+will doubtless cut a great figure in the Exhibition.&nbsp; It is
+the best thing young Phillips has done.&rdquo;&nbsp; The painting
+was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 as &ldquo;George
+Borrow, Esq., author of <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,&rdquo; and is
+now in the possession of Mr John Murray.</p>
+<p>There is a story told in connection with the painting of this
+portrait.&nbsp; Borrow was a bad sitter, and visibly chafed at
+remaining indoors doing nothing.&nbsp; To overcome this
+restlessness the painter had recourse to a clever
+stratagem.&nbsp; He enquired of his sitter if Persian were really
+a fine language, as he had heard; Borrow assured him that it was,
+and at Phillips&rsquo; request, started declaiming at the top of
+his voice, his eyes flashing with enthusiasm.&nbsp; When he
+ceased, the wily painter mentioned other tongues, Turkish,
+Armenian, etc., in each instance with the same result, and the
+painting of the portrait became an easy matter.</p>
+<p>On 23rd June John Murray (the Second) died, at the age of
+sixty-five, and was succeeded by his son.&nbsp; &ldquo;Poor old
+Murray!&rdquo; Ford wrote to Borrow, &ldquo;We shall never see
+his like again.&nbsp; He . . . was a fine fellow in every
+respect.&rdquo;&nbsp; In another letter he refers to him as
+&ldquo;that Prince of Bibliophiles, poor, dear, old
+Murray.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s own relations with John
+Murray had always been most cordial.&nbsp; On one occasion, when
+writing to his son, he says: &ldquo;I shall be most happy to see
+you and still more your father, whose jokes do one good.&nbsp; I
+wish all the world were as gay as he.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then without a
+break, he goes on to deplore the fact that &ldquo;a gentleman
+drowned himself last week on my property.&nbsp; I wish he had
+gone somewhere else.&rdquo;&nbsp; Such was George Borrow.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p358b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"John Murray the Third.  From a photograph by Maull and Fox"
+title=
+"John Murray the Third.  From a photograph by Maull and Fox"
+ src="images/p358s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>For some time past Borrow&rsquo;s thoughts had been directed
+towards obtaining a Government post abroad.&nbsp; The sentence,
+&ldquo;You tell me to ask for situations, etc.,&rdquo; in a
+letter to his wife had reference to this ambition.&nbsp; He had
+previously (21st June 1841) written to Lord Clarendon suggesting
+for himself a consulship; but the reply had not been
+encouraging.&nbsp; It was &ldquo;quite hopeless to expect a
+consulship from Lord Palmerston, the applicants were too many and
+the appointments too few.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow recognised the stagnation of his present life.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I wish the Government would give me some
+command in Ireland which would call forth my energies,&rdquo; he
+wrote to John Murray (25th Oct. 1843).&nbsp; &ldquo;If there be
+an outbreak there I shall apply to them at once, for my heart is
+with them in the present matter: I hope they will be firm, and
+they have nothing to fear; I am sure that the English nation will
+back them, for the insolence and ingratitude of the Irish, and
+the cowardice of their humbug chief, have caused universal
+disgust.&rdquo;&nbsp; Later he wrote, also to John Murray, with
+reference to that &ldquo;trumpery fellow O&rsquo;Connell . . . I
+wish I were acquainted with Sir Robert Peel.&nbsp; I could give
+him many a useful hint with respect to Ireland and the
+Irish.&nbsp; I know both tolerably well.&nbsp; Whenever
+there&rsquo;s a row I intend to go over with Sidi Habismilk and
+put myself at the head of a body of volunteers.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He had previously written &ldquo;the old Duke [Wellington]
+will at last give salt eel to that cowardly, bawling vagabond
+O&rsquo;Connell.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow detested O&rsquo;Connell as
+a &ldquo;Dublin bully . . . a humbug, without courage or one
+particle of manly feeling.&rdquo;&nbsp; Again (17th June) he had
+written: &ldquo;Horrible news from Ireland.&nbsp; I wish
+sincerely the blackguards would break out at once; they will
+never be quiet until they have got a sound licking, and the
+sooner the better.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The finer side of Borrow&rsquo;s character was shown in his
+eagerness to obtain employment.&nbsp; There is a touch of pathos
+in the sight of this knight, armed and ready to fight anything
+for anybody, wasting his strength and his talents in feuds with
+his neighbours.</p>
+<p>In the profits on the old and the preparation of new editions
+of <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, Borrow took a keen interest.&nbsp;
+The money he was making enabled him to assist his wife in
+disembarrassing her estate.&nbsp; &ldquo;I begin to take
+considerable pleasure in making money,&rdquo; he wrote to his
+publisher, &ldquo;which I hope is a good sign; for what is life
+unless we take pleasure in something?&rdquo;&nbsp; Again he
+enquires, &ldquo;Why does not the public call for another edition
+of them [<i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>].&nbsp; You see what an
+unconscionable rascal I am becoming.&rdquo;&nbsp; During his
+lifetime Borrow received from the firm of Murray, &pound;3437,
+19s., most of which was on account of <i>The Bible in Spain</i>
+and, consequently, was paid to him during the first years of his
+association with Albemarle Street.</p>
+<p>Caroline Fox gives an interesting picture of Borrow at this
+period as he appeared to her:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;25<i>th</i>
+<i>Oct.</i> 1843.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Catherine Gurney gave us a note to George Borrow, so on
+him we called,&mdash;a tall, ungainly, uncouth man, with great
+physical strength, a quick penetrating eye, a confident manner,
+and a disagreeable tone and pronunciation.&nbsp; He was sitting
+on one side of the fire, and his old mother on the other.&nbsp;
+His spirits always sink in wet weather, and to-day was very
+rainy, but he was courteous and not displeased to be a little
+lionised, for his delicacy is not of the most susceptible.&nbsp;
+He talked about Spain and the Spaniards; the lowest classes of
+whom, he says, are the only ones worth investigating, the upper
+and middle class being (with exceptions, of course) mean,
+selfish, and proud beyond description.&nbsp; They care little for
+Roman Catholicism, and bear faint allegiance to the Pope.&nbsp;
+They generally lead profligate lives, until they lose all energy
+and then become slavishly superstitious.&nbsp; He said a curious
+thing of the Esquimaux, namely, that their language is a most
+complex and highly artificial one, calculated to express the most
+delicate metaphysical subtleties, yet they have no literature,
+nor are there any traces of their ever having had one&mdash;a
+most curious anomaly; hence he simply argues that you can ill
+judge of a people by their language.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation360a"></a><a href="#footnote360a"
+class="citation">[360a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>One of the strangest things about Borrow&rsquo;s personality
+was that it almost invariably struck women unfavourably.&nbsp;
+That he himself was not indifferent to women is shown by the
+impression made upon him by the black eyes of one of the Misses
+Mills of Saxham Hall, where he was taken to dinner by Dr Hake,
+who states that &ldquo;long afterwards, his inquiries after the
+black eyes were unfailing.&rdquo; <a name="citation360b"></a><a
+href="#footnote360b" class="citation">[360b]</a>&nbsp; He was
+also very kind and considerate to women.&nbsp; &ldquo;He was very
+polite and gentlemanly in ladies&rsquo; society, and we all liked
+him,&rdquo; wrote one woman friend <a name="citation360c"></a><a
+href="#footnote360c" class="citation">[360c]</a> who frequently
+accompanied him on his walks.&nbsp; She has described him as
+walking along &ldquo;singing to himself or quite silent, quite
+forgetting me until he came to a high hill, when he would turn
+round, seize my hand, and drag me up.&nbsp; Then he would sit
+down and enjoy the prospect.&rdquo; <a name="citation360d"></a><a
+href="#footnote360d" class="citation">[360d]</a></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII<br />
+MARCH 1844&ndash;1848</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> March 1844 Borrow, unable longer
+to control the <i>Wanderlust</i> within him, gave up the
+struggle, and determined to make a journey to the East.&nbsp; He
+was in London on the 20th, as Lady Eastlake (then Miss Elizabeth
+Rigby) testifies in her Journal.&nbsp; &ldquo;Borrow came in the
+evening,&rdquo; she writes: &ldquo;now a fine man, but a most
+disagreeable one; a kind of character that would be most
+dangerous in rebellious times&mdash;one that would suffer or
+persecute to the utmost.&nbsp; His face is expressive of
+wrong-headed determination.&rdquo; <a name="citation361"></a><a
+href="#footnote361" class="citation">[361]</a></p>
+<p>He left London towards the end of April for Paris, from which
+he wrote to John Murray, 1st May:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Vidocq wishes very much to have a copy of
+my <i>Gypsies of Spain</i>, and likewise one of the Romany
+Gospels.&nbsp; On the other side you will find an order on the
+Bible Society for the latter, and perhaps you will be so kind as
+to let one of your people go to Earl Street to procure it.&nbsp;
+You would oblige me by forwarding it to your agent in Paris, the
+address is Monsr. Vidocq, Galerie Vivienne, No. 13 . . . V. is a
+strange fellow, and amongst other things dabbles in
+literature.&nbsp; He is meditating a work upon <i>Les
+Bohemiens</i>, about whom I see he knows nothing at all.&nbsp; I
+have no doubt that the <i>Zincali</i>, were it to fall into his
+hands, would be preciously gutted, and the best part of the
+contents pirated.&nbsp; By the way, could you not persuade some
+of the French publishers to cause it to be translated, in which
+event there would be no fear.&nbsp; Such a work would be sure to
+sell.&nbsp; I wish Vidocq to have a copy of the book, but I
+confess I have my suspicions; he is so extraordinarily
+civil.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>From Paris he proceeded to Vienna, and thence into Hungary and
+Transylvania, where he remained for some months.&nbsp; He is
+known to have been &ldquo;in the steppe of Debreczin,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation362a"></a><a href="#footnote362a"
+class="citation">[362a]</a> to Koloszvar, through Nagy-Szeben, or
+Hermannstadt, on his journey through Roumania to Bucharest.&nbsp;
+He visited Wallachia &ldquo;for the express purpose of
+discoursing with the Gypsies, many of whom I found wandering
+about.&rdquo; <a name="citation362b"></a><a href="#footnote362b"
+class="citation">[362b]</a></p>
+<p>So little is known of Borrow&rsquo;s Eastern Journey that the
+following account, given by an American, has a peculiar
+interest:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;My companions, as we rode along, related
+some marvellous stories of a certain English traveller who had
+been here [near Grosswardein] and of his influence over the
+Gypsies.&nbsp; One of them said that he was walking out with him
+one day, when they met a poor gypsy woman.&nbsp; The Englishman
+addressed her in Hungarian, and she answered in the usual
+disdainful way.&nbsp; He changed his language, however, and spoke
+a word or two in an unknown tongue.&nbsp; The woman&rsquo;s face
+lighted up in an instant, and she replied in the most passionate,
+eager way, and after some conversation dragged him away almost
+with her.&nbsp; After this the English gentleman visited a number
+of their most private gatherings and was received everywhere as
+one of them.&nbsp; He did more good among them, all said, than
+all the laws over them, or the benevolent efforts for them, of
+the last half century.&nbsp; They described his
+appearance&mdash;his tall, lank, muscular form, and mentioned
+that he had been much in Spain, and I saw that it must be that
+most ubiquitous of travellers, Mr Borrow.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation362c"></a><a href="#footnote362c"
+class="citation">[362c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This was the fame most congenial to Borrow&rsquo;s strange
+nature.&nbsp; Dinners, receptions, and the like caused him to
+despise those who found pleasure in such &ldquo;crazy admiration
+for what they called gentility.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was his foible,
+as much as &ldquo;gentility nonsense&rdquo; was theirs, to find
+pleasure in the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of the mysterious stranger, who
+by a word could change a disdainful gypsy into a fawning,
+awe-stricken slave.&nbsp; Fame to satisfy George Borrow must
+carry with it something of the greatness of Olympus.</p>
+<p>A glimpse of Borrow during his Eastern tour is obtained from
+Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s letters to John Murray.&nbsp; After telling
+him that she possesses a privilege which many wives do not
+(viz.), permission to open her Husband&rsquo;s letters during his
+absence, she proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The accounts from him are, I am thankful to
+say, very satisfactory.&nbsp; It is extraordinary with what marks
+of kindness even Catholics of distinction treat him when they
+know who he is, but it is clearly his gift of tongues which
+causes him to meet with so many adventures, several of which he
+has recorded of a most singular nature.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation363"></a><a href="#footnote363"
+class="citation">[363]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>At Vienna Borrow had arranged to wait until he should receive
+a letter from his wife, &ldquo;being very anxious to know of his
+family,&rdquo; as Mrs Borrow informed John Murray (24th
+July).</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Thus far,&rdquo; she continues,
+&ldquo;thanks be to God, he has prospered in his journey.&nbsp;
+Many and wonderful are the adventures he has met with, which I
+hope at no distant period may be related to his friends.&nbsp;
+Doctor Bowring was very kind in sending me flattering tidings of
+my Husband.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was at Constantinople on 17th Sept. when he drew on his
+letter of credit.&nbsp; Leland tells an anecdote about Borrow at
+Constantinople; but it must be remembered that it was written
+when he regarded Borrow with anything but friendly
+feelings:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Sir Patrick Colquhoun told me that once
+when he was at Constantinople, Mr Borrow came there, and gave it
+out that he was a marvellous Oriental scholar.&nbsp; But there
+was great scepticism on this subject at the Legation, and one day
+at the <i>table d&rsquo;h&ocirc;te</i>, where the great writer
+and divers young diplomatists dined, two who were seated on
+either side of Borrow began to talk Arabic, speaking to him, the
+result being that he was obliged to confess that he not only did
+not understand what they were saying, but did not even know what
+the language was.&nbsp; Then he was tried in Modern Greek, with
+the same result.&rdquo; <a name="citation364"></a><a
+href="#footnote364" class="citation">[364]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The story is obviously untrue.&nbsp; Had Borrow been ignorant
+of Arabic he would not have risked writing to Dr Bowring (11th
+Sept. 1831; see <i>ante</i>, page 85) expressing his enthusiasm
+for that language.&nbsp; Arabic had, apparently, formed one of
+the subjects of his preliminary examination at Earl Street.&nbsp;
+With regard to Modern Greek he confessed in a letter to Mr
+Brandram (12th June 1839), &ldquo;though I speak it very ill, I
+can make myself understood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Having obtained a Turkish passport, and after being presented
+to Abd&ucirc;l Medj&icirc;d, the Sultan, Borrow proceeded to
+Salonika and, crossing Thessaly to Albania, visited Janina and
+Prevesa.&nbsp; He passed over to Corf&ugrave;, and saw Venice and
+Rome, returning to England by way of Marseilles, Paris and
+Havre.&nbsp; He arrived in London on 16th November, after nearly
+seven months&rsquo; absence, to find his &ldquo;home particularly
+dear to me . . . after my long wanderings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is curious that he should have left no record of this
+expedition; but if he made notes he evidently destroyed them, as,
+with the exception of a few letters, nothing was found among his
+papers relating to the Eastern tour.&nbsp; There is evidence that
+he was occupied with his pen during this journey, in the
+existence at the British Museum of his <i>Vocabulary of the Gypsy
+Language as spoken in Hungary and Transylvania</i>, <i>compiled
+during an intercourse of some months with the Gypsies in those
+parts in the year</i> 1844, <i>by George Borrow</i>.&nbsp; In all
+probability he prepared his <i>Bohemian Grammar</i> at the same
+time. <a name="citation365a"></a><a href="#footnote365a"
+class="citation">[365a]</a></p>
+<p>From the time that he became acquainted with Borrow, Richard
+Ford had constituted himself the genius of <i>La Mezquita</i>
+(the Mosque), as he states the little octagonal Summer-house was
+called.&nbsp; He was for ever urging in impulsive, polyglot
+letters that the curtain to be lifted.&nbsp; &ldquo;Publish your
+<i>whole</i> adventures for the last twenty years,&rdquo; he had
+written. <a name="citation365b"></a><a href="#footnote365b"
+class="citation">[365b]</a>&nbsp; Ford saw that a man of
+Borrow&rsquo;s nature must have had astonishing adventures, and
+with <i>his</i> pen would be able to tell them in an astonishing
+manner.</p>
+<p>As early as the summer of 1841 Borrow appears to have
+contemplated writing his <i>Autobiography</i>.&nbsp; On the eve
+of the appearance of <i>The Bible in Spain</i> (17th Dec.) he
+wrote to John Murray: &ldquo;I hope our book will be successful;
+if so, I shall put another on the stocks.&nbsp; Capital subject:
+early life; studies and adventures; some account of my father,
+William Taylor, Whiter, Big Ben, etc. etc.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The first draft of notes for <i>Lavengro</i>, <i>an
+Autobiography</i>, as the book was originally advertised in the
+announcement, is extremely interesting.&nbsp; It runs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Reasons for studying languages: French,
+Italian, D&rsquo;Eterville.</p>
+<p>Southern tongues.&nbsp; Dante.</p>
+<p>Walks.&nbsp; The Quaker&rsquo;s Home, Mousehold.&nbsp;
+Petulengro.</p>
+<p>The Gypsies.</p>
+<p>The Office.&nbsp; Welsh.&nbsp; Lhuyd.</p>
+<p>German.&nbsp; Levy.&nbsp; Billy Taylor.</p>
+<p>Danish.&nbsp; K&oelig;mpe Viser.&nbsp; Billy Taylor.&nbsp;
+Dinner.</p>
+<p>Bowring.</p>
+<p>Hebrew.&nbsp; The Jew.</p>
+<p>Philosophy.&nbsp; Radicalism.&nbsp; Ranters.</p>
+<p>Thurtell.&nbsp; Boxers.&nbsp; Petulengres.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation365c"></a><a href="#footnote365c"
+class="citation">[365c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><i>Lavengro</i> was planned in 1842 and the greater part
+written before the end of the following year, although the work
+was not actually completed until 1846.&nbsp; There are numerous
+references in Borrow&rsquo;s letters of this period to the book
+on which he was then engaged, and he invariably refers to it as
+his <i>Life</i>.&nbsp; On 21st January 1843 he writes to John
+Murray, Junr.: &ldquo;I meditate shortly a return to Barbary in
+quest of the <i>Witch Hamlet</i>, and my adventures in the land
+of wonders will serve capitally to fill the thin volume of <i>My
+Life</i>, <i>a Drama</i>, By G. B.&rdquo;&nbsp; Again and again
+Borrow refers to <i>My Life</i>.&nbsp; Hasfeldt and Ford also
+wrote of it as the &ldquo;wonderful life&rdquo; and &ldquo;the
+<i>Biography</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In his letters to John Murray, Borrow not only refers to the
+book as his <i>Life</i>, but from time to time gives crumbs of
+information concerning its progress.&nbsp; The Secretary of the
+Bible Society has just lent him his letters from Russia,
+&ldquo;which will be of great assistance in the Life, as I shall
+work them up as I did those relating to Spain.&nbsp; The first
+volume,&rdquo; he continues, &ldquo;will be devoted to England
+entirely, and my pursuits and adventures in early
+life.&rdquo;&nbsp; He recognises that he must be careful of the
+reputation that he has earned.&nbsp; His new book is to be
+original, as would be seen when it at last appears; but he
+confesses that occasionally he feels &ldquo;tremendously
+lazy.&rdquo;&nbsp; On another occasion (27th March 1843) he
+writes to John Murray, Junr.: &ldquo;I hope by the end of next
+year that I shall have part of my life ready for the press in 3
+vols.&rdquo;&nbsp; Six months later (2nd Oct. 1843) he writes to
+John Murray:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I wish I had another <i>Bible</i> ready;
+but slow and sure is my maxim.&nbsp; The book which I am at
+present about will consist, if I live to finish it of a series of
+Rembrandt pictures interspersed here and there with a
+Claude.&nbsp; I shall tell the world of my parentage, my early
+thoughts and habits; how I became a sap-engro, or viper-catcher;
+my wanderings with the regiment in England, Scotland and Ireland
+. . . Then a great deal about Norwich, Billy Taylor, Thurtell,
+etc.; how I took to study and became a lav-engro.&nbsp; What do
+you think of this as a bill of fare for the <i>first</i>
+Vol.?&nbsp; The second will consist of my adventures in London as
+an author in the year &rsquo;23 (<i>sic</i>), adventures on the
+Big North Road in &rsquo;24 (<i>sic</i>), Constantinople,
+etc.&nbsp; The third&mdash;but I shall tell you no more of my
+secrets.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In a letter to John Murray (25th Oct. 8843), the title is
+referred to as <i>Lavengro</i>: <i>A Biography</i>.&nbsp; It is
+to be &ldquo;full of grave fun and solemn laughter like the
+<i>Bible</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; On 6th December he again
+writes:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I do not wish for my next book to be
+advertised yet; I have a particular reason.&nbsp; The Americans
+are up to everything which affords a prospect of gain, and I
+should not wonder that, provided I were to announce my title, and
+the book did not appear forthwith, they would write one for me
+and send forth their trash into the world under my name.&nbsp;
+For my own part I am in no hurry,&rdquo; he proceeds.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I am writing to please myself, and am quite sure that if I
+can contrive to please myself, I shall please the public
+also.&nbsp; Had I written a book less popular than the
+<i>Bible</i>, I should be less cautious; but I know how much is
+expected from me, and also know what a roar of exultation would
+be raised by my enemies (and I have plenty) were I to produce
+anything that was not first rate.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Time after time he insists upon his determination to publish
+nothing that is not &ldquo;as good as the last.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I shall go on with my <i>Life</i>,&rdquo; he writes, to
+Ford (9th Feb. 1844), &ldquo;but slowly and lazily.&nbsp; What I
+write, however, is <i>good</i>.&nbsp; I feel it is good, strange
+and wild as it is.&rdquo; <a name="citation367"></a><a
+href="#footnote367" class="citation">[367]</a></p>
+<p>From 24th&ndash;27th Jan. 1844 that &ldquo;most astonishing
+fellow&rdquo; Richard Ford visited Borrow at Oulton, urging again
+in person, most likely, the lifting of the veil that obscured
+those seven mysterious years.&nbsp; Ford has himself described
+this visit to Borrow in a letter written from Oulton Hall.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am here on a visit to <i>El
+Gitano</i>;&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;two &lsquo;rum&rsquo; coves,
+in a queer country . . . we defy the elements, and chat over
+<i>las cosas de Espa&ntilde;a</i>, and he tells me portions of
+his life, more strange even than his book.&nbsp; We scamper by
+day over the country in a sort of gig, which reminds me of Mr
+Weare on his trip with Mr THURTELL [Borrow&rsquo;s old
+preceptor]; &lsquo;Sidi Habismilk&rsquo; is in the stable and a
+Zamarra [sheepskin coat] now before me, writing as I am in a sort
+of summer-house called <i>La Mezquita</i>, in which <i>El
+Gitano</i> concocts his lucubrations, and <i>paints</i> his
+pictures, for his object is to colour up and poetise his
+adventures.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>By this last sentence Ford showed how thoroughly he understood
+Borrow&rsquo;s literary methods.&nbsp; A fortnight later Borrow
+writes to Ford:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t think how I miss you and
+our chats by the fireside.&nbsp; The wine, now I am alone, has
+lost its flavour, and the cigars make me ill.&nbsp; I am
+frequently in my valley of the shadows, and had I not my summer
+jaunt [the Eastern Tour] to look forward to, I am afraid it would
+be all up with your friend and <i>Batushka</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Eastern Tour considerably interfered with the writing of
+<i>Lavengro</i>.&nbsp; There was a seven months&rsquo; break; but
+Borrow settled down to work on it again, still determined to take
+his time and produce a book that should be better than <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i>.</p>
+<p>Ford&rsquo;s <i>Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain and Readers
+at Home</i> appeared in 1845, a work that had cost its author
+upwards of sixteen years of labour.&nbsp; In a letter to Borrow
+he characterised it as &ldquo;a <i>rum</i> book and has queer
+stuff in it, although much expurgated for the sake of
+Spain.&rdquo;&nbsp; Ford was very anxious that Borrow should keep
+the promise that he had given two years previously to review the
+<i>Hand-Book</i> when it appeared.&nbsp; &ldquo;You will do it
+<i>magnificently</i>.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thou art the
+man,&rsquo;&rdquo; Ford had written with the greatest
+enthusiasm.&nbsp; On 2nd June an article of thirty-seven folio
+pages was despatched by Borrow to John Murray for <i>The
+Quarterly Review</i>, with the following from Mrs
+Borrow:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;With regard to the article, it must not be
+received as a specimen of what Mr Borrow would have produced had
+he been well, but he considered his promise to Mr Ford
+sacred&mdash;and it is only to be wished that it had been written
+under more favourable circumstances.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow was ill
+at the time, having been &ldquo;very unwell for the last
+month,&rdquo; as Mrs Borrow explains, &ldquo;and particularly so
+lately.&nbsp; Shivering fits have been succeeded by burning
+fever, till his strength was much reduced; and he at present
+remains in a low, and weak state, and what is worse, we are by no
+means sure that the disease is subdued.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Ford saw in Borrow &ldquo;a crack reviewer.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo; . . . You have,&rdquo; he assured him in 1843,
+&ldquo;only to write a <i>long letter</i>, having read the book
+carefully and thought over the subject.&rdquo;&nbsp; Ford also
+wrote to Borrow (26th Oct. 1843): &ldquo;I have written several
+letters to Murray recommending them to <i>bag</i> you forthwith,
+unless they are demented.&rdquo;&nbsp; There was no doubt in his,
+Ford&rsquo;s, mind as to the acceptance of Borrow&rsquo;s
+article.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;If insanity does not rule the <i>Q. R.</i>
+camp, they will embrace the offer with open arms in their present
+Erebus state of dullness,&rdquo; he tells Borrow, then, with a
+burst of confidence continues, &ldquo;But, barring politics, I
+confidentially tell you that the <i>Ed</i>[<i>inburgh</i>]
+<i>Rev.</i> does business in a more liberal and more
+business-like manner than the <i>Q</i>[<i>uarterly</i>]
+<i>Rev.</i>&nbsp; I am always dunning this into Murray&rsquo;s
+head.&nbsp; More flies are caught with honey than vinegar.&nbsp;
+Soft sawder, especially if plenty of <i>gold</i> goes into the
+composition, cements a party and keeps earnest pens
+together.&nbsp; I grieve, for my heart is entirely with the <i>Q.
+R.</i>, its views and objects.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The article turned out to be, not a review of the
+<i>Hand-Book</i>, but a bitter attack on Spain and her
+rulers.&nbsp; The second part was to some extent germane to the
+subject, but it appears to have been more concerned with
+Borrow&rsquo;s view of Spain and things Spanish than with
+Ford&rsquo;s book.&nbsp; Lockhart saw that it would not do.&nbsp;
+In a letter to John Murray he explains very clearly and very
+justly the objections to using the article as it stood.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; he writes (13th
+June), &ldquo;after Borrow has so kindly exerted himself during
+illness, that I must return his paper.&nbsp; I read the MS. with
+much pleasure; but clever and brilliant as he is sure always to
+be, it was very evident that he had not done such an article as
+Ford&rsquo;s merits required; and I therefore intended to adopt
+Mr Borrow&rsquo;s lively diatribe, but interweave with his matter
+and add to it, such observations and extracts as might, I
+thought, complete the paper in a <i>review sense</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But it appears that Mr B. won&rsquo;t allow anybody to
+tamper with his paper; therefore here it is.&nbsp; It will be
+highly ornamental as it stands to any <i>Magazine</i>, and I have
+no doubt either <i>Blackwood</i> or <i>Fraser</i> or
+<i>Colburn</i> will be [only] too happy to insert it next month,
+if applied to now.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr Borrow would not have liked that, when his <i>Bible
+in Spain</i> came out, we should have printed a brilliant essay
+by Ford on some point of Spanish interest, but including hardly
+anything calculated to make the public feel that a new author of
+high consequence had made his appearance among us&mdash;one
+bearing the name, not of Richard Ford, but of George
+Borrow.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Lockhart was right and Borrow was wrong.&nbsp; There is no
+room for equivocation.&nbsp; Borrow should have sunk his pride in
+favour of his friendship for Ford, who had, even if occasionally
+a little tedious in his epistolary enthusiasm, always been a
+loyal friend; but Borrow was ill and excuses must be made for
+him.&nbsp; Lockhart wrote also to Ford describing Borrow&rsquo;s
+paper as &ldquo;just another capital chapter of his <i>Bible in
+Spain</i>,&rdquo; which he had read with delight, but there was
+&ldquo;hardly a word of <i>review</i>, and no extract giving the
+least notion of the peculiar merits and style especially, of the
+<i>Hand-Book</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;He is unwell,&rdquo;
+continued Lockhart, &ldquo;I should be very sorry to bother him
+more at present; and, moreover, from the little he has said of
+your <i>style</i>, I am forced to infer that a <i>review</i> of
+your book by him would never be what I could feel authorised to
+publish in the <i>Q. R.</i>&rdquo;&nbsp; The letter concludes
+with a word of condolence that the <i>Hand-Book</i> will have to
+be committed to other hands.</p>
+<p>Ford realised the difficulty of the situation in which he was
+placed, and strove to wriggle out of it by telling Borrow that
+his wife had said all along that</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Borrow can&rsquo;t write anything
+dull enough for your set; I wonder how I ever married one of
+them,&rsquo;&mdash;I hope and trust you will not cancel the
+paper, for we can&rsquo;t afford to lose a scrap of your queer
+sparkle and &lsquo;thousand bright daughters
+circumvolving.&rsquo;&nbsp; I have recommended its insertion in
+<i>Blackwood</i>, <i>Fraser</i>, or some of those clever
+Magazines, who will be overjoyed to get such a hand as yours, and
+I will bet any man &pound;5 that your paper will be the most
+popular of all they print.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is evident that Ford was genuinely distressed, and in his
+anxiety to be loyal to his friend rather overdid it.&nbsp; His
+letter has an air of patronage that the writer certainly never
+intended.&nbsp; The outstanding feature is its absolute
+selflessness.&nbsp; Ford never seems to think of himself, or that
+Borrow might have made a concession to their friendship.&nbsp;
+Happy Ford!&nbsp; The unfortunate episode estranged Borrow from
+Ford.&nbsp; Letters between them became less and less frequent
+and finally ceased altogether, although Borrow did not forget to
+send to his old friend a copy of <i>Lavengro</i> when it
+appeared.</p>
+<p>Worries seemed to rain down upon Borrow&rsquo;s head about
+this time.&nbsp; Samuel Morton Peto (afterwards Sir Samuel) had
+decided to enrich Lowestoft by improving the harbour and building
+a railway to Reedham, about half-way between Yarmouth and
+Norwich.&nbsp; He was authorised by Parliament and duly
+constructed his line, which not even Borrow&rsquo;s anger could
+prevent from passing through the Oulton Estate, between the Hall
+and the Cottage.&nbsp; Borrow could not fight an Act of
+Parliament, which forced him to cross a railway bridge on his way
+to church; but he never forgave the man who had contrived it, or
+his millions.&nbsp; His first thought had been to fly before the
+invader.&nbsp; All quiet would be gone from the place.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Sell and be off,&rdquo; advised Ford; &ldquo;I hope you
+will make the railway pay dear for its whistle,&rdquo; quietly
+observed John Murray.&nbsp; At first Borrow was inclined to take
+Ford&rsquo;s advice and settle abroad; but subsequently
+relinquished the idea.</p>
+<p>He was not, however, the man quietly to sit down before what
+he conceived to be an unjustifiable outrage to his right to be
+quiet.&nbsp; He never forgave railways, although forced sometimes
+to make use of them.&nbsp; Samuel Morton Peto became to him the
+embodiment of evil, and as &ldquo;Mr Flamson flaming in his coach
+with a million&rdquo; he is immortalised in <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>.</p>
+<p>It is said that Sir Samuel boasted that he had made more than
+the price he had paid for Borrow&rsquo;s land out of the gravel
+he had taken from off it.&nbsp; On one occasion, after he had
+bought Somerleyton Hall, happening to meet Borrow, he remarked
+that he never called upon him, and Borrow remembering the boast
+replied, &ldquo;I call on you!&nbsp; Do you think I don&rsquo;t
+read my Shakespeare?&nbsp; Do you think I don&rsquo;t know all
+about those highwaymen Bardolph and Peto?&rdquo; <a
+name="citation372"></a><a href="#footnote372"
+class="citation">[372]</a></p>
+<p>The neighbourhood of Oulton appears to have been infested with
+thieves, and poachers found admirable &ldquo;cover&rdquo; in the
+surrounding plantations, or small woods.&nbsp; On several
+occasions Borrow himself had been attacked at night on the
+highway between Lowestoft and Oulton.&nbsp; Once he had even been
+shot at and nearly overpowered.&nbsp; John Murray (the Second) on
+hearing of one of these assaults had written (1841) artfully
+enquiring, &ldquo;Were your wood thieves Gypsies, and have the
+<i>Cal&eacute;s</i> got notice of your publication [<i>The
+Zincali</i>]?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had written to John Murray, Junr. (10th May
+1842):&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have been dreadfully unwell since I last
+heard from you&mdash;a regular nervous attack.&nbsp; At present I
+have a bad cough, caught by getting up at night in pursuit of
+poachers and thieves.&nbsp; A horrible neighbourhood
+this&mdash;not a magistrate dares do his duty.&rdquo;&nbsp; On
+18th September 1843 he again wrote to John Murray: &ldquo;One of
+the Magistrates in this district is just dead.&nbsp; Present my
+compliments to Mr Gladstone and tell him that the <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i> would have no objection to become &lsquo;a great
+unpaid!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Gladstone is said greatly to have admired <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i>, even to the extent of writing to John Murray
+counselling him to have amended a passage that he considered
+ill-advised.&nbsp; Gladstone&rsquo;s letter was sent on to
+Borrow, and he acknowledges its receipt (6th November 1843) in
+the following terms:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Many thanks for the perusal of Mr
+Gladstone&rsquo;s letter.&nbsp; I esteem it a high honour that so
+distinguished a man should take sufficient interest in a work of
+mine as to suggest any thing in emendation.&nbsp; I can have no
+possible objection to modify the passage alluded to.&nbsp; It
+contains some strong language, particularly the sentence about
+the scarlet Lady, which it would be perhaps as well to
+omit.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The offending passage was that in which Borrow says, when
+describing the interior of the Mosque at Tangier: &ldquo;I looked
+around for the abominable thing, and found it not; no scarlet
+strumpet with a crown of false gold sat nursing an ugly
+changeling in a niche.&rdquo;&nbsp; In later editions the words
+&ldquo;no scarlet strumpet,&rdquo; etc., were changed to
+&ldquo;the besetting sin of the pseudo-Christian Church did not
+stare me in the face in every corner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The amendment was little likely to please a Churchman of
+Gladstone&rsquo;s calibre, or procure for the writer the
+magistracy he coveted, even if it had been made less
+grudgingly.&nbsp; &ldquo;We must not make any further alterations
+here,&rdquo; Borrow wrote to Murray a few days later,
+&ldquo;otherwise the whole soliloquy, which is full of vigor and
+poetry, and moreover of <i>truth</i>, would be entirely
+spoiled.&nbsp; As it is, I cannot help feeling that [it] is
+considerably damaged.&rdquo;&nbsp; There seems very little doubt
+that this passage was referred to in the letter that John Murray
+encloses in his of 10th July 1843 <a name="citation374"></a><a
+href="#footnote374" class="citation">[374]</a> with this
+reference: &ldquo;(The writer of the enclosed note is a worthy
+canon of St Paul&rsquo;s, and has evidently seen only the 1st
+edition).&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow replied:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Pray present my best respects to the Canon
+of St Paul&rsquo;s and tell him from me that he is a
+<i>burro</i>, which meaneth Jackass, and that I wish he would
+mind his own business, which he might easily do by attending a
+little more to the accommodation of the public in his ugly
+Cathedral.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow appears to have set his mind on becoming a
+magistrate.&nbsp; He had written to Lockhart (November 1843)
+enquiring how he had best proceed to obtain such an
+appointment.&nbsp; Lockhart was not able to give him any very
+definite information, his knowledge of such things, as he
+confessed, &ldquo;being Scotch.&rdquo;&nbsp; For the time being
+the matter was allowed to drop, to be revived in 1847 by a direct
+application from Borrow to Lord Clarendon to support his
+application with the Lord Chancellor.&nbsp; His claims were based
+upon (1) his being a large landed-proprietor in the district (Mrs
+Borrow had become the owner of the Oulton Hall Estate during the
+previous year); (2) the fact that the neighbourhood was over-run
+with thieves and undesirable characters; (3) that there was no
+magistrate residing in the district.&nbsp; Lord Clarendon
+promised his good offices, but suggested that as all such
+appointments were made through the Lord-Lieutenant of the County,
+the Earl of Stradbroke had better be acquainted with what was
+taking place.&nbsp; This was done through the Hon. Wm. Rufus
+Rous, Lord Stradbroke&rsquo;s brother, whose interest was
+obtained by some of Borrow&rsquo;s friends.</p>
+<p>After a delay of two months, Lord Stradbroke wrote to Lord
+Clarendon that he was quite satisfied with &ldquo;the number and
+efficiency of the Magistrates&rdquo; and also with the way in
+which the Petty Sessions were attended.&nbsp; He could hear of no
+complaint, and when the time came to increase the number of
+J.P.&rsquo;s, he would be pleased to add Borrow&rsquo;s name to
+the list, provided he were advised to do so by &ldquo;those
+gentlemen residing in the neighbourhood, who, living on terms of
+intimacy with them [the Magistrates], will be able to maintain
+that union of good feeling which . . . exists in all our benches
+of Petty Sessions.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow would have made a good magistrate, provided the
+offender were not a gypsy.&nbsp; He would have caused the
+wrong-doer more fear the instrument of the law rather than the
+law itself, and some of his sentences might possibly have been as
+summary as those of Judge Lynch.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It was a fine thing,&rdquo; writes a
+contemporary, &ldquo;to see the great man tackle a tramp.&nbsp;
+Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy
+with a quivering nostril.&nbsp; If the nomad happened to be a
+gypsy he was courteously addressed.&nbsp; But were he a mere
+native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow&rsquo;s
+coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and
+then who was the better man flung forth.&nbsp; I have never seen
+such challenges accepted, for Borrow was robust and
+towering.&rdquo; <a name="citation375"></a><a href="#footnote375"
+class="citation">[375]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is not strange that Borrow&rsquo;s application failed; for
+he never refused leave to the gypsies to camp upon his land, and
+would sometimes join them beside their campfires.&nbsp; Once he
+took a guest with him after dinner to where the gypsies were
+encamped.&nbsp; They received Borrow with every mark of
+respect.&nbsp; Presently he &ldquo;began to intone to them a
+song, written by him in Romany, which recounted all their tricks
+and evil deeds.&nbsp; The gypsies soon became excited; then they
+began to kick their property about, such as barrels and tin cans;
+then the men began to fight and the women to part them; an uproar
+of shouts and recriminations set in, and the quarrel became so
+serious that it was thought prudent to quit the scene.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation376a"></a><a href="#footnote376a"
+class="citation">[376a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;In nothing can the
+character of a people be read with greater certainty and
+exactness than in its songs,&rdquo; <a name="citation376b"></a><a
+href="#footnote376b" class="citation">[376b]</a> Borrow had
+written. <a name="citation376c"></a><a href="#footnote376c"
+class="citation">[376c]</a></p>
+<p>These disappointments tended to embitter Borrow, who saw in
+them only a conspiracy against him.&nbsp; There is little doubt
+that Lord Stradbroke&rsquo;s enquiries had revealed some curious
+gossip concerning the Master of Oulton Hall, possibly the dispute
+with his rector over the inability of their respective dogs to
+live in harmony; perhaps even the would-be magistrate&rsquo;s
+predilection for the society of gypsies, and his profound
+admiration for &ldquo;the Fancy&rdquo; had reached the
+Lord-Lieutenant&rsquo;s ears.</p>
+<p>The unfortunate and somewhat mysterious dispute with Dr
+Bowring was another anxiety that Borrow had to face.&nbsp; He had
+once remarked, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very odd, Bowring, that you and
+I have never had a quarrel.&rdquo; <a name="citation376d"></a><a
+href="#footnote376d" class="citation">[376d]</a>&nbsp; In the
+summer of 1842 he and Bowring seem to have been on excellent
+terms.&nbsp; Borrow wrote asking for the return of the papers and
+manuscripts that had remained in Bowring&rsquo;s hands since
+1829, when the <i>Songs of Scandinavia</i> was projected, as
+Borrow hoped to bring out during the ensuing year a volume
+entitled <i>Songs of Denmark</i>.&nbsp; The cordiality of the
+letter may best be judged by the fact that in it he announces his
+intention of having a copy of the forthcoming <i>Bible in
+Spain</i> sent &ldquo;to my oldest, I may say my <i>only</i>
+friend.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In 1847 Bowring wrote to Borrow enquiring as to the Russian
+route through Kiakhta, and asking if he could put him in the way
+of obtaining the information for the use of a Parliamentary
+Committee then enquiring into England&rsquo;s commercial
+relations with China.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s reply is apparently no
+longer in existence; but it drew from Bowring another letter
+raising a question as to whether &ldquo;&lsquo;two hundred
+merchants are allowed to visit Pekin every three
+years.&rsquo;&nbsp; Are you certain this is in practice
+now?&nbsp; Have you ever been to Kiakhta?&rdquo;&nbsp; It would
+appear from Bowring&rsquo;s &ldquo;if summoned, your expenses
+must be paid by the public,&rdquo; that Borrow had suggested
+giving evidence before the Committee, hence Bowring&rsquo;s
+question as to whether Borrow could speak from personal knowledge
+of Kiakhta.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s claim against Bowring is that after promising
+to use all his influence to get him appointed Consul at Canton,
+he obtained the post for himself, passing off as his own the
+Manchu-Tartar New Testament that Borrow had edited in St
+Petersburg.&nbsp; There is absolutely no other evidence than that
+contained in Borrow&rsquo;s Appendix to <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>.&nbsp; There is very little doubt that Bowring was a man
+who had no hesitation in seizing everything that presented itself
+and turning it, as far as possible, to his own uses.&nbsp; In
+this he was doing what most successful men have done and will
+continue to do.&nbsp; He had been kind to Borrow, and had helped
+him as far as lay in his power.&nbsp; He no doubt obtained all
+the information he could from Borrow, as he would have done from
+anyone else; but he never withheld his help.&nbsp; It has been
+suggested that he really did mention Borrow as a candidate for
+the Consulship and later, when in financial straits and finding
+that Borrow had no chance of obtaining it, accepted Lord
+Palmerston&rsquo;s offer of the post for himself.&nbsp; It is,
+however, idle to speculate what actually happened.&nbsp; What
+resulted was that Bowring as the &ldquo;Old Radical&rdquo; took
+premier place in the Appendix-inferno that closed <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>. <a name="citation378a"></a><a href="#footnote378a"
+class="citation">[378a]</a></p>
+<p>Fate seemed to conspire to cause Borrow chagrin.&nbsp; Early
+in 1847 it came to his knowledge that there were in existence
+some valuable Codices in certain churches and convents in the
+Levant.&nbsp; In particular there was said to be an original of
+the Greek New Testament, supposed to date from the fourth
+century, which had been presented to the convent on Mount Sinai
+by the Emperor Justinian.&nbsp; Borrow received information of
+the existence of the treasure, and also a hint that with a little
+address, some of these priceless manuscripts might be secured to
+the British Nation.&nbsp; It was even suggested that application
+might be made to the Government by the Trustees of the British
+Museum. <a name="citation378b"></a><a href="#footnote378b"
+class="citation">[378b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s reply to this
+was an intimation that if requested to do so he would willingly
+undertake the mission.&nbsp; Nothing, however, came of the
+project, and the remainder of the manuscript of the Greek
+Testament (part of it had been acquired in 1843 by Tischendorf)
+was presented by the monks to Alexander II. and it is now in the
+Imperial Library at St Petersburg.</p>
+<p>The information as to the existence of the manuscripts, it is
+alleged, was given to the Museum Trustees by the Hon. Robert
+Curzon, who had travelled much in Egypt and the Holy Land.&nbsp;
+It was certainly no fault of his that the mission was not sent
+out, and Borrow&rsquo;s subsequent antagonism to him and his
+family is difficult to understand and impossible to explain.</p>
+<p>Borrow had achieved literary success: before the year 1847
+<i>The Zincali</i> was in its Fourth Edition (nearly 10,000
+copies having been printed) and <i>The Bible in Spain</i> had
+reached its Eighth Edition (nearly 20,000 copies having been
+printed).&nbsp; He was an unqualified success; yet he had been
+far happier when distributing Testaments in Spain.&nbsp; The
+greyness and inaction of domestic life, even when relieved by
+occasional excursions with Sidi Habismilk and the Son of the
+Miracle, were irksome to his temperament, ever eager for
+occupation and change of scene.&nbsp; He was like a war-horse
+champing his bit during times of peace.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Why did you send me down six copies [of
+<i>The Zincali</i>]?&rdquo; he bursts out in a letter to John
+Murray (29th Jan. 1846).&nbsp; &ldquo;Whom should I send them
+to?&nbsp; Do you think I have six friends in the world?&nbsp; Two
+I have presented to my wife and daughter (in law).&nbsp; I shall
+return three to you by the first opportunity.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In 1847, through the Harveys, he became acquainted with Dr
+Thomas Gordon Hake, who was in practice at Brighton 1832&ndash;37
+and at Bury St Edmunds 1839&ndash;53, and who was also a
+poet.&nbsp; The two families visited each other, and Dr Hake has
+left behind him some interesting stories about, and valuable
+impressions of, Borrow.&nbsp; Dr Hake shows clearly that he did
+not allow his friendship to influence his judgment when in his
+<i>Memoirs</i> he described Borrow as</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;one of those whose mental powers are
+strong, and whose bodily frame is yet stronger&mdash;a
+conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career, in
+an age of intellectual predominance.&nbsp; His temper was good
+and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his
+vanity in being negative, was one of the most positive
+kind.&nbsp; He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with
+an emphasis that made trifles significant.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation379"></a><a href="#footnote379"
+class="citation">[379]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This rather laboured series of paradoxes quite fails to give a
+convincing impression of the man.&nbsp; A much better idea of
+Borrow is to be found in a letter (1847) by a fellow-guest at a
+breakfast given by the Prussian Ambassador.&nbsp; He writes that
+there was present</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;the amusing author of <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i>, a man who is remarkable for his extraordinary powers
+as a linguist, and for the originality of his character, not to
+speak of the wonderful adventures he narrates, and the ease and
+facility with which he tells them.&nbsp; He kept us laughing a
+good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his remarks, as well
+as the positiveness of his assertions, often rather startling,
+and like his books partaking of the marvellous.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation380a"></a><a href="#footnote380a"
+class="citation">[380a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Abandoning paradox, Dr Hake is more successful in his
+description of Borrow&rsquo;s person.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;His figure was tall,&rdquo; he tells us,
+&ldquo;and his bearing very noble; he had a finely moulded head,
+and thick white hair&mdash;white from his youth; his brown eyes
+were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of the
+&lsquo;semitic&rsquo; type, which gave his face the cast of the
+young Memnon.&nbsp; His mouth had a generous curve; and his
+features, for beauty and true power, were such as can have no
+parallel in our portrait gallery.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation380b"></a><a href="#footnote380b"
+class="citation">[380b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>When not occupied in writing, Borrow would walk about the
+estate with his animals, between whom and their master a perfect
+understanding existed.&nbsp; Sidi Habismilk would come to a
+whistle and would follow him about, and his two dogs and cat
+would do the same.&nbsp; When he went for a walk the dogs and cat
+would set out with him; but the cat would turn back after
+accompanying him for about a quarter of a mile. <a
+name="citation381a"></a><a href="#footnote381a"
+class="citation">[381a]</a></p>
+<p>The two young undergraduates who drove in a gig from Cambridge
+to Oulton to pay their respects to Borrow (<i>circa</i> 1846)
+described him as employed</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;in training some young horses to follow him
+about like dogs and come at the call of his whistle.&nbsp; As my
+two friends <a name="citation381b"></a><a href="#footnote381b"
+class="citation">[381b]</a> were talking with him, Borrow sounded
+his whistle in a paddock near the house, which, if I remember
+rightly, was surrounded by a low wall.&nbsp; Immediately two
+beautiful horses came bounding over the fence and trotted up to
+their master.&nbsp; One put his nose into Borrow&rsquo;s
+outstretched hand and the other kept snuffing at his pockets in
+expectation of the usual bribe for confidence and good
+behaviour.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s love of animals was almost feminine.&nbsp; The
+screams of a hare pursued by greyhounds would spoil his appetite
+for dinner, and he confessed himself as &ldquo;silly enough to
+feel disgust and horror at the squeals of a rat in the fangs of a
+terrier.&rdquo; <a name="citation381c"></a><a
+href="#footnote381c" class="citation">[381c]</a>&nbsp; When a
+favourite cat was so ill that it crawled away to die in solitude,
+Borrow went in search of it and, discovering the poor creature in
+the garden-hedge, carried it back into the house, laid it in a
+comfortable place and watched over it until it died.&nbsp; His
+care of the much persecuted &ldquo;Church of England cat&rdquo;
+at Llangollen <a name="citation381d"></a><a href="#footnote381d"
+class="citation">[381d]</a> is another instance of his
+tender-heartedness with regard to animals.</p>
+<p>Borrow had ample evidence that he was still a celebrity.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He was much courted . . . by his neighbours and by
+visitors to the sea-side,&rdquo; Dr Hake relates; but
+unfortunately he allowed himself to become a prey to moods at
+rather inappropriate moments.&nbsp; As a lion, Borrow accompanied
+Dr Hake to some in the great houses of the neighbourhood.&nbsp;
+On one occasion they went to dine at Hardwick Hall, the residence
+of Sir Thomas and Lady Cullum.&nbsp; The last-named subsequently
+became a firm friend of Borrow&rsquo;s during many years.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The party consisted of Lord Bristol; Lady
+Augusta Seymour, his daughter; Lord and Lady Arthur Hervey; Sir
+Fitzroy Kelly; Mr Thackeray, and ourselves.&nbsp; At that date,
+Thackeray had made money by lectures on <i>The Satirists</i>, and
+was in good swing; but he never could realise the independent
+feelings of those who happen to be born to fortune&mdash;a thing
+which a man of genius should be able to do with ease.&nbsp; He
+told Lady Cullum, which she repeated to me, that no one could
+conceive how it mortified him to be making a provision for his
+daughters by delivering lectures; and I thought she rather
+sympathised with him in this degradation.&nbsp; He approached
+Borrow, who, however, received him very dryly.&nbsp; As a last
+attempt to get up a conversation with him, he said, &lsquo;Have
+you read my Snob Papers in <i>Punch</i>?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;In <i>Punch</i>?&rsquo; asked Borrow.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It is a periodical I never look at!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was a very fine dinner.&nbsp; The plates at dessert
+were of gold; they once belonged to the Emperor of the French,
+and were marked with his &ldquo;N&rdquo; and his Eagle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thackeray, as if under the impression that the party
+was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to make a
+figure, and absorb attention during the dessert, by telling
+stories and more than half acting them; the aristocratic party
+listening, but appearing little amused.&nbsp; Borrow knew better
+how to behave in good company, and kept quiet; though, doubtless
+he felt his mane.&rdquo; <a name="citation382"></a><a
+href="#footnote382" class="citation">[382]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There were other moments when Borrow caused acute
+embarrassment by his rudeness.&nbsp; Once his hostess, a simple
+unpretending woman desirous only of pleasing her distinguished
+guest, said, &ldquo;Oh, Mr Borrow, I have read your books with so
+much pleasure!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Pray, what books do you mean,
+madam?&nbsp; Do you mean my account books?&rdquo; was the
+ungracious retort.&nbsp; He then rose from the table, fretting
+and fuming and walked up and down the dining-room among the
+servants &ldquo;during the whole of the dinner, and afterwards
+wandered about the rooms and passage, till the carriage could be
+ordered for our return home.&rdquo; <a name="citation383a"></a><a
+href="#footnote383a" class="citation">[383a]</a>&nbsp; The reason
+for this unpardonable behaviour appears to have been ill-judged
+loyalty to a friend.&nbsp; His host was a well-known Suffolk
+banker who, having advanced a large sum of money to a friend of
+Borrow&rsquo;s, the heir to a considerable estate, who was in
+temporary difficulties, then &ldquo;struck the docket&rdquo; in
+order to secure payment.&nbsp; Borrow confided to another friend
+that he yearned &ldquo;to cane the banker.&rdquo;&nbsp; His
+loyalty to his friend excuses his wrath; it was his judgment that
+was at fault.&nbsp; He should undoubtedly have caned the banker,
+in preference to going to his house as a guest and revenging his
+friend upon the gentle and amiable woman who could not be held
+responsible for her husband&rsquo;s business transgressions.</p>
+<p>Unfortunate remarks seemed to have a habit of bursting from
+Borrow&rsquo;s lips.&nbsp; When Dr Bowring introduced to him his
+son, Mr F. J. Bowring, and with pardonable pride added that he
+had just become a Fellow of Trinity, Borrow remarked,
+&ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; Fellows of Trinity always marry their
+bed-makers.&rdquo;&nbsp; Agnes Strickland was another
+victim.&nbsp; Being desirous of meeting him and, in spite of
+Borrow&rsquo;s unwillingness, achieving her object, she expressed
+in rapturous terms her admiration of his works, and concluded by
+asking permission to send him a copy of <i>The Queens of
+England</i>, to which he ungraciously replied, &ldquo;For
+God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t, madam; I should not know where to
+put them or what to do with them.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;What a
+damned fool that woman is!&rdquo; he remarked to W. B. Donne, who
+was standing by. <a name="citation383b"></a><a
+href="#footnote383b" class="citation">[383b]</a></p>
+<p>There is a world of meaning in a paragraph from one of John
+Murray&rsquo;s (the Second) letters (21st June 1843) to Borrow in
+which he enquires, &ldquo;Did you receive a note from Mme.
+Simpkinson which I forwarded ten days ago?&nbsp; I have not seen
+her since your abrupt departure from her house.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is rather regrettable that the one side of Borrow&rsquo;s
+character has to be so emphasised.&nbsp; He could be just and
+gracious, even to the point of sternly rebuking one who
+represented his own religious convictions and supporting a
+dissenter.&nbsp; After a Bible Society&rsquo;s meeting at Mutford
+Bridge (the nearest village to Oulton Hall), the speakers
+repaired to the Hall to supper.&nbsp; One of the guests, an
+independent minister, became involved in a heated argument with a
+Church of England clergyman, who reproached him for holding
+Calvinistic views.&nbsp; The nonconformist replied that the
+clergy of the Established Church were equally liable to attack on
+the same ground, because the Articles of their Church were
+Calvinistic, and to these they had all sworn assent.&nbsp; The
+reply was that the words were not necessarily to be taken in
+their literal sense.&nbsp; At this Borrow interposed, attacking
+the clergyman in a most vigorous fashion for his sophistry, and
+finally reducing him to silence.&nbsp; The Independent minister
+afterwards confessed that he had never heard &ldquo;one man give
+another such a dressing down as on that occasion.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation384a"></a><a href="#footnote384a"
+class="citation">[384a]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow was capable of very deep feeling, which is nowhere
+better shown than in his retort to Richard Latham whom he met at
+Dr Hake&rsquo;s table.&nbsp; Well warmed by the generous wine,
+Latham stated that he should never do anything so low as dine
+with his publisher.&nbsp; &ldquo;You do not dine with John
+Murray, I presume?&rdquo; he added.&nbsp; &ldquo;Indeed I
+do,&rdquo; Borrow responded with deep emotion.&nbsp; &ldquo;He is
+a most kind friend.&nbsp; When I have had sickness in the house
+he has been unfailing in his goodness towards me.&nbsp; There is
+no man I more value.&rdquo; <a name="citation384b"></a><a
+href="#footnote384b" class="citation">[384b]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow was a frequent visitor to the Hakes at Bury St
+Edmunds.&nbsp; W. B. Donne gives a glimpse to him in a letter to
+Bernard Barton (12th Sept. 1848).</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We have had a great man here&mdash;and I
+have been walking with him and aiding him to eat salmon and
+mutton and drink port&mdash;George Borrow&mdash;and what is more
+we fell in with some gypsies and I heard his speech of Egypt,
+which sounded wondrously like a medley of broken Spanish and dog
+Latin.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s face lighted by the red turf fire of
+the tent was worth looking at.&nbsp; He is ashy-white
+now&mdash;but twenty years ago, when his hair was like a
+raven&rsquo;s wing, he must have been hard to discriminate from a
+born Bohemian.&nbsp; Borrow is best on the tramp: if you can walk
+4.5 miles per hour, as I can with ease and do by choice, and can
+walk 15 of them at a stretch&mdash;which I can compass
+also&mdash;then he will talk Iliads of adventures even better
+than his printed ones.&nbsp; He cannot abide those Amateur
+Pedestrians who saunter, and in his chair he is given to groan
+and be contradictory.&nbsp; But on Newmarket-heath, in Rougham
+Woods he is at home, and specially when he meets with a thorough
+vagabond like your present correspondent.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation385a"></a><a href="#footnote385a"
+class="citation">[385a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The present Mr John Murray recollects Borrow very clearly
+as</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;tall, broad, muscular, with very heavy
+shoulders&rdquo; and of course the white hair.&nbsp; &ldquo;He
+was,&rdquo; continues Mr Murray, &ldquo;a figure which no one who
+has seen it is likely to forget.&nbsp; I never remember to have
+seen him dressed in anything but black broad cloth, and white
+cotton socks were generally distinctly visible above his low
+shoes.&nbsp; I think that with Borrow the desire to attract
+attention to himself, to inspire a feeling of awe and mystery,
+must have been a ruling passion.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was frequently the guest of his publisher at Albemarle
+Street, in times well within the memory of Mr Murray, who relates
+how on one occasion</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Borrow was at a dinner-party in company
+with Whewell <a name="citation385b"></a><a href="#footnote385b"
+class="citation">[385b]</a> [who by the way it has been said was
+the original of the Flaming Tinman, although there is very little
+to support the statement except the fact that Dr Whewell was a
+proper man with his hands] both of them powerful men, and both of
+them, if report be true, having more than a superficial knowledge
+of the art of self-defence.&nbsp; A controversy began, and waxed
+so warm that Mrs Whewell, believing a personal encounter to be
+imminent, fainted, and had to be carried out of the room.&nbsp;
+Once when Borrow was dining with my father he disappeared into a
+small back room after dinner, and could not be found.&nbsp; At
+last he was discovered by a lady member of the family, stretched
+on a sofa and groaning.&nbsp; On being spoken to and asked to
+join the other guests, he suddenly said: Go away! go away!&nbsp;
+I am not fit company for respectable people.&nbsp; There was no
+apparent cause for this strange conduct, unless it were due to
+one of those unaccountable fits to which men of genius (and this
+description will be allowed him by many) are often subject.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On another occasion, when dining with my father at
+Wimbledon, he was regaled with a &lsquo;haggis,&rsquo; a dish
+which was new to him, and of which he partook to an extent which
+would have astonished many a hardy Scotsman.&nbsp; One summers
+day, several years later, he again came to dinner, and having
+come on foot, entered the house by a garden door, his first
+words&mdash;without any previous greetings&mdash;were: &lsquo;Is
+there a haggis to-day?&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation386"></a><a
+href="#footnote386" class="citation">[386]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV<br />
+LAVENGRO&mdash;1843&ndash;1851</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> all these years
+<i>Lavengro</i> had been making progress towards completion,
+irregular and spasmodic it would appear; but still each year
+brought it nearer to the printer.&nbsp; &ldquo;I cannot get out
+of my old habits,&rdquo; Borrow wrote to Dawson Turner (15th
+January 1844), &ldquo;I find I am writing the work . . . in
+precisely the same manner as <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, viz., on
+blank sheets of old account books, backs of letters, etc.&nbsp;
+In slovenliness of manuscript I almost rival Mahomet, who, it is
+said, wrote his <i>Coran</i> on mutton spade bones.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;His [Borrow&rsquo;s] biography will be passing strange if
+he tells the <i>whole</i> truth,&rdquo; Ford writes to a friend
+(27th February 1843).&nbsp; &ldquo;He is now writing it by my
+advice.&nbsp; I go on . . . scribbling away, though with a
+palpitating heart,&rdquo; Borrow informs John Murray (5th
+February 1844), &ldquo;and have already plenty of scenes and
+dialogues connected with my life, quite equal to anything in
+<i>The Bible in Spain</i>.&nbsp; The great difficulty, however,
+is to blend them all into a symmetrical whole.&rdquo;&nbsp; On
+17th September 1846 he writes again to his publisher:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have of late been very lazy, and am
+become more addicted to sleep than usual, am seriously afraid of
+apoplexy.&nbsp; To rouse myself, I rode a little time ago to
+Newmarket.&nbsp; I felt all the better for it for a few
+days.&nbsp; I have at present a first rate trotting horse who
+affords me plenty of exercise.&nbsp; On my return from Newmarket,
+I rode him nineteen miles before breakfast.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Another cause of delay was the &ldquo;shadows&rdquo; that were
+constantly descending upon him.&nbsp; His determination to give
+only the best of which he was capable, is almost tragic in the
+light of later events.&nbsp; To his wife, he wrote from London
+(February 1847): &ldquo;Saw M[urray] who is in a hurry for me to
+begin [the printing].&nbsp; I will not be hurried though for
+anyone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, July 1848, under the heading
+of Mr Murray&rsquo;s List of New Works in Preparation, there
+appeared the first announcement of <i>Lavengro</i>, <i>an
+Autobiography</i>, by George Borrow, Author of <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i>, etc., 4 vols. post 8vo.&nbsp; This was repeated in
+October.&nbsp; During the next two months the book was advertised
+as <i>Life</i>; <i>A Drama</i>, in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i> and
+<i>The Quarterly Review</i>, and the first title-page (1849) was
+so printed.&nbsp; On 7th October John Murray wrote asking Borrow
+to send the manuscript to the printer.&nbsp; This was accordingly
+done, and about two-thirds of it composed.&nbsp; Then Borrow
+appears to have fallen ill.&nbsp; On 5th January 1849 John Murray
+wrote to Mrs Borrow:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I trust Mr Borrow is now restored to health
+and tranquillity of mind, and that he will soon be able to resume
+his pen.&nbsp; I desire this on his own account and for the sake
+of poor Woodfall [the printer], who is of course inconvenienced
+by having his press arrested after the commencement of the
+printing.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Writing on 27th November 1849, John Murray refers to the work
+having been &ldquo;first sent to press&mdash;now nearly eighteen
+months.&rdquo;&nbsp; This is clearly a mistake, as on 7th October
+1848, thirteen and a half months previously, he asks Borrow to
+send the manuscript to the printer that he may begin the
+composition.&nbsp; John Murray was getting anxious and urges
+Borrow to complete the work, which a year ago had been offered to
+the booksellers at the annual trade-dinner.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know that you are fastidious, and that you desire to
+produce a work of distinguished excellence.&nbsp; I see the
+result of this labour in the sheets as they come from the press,
+and I think when it does appear it will make a sensation,&rdquo;
+wrote the tactful publisher.&nbsp; &ldquo;Think not, my dear
+friend,&rdquo; replied Borrow, &ldquo;that I am idle.&nbsp; I am
+finishing up the concluding part.&nbsp; I should be sorry to
+hurry the work towards the last.&nbsp; I dare say it will be
+ready by the middle of February.&rdquo;&nbsp; The correspondence
+grew more and more tense.&nbsp; Mrs Borrow wrote to the printer
+urging him to send to her husband, who has been overworked to the
+point of complaint, &ldquo;one of your kind encouraging
+notes.&rdquo;&nbsp; Later Borrow went to Yarmouth, where
+sea-bathing produced a good effect upon his health; but still the
+manuscript was not sent to the despairing printer.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+do not, God knows! wish you to overtask yourself,&rdquo; wrote
+the unhappy Woodfall; &ldquo;but after what you last said, I
+thought I might fully calculate on your taking up, without
+further delay, the fragmentary portions of your 1st and 2nd
+volumes and let us get them out of hand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Letters continued to pass to and fro, but the balance of
+manuscript was not forthcoming until November 1850, when Mrs
+Borrow herself took it to London.&nbsp; Another trade-dinner was
+at hand, and John Murray had written to Mrs Borrow, &ldquo;If I
+cannot show the book then&mdash;I must throw it up.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+To Mrs Borrow this meant tragedy.&nbsp; The poor woman was
+distracted, and from time to time she begs for encouraging
+letters.&nbsp; In response to one of these appeals, John Murray
+wrote with rare insight into Borrow&rsquo;s character, and
+knowledge of what is most likely to please him: &ldquo;There are
+passages in your book equal to De Foe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The preface when eventually submitted to John Murray disturbed
+him somewhat.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is quaint,&rdquo; he writes to Mrs
+Borrow, &ldquo;but so is everything that Mr Borrow
+writes.&rdquo;&nbsp; He goes on to suggest that the latter
+portion looks too much as if it had been got up in the interests
+of &ldquo;Papal aggression,&rdquo; and he calls attention to the
+oft-repeated &ldquo;Damnation cry&rdquo;.&nbsp; There appears to
+have been some modification, a few &ldquo;Damnation Cries&rdquo;
+omitted, the last sheet passed for press, and on 7th February
+1851 <i>Lavengro</i> was published in an edition of three
+thousand copies, which lasted for twenty-one years.</p>
+<p>The appearance of <i>Lavengro</i> was indeed sensational: but
+not quite in the way its publisher had anticipated.&nbsp; Almost
+without exception the verdict was unfavourable.&nbsp; The book
+was attacked vigorously.&nbsp; The keynote of the critics was
+disappointment.&nbsp; Some reviews were purely critical, others
+personal and abusive, but nearly all were disapproving.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Great is our disappointment&rdquo; said the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;We are disappointed,&rdquo;
+echoed <i>Blackwood</i>.&nbsp; Among the few friendly notices was
+that of Dr Hake, in which he prophesied that
+&ldquo;<i>Lavengro&rsquo;s</i> roots will strike deep into the
+soil of English letters.&rdquo;&nbsp; Even Ford wrote (8th
+March):</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I frankly own that I am somewhat
+disappointed with the very <i>little</i> you have told us about
+<i>yourself</i>.&nbsp; I was in hopes to have a full, true, and
+particular account of your marvellously varied and interesting
+biography.&nbsp; I do hope that some day you will give it to
+us.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In this chorus of dispraise Borrow saw a conspiracy.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;If ever a book experienced infamous and undeserved
+treatment,&rdquo; he wrote, <a name="citation390"></a><a
+href="#footnote390" class="citation">[390]</a> &ldquo;it was that
+book.&nbsp; I was attacked in every form that envy and malice
+could suggest.&rdquo;&nbsp; In <i>The Romany Rye</i> he has done
+full justice to the subject, exhibiting the critics with blood
+and foam streaming from their jaws.&nbsp; In the original draft
+of the Advertisement to the same work he expresses himself as
+&ldquo;proud of a book which has had the honour of being
+rancorously abused and execrated by every unmanly scoundrel,
+every sycophantic lacquey, and <i>every political and religious
+renegade</i> in Britain.&rdquo;&nbsp; A few years previously,
+Borrow had written to John Murray, &ldquo;I have always
+myself.&nbsp; If you wish to please the public leave the matter
+[the revision of <i>The Zincali</i>] to me.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation391a"></a><a href="#footnote391a"
+class="citation">[391a]</a>&nbsp; From this it is evident that
+Borrow was unprepared for anything but commendation from critics
+and readers.</p>
+<p>Dr Bowring had some time previously requested the editor of
+<i>The Edinburgh Review</i> to allow him to review
+<i>Lavengro</i>; but no notice ever appeared.&nbsp; In all
+probability he realised the impossibility of writing about a book
+in which he and his family appeared in such an unpleasant
+light.&nbsp; It is unlikely that he asked for the book in order
+to prevent a review appearing in <i>The Edinburgh</i>, as has
+been suggested.</p>
+<p>In the Preface, <i>Lavengro</i> is described as a dream; yet
+there can be not a vestage of doubt that Borrow&rsquo;s original
+intention had been to acknowledge it as an autobiography.&nbsp;
+This work is a kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style, he
+had written in 1844.&nbsp; This he contradicted in the Appendix
+to <i>The Romany Rye</i>; yet in his manuscript autobiography <a
+name="citation391b"></a><a href="#footnote391b"
+class="citation">[391b]</a> (13th Oct. 1862) he says: &ldquo;In
+1851 he published <i>Lavengro</i>, a work in which he gives an
+account of his early life.&rdquo;&nbsp; Why had Borrow changed
+his mind?</p>
+<p>When <i>Lavengro</i> was begun, as a result of Ford&rsquo;s
+persistent appeals, Borrow was on the crest of the wave of
+success.&nbsp; He saw himself the literary hero of the
+hour.&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i> was selling in its
+thousands.&nbsp; The press had proclaimed it a masterpiece.&nbsp;
+He had seen himself a great man.&nbsp; The writer of a great
+book, however, does not occupy a position so kinglike in its
+loneliness as does gentleman a gypsy, round whom flock the
+<i>gitanos</i> to kiss his hand and garments as if he were a god
+or a hero.&nbsp; The literary and social worlds that <i>The Bible
+in Spain</i> opened to Borrow were not to be awed by his mystery,
+or, disciplined into abject hero-worship by one of those steady
+penetrating gazes, which cowed jockeys and
+<i>alguacils</i>.&nbsp; They claimed intellectual kinship and
+equality, the very things that Borrow had no intention of
+conceding them.&nbsp; He would have tolerated their
+&ldquo;gentility nonsense&rdquo; if they would have acknowledged
+his paramountcy.&nbsp; He found that to be a social or a literary
+lion was to be a tame lion, and he was too big for that.&nbsp;
+His conception of genius was that it had its moods, and
+mediocrity must suffer them.</p>
+<p>Borrow would rush precipitately from the house where he was a
+guest; he would be unpardonably rude to some inoffensive and
+well-meaning woman who thought to please him by admiring his
+books; he would magnify a fight between their respective dogs
+into a deadly feud between himself and the rector of his parish:
+thus he made enemies by the dozen and, incidentally, earned for
+himself an extremely unenviable reputation.&nbsp; A hero with a
+lovable nature is twice a hero, because he is possessed of those
+qualities that commend themselves to the greater number.&nbsp;
+Wellington could never be a serious rival in a nation&rsquo;s
+heart to dear, weak, sensitive, noble Nelson, who lived for
+praise and frankly owned to it.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s lovable qualities were never permitted to show
+themselves in public, they were kept for the dingle, the
+fireside, or the inn-parlour.&nbsp; That he had a sweeter side to
+his nature there can be no doubt, and those who saw it were his
+wife, his step-daughter, and his friends, in particular those
+who, like Mr Watts-Dunton and Mr A. Egmont Hake, have striven for
+years to emphasise the more attractive part of his strange
+nature.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s attitude towards literature in itself was not
+calculated to gain friends for him.&nbsp; He was uncompromisingly
+and caustically severe upon some of the literary idols of his
+day, men who have survived that terrible handicap, contemporary
+recognition and appreciation.</p>
+<p>He was not a deep reader, hardly a reader at all in the
+accepted meaning of the word.&nbsp; He frankly confessed that
+books were to him of secondary importance to man as a subject for
+study.&nbsp; In his criticisms of literature, he was apt to
+confuse the man with his works.&nbsp; His hatred of Scott is
+notorious; it was not the artist he so cordially disliked, but
+the politician; he admitted that Scott &ldquo;wrote splendid
+novels about the Stuarts.&rdquo; <a name="citation393a"></a><a
+href="#footnote393a" class="citation">[393a]</a>&nbsp; He hailed
+him as &ldquo;greater than Homer;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation393b"></a><a href="#footnote393b"
+class="citation">[393b]</a> but the House of Stuart he held in
+utter detestation, and when writing or speaking of Scott he
+forgot to make a rather necessary distinction.&nbsp; He
+wrote:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;He admires his talents both as a prose
+writer and a poet; as a poet especially. <a
+name="citation393c"></a><a href="#footnote393c"
+class="citation">[393c]</a> . . .&nbsp; As a prose writer he
+admires him less, it is true, but his admiration for him in that
+capacity is very high, and he only laments that he prostituted
+his talents to the cause of the Stuarts and gentility . . . in
+conclusion, he will say, in order to show the opinion which he
+entertains of the power of Scott as a writer, that he did for the
+spectre of the wretched Pretender what all the kings of Europe
+could not do for his body&mdash;placed it on the throne of these
+realms.&rdquo; <a name="citation393d"></a><a href="#footnote393d"
+class="citation">[393d]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In later years Borrow paid a graceful tribute to Scott&rsquo;s
+memory.&nbsp; When at Kelso, in spite of the rain and mist, he
+&ldquo;trudged away to Dryburgh to pay my respects to the tomb of
+Walter Scott, a man with whose principles I have no sympathy, but
+for whose genius I have always entertained the most intense
+admiration.&rdquo; <a name="citation393e"></a><a
+href="#footnote393e" class="citation">[393e]</a>&nbsp; It was
+just the same with Byron, &ldquo;for whose writings I really
+entertained considerable admiration, though I had no particular
+esteem for the man himself.&rdquo; <a name="citation393f"></a><a
+href="#footnote393f" class="citation">[393f]</a></p>
+<p>With Wordsworth it was different, and it was his cordial
+dislike of his poetry that prompted Borrow to introduce into
+<i>The Romany Rye</i> that ineffectual episode of the man who was
+sent to sleep by reading him.&nbsp; Tennyson he dismissed as a
+writer of &ldquo;duncie books.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For Dickens he had an enthusiastic admiration as &ldquo;a
+second Fielding, a young writer who . . . has evinced such
+talent, such humour, variety and profound knowledge of character,
+that he charms his readers, at least those who have the capacity
+to comprehend him.&rdquo; <a name="citation394a"></a><a
+href="#footnote394a" class="citation">[394a]</a>&nbsp; He was
+delighted with <i>The Pickwick Papers</i> and <i>Oliver
+Twist</i>.</p>
+<p>His reading was anything but thorough, in fact he occasionally
+showed a remarkable ignorance of contemporary writers.&nbsp; Mr
+A. Egmont Hake tells how:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;His conversation would sometimes turn on
+modern literature, with which his acquaintance was very
+slight.&nbsp; He seemed to avoid reading the products of modern
+thought lest his own strong opinions should undergo
+dilution.&nbsp; We were once talking of Keats whose fame had been
+constantly increasing, but of whose poetry Borrow&rsquo;s
+knowledge was of a shadowy kind, when suddenly he put a stop to
+the conversation by ludicrously asking, in his strong voice,
+&lsquo;Have they not been trying to resuscitate
+him?&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation394b"></a><a
+href="#footnote394b" class="citation">[394b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>By the time that <i>Lavengro</i> appeared, Borrow was
+estranged from his generation.&nbsp; The years that intervened
+between the success of <i>The Bible in Spain</i> and the
+publication of <i>Lavengro</i> had been spent by him in war; he
+had come to hate his contemporaries with a wholesome, vigorous
+hatred.&nbsp; He would give them his book; but they should have
+it as a stray cur has a bone&mdash;thrown at them.&nbsp; Above
+all, they should not for a moment be allowed to think that it
+contained an intimate account of the life of the supreme hater
+who had written it.&nbsp; When there had been sympathy between
+them, Borrow was prepared to allow his public to peer into the
+sacred recesses of his early life.&nbsp; Now that there was none,
+he denied that <i>Lavengro</i> was more than &ldquo;a
+dream&rdquo;, forgetting that he had so often written of it as an
+autobiography, had even seen it advertised as such, and insisted
+that it was fiction.</p>
+<p>When <i>Lavengro</i> was published Borrow was an unhappy and
+disappointed man.&nbsp; He had found what many other travellers
+have found when they come home, that in the wilds he had left his
+taste and toleration for conventional life and ideas.&nbsp; The
+life in the Peninsula had been thoroughly congenial to a man of
+Borrow&rsquo;s temperament: hardships, dangers,
+imprisonments,&mdash;they were his common food.&nbsp; He who had
+defied the whole power of Spain, found himself powerless to
+prevent his Rector from keeping a dog, or a railway line from
+being cut through his own estate and his peace of mind disturbed
+by the rumble of trains and the shriek of
+locomotive-whistles.&nbsp; He had beaten the Flaming Tinman and
+Count Ofalia, but Samuel Morton Peto had vanquished and put him
+to flight by virtue of an Act of Parliament, in all probability
+without being conscious of having achieved a signal
+victory.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s life had been built up upon a wrong
+hypothesis: he strove to adapt, not himself to the Universe; but
+the Universe to himself.</p>
+<p>It is easy to see that a man with this attitude of mind would
+regard as sheer vindictiveness the adverse criticism of a book
+that he had written with such care, and so earnest an endeavour
+to maintain if not improve upon the standard created in a former
+work.&nbsp; It never for a moment struck him that the men who had
+once hailed him &ldquo;great&rdquo;, should now admonish him as a
+result of the honest exercise of their critical faculties.&nbsp;
+No; there was conspiracy against him, and he tortured himself
+into a pitiable state of wrath and melancholy.&nbsp; A later
+generation has been less harsh in its judgment.&nbsp; The
+controversial parts of <i>Lavengro</i> have become less
+controversial and the magnificent parts have become more
+magnificent, and it has taken its place as a star of the second
+magnitude.</p>
+<p>The question of what is actual autobiography and what is so
+coloured as to become practically fiction, must always be a
+matter of opinion.&nbsp; The early portion seems convincing, even
+the first meeting with the gypsies in the lane at Norman
+Cross.&nbsp; It has been asked by an eminent gypsy scholar how
+Borrow knew the meaning of the word &ldquo;sap&rdquo;, or why he
+addressed the gypsy woman as &ldquo;my mother&rdquo;.&nbsp; When
+the Gypsy refers to the &ldquo;Sap there&rdquo;, the child
+replies, &ldquo;what, the snake&rdquo;?&nbsp; The employment of
+the other phrase is obviously an inadvertent use of knowledge he
+gained later.</p>
+<p>In writing to Mrs George Borrow (24th March 1851) to tell her
+that W. B. Donne had been unable to obtain <i>Lavengro</i> for
+<i>The Edinburgh Review</i> as it had been bespoken a year
+previously by Dr Bowring, Dr Hake adds that Donne had written
+&ldquo;putting the editor in possession of his view of
+<i>Lavengro</i>, as regards verisimilitude, vouching for the
+Daguerreotype-like fidelity of the picture in the first volume,
+etc., etc., in order to prevent him from being <i>taken in by</i>
+a spiteful article.&rdquo;&nbsp; This passage is very significant
+as being written by one of Borrow&rsquo;s most intimate friends,
+with the sure knowledge that its contents would reach him.&nbsp;
+It leaves no room for doubt that, although Borrow denied publicly
+the autobiographical nature of <i>Lavengro</i>, in his own circle
+it was freely admitted and referred to as a life.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is an autobiography?&rdquo; Borrow once asked Mr
+Theodore Watts-Dunton (who had called his attention to several
+bold coincidences in <i>Lavengro</i>).&nbsp; &ldquo;Is it the
+mere record of the incidents of a man&rsquo;s life? or is it a
+picture of the man himself&mdash;his character, his soul?&rdquo;
+<a name="citation396"></a><a href="#footnote396"
+class="citation">[396]</a>&nbsp; Mr Watts-Dunton confirms
+Borrow&rsquo;s letters when he says &ldquo;That he [Borrow] sat
+down to write his own life in <i>Lavengro</i> I know.&nbsp; He
+had no idea then of departing from the strict line of
+fact.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At times Borrow seemed to find his pictures flat, and
+heightened the colour in places, as a painter might heighten the
+tone of a drapery, a roof or some other object, not because the
+individual spot required it, but rather because the general
+effect he was aiming at rendered it necessary.&nbsp; He did this
+just as an actor rouges his face, darkens his eyebrows and round
+his eyes, that he may appear to his audience a living man and not
+an animated corpse.</p>
+<p>Borrow was drawing himself, striving to be as faithful to the
+original as Boswell to Johnson.&nbsp; Incidents! what were they?
+the straw with which the bricks of personality are made.&nbsp; A
+comparison of <i>Lavengro</i> with Borrow&rsquo;s letters to the
+Bible Society is instructive; it is the same Borrow that appears
+in both, with the sole difference that in the Letters he is less
+mysterious, less in the limelight than in <i>Lavengro</i>.</p>
+<p>Mr Watts-Dunton, with inspiration, has asked whether or not
+<i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i> form a spiritual
+autobiography; and if they do, whether that autobiography does or
+does not surpass every other for absolute truth of spiritual
+representation.&nbsp; Borrow certainly did colour his narrative
+in places.&nbsp; Who could write the story of his early life with
+absolute accuracy? without dwelling on and elaborating certain
+episodes, perhaps even adjusting them somewhat?&nbsp; That would
+not necessarily prove them untrue.</p>
+<p>There are, unquestionably, inconsistencies in <i>Lavengro</i>
+and <i>The Romany Rye</i>&mdash;they are admitted, they have been
+pointed out.&nbsp; There are many inaccuracies, it must be
+confessed; but because a man makes a mistake in the date of his
+birth or even the year, it does not prove that he was not born at
+all.&nbsp; Borrow was for ever making the most inaccurate
+statements about his age.</p>
+<p>In the main <i>Lavengro</i> would appear to be
+autobiographical up to the period of Borrow&rsquo;s coming to
+London.&nbsp; After this he begins to indulge somewhat in the
+dramatic.&nbsp; The meeting with the pickpocket as a
+thimble-rigger at Greenwich might pass muster were it not for the
+<i>rencontre</i> with the apple-woman&rsquo;s son near
+Salisbury.&nbsp; The Dingle episode may be accepted, for Mr John
+Sampson has verified even the famous thunder-storm by means of
+the local press.&nbsp; Isopel Berners is not so easy to settle;
+yet the picture of her is so convincing, and Borrow was unable to
+do more than colour his narrative, that she too must have
+existed.</p>
+<p>The failure of <i>Lavengro</i> is easily accounted for.&nbsp;
+Borrow wrote of vagabonds and vagabondage; it did not mitigate
+his offence in the eyes of the critics or the public that he
+wrote well about them.&nbsp; His crime lay in his subject.&nbsp;
+To Borrow, a man must be ready and able to knock another man down
+if necessity arise.&nbsp; When nearing sixty he lamented his
+childless state and said very mournfully: &ldquo;I shall soon not
+be able to knock a man down, and I have no son to do it for
+me.&rdquo; <a name="citation398"></a><a href="#footnote398"
+class="citation">[398]</a>&nbsp; He glorified the bruisers of
+England, in the face of horrified public opinion.&nbsp; England
+had become ashamed of its bruisers long before <i>Lavengro</i>
+was written, and this flaunting in its face of creatures that it
+considered too low to be mentioned, gave mortal offence.&nbsp;
+That in <i>Lavengro</i> was the best descriptions of a fight in
+the language, only made the matter worse.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s
+was an age of gentility and refinement, and he outraged it, first
+by glorifying vagabondage, secondly by decrying and sneering at
+gentility.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Qui n&rsquo; a pas l&rsquo;esprit de son
+&acirc;ge,<br />
+De son &acirc;ge a tout le malheur.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And Borrow proved Voltaire&rsquo;s words.</p>
+<p>It is not difficult to understand that an age in which
+prize-fighting is anathema should not tolerate a book glorifying
+the ring; but it is strange that Borrow&rsquo;s simple paganism
+and nature-worship should not have aroused sympathetic
+recognition.&nbsp; Poetry is ageless, and such passages as the
+description of the sunrise over Stonehenge should have found
+some, at least, to welcome them, even when found in juxtaposition
+with bruisers and gypsies.</p>
+<p>Borrow loved to mystify, but in <i>Lavengro</i> he had
+overreached himself.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are you really in
+existence?&rdquo; wrote one correspondent who was unknown to
+Borrow, &ldquo;for I also have occasionally doubted whether
+things exist, as you describe your own feelings in former
+days.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>John Murray wrote (8th Nov. 1851):&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I was reminded of you the other day by an
+enquiry after <i>Lavengro</i> and its author, made by the Right
+Honourable John Wilson Croker. <a name="citation399a"></a><a
+href="#footnote399a" class="citation">[399a]</a>&nbsp; Knowing
+how fastidious and severe a critic he is, I was particularly glad
+to find him expressing a favourable opinion of it; and thinking
+well of it his curiosity was piqued about you.&nbsp; Like all the
+rest of the world, he is mystified by it.&nbsp; He knew not
+whether to regard it as truth or fiction.&nbsp; How can you
+remedy this defect?&nbsp; I call it a defect, because it really
+impedes your popularity.&nbsp; People say of a chapter or of a
+character: &lsquo;This is very wonderful, <i>if true</i>; but if
+fiction it is pointless.&rsquo;&mdash;Will your new volumes
+explain this and dissolve the mystery?&nbsp; If so, pray make
+haste and get on with them.&nbsp; I hope you have employed the
+summer in giving them the finishing touches.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;There are,&rdquo; says a distinguished critic, <a
+name="citation399b"></a><a href="#footnote399b"
+class="citation">[399b]</a> &ldquo;passages in <i>Lavengro</i>
+which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of
+England&mdash;unsurpassed, I mean, for mere perfection of
+style&mdash;for blending of strength and graphic power with
+limpidity and music of flow.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s own
+generation would have laughed at such a value being put upon
+anything in <i>Lavengro</i>.</p>
+<p>Another thing against the books success was its style.&nbsp;
+It lacked what has been described as the poetic ecstacy or
+sentimental verdure of the age.&nbsp; Trope, imagery,
+mawkishness, were all absent, for Borrow had gone back to his
+masters, at whose head stood the glorious Defoe.&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s style was as individual as the man himself.&nbsp;
+By a curious contradiction, the tendency is to overlook literary
+lapses in the very man towards whom so little latitude was
+allowed in other directions.&nbsp; Many Borrovians have groaned
+in anguish over his misuse of that wretched word
+&ldquo;Individual.&rdquo;&nbsp; A distinguished man of letters <a
+name="citation400a"></a><a href="#footnote400a"
+class="citation">[400a]</a> has written:&mdash;&ldquo;I would as
+lief read a chapter of <i>The Bible in Spain</i> as I would
+<i>Gil Blas</i>; nay, I positively would give the preference to
+Se&ntilde;or Giorgio.&rdquo;&nbsp; Another critic, and a severe
+one, has written:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It is not as philologist, or traveller, or
+wild missionary, or folk-lorist, or antiquary, that Borrow lives
+and will live.&nbsp; It is as the master of splendid, strong,
+simple English, the prose Morland of a vanished road-side life,
+the realist who, Defoe-like, could make fiction seem truer than
+fact.&nbsp; To have written the finest fight in the whole
+world&rsquo;s literature, the fight with the Flaming Tinman, is
+surely something of an achievement.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation400b"></a><a href="#footnote400b"
+class="citation">[400b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is Borrow&rsquo;s personality that looms out from his
+pages.&nbsp; His mastery over the imagination of his reader, his
+subtle instinct of how to throw his own magnetism over everything
+he relates, although he may be standing aside as regards the
+actual events with which he is dealing, is worthy of Defoe
+himself.&nbsp; It is this magnetism that carries his readers
+safely over the difficult places, where, but for the
+author&rsquo;s grip upon them, they would give up in despair; it
+is this magnetism that prompts them to pass by only with a slight
+shudder, such references as the feathered tribe, fast in the arms
+of Morpheus, and, above all, those terrible puns that crop up
+from time to time.&nbsp; There is always the strong, masterful
+man behind the words who, like a great general, can turn a
+reverse to his own advantage.</p>
+<p>In his style perhaps, after all, lay the secret of
+Borrow&rsquo;s unsuccess.&nbsp; He was writing for another
+generation; speaking in a voice too strong to be heard other than
+as a strange noise by those near to him.&nbsp; It may be urged
+that <i>The Bible in Spain</i> disproves these conclusions; but
+<i>The Bible in Spain</i> was a peculiar book.&nbsp; It was a
+chronicle of Christian enterprise served up with <i>sauce
+picaresque</i>.&nbsp; It pleased and astonished everyone,
+especially those who had grown a little weary of godly
+missioners.&nbsp; It had the advantage of being spontaneous,
+having been largely written on the spot, whereas <i>Lavengro</i>
+and <i>The Romany Rye</i> were worked on and laboured at for
+years.&nbsp; Above all, it had the inestimable virtue of being
+known to be True.&nbsp; To the imaginative intellectual, Truth or
+Fiction are matters of small importance, he judges by Art; but to
+the general public of limited intellectual capacity, Truth is
+appreciated out of all proportion to its artistic
+importance.&nbsp; If Borrow had published <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i> after the failure of <i>Lavengro</i>, it would in all
+probability have been as successful as it was appearing
+before.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV<br />
+SEPTEMBER 1849&ndash;FEBRUARY 1854</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">One</span> of the finest traits in
+Borrow&rsquo;s character was his devotion to his mother.&nbsp; He
+was always thoughtful for her comfort, even when fighting that
+almost hopeless battle in Russia, and later in the midst of
+bandits and bloody patriots in Spain.&nbsp; She was now, in 1849,
+an old woman, too feeble to live alone, and it was decided to
+transfer her to Oulton.&nbsp; An addition to the Hall was
+constructed for her accommodation, and she was to be given an
+attendant-companion in the person of the daughter of a local
+farmer.</p>
+<p>For thirty-three years she had lived in the little house in
+Willow Lane; yet it was not she, but Borrow, who felt the parting
+from old associations.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; she writes to
+her daughter-in-law on 16th September 1849, &ldquo;my dear George
+would not have such fancies about <i>the old house</i>; it is a
+mercy it has not fallen on my head before this.&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+old lady was anxious to get away.&nbsp; It would not be safe, she
+thought, for her to be shut up alone, as the old woman who had
+looked after her could, for some reason or other, do so no
+longer.&nbsp; She urges her daughter-in-law to represent this to
+Borrow.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There is a low, noisy set close to
+me,&rdquo; she continues.&nbsp; &ldquo;I shall not die one day
+sooner, or live one day longer.&nbsp; If I stop here and die on a
+sudden, half the things might be lost or stolen, therefore it
+seems as if the Lord would provide me a <i>safer home</i>.&nbsp;
+I have made up my mind to the change and only pray that I may be
+able to get through the trouble.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It would appear that the move, which took place at the end of
+September, was brought about by the old lady&rsquo;s appeals and
+insistence, and that Borrow himself was not anxious for it.&nbsp;
+He felt a sentimental attachment to the old place, which for so
+many years had been a home to him.</p>
+<p>In 1853 Borrow removed to Great Yarmouth.&nbsp; During the
+summer of that year, Dr Hake had peremptorily ordered Mrs George
+Borrow not to spend the ensuing winter and spring at Oulton, and
+the move was made in August.&nbsp; The change was found to be
+beneficial to Mrs Borrow and agreeable to all, and for the next
+seven years (Aug. 1853&ndash;June 1860) Borrow&rsquo;s
+headquarters were to be at Great Yarmouth, where he and his
+family occupied various lodgings.</p>
+<p>Shortly before leaving Oulton, Borrow had received the
+following interesting letter from FitzGerald:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Boulge</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Woodbridge</span>, 22nd <i>July</i> 1853.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Sir</span>,&mdash;I take the
+liberty of sending you a book [Six Dramas from Calderon], of
+which the title-page and advertisement will sufficiently explain
+the import.&nbsp; I am afraid that I shall in general be set down
+at once as an impudent fellow in making so free with a Great Man;
+but, as usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like
+yourself, who both do fine things in your own language and are
+deep read in those of others.&nbsp; I mean, that whether you like
+or not what I send you, you will do so from knowledge and in the
+candour which knowledge brings.</p>
+<p>I had even a mind to ask you to look at these plays before
+they were printed, relying on our common friend Donne for a
+mediator; but I know how wearisome all MS. inspection is; and,
+after all, the whole affair was not worth giving you such a
+trouble.&nbsp; You must pardon all this, and believe
+me,&mdash;Yours very faithfully,</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Edward FitzGerald</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Soon after his arrival by the sea, Borrow performed an act of
+bravery of which <i>The Bury Post</i> (17th Sept. 1852) gave the
+following account, most likely written by Dr Hake:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;<span
+class="smcap">Intrepidity</span>.&mdash;Yarmouth jetty presented
+an extra-ordinary and thrilling spectacle on Thursday, the 8th
+inst., about one o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; The sea raged frantically,
+and a ship&rsquo;s boat, endeavouring to land for water, was
+upset, and the men were engulfed in a wave some thirty feet high,
+and struggling with it in vain.&nbsp; The moment was an awful
+one, when George Borrow, the well-known author <i>of
+Lavengro</i>, and <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, dashed into the surf
+and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the others
+were saved.&nbsp; We ourselves have known this brave and gifted
+man for years, and, daring as was this deed we have known him
+more than once to risk his life for others.&nbsp; We are happy to
+add that he has sustained no material injury.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was a splendid swimmer. <a name="citation404a"></a><a
+href="#footnote404a" class="citation">[404a]</a>&nbsp; In the
+course of one of his country walks with Robert Cooke (John
+Murray&rsquo;s partner), with whom he was on very friendly
+terms,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;he suggested a bathe in the river along
+which they were walking.&nbsp; Mr Cooke told me that Borrow,
+having stripped, took a header into the water and
+disappeared.&nbsp; More than a minute had elapsed, and as there
+were no signs of his whereabouts, Mr Cooke was becoming alarmed,
+lest he had struck his head or been entangled in the weeds, when
+Borrow suddenly reappeared a considerable distance off, under the
+opposite bank of the stream, and called out &lsquo;What do you
+think of that?&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation404b"></a><a
+href="#footnote404b" class="citation">[404b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Elizabeth Harvey, in telling the same story, says that on
+coming up he exclaimed: &ldquo;There, if that had been written in
+one of my books, they would have said it was a lie,
+wouldn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; <a name="citation404c"></a><a
+href="#footnote404c" class="citation">[404c]</a></p>
+<p>The paragraph about Borrow&rsquo;s courage was printed in
+various newspapers throughout the country, amongst others in the
+<i>Plymouth Mail</i> under the heading of &ldquo;Gallant Conduct
+of Mr G. Borrow,&rdquo; and was read by Borrow&rsquo;s Cornish
+kinsmen, who for years had heard nothing of Thomas Borrow.&nbsp;
+Apparently quite convinced that George was his son, they deputed
+Robert Taylor, a farmer of Penquite Farm (who had married Anne
+Borrow, granddaughter of Henry Borrow), to write to Borrow and
+invite him to visit Trethinnick.&nbsp; The letter was dated 10th
+October and directed to &ldquo;George Borrow,
+Yarmouth.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow replied as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Yarmouth</span>, 14<i>th</i> <i>Octr.</i>,
+1853.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Sir</span>,&mdash;I beg leave to
+acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 10th inst. in which
+you inform me of the kind desire of my Cornish relatives to see
+me at Trethinnock (sic).&nbsp; Please to inform them that I shall
+be proud and happy to avail myself of their kindness and to make
+the acquaintance of &ldquo;one and all&rdquo; <a
+name="citation405"></a><a href="#footnote405"
+class="citation">[405]</a> of them.&nbsp; My engagements will
+prevent my visiting them at present, but I will appear amongst
+them on the first opportunity.&nbsp; I am delighted to learn that
+there are still some living at Trethinnock who remember my
+honoured father, who had as true a Cornish heart as ever
+beat.</p>
+<p>I am at present at Yarmouth, to which place I have brought my
+wife for the benefit of her health; but my residence is Oulton
+Hall, Lowestoft, Suffolk.&nbsp; With kind greetings to my Cornish
+kindred, in which my wife and my mother join,&mdash;I remain, my
+dear Sir, ever sincerely yours,&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was not free to visit his kinsfolk until the following
+Christmas.&nbsp; First advising Robert Taylor of his intention,
+and receiving his approval and instructions for the journey,
+Borrow set out from Great Yarmouth on 23rd December.&nbsp; He
+spent the night at Plymouth.&nbsp; Next morning on finding the
+Liskeard coach full, he decided to walk.&nbsp; Leaving his
+carpet-bag to be sent on by the mail, and throwing over his arm
+the cloak that had seen many years of service, he set out upon
+his eighteen-mile tramp.&nbsp; He arrived at Liskeard in the
+afternoon, and was met by his cousin Henry Borrow and Robert
+Taylor, as well as by several local celebrities.</p>
+<p>After tea Borrow, accompanied by Robert Taylor, rode to
+Penquite, four miles away.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ride by night to
+Penquite, Borrow records in his <i>Journal</i>.&nbsp; House of
+stone and slate on side of a hill.&nbsp; Mrs Taylor.&nbsp;
+Hospitable reception.&nbsp; Christmas Eve.&nbsp; Log on
+fire.&rdquo;&nbsp; He found alive of his own generation, Henry,
+William, Thomas, Elizabeth (who lived to be 94 years of age) and
+Nicholas, the children of Henry Borrow, Captain Borrow&rsquo;s
+eldest brother.&nbsp; Also Anne, daughter of Henry, who married
+Robert Taylor, and their daughter, likewise named Anne, and
+William Henry, son of Nicholas.</p>
+<p>In the Cornish Note Books there appears under the date of 3rd
+January the following entry: &ldquo;Rain and snow.&nbsp; Rode
+with Mr Taylor to dine at Trethinnick.&nbsp; House
+dilapidated.&nbsp; A family party.&nbsp; Hospitable
+people.&rdquo;&nbsp; On first entering his father&rsquo;s old
+home tears had sprung to Borrow&rsquo;s eyes, and he was much
+affected.&nbsp; There was present at the dinner the vicar of St
+Cleer, the Rev. J. R. P. Berkeley, a pleasant Irish clergyman
+who, years later, was able to give to Dr Knapp an account of what
+took place.&nbsp; He noticed the &ldquo;vast difference in
+appearance and manners between the simple yet shrewd Cornish
+farmers and the betravelled gentleman their kinsman;&rdquo; yet
+for all this there were shades of resemblance&mdash;in a look,
+some turn of thought or tone of voice.&nbsp; George Borrow was
+not at his best that evening, Mr Berkeley relates of the dinner
+at Trethinnick:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;his feelings were too much excited.&nbsp;
+He was thinking of the time when his father&rsquo;s footsteps and
+his father&rsquo;s voice re-echoed in the room in which we were
+sitting.&nbsp; His eyes wandered from point to point, and at
+times, if I was not mistaken, a tear could be seen trembling in
+them.&nbsp; At length he could no longer control his
+feelings.&nbsp; He left the hall suddenly, and in a few moments,
+but for God&rsquo;s providential care, the career of George
+Borrow would have been ended.&nbsp; There was within a few feet
+of the house a low wall with a drop of some feet into a paved
+yard.&nbsp; He walked rapidly out, and, it being nearly dark, he
+stepped one side of the gate and fell over the wall.&nbsp; He did
+not mention the accident, although he bruised himself a good
+deal, and it was some days before I heard of it.&nbsp; His words
+to me that evening, when bidding me good-bye, were: &lsquo;Well,
+we have shared the old-fashioned hospitality of old-fashioned
+people in an old-fashioned house.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation407a"></a><a href="#footnote407a"
+class="citation">[407a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow created something of a sensation in the
+neighbourhood.&nbsp; As a celebrity his autograph was much sought
+after; but he would gratify nobody.&nbsp; His hosts experienced
+many little surprises from their guest&rsquo;s strange
+ways.&nbsp; He would plunge into a moorland pool to fetch a bird
+that had fallen to his gun, or, round the family fireside, he
+would shout his ballads of the North, at one time alarming his
+audience by seizing a carving-knife and brandishing it about in
+the air to emphasize the passionate nature of his song.&nbsp;
+When a card-party proved too dull he slipped off and found his
+way into some slums, picking up all the disreputable characters
+he could find, working off his knowledge of cant on them, and
+getting out of them what he could. <a name="citation407b"></a><a
+href="#footnote407b" class="citation">[407b]</a></p>
+<p>On one occasion when dining at the house of a local celebrity
+he was suddenly missed from table during dessert.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A search revealed him in a remote room
+surrounded by the children of the house, whom he was amusing by
+his stories and catechising in the subject of their studies and
+pursuits.&nbsp; He excused his absence by saying that he had been
+fascinated by the intelligence of the children, and had forgotten
+about the dinner.&rdquo; <a name="citation407c"></a><a
+href="#footnote407c" class="citation">[407c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>His hatred of gentility led him into some actions that can
+only be characterised as childish.&nbsp; Even in Cornwall he was
+on the lookout for his fetish.&nbsp; On one occasion when dining
+with the ex-Mayor of Liskeard, he pulled out of his pocket and
+used instead of a handkerchief, a dirty old grease-stained rag
+with which he was wont to clean his gun. <a
+name="citation408"></a><a href="#footnote408"
+class="citation">[408]</a>&nbsp; This was done as a protest
+against something or other that seemed to him to suggest mock
+refinement.</p>
+<p>When at Wolsdon as the guest of the Pollards there arrived a
+lady and gentleman of the name of Hambly, according to the Note
+Books.&nbsp; In spite of this brief reference, Borrow immediately
+recognised a hated name.&nbsp; Never was one of the name good, he
+informed Mr Berkeley.&nbsp; He may even have been informed that
+they were descendants of the Headborough whom his father had
+knocked down.&nbsp; He showed his detestation for the name by
+being as rude as he could to those who bore it.</p>
+<p>Borrow was as incapable of dissimulating his dislikes as he
+was of controlling his moods.&nbsp; Even during his short stay at
+Penquite he was on one occasion, at least, plunged into a deep
+melancholy, sitting before a huge fire entirely oblivious to the
+presence of others in the room.&nbsp; Mrs Berkeley, who, with the
+vicar himself, was a caller, thinking to produce some good effect
+upon the gloomy man, sat down at the piano and played some old
+Irish and Scottish airs.&nbsp; After a time Borrow began to
+listen, then he raised his head, and finally &ldquo;he suddenly
+sprang to his feet, clapped his hands several times, danced about
+the room, and struck up some joyous melody.&nbsp; From that
+moment he was a different man.&rdquo;&nbsp; He told them
+&ldquo;tales and side-splitting anecdotes,&rdquo; he joined the
+party at supper, and when the vicar and his wife rose to take
+their leave he pressed Mrs Berkeley&rsquo;s hands, and told her
+that her music had been as David&rsquo;s harp to his soul.</p>
+<p>To the young man he met during this visit who informed him
+that he had left the Army as it was no place for a gentleman,
+Borrow replied that it was no place for a man who was not a
+gentleman, and that he was quite right in leaving it.&nbsp; To
+speak against the Army to Borrow was to speak against his
+honoured father.</p>
+<p>How Borrow struck his Cornish kinsfolk is shown in a letter
+written by his hostess to a friend.&nbsp; &ldquo;I must tell
+you,&rdquo; she writes, &ldquo;a bit about our distinguished
+visitor.&rdquo;&nbsp; She gives one of the most valuable
+portraits of Borrow that exists.&nbsp; He was to her:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;A fine tall man of about six feet three,
+well-proportioned and not stout; able to walk five miles an hour
+successively; rather florid face without any hirsute appendages;
+hair white and soft; eyes and eyebrows dark; good nose and very
+nice mouth; well-shaped hands&mdash;altogether a person you would
+notice in a crowd.&nbsp; His character is not so easy to
+portray.&nbsp; The more I see of him the less I know of
+him.&nbsp; He is very enthusiastic and eccentric, very proud and
+unyielding.&nbsp; He says very little of himself, and one cannot
+ask him if inclined to . . . He is a marvel in himself.&nbsp;
+There is no one here to draw him out.&nbsp; He has an astonishing
+memory as to dates when great events have taken place, no matter
+in what part of the world.&nbsp; He seems to know
+everything.&rdquo; <a name="citation409"></a><a
+href="#footnote409" class="citation">[409]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was gratified at the welcome he received, and was much
+pleased with the neighbourhood and its people.&nbsp; &ldquo;My
+relations are most excellent people,&rdquo; he wrote to his wife,
+&ldquo;but I could not understand more than half they
+said.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was puzzled to know why the head of a
+family, which was reputed to be worth seventy thousand pounds,
+should live in a house which could not boast of a single
+grate&mdash;&ldquo;nothing but open chimneys.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He remained at Penquite for upwards of a fortnight, at one
+time galloping over snowy hills and dales with Anne Taylor,
+Junr., &ldquo;as gallant a girl as ever rode,&rdquo; at another,
+alert as ever for fragments of folk-lore or philology, jotting
+down the story of a pisky-child from the dictation of his cousin
+Elizabeth.</p>
+<p>On 9th January Borrow left Penquite on a tour to Truro,
+Penzance, Mousehole, and Land&rsquo;s End, armed with the
+inevitable umbrella, grasped in the centre by the right hand,
+green, manifold and bulging, that so puzzled Mr Watts-Dunton and
+caused him on one occasion to ask Dr Hake, &ldquo;Is he a genuine
+Child of the Open Air?&rdquo;&nbsp; It was one of the first
+things to which Borrow&rsquo;s pedestrian friends had to accustom
+themselves.&nbsp; With this &ldquo;damning thing . . . gigantic
+and green,&rdquo; Borrow set out upon his excursion, now
+examining some Celtic barrow, now enquiring his way or the name
+of a landmark, occasionally singing in that tremendous voice of
+his, &ldquo;Look out, look out, Swayne Vonved!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At Mousehole he called upon a relative, H. D. Burney (who was,
+it would seem, in charge of the Coast Guard Station), to whom he
+had a letter of introduction from Robert Taylor.&nbsp; Mr Burney
+entertained him with stories, showed him places and things of
+interest in the neighbourhood, and accompanied him on his visit
+to St Michael&rsquo;s Mount.&nbsp; Borrow returned to Penquite on
+the 25th with a considerable store of Cornish legends and Cornish
+words, and the knowledge that you can only see Cornwall or know
+anything about it by walking through it.</p>
+<p>The next excursion was to the North Coast, Pentire Point,
+Tintagel, King Arthur&rsquo;s Castle, etc.&nbsp; On the 1st of
+February he left Penquite, and slept the night at
+Trethinnick.&nbsp; The next morning he set out on horseback
+accompanied by Nicholas Borrow.</p>
+<p>To the vicar of St Cleer and his family, Borrow was a very
+welcome visitor.&nbsp; Mr Berkeley&rsquo;s eldest son, a boy of
+ten years of age, on being introduced to the distinguished
+caller, gazed at him for some moments and then without a word
+left the room and, going straight to his mother in another
+apartment cried, &ldquo;Well, mother, that <i>is</i> a
+man.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow was delighted when he heard of the
+child&rsquo;s enthusiasm.&nbsp; Mr Berkeley give a picture of his
+distinguished visitor far more prepossessing than many that
+exist.&nbsp; He was particularly struck, as was everybody, by the
+beauty of Borrow&rsquo;s hands, and their owner&rsquo;s vanity
+over them as the legacy of his Huguenot ancestors.&nbsp; Mr
+Berkeley found Borrow&rsquo;s countenance pleasing, betokening
+calm firmness, self-confidence and a mind under control, though
+capable of passion.&nbsp; He could on occasion prove a delightful
+talker, and he gave to the vicar&rsquo;s family a new maxim to
+implant upon their Christianity, the old prize-fighters receipt
+for a quiet life: &ldquo;Learn to box, and keep a civil tongue in
+your head.&rdquo;&nbsp; He would often drop in at the vicarage in
+the evening, when he would</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;sit in the centre of a group before the
+fire with his hands on his knees&mdash;his favourite
+position&mdash;pouring forth tales of the scenes he had witnessed
+in his wanderings. . . . Then he would suddenly spring from his
+seat and walk to and fro the room in silence; anon he would clap
+his hands and sing a Gypsy song, or perchance would chant forth a
+translation of some Viking poem; after which he would sit down
+again and chat about his father, whose memory he revered as he
+did his mother&rsquo;s; <a name="citation411"></a><a
+href="#footnote411" class="citation">[411]</a> and finally he
+would recount some tale of suffering or sorrow with deep
+pathos&mdash;his voice being capable of expressing triumphant joy
+or the profoundest sadness.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was Borrow&rsquo;s intention to write a book about his
+visit to Cornwall, and he even announced it at the end of <i>The
+Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp; He was delighted with the Duchy, and
+evidently gave his relatives to understand that it was his
+intention to use the contents of his Note Books as the nucleus of
+a book.&nbsp; &ldquo;He will undoubtedly write a description of
+his visit,&rdquo; Mrs Taylor wrote to her friend.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+walked through the whole of Cornwall and saw everything,&rdquo;
+Borrow wrote to his wife after his return to London.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I kept a Journal of every day I was there, and it fills
+<i>two</i> pocket books.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow left Cornwall the second week in February and was in
+London on the 10th, where he was to break his journey home in
+order to obtain some data at the British Museum for the Appendix
+of <i>The Romany Rye</i>. <a name="citation412a"></a><a
+href="#footnote412a" class="citation">[412a]</a>&nbsp; On 13th
+February he writes to his wife:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;For three days I have been working hard at
+the Museum, I am at present at Mr Webster&rsquo;s, but not in the
+three guinea lodgings.&nbsp; I am in rooms above, for which I pay
+thirty shillings a week.&nbsp; I live as economically as I can;
+but when I am in London I am obliged to be at certain
+expense.&nbsp; I must be civil to certain friends who invite me
+out and show me every kindness.&nbsp; Please send me a five pound
+note by return of post.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>His wife appears to have been anxious for his return home, and
+on the 17th he writes to her:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It is hardly worth while making me more
+melancholy than I am.&nbsp; Come home, come home! is the
+cry.&nbsp; And what are my prospects when I get home? though it
+is true that they are not much brighter here.&nbsp; I have
+nothing to look forward to.&nbsp; Honourable employments are
+being given to this and that trumpery fellow; while I, who am an
+honourable man, must be excluded from everything.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Of literature he expressed himself as tired, there was little
+or nothing to be got out of it, save by writing humbug, which he
+refused to do.&nbsp; &ldquo;My spirits are very low,&rdquo; he
+continues, &ldquo;and your letters make them worse.&nbsp; I shall
+probably return by the end of next week; but I shall want more
+money.&nbsp; I am sorry to spend money for it is our only friend,
+and God knows I use as little as possible, but I can&rsquo;t
+travel without it.&rdquo; <a name="citation412b"></a><a
+href="#footnote412b" class="citation">[412b]</a>&nbsp; A few days
+later there is another letter with farther reference to money,
+and protests that he is spending as little as possible.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Perhaps you had better send another note,&rdquo; he
+writes, &ldquo;and I will bring it home unchanged, if I do not
+want any part of it.&nbsp; I have lived very economically as far
+as I am concerned personally; I have bought nothing, and have
+been working hard at the Museum.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation413"></a><a href="#footnote413"
+class="citation">[413]</a></p>
+<p>These constant references to money seem to suggest either some
+difference between Borrow and his wife, or that he felt he was
+spending too much upon himself and was anticipating her thoughts
+by assuring her of how economically he was living.&nbsp; He had
+an unquestioned right to spend, for he had added considerable
+sums to the exchequer from the profits of his first two
+books.</p>
+<p>Borrow returned to Yarmouth on 25th February.&nbsp; <i>The
+Romany Rye</i> was now rapidly nearing completion; but there was
+no encouragement to publish a new book.&nbsp; He worked at <i>The
+Romany Rye</i>, not because he saw profit in it, not because he
+was anxious to give another book to an uneager public; but
+because of the sting in its tail, because of the thunderbolt
+Appendix in which he paid off old scores against the critics and
+his personal enemies.&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i> was to him a
+work of hate; it was a bomb disguised as a book, which he
+intended to throw into the camp of his foes.&nbsp; He was tired
+of literature, by which he meant that he was tired of producing
+his best for a public that neither wanted nor understood
+it.&nbsp; He forgot that the works of a great writer are
+sometimes printed in his own that they may be read in another
+generation.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI<br />
+MARCH 1854&ndash;MAY 1856</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">During</span> the months that followed
+Borrow&rsquo;s return to Great Yarmouth, the question of the
+coming summer holiday was discussed.&nbsp; From the first Borrow
+himself had been for Wales.&nbsp; He was eager to pursue his
+Celtic researches further north.&nbsp; &ldquo;I should not wonder
+if he went into Wales before he returns,&rdquo; Mrs Robert Taylor
+had written to her friend during Borrow&rsquo;s stay in
+Cornwall.&nbsp; His wife and Henrietta had &ldquo;a hankering
+after what is fashionable,&rdquo; and suggested Harrogate or
+Leamington.&nbsp; To which Borrow replied that there was nothing
+he &ldquo;so much hated as fashionable life.&rdquo;&nbsp; He,
+however, gave way, the two women followed suit, as he had
+intended they should, and Wales was decided upon.&nbsp; For
+Borrow the literature of Wales had always exercised a great
+attraction.&nbsp; Her bards were as no other bards.&nbsp; Ab
+Gwilym was to him the superior of Chaucer, and Huw Morris
+&ldquo;the greatest songster of the seventeenth
+century.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was, he confessed, a desire to put to
+practical use his knowledge of the Welsh tongue, &ldquo;such as
+it was,&rdquo; that first gave him the idea of going to
+Wales.</p>
+<p>The party left Great Yarmouth on 27th July 1854, spending one
+night at Peterborough and three at Chester.&nbsp; They reached
+Llangollen, which was to be their head-quarters, on 1st
+August.&nbsp; On 9th August Mrs George Borrow wrote to the old
+lady at Oulton, &ldquo;We all much enjoy this wonderful and
+beautiful country.&nbsp; We are in a lovely quiet spot.&nbsp;
+Dear George goes out exploring the mountains, and when he finds
+remarkable views takes us of an evening to see them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow wanted to see Wales and get to know the people, and,
+above all, to speak with them in their own language, and on 27th
+August he started upon a walking tour to Bangor, where he was to
+meet his wife and Henrietta, who were to proceed thither by
+rail.&nbsp; It was during this excursion that he encountered the
+delightful Papist-Orange fiddler, whose fortunes and fingers
+fluctuated between &ldquo;Croppies Get Up&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;Croppies Lie Down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>From Bangor Borrow explored the surrounding places of
+interest.&nbsp; He ascended Snowdon arm-in-arm with Henrietta,
+singing &ldquo;at the stretch of my voice a celebrated Welsh
+stanza,&rdquo; the boy-guide following wonderingly behind.&nbsp;
+In spite of the fatigues of the climb, &ldquo;the gallant
+girl&rdquo; reached the summit and heard her stepfather declaim
+two stanzas of poetry in Welsh, to the grinning astonishment of a
+small group of English tourists and the great interest of a
+Welshman, who asked Borrow if he were <i>a Breton</i>.</p>
+<p>There is no question that Borrow was genuinely attached to
+Henrietta.&nbsp; &ldquo;I generally call her daughter,&rdquo; he
+writes, &ldquo;and with good reason, seeing that she has always
+shown herself a daughter to me&mdash;that she has all kinds of
+good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of
+conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch
+style,&rdquo; <a name="citation415a"></a><a href="#footnote415a"
+class="citation">[415a]</a> not to speak of her ability to play
+on the Spanish guitar.&nbsp; She was &ldquo;the dear girl,&rdquo;
+or &ldquo;the gallant girl,&rdquo; between whom and her
+stepfather existed a true spirit of comradeship.&nbsp; In 1844
+she wrote to him, &ldquo;And then that <i>funny</i> look <a
+name="citation415b"></a><a href="#footnote415b"
+class="citation">[415b]</a> would come into your eyes and you
+would call me &lsquo;poor old Hen.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp; He seemed
+incapable of laughing, and one intimate friend states that she
+&ldquo;never saw him even smiling, but there was a twinkle in his
+eyes which told you that he was enjoying himself just the
+same.&rdquo; <a name="citation416"></a><a href="#footnote416"
+class="citation">[416]</a></p>
+<p>About this time Mrs George Borrow wrote to old Mrs Borrow at
+Oulton Hall, saying that all was well with her son.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;He is very regular in his morning and
+evening devotions, so that we all have abundant cause for
+thankfulness . . . As regards your dear son and his peace and
+comfort, you have reason to praise and bless God on his account .
+. . He is fully occupied.&nbsp; He keeps a <i>daily</i> Journal
+of all that goes on, so that he can make a most amusing book in a
+month, whenever he wishes to do so.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The first sentence is very puzzling, and would seem to suggest
+that Borrow&rsquo;s moods were somehow or other associated with
+outbursts against religion.&nbsp; &ldquo;Be sure you <i>burn</i>
+this, or do not leave it about,&rdquo; the old lady is
+admonished.</p>
+<p>On the day following the ascent of Snowdon, Mrs Borrow and
+Henrietta returned to Llangollen by train, leaving Borrow free to
+pursue his wanderings.&nbsp; He eventually arrived at Llangollen
+on 6th September, by way of Carnarvon, Festiniog and Bala.&nbsp;
+After remaining another twenty days at Llangollen, he despatched
+his wife and stepdaughter home by rail.&nbsp; He then bought a
+small leather satchel, with a strap to sling it over his
+shoulder, packed in it a white linen shirt, a pair of worsted
+stockings, a razor and a prayer-book.&nbsp; Having had his boots
+resoled and his umbrella repaired, he left Llangollen for South
+Wales, upon an excursion which was to occupy three weeks.&nbsp;
+During the course of this expedition he was taken for many
+things, from a pork-jobber to Father Toban himself, as whom he
+pronounced &ldquo;the best Latin blessing I could remember&rdquo;
+over two or three dozen Irish reapers to their entire
+satisfaction.&nbsp; Eventually he arrived at Chepstow, having
+learned a great deal about wild Wales.</p>
+<p>One of the excursions that Borrow made from Bangor was to
+Llanfair in search of Gronwy, the birthplace of Gronwy
+Owen.&nbsp; He found in the long, low house an old woman and five
+children, descendants of the poet, who stared at him
+wonderingly.&nbsp; To each he gave a trifle.&nbsp; Asking whether
+they could read, he was told that the eldest could read anything,
+whether Welsh or English.&nbsp; In <i>Wild Wales</i> he gives an
+account of the interview.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Can you write?&rsquo; said I to the
+child [the eldest], a little stubby girl of about eight, with a
+broad flat red face and grey eyes, dressed in a chintz gown, a
+little bonnet on her head, and looking the image of
+notableness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The little maiden, who had never taken her eyes off of
+me for a moment during the whole time I had been in the room, at
+first made no answer; being, however, bid by her grandmother to
+speak, she at length answered in a soft voice, &lsquo;Medraf, I
+can.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Then write your name in this book,&rsquo; said
+I, taking out a pocket-book and a pencil, &lsquo;and write
+likewise that you are related to Gronwy Owen&mdash;and be sure
+you write in Welsh.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The little maiden very demurely took the book and
+pencil, and placing the former on the table wrote as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Ellen Jones yn perthyn o bell i gronow
+owen.&rsquo; <a name="citation417a"></a><a href="#footnote417a"
+class="citation">[417a]</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is, &lsquo;Ellen Jones belonging, from afar off to
+Gronwy Owen.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation417b"></a><a
+href="#footnote417b" class="citation">[417b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Ellen Jones is now Ellen Thomas, and she well remembers Borrow
+coming along the lane, where she was playing with some other
+children, and asking for the house of Gronwy Owen.&nbsp; Later,
+when she entered the house, she found him talking to her
+grandmother, who was a little deaf as described in <i>Wild
+Wales</i>.&nbsp; Mrs Thomas&rsquo; recollection of Borrow is that
+he had the appearance of possessing great strength.&nbsp; He had
+&ldquo;bright eyes and shabby dress, more like a merchant than a
+gentleman, or like a man come to buy cattle [others made the same
+mistake].&nbsp; But, dear me! he did speak <i>funny</i>
+Welsh,&rdquo; she remarked to a student of Borrow who sought her
+out, &ldquo;he could not pronounce the &lsquo;ll&rsquo;
+[pronouncing the word &ldquo;pell&rdquo; as if it rhymed with
+tell, whereas it should be pronounced something like
+&ldquo;pelth&rdquo;], and his voice was very high; but perhaps
+that was because my grandmother was deaf.&rdquo;&nbsp; He had
+plenty of words, but bad pronunciation.&nbsp; William Thomas <a
+name="citation418a"></a><a href="#footnote418a"
+class="citation">[418a]</a> laughed many a time at him coming
+talking his funny Welsh to him, and said he was glad he knew a
+few words of Spanish to answer him with.&nbsp; Borrow was,
+apparently, unconscious of any imperfection in his pronunciation
+of the &ldquo;ll&rdquo;.&nbsp; He has written: &ldquo;&lsquo;Had
+you much difficulty in acquiring the sound of the
+&ldquo;ll&rdquo;?&rsquo;&nbsp; I think I hear the reader
+inquire.&nbsp; None whatever: the double l of the Welsh is by no
+means the terrible guttural which English people generally
+suppose it to be.&rdquo; <a name="citation418b"></a><a
+href="#footnote418b" class="citation">[418b]</a></p>
+<p>Mrs Thomas is now sixty-seven years of age (she was eleven and
+not eight at the time of Borrow&rsquo;s visit) and still
+preserves carefully wrapped up the book from which she read to
+the white-haired stranger.&nbsp; The episode was not thought much
+of at the time, except by the child, whom it much excited. <a
+name="citation418c"></a><a href="#footnote418c"
+class="citation">[418c]</a></p>
+<p>It was in all probability during this, his first tour in
+Wales, that Borrow was lost on Cader Idris, and spent the whole
+of one night in wandering over the mountain vainly seeking a
+path.&nbsp; The next morning he arrived at the inn utterly
+exhausted.&nbsp; It was quite in keeping with Borrow&rsquo;s
+nature to suppress from his book all mention of this unpleasant
+adventure. <a name="citation419a"></a><a href="#footnote419a"
+class="citation">[419a]</a></p>
+<p>The Welsh holiday was unquestionably a success.&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s mind had been diverted from critics and his lost
+popularity.&nbsp; He had forgotten that in official quarters he
+had been overlooked.&nbsp; He was in the land of Ab Gwilym and
+Gronwy Owen.&nbsp; &ldquo;There never was such a place for
+poets,&rdquo; he wrote; &ldquo;you meet a poet, or the birthplace
+of a poet, everywhere.&rdquo; <a name="citation419b"></a><a
+href="#footnote419b" class="citation">[419b]</a>&nbsp; He was
+delighted with the simplicity of the people, and in no way
+offended by their persistent suspicion of all things Saxon.&nbsp;
+At least they knew their own poets; and he could not help
+comparing the Welsh labouring man who knew Huw Morris, with his
+Suffolk brother who had never heard of Beowulf or Chaucer.&nbsp;
+He discoursed with many people about their bards, surprising them
+by his intimate knowledge of the poets and the poetry of
+Wales.&nbsp; He found enthusiasm &ldquo;never scoffed at by the
+noble simple-minded genuine Welsh, whatever treatment it may
+receive from the coarse-hearted, sensual, selfish Saxon.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation419c"></a><a href="#footnote419c"
+class="citation">[419c]</a>&nbsp; Sometimes he was reminded
+&ldquo;of the substantial yoemen of Cornwall, particularly . . .
+of my friends at Penquite.&rdquo; <a name="citation419d"></a><a
+href="#footnote419d" class="citation">[419d]</a>&nbsp; Wherever
+he went he experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality, and
+it delighted him to be taken for a Cumro, as was frequently the
+case.</p>
+<p>What Borrow writes about his Welsh is rather
+contradictory.&nbsp; Sometimes he represents himself as taken for
+a Welshman, at others as a foreigner speaking Welsh.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Oh, what a blessing it is to be able to speak
+Welsh!&rdquo; <a name="citation420a"></a><a href="#footnote420a"
+class="citation">[420a]</a> he exclaims.&nbsp; He acknowledged
+that he could read Welsh with far more ease than he could speak
+it.&nbsp; There is absolutely no posing or endeavour to depict
+himself a perfect Welsh scholar, whose accent could not be
+distinguished from that of a native.&nbsp; The literary results
+of the Welsh holiday were four Note Books written in pencil, from
+which <i>Wild Wales</i> was subsequently written.&nbsp; Borrow
+was in Wales for nearly sixteen weeks (1st Aug.&mdash;16th
+November), of which about a third was devoted to expeditions on
+foot.</p>
+<p>In the annual consultations about holidays, Borrow&rsquo;s was
+always the dominating voice.&nbsp; For the year 1855 the Isle of
+Man was chosen, because it attracted him as a land of legend and
+quaint customs and speech.&nbsp; Accordingly during the early
+days of September Mrs Borrow and Henrietta were comfortably
+settled at Douglas, and Borrow began to make excursions to
+various parts of the island.&nbsp; He explored every corner of
+it, conversing with the people in Manx, collecting ballads and
+old, smoke-stained <i>carvel</i> <a name="citation420b"></a><a
+href="#footnote420b" class="citation">[420b]</a> (or carol)
+books, of which he was successful in securing two examples.&nbsp;
+He discovered that the island possessed a veritable literature in
+these <i>carvels</i>, which were circulated in manuscript form
+among the neighbours of the writers.</p>
+<p>The old runic inscriptions that he found on the tombstones
+exercised a great fascination over Borrow.&nbsp; He would spend
+hours, or even days (on one occasion as much as a week), in
+deciphering one of them.&nbsp; Thirty years later he was
+remembered as an accurate, painstaking man.&nbsp; His evenings
+were frequently occupied in translating into English the Manx
+poem <i>Illiam Dhoo</i>, or Brown William.&nbsp; He discovered
+among the Manx traditions much about Finn Ma Coul, or
+M&lsquo;Coyle, who appears in <i>The Romany Rye</i> as a
+notability of Ireland.&nbsp; He ascended Snaefell, sought out the
+daughter of George Killey, the Manx poet, and had much talk with
+her, she taking him for a Manxman.&nbsp; The people of the island
+he liked.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In the whole world,&rdquo; he wrote in his
+&lsquo;Note Books,&rsquo; &ldquo;there is not a more honest,
+kindly race than the genuine Manx.&nbsp; Towards strangers they
+exert unbounded hospitality without the slightest idea of
+receiving any compensation, and they are, whether men or women,
+at any time willing to go two or three miles over mountain and
+bog to put strangers into the right road.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>During his stay in the Isle of Man, news reached Borrow of the
+death of a kinsman, William, son of Samuel Borrow, his cousin, a
+cooper at Devonport.&nbsp; William Borrow had gone to America,
+where he had won a prize for a new and wonderful application of
+steam.&nbsp; His death is said to have occurred as the result of
+mental fatigue.&nbsp; In this Borrow saw cause for grave
+complaint against the wretched English Aristocracy that forced
+talent out of the country by denying it employment or honour,
+which were all for their &ldquo;connections and
+lick-spittles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The holiday in the Isle of Man had resulted in two quarto note
+books, aggregating ninety-six pages, closely written in
+pencil.&nbsp; Again Borrow planned to write a book, just as he
+had done on the occasion of the Cornish visit.&nbsp; Nothing,
+however, came of it.&nbsp; Among his papers was found the
+following draft of a suggested title-page:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">BAYR JAIRGEY<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AND</span><br />
+GLION DOO</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE RED PATH
+AND THE BLACK VALLEY</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WANDERINGS
+IN QUEST OF MANX LITERATURE</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A curious feature of Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s correspondence is her
+friendly conspiracies, sometimes with John Murray, sometimes with
+Woodfall, the printer, asking them to send encouraging letters
+that shall hearten Borrow to greater efforts.&nbsp; On 26th
+November 1850 John Murray wrote to her: &ldquo;I have determined
+on engraving [by W. Holl] Phillips&rsquo; portrait <a
+name="citation422"></a><a href="#footnote422"
+class="citation">[422]</a> . . . as a frontispiece to it
+[<i>Lavengro</i>].&nbsp; I trust that this will not be
+disagreeable to you and the author&mdash;in fact I do it in
+confident expectation that it will meet with <i>your</i> assent;
+I do not ask Mr Borrow&rsquo;s leave, remember.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It must be borne in mind that Mrs Borrow had been in London a
+few days previously, in order to deliver to John Murray the
+manuscript of <i>Lavengro</i>.&nbsp; Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s reply to
+this letter is significant.&nbsp; With regard to the engraving,
+she writes (28th November), &ldquo;<i>I like the idea of it</i>,
+and when Mr Borrow remarked that he did not wish it (as we
+expected he would) I reminded him that <i>his</i> leave
+<i>was</i> not asked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again, on 30th October 1852, Mrs Borrow wrote to Robert Cooke
+asking that either he or John Murray would write to Borrow
+enquiring as to his health, and progress with <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>, and how long it would be before the manuscript were
+ready for the printer.&nbsp; &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she adds,
+&ldquo;all this is in perfect confidence to Mr Murray and
+yourself as you <i>both</i> of you know my truly excellent
+Husband well enough to be aware how much he every now and then
+requires an impetus to cause the large wheel to move round at a
+quicker pace . . . Oblige me by committing this to the flames,
+and write to him just as you would have done, without hearing
+<i>a word from me</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; On yet another occasion when
+she and Borrow were both in London, she writes to Cooke asking
+that either he &ldquo;or Mr Murray will give my Husband a look,
+if it be only for a few minutes . . . He seems rather low.&nbsp;
+Do, <i>not</i> let this note remain on your table,&rdquo; she
+concludes, &ldquo;or <i>mention</i> it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If Borrow were a problem to his wife and to his publisher, he
+presented equal difficulties to the country folk about
+Oulton.&nbsp; To one he was &ldquo;a missionary out of
+work,&rdquo; to another &ldquo;a man who kep&rsquo; &rsquo;isself
+to &rsquo;isself&rdquo;; but to none was he the tired lion weary
+of the chase.&nbsp; &ldquo;His great delight . . . was to plunge
+into the darkening mere at eventide, his great head and heavy
+shoulders ruddy in the rays of the sun.&nbsp; Here he hissed and
+roared and spluttered, sometimes frightening the eel-catcher
+sailing home in the half-light, and remembering suddenly school
+legends of river-sprites and monsters of the deep.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation423a"></a><a href="#footnote423a"
+class="citation">[423a]</a></p>
+<p>In the spring following his return from the Isle of Man,
+Borrow made numerous excursions on foot through East
+Anglia.&nbsp; He seemed too restless to remain long in one
+place.&nbsp; During a tramp from Yarmouth to Ely by way of
+Cromer, Holt, Lynn and Wisbech, he called upon Anna Gurney. <a
+name="citation423b"></a><a href="#footnote423b"
+class="citation">[423b]</a>&nbsp; His reason for doing so was
+that she was one of the three celebrities of the world he desired
+to see.&nbsp; The other two were Daniel O&rsquo;Connell <a
+name="citation423c"></a><a href="#footnote423c"
+class="citation">[423c]</a> and Lamplighter (the sire of
+Phosphorus), Lord Berners winner of the Derby.&nbsp; Two of the
+world&rsquo;s notabilities had slipped through his fingers by
+reason of their deaths, but he was determined that Anna Gurney,
+who lived at North Repps, should not evade him.&nbsp; He gave her
+notice of his intention to call, and found her ready to receive
+him.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When, according to his account, <a
+name="citation424"></a><a href="#footnote424"
+class="citation">[424]</a> he had been but a very short time in
+her presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her hand to
+one of her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and put
+it into his hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point,
+which he tried to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him
+continuously; when, said he, &lsquo;I could not study the Arabic
+grammar and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the
+book and ran out of the room.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is said that Borrow ran until he reached Old Tucker&rsquo;s
+Inn at Cromer, where he ate &ldquo;five excellent sausages&rdquo;
+and found calm.&nbsp; He then went on to Sheringham and related
+the incident to the Upchers.</p>
+<p>These lonely walking tours soothed Borrow&rsquo;s restless
+mind.&nbsp; He had constant change of scene, and his thoughts
+were diverted by the adventures of the roadside.&nbsp; He
+encountered many and interesting people, on one occasion an old
+man who remembered the fight between Painter and Oliver; at
+another time he saw a carter beating his horse which had fallen
+down.&nbsp; &ldquo;Give him a pint of ale, and I will pay for
+it,&rdquo; counselled Borrow.&nbsp; After the second pint the
+beast got up and proceeded, &ldquo;pulling merrily . . . with the
+other horses.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ale was Borrow&rsquo;s sovereign remedy for the world&rsquo;s
+ills and wrongs.&nbsp; It was by ale that he had been cured when
+the &ldquo;Horrors&rdquo; were upon him in the dingle.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Oh, genial and gladdening is the power of good ale, the
+true and proper drink of Englishmen,&rdquo; he exclaims after
+having heartened Jack Slingsby and his family.&nbsp; &ldquo;He is
+not deserving of the name of Englishman,&rdquo; he continues,
+&ldquo;who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation425a"></a><a href="#footnote425a"
+class="citation">[425a]</a>&nbsp; To John Murray (the Third) he
+wrote in his letter of sympathy on the death of his father:
+&ldquo;Pray keep up your spirits, and that you may be able to do
+so, take long walks and drink plenty of Scotch ale with your
+dinner . . .&nbsp; God bless you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He liked ale &ldquo;with plenty of malt in it, and as little
+hop as well may be&mdash;ale at least two years old.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation425b"></a><a href="#footnote425b"
+class="citation">[425b]</a>&nbsp; The period of its maturity
+changed with his mood.&nbsp; In another place he gives nine or
+ten months as the ideal age. <a name="citation425c"></a><a
+href="#footnote425c" class="citation">[425c]</a>&nbsp; He was all
+for an Act of Parliament to force people to brew good ale.&nbsp;
+He not only drank good ale himself; but prescribed it as a
+universal elixir for man and beast.&nbsp; Hearing from Elizabeth
+Harvey &ldquo;of a lady who was attached to a gentleman,&rdquo;
+Borrow demanded bluntly, &ldquo;Well, did he make her an
+offer?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;No,&rdquo; was the response.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Borrow replied with conviction, &ldquo;if she
+had given him some good ale he would.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation425d"></a><a href="#footnote425d"
+class="citation">[425d]</a></p>
+<p>He loved best old Burton, which, with &rsquo;37 port, were his
+favourites; yet he would drink whatever ale the roadside-inn
+provided, as if to discipline his stomach.&nbsp; It has been said
+that he habitually drank &ldquo;swipes,&rdquo; a thin cheap ale,
+because that was the drink of his gypsy friends; but
+Borrow&rsquo;s friendship certainly did not often involve him in
+anything so distasteful.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII<br />
+<i>THE ROMANY RYE</i>.&nbsp; 1854&ndash;1859</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Borrow</span> was not a great
+correspondent, and he left behind him very few letters from
+distinguished men of his time.&nbsp; Among those few were several
+from Edward FitzGerald, whose character contrasted so strangely
+with that of the tempestuous Borrow.&nbsp; In 1856 FitzGerald
+wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">31 <span
+class="smcap">Great Portland Street</span>,<br />
+<span class="smcap">London</span>, 27<i>th</i> <i>October</i>
+1856.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;It is I who send
+you the new Turkish Dictionary [Redhouse&rsquo;s Turkish &amp;
+English Dictionary] which ought to go by this Post; my reasons
+being that I bought it really only for the purpose of doing that
+little good to the spirited Publisher of the book (who thought
+when he began it that the [Crimean] War was to last), and I send
+it to you because I should be glad of your opinion, if you can
+give it.&nbsp; I am afraid that you will hardly condescend to
+<i>use</i> it, for you abide in the old Meninsky; but if you
+<i>will</i> use it, I shall be very glad.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+think <i>I</i> ever shall; and so what is to be done with it now
+it is bought?</p>
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know what Kerrich told you of my being too
+<i>lazy</i> to go over to Yarmouth to see you a year ago.&nbsp;
+No such thing as that.&nbsp; I simply had doubts as to whether
+you would not rather remain unlookt for.&nbsp; I know I enjoyed
+my evening with you a month ago.&nbsp; I wanted to ask you to
+read some of the <i>Northern Ballads</i> too; but you shut the
+book.</p>
+<p>I must tell you.&nbsp; I am come up here on my way to
+Chichester to be married! to Miss Barton (of Quaker memory) and
+our united ages amount to 96!&mdash;a dangerous experiment on
+both sides.&nbsp; She at least brings a fine head and heart to
+the bargain&mdash;worthy of a better market.&nbsp; But it is to
+be, and I dare say you will honestly wish we may do well.</p>
+<p>Keep the book as long as you will.&nbsp; It is useless to
+me.&nbsp; I shall be to be heard of through Geldeston Hall,
+Beccles.&nbsp; With compliments to Mrs Borrow, believe me,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Edward
+FitzGerald</span>.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Donne is well, and wants to know about
+you.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A few months later FitzGerald wrote again:</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Albert House</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Gorleston</span>,<br />
+6<i>th</i> <i>July</i> 1857.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Borrow</span>,&mdash;Will you send me
+[The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam] by bearer.&nbsp; I only want to
+look at him, for that Frenchman <a name="citation427"></a><a
+href="#footnote427" class="citation">[427]</a> has been
+misquoting him in a way that will make [Professor] E. Cowell [of
+Cambridge] answerable for another&rsquo;s blunder, which must not
+be.&nbsp; You shall have &rsquo;<i>Omar</i> back directly, or
+whenever you want him, and I should really like to make you a
+copy (taking my time) of the best Quatrains.&nbsp; I am now
+looking over the Calcutta MS. which has 500!&mdash;very many
+quite as good as those in the MS. you have; but very many in
+<i>both</i> MSS. are well omitted.</p>
+<p>I have been for a fortnight to Geldeston where Kerrich is not
+very well.&nbsp; I shall look for you one day in my Yarmouth
+rounds, and you know how entirely disengaged and glad to see you
+I am here.&nbsp; I have two fresh Nieces with me&mdash;and I find
+I gave you the <i>worst</i> wine of two samples Diver sent
+me.&nbsp; I wish you would send word by bearer you are
+better&mdash;this one word written will be enough you see.</p>
+<p>My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or
+something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon
+sink into the village Churchsward.&nbsp; Why, <i>our</i> time
+seems coming.&nbsp; Make way, Gentlemen!&mdash;Yours very
+truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Edward
+FitzGerald</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>What effect the sweet gentleness of FitzGerald&rsquo;s nature
+had upon that of Borrow is not known, for the replies have not
+been preserved.&nbsp; FitzGerald was a man capable of soothing
+the angriest and most discontented mind, and it is a misfortune
+that he saw so little of Borrow.&nbsp; In the early part of the
+following year (24th Jan. 1857) FitzGerald wrote to Professor E.
+B. Cowell of Cambridge:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I was with Borrow a week ago at
+Donne&rsquo;s, and also at Yarmouth three months ago: he is well,
+but not yet agreed with Murray.&nbsp; He read me a long
+Translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not
+admire, and his Taste becomes stranger than ever.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation428a"></a><a href="#footnote428a"
+class="citation">[428a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>From Wales Mrs George Borrow had written (Sept. 1854) to old
+Mrs Borrow: &ldquo;He [Borrow] will, I expect at Christmas,
+publish his other work [<i>The Romany Rye</i>] together with his
+poetry in all the European languages.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation428b"></a><a href="#footnote428b"
+class="citation">[428b]</a>&nbsp; In November (1854) the
+manuscript of <i>The Romany Rye</i> was delivered to John Murray,
+who appears to have taken his time in reading it; for it was not
+until 23rd December that he expressed his views in the following
+letter.&nbsp; Even when the letter was written it was allowed to
+remain in John Murray&rsquo;s desk for five weeks, not being sent
+until 27th January:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">My dear Borrow</span>,&mdash;I
+have read with care the MS. of <i>The Romany Rye</i> and have
+pondered anxiously over it; and in what I am about to write I
+think I may fairly claim the privilege of a friend deeply
+interested in you personally, as well as in your reputation as
+author, and by no means insensible to the abilities displayed in
+your various works.&nbsp; It is my firm conviction then, that you
+will incur the certainty of failure and run the risque of
+injuring your literary fame by publishing the MS. as it
+stands.&nbsp; Very large omissions seem to me&mdash;and in this,
+Elwin, <a name="citation429"></a><a href="#footnote429"
+class="citation">[429]</a> no mean judge,
+concurs&mdash;absolutely indispensable.&nbsp; That
+<i>Lavengro</i> would have profited by curtailment, I stated
+before its publication.&nbsp; The result has verified my
+anticipations, and in the present instance I feel compelled to
+make it the condition of publication.&nbsp; You can well imagine
+that it is not my <i>interest</i> to shorten a book from two
+volumes to one unless there were really good cause.</p>
+<p><i>Lavengro</i> clearly has not been successful.&nbsp; Let us
+not then risque the chance of another failure, but try to avoid
+the rock upon which we then split.&nbsp; You have so great store
+of interesting matter in your mind and in your notes, that I
+cannot but feel it to be a pity that you should harp always upon
+one string, as it were.&nbsp; It seems to me that you have dwelt
+too long on English ground in this new work, and have
+resuscitated some characters of the former book (such as F.
+Ardry) whom your readers would have been better pleased to have
+left behind.&nbsp; Why should you not introduce us rather to
+those novel scenes of Moscovite and Hungarian life respecting
+which I have heard you drop so many stimulating allusions.&nbsp;
+Do not, I pray, take offence at what I have written.&nbsp; It is
+difficult and even painful for me to assume the office of critic,
+and this is one of the reasons why this note has lingered so long
+in my desk.&nbsp; Fortunately, in the advice I am tendering I am
+supported by others of better literary judgment than myself, and
+who have also deep regard for you.&nbsp; I will specify below
+some of the passages which I would point out for
+omission.&mdash;With best remembrances, I remain, my dear Borrow,
+Your faithful publisher and sincere friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">John
+Murray</span>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Suggestions for
+Omission</i>.</p>
+<p>The Hungarian in No. 6.</p>
+<p>The Jockey Story, terribly spun out, No. 7.</p>
+<p>Visit to the Church, too long.</p>
+<p>Interview with the Irishman, Do.</p>
+<p>Learning Chinese, too much repetition in this part of a very
+interesting chapter.</p>
+<p>The Postilion and Highwayman.</p>
+<p>Throughout the MS. condensation is indispensable.&nbsp; Many
+of the narratives are carried to a tedious length by details and
+repetition.</p>
+<p>The dialogue with Ursula, the song, etc., border on the
+indelicate.&nbsp; I like much Horncastle Fair, the Chinese
+scholar, except objection noted above.</p>
+<p>Grooming of the horse.</p>
+<p>January 27, 1855.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 29th January, Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray a letter that
+was inspired by Borrow himself.&nbsp; Dr Knapp discovered the
+original draft, some of which was in Borrow&rsquo;s own
+hand.&nbsp; It runs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr
+Murray</span>,&mdash;We have received your letters.&nbsp; In the
+first place I beg leave to say something on a very principal
+point.&nbsp; You talk about <i>conditions</i> of
+publishing.&nbsp; Mr Borrow has not the slightest wish to publish
+the book.&nbsp; The MS. was left with you because you wished to
+see it, and when left, you were particularly requested not to let
+it pass out of your own hands.&nbsp; But it seems you have shown
+it to various individuals whose opinions you repeat.&nbsp; What
+those opinions are worth may be gathered from the following
+fact.</p>
+<p>The book is one of the most learned works ever written; yet in
+the summary of the opinions which you give, not one single
+allusion is made to the learning which pervades the book, no more
+than if it contained none at all.&nbsp; It is treated just as if
+all the philological and historical facts were mere inventions,
+and the book a common novel . . .</p>
+<p>With regard to <i>Lavengro</i> it is necessary to observe that
+if ever a book experienced infamous and undeserved treatment it
+was that book.&nbsp; It was attacked in every form that envy and
+malice could suggest, on account of Mr Borrow&rsquo;s
+acquirements and the success of <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, and it
+was deserted by those whose duty it was, in some degree to have
+protected it.&nbsp; No attempt was ever made to refute the vile
+calumny that it was a book got up against the Popish agitation of
+&rsquo;51.&nbsp; It was written years previous to that
+period&mdash;a fact of which none is better aware than the
+Publisher.&nbsp; Is that calumny to be still permitted to go
+unanswered?</p>
+<p>If these suggestions are attended to, well and good; if not,
+Mr Borrow can bide his time.&nbsp; He is independent of the
+public and of everybody.&nbsp; Say no more on that Russian
+Subject.&nbsp; Mr Borrow has had quite enough of the press.&nbsp;
+If he wrote a book on Russia, it would be said to be like <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i>, or it would be said to be unlike <i>The Bible
+in Spain</i>, and would be blamed in either case.&nbsp; He has
+written a book in connection with England such as no other body
+could have written, and he now rests from his labours.&nbsp; He
+has found England an ungrateful country.&nbsp; It owes much to
+him, and he owes nothing to it.&nbsp; If he had been a low
+ignorant impostor, like a person he could name, he would have
+been employed and honoured.&mdash;I remain, Yours sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Mary
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 5th April 1856 Mrs Borrow wrote again, requesting Murray to
+return the manuscript, but for what purpose she does not
+state.&nbsp; Two days later it was despatched by rail from
+Albemarle Street.</p>
+<p>Some years before, Borrow had met Rev. Whitwell Elwin, Rector
+of Booton, somewhere about the time he (Elwin) came up to London
+to edit <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, viz., 1853. <a
+name="citation431"></a><a href="#footnote431"
+class="citation">[431]</a>&nbsp; The first interview between the
+two men has been described as characteristic of both.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Borrow was just then very sore with his
+slashing critics, and on someone mentioning that Elwin was a
+&lsquo;<i>Quartering</i> reviewer,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;Sir, I
+wish you a better employment.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then hastily changing
+the subject, he called out, &lsquo;What party are you in the
+Church&mdash;Tractarian, Moderate, or Evangelical?&nbsp; I am
+happy to say, <i>I</i> am the old <i>High</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am happy to say I am <i>not</i>,&rsquo; was
+Elwin&rsquo;s emphatic reply.&nbsp; Borrow boasted of his
+proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he endeavoured to speak
+as broadly as possible.&nbsp; &lsquo;I told him,&rsquo; said
+Elwin, &lsquo;that he had not cultivated it with his usual
+success.&rsquo;&nbsp; As the conversation proceeded it became
+less disputatious, and the two ended by becoming so cordial that
+they promised to visit each other.&nbsp; Borrow fulfilled his
+promise in the following October, when he went to Booton, and was
+&lsquo;full of anecdote and reminiscence,&rsquo; and delighted
+the rectory children by singing them songs in the gypsy
+tongue.&nbsp; Elwin during this visit urged him to try his hand
+at an article for the Review.&nbsp; &lsquo;Never,&rsquo; he said,
+&lsquo;I have made a resolution never to have anything to do with
+such a blackguard trade.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation432a"></a><a href="#footnote432a"
+class="citation">[432a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Elwin became greatly interested in <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>.&nbsp; He endeavoured to influence its composition, and
+even wrote to Borrow begging him &ldquo;to give his sequel to
+<i>Lavengro</i> more of an historical, and less of a romancing
+air.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was not happy about the book.&nbsp; He wrote
+to John Murray in March:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It is not the statements themselves
+which provoke incredulity, but the melodramatic effect which he
+tries to impart to all his adventures.&rsquo;&nbsp; Instead of
+&lsquo;roaring like a lion,&rsquo; in reply, as Elwin had
+expected, he returned quite a &lsquo;lamb-like&rsquo; note, which
+gave promise of a greater success for his new work than its
+precursor.&rdquo; <a name="citation432b"></a><a
+href="#footnote432b" class="citation">[432b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow appears to have become tired of biding his time with
+regard to <i>The Romany Rye</i>, and on 27th Feb. 1857 he wrote
+to John Murray to say that &ldquo;the work must go to press, and
+that unless the printing is forthwith commenced, I must come up
+to London and make arrangements myself.&nbsp; Time is passing
+away.&nbsp; It ought to have appeared many years ago.&nbsp; I can
+submit to no more delays.&rdquo;&nbsp; The work was accordingly
+proceeded with, and Elwin wrote a criticism of the work for
+<i>The Quarterly Review</i> from the proof-sheets:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When the review was almost finished, it was
+on the point of being altogether withdrawn, owing to a passage in
+<i>Romany Rye</i> which Elwin said was clearly meant to be a
+reflection on his friend Ford, &lsquo;to avenge the presumed
+refusal of the latter to praise <i>Lavengro</i> in <i>The
+Quarterly Review</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I am very
+anxious,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;to get Borrow justice for rare
+merits which have been entirely overlooked, but if he persists in
+publishing an attack of this kind I shall, I fear, not be able to
+serve him.&rsquo;&nbsp; The objectionable paragraphs had been
+written by Borrow under a misapprehension, and he cancelled them
+as soon as he was convinced of his error.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation433"></a><a href="#footnote433"
+class="citation">[433]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>John Murray determined not to publish the book unless the
+offending passage were removed.&nbsp; He wrote to Borrow the
+following letter:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">8<i>th</i> <i>April</i>
+1857.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Borrow</span>,&mdash;When I have
+done anything towards you deserving of apology I will not
+hesitate to offer one.&nbsp; As it is, I have acted loyally
+towards you, and with a view to maintain your interests.</p>
+<p>I agreed to publish your present work solely with the object
+of obliging you, and in a great degree at the strong
+recommendation of Cooke.&nbsp; I meant (as was my duty) to do my
+very best to promote its success.&nbsp; You on your side promised
+to listen to me in regard to any necessary omissions; and on the
+faith of this, I pointed out one omission, which I make the
+indispensable condition of my proceeding further with the
+book.&nbsp; I have asked nothing unfair nor
+unreasonable&mdash;nay, a compliance with the request is
+essential for your own character as an author and a man.</p>
+<p>You are the last man that I should ever expect to
+&ldquo;frighten or bully&rdquo;; and if a mild but firm
+remonstrance against an offensive passage in your book is
+interpreted by you into such an application, I submit that the
+grounds for the notion must exist nowhere but in your own
+imagination.&nbsp; The alternative offered to you is to omit or
+publish elsewhere.&nbsp; Nothing shall compel me to publish what
+you have written.&nbsp; Think calmly and dispassionately over
+this, and when you have decided let me know.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Yours very faithfully,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">John
+Murray</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The reference that had so offended Murray and Elwin had, in
+all probability been interpolated in proof form, otherwise it
+would have been discovered either when Murray read the manuscript
+or Elwin the proofs.&nbsp; By return of post came the following
+reply from Borrow, then at Great Yarmouth:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear
+Sir</span>,&mdash;Yesterday I received your letter.&nbsp; You had
+better ask your cousin [Robert Cooke] to come down and talk about
+matters.&nbsp; <i>After</i> Monday I shall be disengaged and
+shall be most happy to see him.&nbsp; And now I must tell you
+that you are exceedingly injudicious.&nbsp; You call a chapter
+heavy, and I, not wishing to appear unaccommodating, remove or
+alter two or three passages for which I do not particularly care,
+whereupon you make most unnecessary comments, obtruding your
+private judgment upon matters with which you have no business,
+and of which it is impossible that you should have a competent
+knowledge.&nbsp; If you disliked the passages you might have said
+so, but you had no right to say anything more.&nbsp; I believe
+that you not only meant no harm, but that your intentions were
+good; unfortunately, however, people with the best of intentions
+occasionally do a great deal of harm.&nbsp; In your language you
+are frequently in the highest degree injudicious; for example, in
+your last letter you talk of obliging me by publishing my
+work.&nbsp; Now is not that speaking very injudiciously?&nbsp;
+Surely you forget that I could return a most cutting answer were
+I disposed to do so.</p>
+<p>I believe, however, that your intentions are good, and that
+you are disposed to be friendly.&mdash;Yours truly,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The tone of this letter is strangely reminiscent of some of
+the Rev Andrew Brandram&rsquo;s admonitions to Borrow himself,
+during his association with the Bible Society.&nbsp; Borrow bowed
+to the wind, and the offending passage was deleted, and <i>The
+Romany Rye</i> eventually appeared on 30th April 1857, in an
+edition of a thousand copies.&nbsp; The public, or such part of
+it as had not forgotten Borrow, had been kept waiting six years
+to know what had happened on the morning after the storm.&nbsp;
+<i>Lavengro</i> had ended by the postilion concluding his story
+with &ldquo;Young gentleman, I will now take a spell on your
+blanket&mdash;young lady, good-night,&rdquo; and presumably the
+three, Borrow, Isopel Berners and their guest had lain down to
+sleep, and a great quiet fell upon the dingle, and the moon and
+the stars shone down upon it, and the red glow from the charcoal
+in the brazier paled and died away.</p>
+<p><i>The Romany Rye</i> is a puzzling book.&nbsp; The latter
+portion, at least, seems to suggest &ldquo;spiritual
+autobiography.&rdquo;&nbsp; It reveals the man, his atmosphere,
+his character, and nowhere better than among the jockeys at
+Horncastle.&nbsp; It gives a better and more convincing picture
+of Borrow than the most accurate list of dates and occurrences,
+all vouched for upon unimpeachable authority.&nbsp; It is
+impressionism applied to autobiography, which has always been
+considered as essentially a subject for photographic
+treatment.&nbsp; Borrow thought otherwise, with the result that
+many people decline to believe that his picture is a portrait,
+because there is a question as to the dates.</p>
+<p>Among the reviews, which were on the whole unfriendly, was the
+remarkable notice in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, by the Rev.
+Whitwell Elwin:&mdash;<a name="citation435"></a><a
+href="#footnote435" class="citation">[435]</a></p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Nobody,&rdquo; he wrote, &ldquo;sympathises
+with wounded vanity, and the world only laughs when a man angrily
+informs it that it does not rate him at his true value.&nbsp; The
+public to whom he appeals must, after all, be the judge of his
+pretensions.&nbsp; Their verdict at first is frequently wrong,
+but it is they themselves who must reverse it, and not the author
+who is upon his trial before them.&nbsp; The attacks of critics,
+if they are unjust, invariably yield to the same remedy.&nbsp;
+Though we do not think that Mr Borrow is a good counsel in his
+own cause, we are yet strongly of the opinion that Time in this
+case has some wrongs to repair, and that <i>Lavengro</i> has
+<i>not</i> obtained the fame which was its due.&nbsp; It contains
+passages which in their way are not surpassed by anything in
+English Literature.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The value of these prophetic words lies in the fine spirit of
+fatherly reproof in which the whole review was written.&nbsp; It
+is the work of a critic who regarded literature as a thing to be
+approached, both by author and reviewer, with grave and
+deliberate ceremony, not with enthusiasm or prejudice.&nbsp; From
+any other source the following words would not have possessed the
+significance they did, coming from a man of such sane ideas with
+the courage to express them:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Various portions of the history are known
+to be a faithful narrative of Mr Borrow&rsquo;s career, while we
+ourselves can testify, as to many other parts of his volumes,
+that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described
+both men and things.&nbsp; Far from his showing any tendency to
+exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have known,
+and they are not a few, are rather within the truth than beyond
+it.&nbsp; However picturesquely they may be drawn, the lines are
+invariably those of nature.&nbsp; Why under these circumstances
+he should envelop the question in mystery is more than we can
+divine.&nbsp; There can be no doubt that the larger part, and
+possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual
+occurrences.&rdquo; <a name="citation436"></a><a
+href="#footnote436" class="citation">[436]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The Appendix itself, which had drawn from Elwin the grave
+declaration that &ldquo;Mr Borrow is very angry with his
+critics,&rdquo; is a fine piece of rhetorical denunciation.&nbsp;
+It opens with the deliberate restraint of a man who feels the
+fury of his wrath surging up within him.&nbsp; It tells again the
+story of <i>Lavengro</i>, pointing morals as it goes.&nbsp; Then
+the studied calm is lost&mdash;Priestcraft, &ldquo;Foreign
+Nonsense,&rdquo; &ldquo;Gentility Nonsense,&rdquo; &ldquo;Canting
+Nonsense,&rdquo; &ldquo;Pseudo-Critics,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Pseudo-Radicals&rdquo; he flogs and pillories mercilessly
+until, arriving at &ldquo;The Old Radical,&rdquo; he throws off
+all restraint and lunges out wildly, mad with hate and
+despair.&nbsp; As a piece of literary folly, the Appendix to
+<i>The Romany Rye</i> has probably never been surpassed.&nbsp; It
+alienated from Borrow all but his personal friends, and it sealed
+his literary fate as far as his own generation was
+concerned.&nbsp; In short, he had burnt his boats.</p>
+<p>Borrow had sent a copy of <i>The Romany Rye</i> to FitzGerald,
+which is referred to by him in a letter written from Gorleston to
+Professor Cowell (5th June 1857):&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Within hail almost lives George Borrow who
+has lately published, and given me, two new Volumes of Lavengro
+called <i>Romany Rye</i>, with some excellent things, and some
+very bad (as I have made bold to write to him&mdash;how shall I
+face him!).&nbsp; You would not like the Book at all, I
+think.&rdquo; <a name="citation437a"></a><a href="#footnote437a"
+class="citation">[437a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was bitterly disappointed at the effect produced by
+<i>The Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp; On someone once saying that it was
+the finest piece of literary invective since Swift, he replied,
+&ldquo;Yes, I meant it to be; and what do you think the effect
+was?&nbsp; No one took the least notice of it!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation437b"></a><a href="#footnote437b"
+class="citation">[437b]</a></p>
+<p><i>The Romany Rye</i> was not a success.&nbsp; The thousand
+copies lasted a year.&nbsp; When it appeared likely that a second
+edition would be required, Borrow wrote to John Murray urging him
+not to send the book to the press again until he &ldquo;was quite
+sure the demand for it will at least defray all attendant
+expenses.&rdquo;&nbsp; He saw that whatever profits had resulted
+from the publication of the first edition, were in danger of
+being swallowed up in the preparation of a second.&nbsp; When
+this did eventually make its appearance in 1858, it was limited
+to 750 copies, which lasted until 1872.</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s own attitude with regard to the work and his
+wisdom in publishing it is summed up in a letter to John Murray
+(17th Sept. 1857):&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I was very anxious to bring it out,&rdquo;
+he writes; &ldquo;and I bless God that I had the courage and
+perseverance to do so.&nbsp; It is of course unpalatable to many;
+for it scorns to foster delusion, to cry &lsquo;peace where there
+is no peace,&rsquo; and denounces boldly the evils which are
+hurrying the country to destruction, and which have kindled
+God&rsquo;s anger against it, namely, the pride, insolence,
+cruelty, covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and above all
+the rage for gentility, which must be indulged in at the expense
+of every good and honourable feeling.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The writing of the Appendix had aroused in Borrow all his old
+enthusiasm, and he appears to have come to the determination to
+publish a number of works, including a veritable library of
+translations.&nbsp; At the end of <i>The Romany Rye</i> appeared
+a lengthy list of books in preparation. <a
+name="citation438"></a><a href="#footnote438"
+class="citation">[438]</a></p>
+<p>In August 1857 Borrow paid a second visit to Wales, walking
+&ldquo;upwards of four hundred miles.&rdquo;&nbsp; Starting from
+Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, he visited Tenby, Pembroke, Milford
+Haven, Haverford, St David&rsquo;s, Fishguard, Newport, Cardigan,
+Lampeter; passing into Brecknockshire, he eventually reached
+Mortimer&rsquo;s Cross in Hereford and thence to
+Shrewsbury.&nbsp; In October he was at Leighton, Donnington and
+Uppington, where he found traces of Gronwy Owen, the one-time
+curate and all-time poet.</p>
+<p>Throughout his life Borrow had shown by every action and word
+written about her, the great love he bore his mother.&nbsp; When
+his wife wrote to her and he was too restless to do so himself,
+he would interpolate two or three lines to &ldquo;My dear
+Mamma.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was always in his thoughts, and he never
+wavered in his love for her and devotion to her comfort; whilst
+she looked upon him as only a mother so good and so tender could
+look upon a son who had become her &ldquo;only hope.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For many years of her life it had been ordained that this
+brave old lady should live alone. <a name="citation439"></a><a
+href="#footnote439" class="citation">[439]</a>&nbsp; In the
+middle of August 1858 the news reached Borrow that his mother had
+been taken suddenly ill.&nbsp; She was in her eighty-seventh
+year, and at such an age all illnesses are dangerous.&nbsp;
+Borrow hastened to Oulton, and arrived just in time to be with
+her at the last.</p>
+<p>Thus on 16th August 1858, of &ldquo;pulmonary
+congestion,&rdquo; died Anne Borrow, who had followed her husband
+about with his regiment, and had reared and educated her two boys
+under circumstances of great disadvantage.&nbsp; She had lost
+one; but the other, her youngest born, whom she had so often
+shielded from his father&rsquo;s reproaches, had been spared to
+her, and she had seen him famous.&nbsp; Upon her grave in Oulton
+Churchyard the son caused to be inscribed the words, &ldquo;She
+was a good wife and a good mother,&rdquo; than which no woman can
+ask more. <a name="citation440a"></a><a href="#footnote440a"
+class="citation">[440a]</a></p>
+<p>The death of his mother was a great shock to Borrow.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He felt the blow keenly,&rdquo; Mrs Borrow wrote to John
+Murray, &ldquo;and I advised a tour in Scotland to recruit his
+health and spirits.&rdquo;&nbsp; Accordingly he went North early
+in October, leaving his wife and Henrietta at Great
+Yarmouth.&nbsp; He visited the Highlands, walking several hundred
+miles.&nbsp; Mull struck him as &ldquo;a very wild country,
+perhaps the wildest in Europe.&rdquo;&nbsp; Many of its
+place-names reminded him strongly of the Isle of Man.&nbsp; At
+the end of November he finished up the tour at Lerwick in
+Shetland, where he bought presents for his &ldquo;loved
+ones,&rdquo; having seen Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen,
+Inverness, Wick, Thurso among other places.&nbsp; His impressions
+were not altogether favourable to the Scotch.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+queerer country I never saw in all my life,&rdquo; he wrote later
+. . . &ldquo;a queerer set of people than the Scotch you would
+scarcely see in a summer&rsquo;s day.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation440b"></a><a href="#footnote440b"
+class="citation">[440b]</a></p>
+<p>In the following year (1859) an excursion was made to Ireland
+by Borrow and his family.&nbsp; Making Dublin his headquarters,
+where he left his wife and Henrietta comfortably settled, he
+tramped to Connemara and the Giant&rsquo;s Causeway, the
+expedition being full of adventure and affording him &ldquo;much
+pleasure,&rdquo; in spite of the fact that he was
+&ldquo;frequently wet to the skin, and indifferently
+lodged.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had inherited from his mother some property at
+Mattishall Burgh, one and a half miles from his birth-place,
+consisting of some land, a thatched house and outbuildings, now
+demolished.&nbsp; This was let to a small-holder named Henry
+Hill.&nbsp; Borrow thought very highly of his tenant, and for
+hours together would tramp up and down beside him as he ploughed
+the land, asking questions, and hearing always something new from
+the amazing stores of nature knowledge that Henry Hill had
+acquired.&nbsp; This Norfolk worthy appears to have been
+possessed of a genius for many things.&nbsp; He was well versed
+in herbal lore, a self-taught &rsquo;cellist, playing each Sunday
+in the Congregational Chapel at Mattishall, and an equally
+self-taught watch-repairer; but his chief claim to fame was as a
+bee-keeper, local tradition crediting him with being the first
+man to keep bees under glass.&nbsp; He would solemnly state that
+his bees, whom he looked upon as friends, talked to him.&nbsp; On
+Sundays the country folk for miles round would walk over to
+Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill&rsquo;s bees, and hear him
+expound their lore.&nbsp; It was perforce Sunday, there was no
+other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who
+seemed always to live on the verge of starvation.&nbsp; Borrow
+himself expressed regret to Henry Hill that it had not been
+possible to add the education of the academy to that of the
+land.&nbsp; He saw that the combination would have produced an
+even more remarkable man.</p>
+<p>In Norfolk all strangers are regarded with suspicion.&nbsp;
+Lifelong friendships are not contracted in a day.&nbsp; The East
+Anglian is shrewd, and requires to know something about those
+whom he admits to the sacred inner circle of his
+friendship.&nbsp; Borrow was well-known in the Mattishall
+district, and was looked upon with more than usual
+suspicion.&nbsp; He was unquestionably a strange man, in speech,
+in appearance, in habits.&nbsp; He could and would knock down any
+who offended him; but, worst of all, he was the intimate of
+gypsies, sat by their fires, spoke in their tongue.&nbsp; The
+population round about was entirely an agricultural one, and all
+united in hating the gypsies as their greatest enemies, because
+of their depredations.&nbsp; Add to this the fact that Borrow was
+a frequenter of public-houses, of which there were <i>seven</i>
+in the village, and was wont to boast that you could get at the
+true man only after he had been mellowed into speech by good
+English ale.&nbsp; Then he would open his heart and unburden his
+mind of all the accumulated knowledge that he possessed, and add
+something to the epic of the soil.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s
+overbearing manner made people shy of him.&nbsp; On one occasion
+he told John, the son and successor of Henry Hill, that he ought
+to be responsible for the debt of his half-brother; the debt, it
+may be mentioned, was to Borrow.</p>
+<p>There is no better illustration of the suspicion with which
+Borrow was regarded locally, than an incident that occurred
+during one of his visits to Mattishall.&nbsp; He called upon John
+Hill at Church Farm to collect his rent.&nbsp; The evening was
+spent very agreeably.&nbsp; Borrow recited some of his ballads,
+quoted Scripture and languages, and sang a song.&nbsp; He was
+particularly interested on account of Mrs Hill being from London,
+where she knew many of his haunts.&nbsp; He remained the whole
+evening with the family and partook of their meal; but was
+allowed to go to one of the seven public-houses for a bed,
+although there were spare bedrooms in the house that he might
+have occupied.&nbsp; Such was the suspicion that Borrow&rsquo;s
+habits created in the minds of his fellow East Anglians. <a
+name="citation442"></a><a href="#footnote442"
+class="citation">[442]</a></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII<br />
+JULY 1859&ndash;JANUARY 1869</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">After</span> his second tour in Wales,
+Borrow had submitted to John Murray the manuscript of his
+translation of <i>The Sleeping Bard</i>, which in 1830 had so
+alarmed the little Welsh bookseller of Smithfield.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+really want something to do,&rdquo; Borrow wrote, &ldquo;and
+seeing the work passing through the press might amuse
+me.&rdquo;&nbsp; Murray, however, could not see his way to accept
+the offer, and the manuscript was returned.&nbsp; Borrow decided
+to publish the book at his own expense, and accordingly
+commissioned a Yarmouth man to print him 250 copies, upon the
+title-page of which John Murray permitted his name to appear.</p>
+<p>In the note in which he tells of the Welsh bookseller&rsquo;s
+doubts and fears, Borrow goes on to assure his readers that there
+is no harm in the book.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;that the
+Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and
+descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can
+give offence to any but the over fastidious.&nbsp; There is a
+great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope
+however that there is not so much as there was.&nbsp; Indeed can
+we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find
+Albemarle Street in &rsquo;60, willing to publish a harmless but
+plain speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in
+&rsquo;30.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The edition was very speedily exhausted, largely on account of
+an article entitled, <i>The Welsh and Their Literature</i>,
+written years before, that Borrow adapted as a review of the
+book, and published anonymously in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>
+(Jan. 1861).&nbsp; <i>The Sleeping Bard</i> was not
+reprinted.</p>
+<p>The next event of importance in Borrow&rsquo;s life was his
+removal to London with Mrs Borrow and Henrietta.&nbsp; Towards
+the end of the Irish holiday (4th Nov. 1859), Mrs Borrow had
+written to John Murray: &ldquo;If all be well in the Spring, I
+shall wish to look around, and select a pleasant, healthy
+residence within from three to ten miles of London.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Borrow may have felt more at liberty to make the change now that
+his mother was dead, although whilst she was at Oulton he was as
+little company for her at Great Yarmouth as he would have been in
+London.&nbsp; Whatever led them to the decision to take up their
+residence in London, Borrow and his wife left Great Yarmouth at
+the end of June, and immediately proceeded to look about them for
+a suitable house.&nbsp; Their choice eventually fell upon number
+22 Hereford Square, Brompton, which had the misfortune to be only
+a few doors from number 26, where lived Frances Power
+Cobbe.&nbsp; The rent was &pound;65 per annum.&nbsp; The Borrows
+entered upon their tenancy at the Michaelmas quarter, and were
+joined by Henrietta, who had remained behind at Great Yarmouth
+during the house-hunting.</p>
+<p>Miss Cobbe has given in her Autobiography a very unlovely
+picture of George Borrow during the period of his residence in
+Hereford Square.&nbsp; No woman, except his relatives and
+dependants, will tolerate egoism in a man.&nbsp; Borrow was an
+egoist.&nbsp; If not permitted to lead the conversation, he
+frequently wrapped himself in a gloomy silence and waited for an
+opportunity to discomfit the usurper of the place he seemed to
+consider his own.&nbsp; Among his papers were found after his
+death a large number of letters from poor men whom Borrow had
+assisted.&nbsp; His friend the Rev. Francis Cunningham once wrote
+to him a letter protesting against his assisting Nonconformist
+schools.&nbsp; He gave to Church and Chapel alike.&nbsp; This
+disproves misanthropy, and leaves egoism as the only explanation
+of his occasional lapses into bitterness or rudeness.&nbsp; When
+in happy vein, however, &ldquo;his conversation . . . was unlike
+that of any other man; whether he told a long story or only
+commented on some ordinary topic, he was always quaint, often
+humorous.&rdquo; <a name="citation445a"></a><a
+href="#footnote445a" class="citation">[445a]</a></p>
+<p>Miss Cobbe would not humour an egoist, because
+constitutionally women, especially clever women, dislike them,
+unless they wish to marry them.&nbsp; When she heard it said, as
+it very frequently was said, that Borrow was a gypsy by blood,
+she caustically remarked that if he were not he
+&ldquo;<i>ought</i> to have been.&rdquo;&nbsp; Miss Cobbe had
+living with her a Miss Lloyd who, &ldquo;amused by his quaint
+stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, . . .
+cultivated his acquaintance.&nbsp; I,&rdquo; continued Miss Cobbe
+frankly, &ldquo;never liked him, thinking him more or less of a
+hypocrite.&rdquo; <a name="citation445b"></a><a
+href="#footnote445b" class="citation">[445b]</a></p>
+<p>On one occasion Borrow had accepted an invitation from Miss
+Cobbe to meet some friends, but subsequently withdrew his
+acceptance &ldquo;on finding that Dr Martineau was to be of the
+party . . . nor did he ever after attend our little assemblies
+without first ascertaining that Dr Martineau would not be
+present!&rdquo;&nbsp; This she explained by the assertion that Dr
+Martineau had &ldquo;horsed&rdquo; Borrow when he was punished
+for running away from school at Norwich.&nbsp; It appeared
+&ldquo;irresistibly comic&rdquo; to her mind.</p>
+<p>There is an amusing account given by Miss Cobbe of how she
+worsted Borrow, which is certainly extremely flattering to her
+accomplishments.&nbsp; Once when talking with him she happened to
+say</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;something about the imperfect education of
+women, and he said it was <i>right</i> they should be ignorant,
+and that no man could endure a clever wife.&nbsp; I laughed at
+him openly,&rdquo; she continues, &ldquo;and told him some men
+knew better.&nbsp; What did he think of the Brownings?&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Oh, he had heard the name; he did not know anything of
+them.&nbsp; Since Scott, he read no modern writer; Scott <i>was
+greater than Homer</i>!&nbsp; What he liked were curious, old,
+erudite books about medi&aelig;val and northern
+things.&rsquo;&nbsp; I said I knew little of such literature, and
+preferred the writers of our own age, but indeed I was no great
+student at all.&nbsp; Thereupon he evidently wanted to astonish
+me; and, talking of Ireland, said, &lsquo;Ah, yes; a most
+curious, mixed race.&nbsp; First there were the
+Firbolgs,&mdash;the old enchanters, who raised
+mists.&rsquo;&nbsp; . . .&nbsp; &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you think, Mr
+Borrow,&rsquo; I asked, &lsquo;it was the Tuatha-de-Danaan who
+did that?&nbsp; Keatinge expressly says that they conquered the
+Firbolgs by that means.&rsquo;&nbsp; (Mr B. somewhat out of
+countenance), &lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; Aye!&nbsp; Keatinge is <i>the</i>
+authority; a most extraordinary writer.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,
+I should call him the Geoffrey of Monmouth of
+Ireland.&rsquo;&nbsp; (Mr B. changing the <i>venue</i>), &lsquo;I
+delight in Norse-stories; they are far grander than the
+Greek.&nbsp; There is the story of Olaf the Saint of
+Norway.&nbsp; Can anything be grander?&nbsp; What a noble
+character!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;But,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;what do
+<i>you</i> think of his putting all those poor Druids on the
+Skerry of Shrieks, and leaving them to be drowned by the
+tide?&rsquo;&nbsp; (Thereupon Mr B. looked at me askant out of
+his gipsy eyes, as if he thought me an example of the evils of
+female education!)&nbsp; &lsquo;Well!&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; I forgot
+about the Skerry of Shrieks.&nbsp; Then there is the story of
+Beowulf the Saxon going out to sea in his burning ship to
+die.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh, Mr Borrow! that isn&rsquo;t a Saxon
+story at all.&nbsp; It is in the Heimskringla!&nbsp; It is told
+of Hakon of Norway.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then, I asked him about the
+gipsies and their language, and if they were certainly
+Aryans?&nbsp; He didn&rsquo;t know (or pretended not to know)
+what Aryans were; and altogether displayed a miraculous mixture
+of odd knowledge and more odd ignorance.&nbsp; Whether the latter
+were real or assumed I know not!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation446"></a><a href="#footnote446"
+class="citation">[446]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These were some of the neighbourly little pleasantries
+indulged in by Miss Cobbe, regarding a man who was a frequent
+guest at her house.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;His has indeed been a fantastic
+fate!&rdquo; writes Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton.&nbsp; &ldquo;When
+the shortcomings of any illustrious man save Borrow are under
+discussion, &lsquo;<i>les d&eacute;fauts de ses
+qualit&eacute;s</i>&rsquo; is the criticism&mdash;wise as
+charitable&mdash;which they evoke.&nbsp; Yes, each one is allowed
+to have his angularities save Borrow.&nbsp; Each one is allowed
+to show his own pet unpleasant facets of character now and
+then&mdash;allowed to show them as inevitable foils to the
+pleasant ones&mdash;save Borrow.&nbsp; <i>His</i> weaknesses no
+one ever condones.&nbsp; During his lifetime his faults were for
+ever chafing and irritating his acquaintances, and now that he
+and they are dead, these faults of his seem to be chafing and
+irritating people of another generation.&nbsp; A fantastic fate,
+I say, for him who was so interesting to some of us!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation447a"></a><a href="#footnote447a"
+class="citation">[447a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On occasion Borrow could be inexcusably rude, as he was to a
+member of the Russian Embassy who one day called at Hereford
+Square for a copy of <i>Targum</i> for the Czar, when he told him
+that his Imperial master could fetch it himself.&nbsp; Again, no
+one can defend him for affronting the &ldquo;very distinguished
+scholar&rdquo; with whom he happened to disagree, by thundering
+out, &ldquo;Sir, you&rsquo;re a fool!&rdquo;&nbsp; Such lapses
+are deplorable; but why should we view them in a different light
+from those of Dr Johnson?</p>
+<p>What would have been regarded in another distinguished man as
+a pleasant vein of humour was in Borrow&rsquo;s case looked upon
+as evidence of his unveracity.&nbsp; A contemporary tells how, on
+one occasion, he went with him into &ldquo;a tavern&rdquo; for a
+pint of ale, when Borrow pointed out</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;a yokel at the far end of the
+apartment.&nbsp; The foolish bumpkin was slumbering.&nbsp; Borrow
+in a stage whisper, gravely assured me that the man was a
+murderer, and confided to me with all the emphasis of honest
+conviction the scene and details of his crime.&nbsp; Subsequently
+I ascertained that the elaborate incidents and fine touches of
+local colour were but the coruscations of a too vivid
+imagination, and that the villain of the ale-house on the common
+was as innocent as the author of <i>The Romany Rye</i>.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation447b"></a><a href="#footnote447b"
+class="citation">[447b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>If Borrow had been called upon to explain this little
+pleasantry he would in all probability have replied in the words
+of Mr Petulengro, that he had told his acquaintance &ldquo;things
+. . . which are not exactly true, simply to make a fool of you,
+brother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is strange how those among his contemporaries who disliked
+him, denied Borrow the indulgence that is almost invariably
+accorded to genius.&nbsp; Those who were not for him were
+bitterly against him.&nbsp; In their eyes he was either
+outrageously uncivil or insultingly rude.&nbsp; Dr Hake, although
+a close friend, saw Borrow&rsquo;s dominant weakness, his love of
+the outward evidences of fame.&nbsp; Dr Hake&rsquo;s impartiality
+gives greater weight to his testimony when he tells of
+Borrow&rsquo;s first meeting with Dr Robert Latham, the
+ethnologist, philologist and grammarian.&nbsp; Latham much wanted
+to meet Borrow, and promised Dr Hake to be on his best
+behaviour.&nbsp; He was accordingly invited to dinner with
+Borrow.&nbsp; Latham as usual began to show off his
+knowledge.&nbsp; He became aggressive, and finally very excited;
+but throughout the meal Borrow showed the utmost patience and
+courtesy, much to his host&rsquo;s relief.&nbsp; When he
+subsequently encountered Latham in the street he always stopped
+&ldquo;to say a kind word, seeing his forlorn
+condition.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dr Hake had settled at Coombe End, Roehampton, and now that
+the Borrows were in London, the two families renewed their old
+friendship.&nbsp; Borrow would walk over to Coombe End, and on
+arriving at the gate would call out, &ldquo;Are you
+alone?&rdquo;&nbsp; If there were other callers he would pass by,
+if not he would enter and frequently persuade Dr Hake, and
+perhaps his sons, to accompany him for a walk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was something not easily forgotten,&rdquo; writes
+Mr A. Egmont Hake, &ldquo;in the manner in which he would
+unexpectedly come to our gates, singing some gypsy song, and as
+suddenly depart.&rdquo; <a name="citation448"></a><a
+href="#footnote448" class="citation">[448]</a>&nbsp; They had
+many pleasant tramps together, mostly in Richmond Park, where
+Borrow appeared to know every tree and showed himself very
+learned in deer.&nbsp; He was</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;always saying something in his loud,
+self-asserting voice; sometimes stopping suddenly, drawing his
+huge stature erect, and changing the keen and haughty expression
+of his face into the rapt and half fatuous look of the oracle, he
+would without preface recite some long fragment from Welsh or
+Scandinavian bards, his hands hanging from his chest and flapping
+in symphony.&nbsp; Then he would push on again, and as suddenly
+stop, arrested by the beautiful scenery, and exclaim, &lsquo;Ah!
+this is England, as the Pretender said when he again looked on
+his fatherland.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then on reaching any town, he would
+be sure to spy out some lurking gypsy, whom no one but himself
+would have known from a common horse-dealer.&nbsp; A conversation
+in Romany would ensue, a shilling would change hands, two fingers
+would be pointed at the gypsy, and the interview would be at an
+end.&rdquo; <a name="citation449a"></a><a href="#footnote449a"
+class="citation">[449a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>One day he asked Dr Hake&rsquo;s youngest boy if he knew how
+to fight a man bigger than himself, and on being told that he
+didn&rsquo;t, advised him to &ldquo;accept his challenge, and
+tell him to take off his coat, and while he was doing it knock
+him down and then run for your life.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation449b"></a><a href="#footnote449b"
+class="citation">[449b]</a></p>
+<p>Once Borrow arrived at Dr Hake&rsquo;s house to find another
+caller in the person of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, and they
+&ldquo;went through a pleasant trio, in which Borrow, as was his
+wont, took the first fiddle . . . Borrow made himself agreeable
+to Watts [-Dunton], recited a fairy tale in the best style to
+him, and liked him.&rdquo; <a name="citation449c"></a><a
+href="#footnote449c" class="citation">[449c]</a>&nbsp; Borrow did
+not recognise in Mr Watts-Dunton the young man whom he had seen
+bathing on the beach at Great Yarmouth, pleased to be near his
+hero, but too much afraid to venture to address him.&nbsp;
+Writing of this meeting at Coombe End, Mr Watts-Dunton says:
+&ldquo;There is however no doubt that Borrow would have run away
+from me had I been associated in his mind with the literary
+calling.&nbsp; But at that time I had written nothing at all save
+poems, and a prose story or two of a romantic kind.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation450"></a><a href="#footnote450"
+class="citation">[450]</a>&nbsp; Borrow hated the literary man,
+he was at war with the whole genus.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p450b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The Rev. Andrew Brandram.  From an old silhouette in the
+possession of the British and Foreign Bible Society"
+title=
+"The Rev. Andrew Brandram.  From an old silhouette in the
+possession of the British and Foreign Bible Society"
+ src="images/p450s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Mr Watts-Dunton confesses that he made great efforts to enlist
+Borrow&rsquo;s interest.&nbsp; He touched on Bamfylde Moore
+Carew, beer, bruisers, philology, &ldquo;gentility
+nonsense,&rdquo; the &ldquo;trumpery great&rdquo;; but without
+success.&nbsp; Borrow was obviously suspicious of him.&nbsp; Then
+with inspiration he happened to mention what proved to be a magic
+name.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I tried other subjects in the same
+direction,&rdquo; Mr Watts-Dunton continues, &ldquo;but with
+small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of
+Ambrose Gwinett, . . . the man who, after having been hanged and
+gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a
+double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night,
+escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor,
+and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had
+been hanged for murdering.&nbsp; The truth was that
+Gwinett&rsquo;s supposed victim, having been attacked on the
+night in question by a violent bleeding of the nose, had risen
+and left the house for a few minutes&rsquo; walk in the
+sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to
+sea, where he had been in service ever since.&nbsp; The story is
+true, and the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on
+what authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett&rsquo;s
+dictation for a platter of cow-heel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To the bewilderment of Dr Hake, I introduced the
+subject of Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have
+introduced the story of &lsquo;Achilles&rsquo; wrath,&rsquo; and
+appealed to Dr Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book
+or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the pamphlet had
+gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor
+theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story.&nbsp; Borrow
+was caught at last.&nbsp; &lsquo;What?&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you
+know that pamphlet about Ambrose Gwinett?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Know it?&rsquo; said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had
+asked me if I knew &lsquo;Macbeth&rsquo;; &lsquo;of course I know
+Ambrose Gwinett, Mr Borrow, don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And you know the play?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of
+course I do, Mr Borrow,&rsquo; I said, in a tone that was now a
+little angry at such an insinuation of crass ignorance.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Why,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s years and years
+since it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I did
+go to see <i>that</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Well I should rather
+think you <i>did</i>, Mr Borrow,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;But,&rsquo; said he, staring hard at me,
+&lsquo;you&mdash;you were not born!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;And I was
+not born,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;when the &ldquo;Agamemnon&rdquo;
+was produced, and yet one reads the &ldquo;Agamemnon,&rdquo; Mr
+Borrow.&nbsp; I have read the drama of &ldquo;Ambrose
+Gwinett.&rdquo;&nbsp; I have it bound in morocco, with some more
+of Douglas Jerrold&rsquo;s early transpontine plays, and some
+&AElig;schylean dramas by Mr Fitzball.&nbsp; I will lend it to
+you, Mr Borrow, if you like.&rsquo;&nbsp; He was completely
+conquered, &lsquo;Hake!&rsquo; he cried, in a loud voice,
+regardless of my presence, &lsquo;Hake! your friend knows
+everything.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then he murmured to himself.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Wonderful man!&nbsp; Knows Ambrose Gwinett!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will
+cause me to have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart
+for the memory of George Borrow.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation451a"></a><a href="#footnote451a"
+class="citation">[451a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>After this, intercourse proved easy.&nbsp; At Borrow&rsquo;s
+suggestion they walked to the Bald-Faced Stag, in Kingston Vale,
+to inspect Jerry Abershaw&rsquo;s sword.&nbsp; This famous old
+hostelry was a favourite haunt of Borrow&rsquo;s, where he would
+often rest during his walk and drink &ldquo;a cup of ale&rdquo;
+(which he would call &ldquo;swipes,&rdquo; and make a wry face as
+he swallowed) and talk of the daring deeds of Jerry the
+highwayman.</p>
+<p>Many people have testified to the pleasure of being in the
+company of the whimsical, eccentric, humbug-hating Borrow.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;He was a choice companion on a walk,&rdquo;
+writes Mr A. Egmont Hake, &ldquo;whether across country or in the
+slums of Houndsditch.&nbsp; His enthusiasm for nature was
+peculiar; he could draw more poetry from a wide-spreading marsh
+with its straggling rushes than from the most beautiful scenery,
+and would stand and look at it with rapture.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation451b"></a><a href="#footnote451b"
+class="citation">[451b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Since the tour in Wales in 1854, from which he returned with
+the four &ldquo;Note Books,&rdquo; Borrow had been working
+steadily at <i>Wild Wales</i>.&nbsp; In 1857 the book had been
+announced as &ldquo;ready for the press&rdquo;; but this was
+obviously an anticipation.&nbsp; The manuscript was submitted to
+John Murray early in November 1861.&nbsp; On the 20th of that
+month he wrote the following letter, addressing it, not to
+Borrow, but to his wife:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mrs
+Borrow</span>,&mdash;The MS. of <i>Wild Wales</i> has occupied my
+thoughts almost ever since Friday last.</p>
+<p>I approached this MS. with some diffidence, recollecting the
+unsatisfactory results, on the whole, of our last
+publication&mdash;<i>Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp; I have read a large
+part of this new work with care and attention, and although it is
+beautifully written and in a style of English undefiled, which
+few writers can surpass, there is yet a want of stirring incident
+in it which makes me fearful as to the result of its
+publication.</p>
+<p>In my hands at least I cannot think it would succeed even as
+well as <i>Romany Rye</i>&mdash;and I am fearful of not doing
+justice to it.&nbsp; I do not like to undertake a work with the
+chance of reproach that it may have failed through my want of
+power to promote its circulation, and I do wish, for
+Borrow&rsquo;s own sake, that in this instance he would try some
+other publisher and perhaps some other form of publication.</p>
+<p>In my hands I am convinced the work will not answer the
+author&rsquo;s expectations, and I am not prepared to take on me
+this amount of responsibility.</p>
+<p>I will give the best advice I can if called upon, and shall be
+only too glad if I can be useful to Mr Borrow.&nbsp; I regret to
+have to write in this sense, but believe me always, Dear Mrs
+Borrow,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Your faithful friend,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">John
+Murray</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The reply to this letter has not been preserved.&nbsp; It
+would appear that some &ldquo;stirring incidents&rdquo; were
+added, among others most probably the account of Borrow blessing
+the Irish reapers, who mistook him for Father Toban.&nbsp; This
+anecdote was one of John Murray&rsquo;s favourite passages.&nbsp;
+It is evident that some concession was made to induce Murray to
+change his mind.&nbsp; In any case <i>Wild Wales</i> appeared
+towards the close of 1862 in an edition of 1000 copies.&nbsp; The
+publisher&rsquo;s misgivings were not justified, as the first
+edition produced a profit, up to 30th June 1863, of &pound;531,
+14s., which was equally divided between author and
+publisher.&nbsp; The second, and cheap, edition of 3000 copies
+lasted for thirteen years, and the deficiency on this absorbed
+the greater part of the publisher&rsquo;s profit.</p>
+<p>In a way it is the most remarkable of Borrow&rsquo;s books;
+for it shows that he was making a serious effort to regain his
+public.&nbsp; It is an older, wiser and chastened Borrow that
+appears in its pages, striding through the land of the bards at
+six miles an hour, his satchel slung over his shoulder, his green
+umbrella grasped in his right hand, shouting the songs of Wales,
+about which he knew more than any man he met.&nbsp; There are no
+gypsies (except towards the end of the book a reference to his
+meeting with Captain Bosvile), no bruisers, the pope is scarcely
+mentioned, and &ldquo;gentility-nonsense&rdquo; is veiled almost
+to the point of elimination.&nbsp; It seems scarcely conceivable
+that the hand that had written the appendix to <i>The Romany
+Rye</i> could have so restrained itself as to write <i>Wild
+Wales</i>.&nbsp; Borrow had evidently read and carefully digested
+Whitwell Elwin&rsquo;s friendly strictures upon <i>The Romany
+Rye</i>.&nbsp; Instead of the pope, the gypsies and the bruisers
+of England, there were the vicarage cat, the bards and the
+thousand and one trivial incidents of the wayside.&nbsp; There
+were occasional gleams of the old fighting spirit, notably when
+he characterises sherry, <a name="citation453"></a><a
+href="#footnote453" class="citation">[453]</a> as &ldquo;a silly,
+sickly compound, the use of which will transform a nation,
+however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of sketchers,
+scribblers, and punsters,&mdash;in fact, into what Englishmen are
+at the present day.&rdquo;&nbsp; He has created the atmosphere of
+Wales as he did that of the gypsy encampment.&nbsp; He shows the
+jealous way in which the Welsh cling to their language, and their
+suspicion of the <i>Saesneg</i>, or Saxon.&nbsp; Above all, he
+shows how national are the Welsh poets, belonging not to the
+cultured few; but to the labouring man as much as to the landed
+proprietor.&nbsp; Borrow earned the respect of the people, not
+only because he knew their language; but on account of his
+profound knowledge of their literature, their history, and their
+traditions.&nbsp; No one could escape him, he accosted every soul
+he met, and evinced a desire for information as to place-names
+that instantly arrested their attention.</p>
+<p>The most curious thing about <i>Wild Wales</i> is the omission
+of all mention of the Welsh Gypsies, who, with those of Hungary,
+share the distinction of being the aristocrats of their
+race.&nbsp; Several explanations have been suggested to account
+for the curious circumstance.&nbsp; Had Borrow&rsquo;s knowledge
+of Welsh Romany been scanty, he could very soon have improved
+it.&nbsp; The presence of his wife and stepdaughter was no
+hindrance; for, as a matter of fact, they were very little with
+him, even when they and Borrow were staying at Llangollen; but
+during the long tours they were many miles away.&nbsp; In all
+probability the Welsh Gypsies were sacrificed to British
+prejudice, much as were pugilism and the baiting of the pope.</p>
+<p>In spite of its simple charm and convincing atmosphere,
+<i>Wild Wales</i> did not please the critics.&nbsp; Those who
+noticed it (and there were many who did not) either questioned
+its genuineness, or found it crowded with triviality and
+self-glorification.&nbsp; It was full of the superfluous, the
+superfluous repeated, and above all it was too long (some 250,000
+words).&nbsp; <i>The Spectator</i> notice was an exception; it
+did credit to the critical faculty of the man who wrote it.&nbsp;
+He declined &ldquo;to boggle and wrangle over minor defects in
+what is intrinsically good,&rdquo; and praised <i>Wild Wales</i>
+as &ldquo;the first really clever book . . . in which an honest
+attempt is made to do justice to Welsh literature.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow had much time upon his hands in London, which he
+occupied largely in walking.&nbsp; He visited the Metropolitan
+Gypsyries at Wandsworth, &ldquo;the Potteries,&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;the Mounts,&rdquo; as described in <i>Romano
+Lavo-Lil</i>.&nbsp; Sometimes he would be present at some
+sporting event, such as the race between the Indian Deerfoot and
+Jackson, styled the American Deer&mdash;tame sport in comparison
+with the &ldquo;mills&rdquo; of his boyhood.&nbsp; He did very
+little writing, and from 1862, when <i>Wild Wales</i> appeared,
+until he published <i>The Romano Lavo-Lil</i> in 1874, his
+literary output consisted of only some translations contributed
+to <i>Once a Week</i> (January 1862 to December 1863).</p>
+<p>In 1865 he was to lose his stepdaughter, who married a William
+MacOubrey, M.D., described in the marriage register as a
+physician of Sloane Street, London, and subsequently upon his
+tombstone as a barrister.&nbsp; In the July of 1866 Borrow and
+his wife went to Belfast on a visit to the newly married
+pair.&nbsp; From Belfast Borrow took another trip into Scotland,
+crossing over to Stranraer.&nbsp; From there he proceeded to Glen
+Luce and subsequently to Newton Stewart, Castle Douglas,
+Dumfries, Ecclefechan, Gretna Green, Carlisle, Langholm, Hawick,
+Jedburgh, Yetholm (where he saw Esther Blyth of Kirk Yetholm),
+Kelso, Abbotsford, Melrose, Berwick, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and so
+back to Belfast, having been absent for nearly four weeks.</p>
+<p>Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s health had been the cause of the family
+leaving Oulton for Great Yarmouth, and about the time of the
+Irish visit it seems to have become worse.&nbsp; When Borrow was
+away upon his excursion he received a letter at Carlisle in which
+his wife informed him that she was not so well; but urging him
+not to return if he were enjoying his trip and it were benefiting
+his health.</p>
+<p>In the autumn of the following year (1867) they were at
+Bognor, Mrs Borrow taking the sea air, her husband tramping about
+the country and penetrating into the New Forest.&nbsp; On their
+return to town Mrs Borrow appears to have become worse.&nbsp;
+There was much correspondence to be attended to with regard to
+the Oulton Estate, and she had to go down to Suffolk to give her
+personal attention to certain important details.&nbsp; Miss Cobbe
+throws a little light on the period in a letter to a friend, in
+which she says:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Mr Borrow says his wife is very ill and
+anxious to keep the peace with C. (a litigious neighbour).&nbsp;
+Poor old B. was very sad at first, but I cheered him up and sent
+him off quite brisk last night.&nbsp; He talked all about the
+Fathers again, arguing that their quotations went to prove that
+it was <i>not</i> our gospels they had in their hands.&nbsp; I
+knew most of it before, but it was admirably done.&nbsp; I talked
+a little theology to him in a serious way (finding him talk of
+his &lsquo;horrors&rsquo;) and he abounded in my sense of the
+non-existence of Hell, and of the presence and action on the soul
+of <i>a</i> Spirit, rewarding and punishing.&nbsp; He would not
+say &lsquo;God&rsquo;; but repeated over and over again that he
+spoke not from books but from his own personal experience.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation456"></a><a href="#footnote456"
+class="citation">[456]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 24th January (1869) Mrs Borrow was taken suddenly ill and
+the family doctor being out of town, Borrow sent for Dr W. S.
+Playfair of 5 Curzon Street.&nbsp; A letter from Dr Playfair,
+25th January, to the family doctor is the only coherent testimony
+in existence as to what was actually the matter with Mrs
+Borrow.&nbsp; It runs:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I found great difficulty in making out the
+case exactly,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;since Mr Borrow himself
+was so agitated that I could get no very clear account of
+it.&nbsp; I could detect no marked organic affection about the
+heart or lungs, of which she chiefly complained.&nbsp; It seemed
+to me to be either a very aggravated form of hysteria, or, what
+appears more likely, some more serious mental affection.&nbsp; In
+any case, the chief requisite seemed very careful and intelligent
+nursing or management, and I doubt very much, from what I saw,
+whether she gets that with her present surroundings.&nbsp; If it
+is really the more serious mental affection, I should fancy that
+the sooner means are taken to have her properly taken care of,
+the better.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Dr Playfair saw in Borrow&rsquo;s highly nervous excitable
+nature, if not the cause of his wife&rsquo;s breakdown, at least
+an obstacle to her recovery, and was of opinion that Mrs
+Borrow&rsquo;s disorder had been greatly aggravated by her
+husband&rsquo;s presence.</p>
+<p>Mrs Borrow never rallied from the attack, and on the 30th she
+died of &ldquo;valvular disease of the heart and dropsy,&rdquo;
+being then in her seventy-seventh year.&nbsp; On 4th February she
+was buried in Brompton Cemetery, and the lonely man, her husband,
+returned to Hereford Square.&nbsp; The grave bears the
+inscription, &ldquo;To the Beloved Memory of My Mother, Mary
+Borrow, who fell asleep in Jesus, 30th January 1869.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+It is strange that this should be in Henrietta&rsquo;s and not
+Borrow&rsquo;s name.</p>
+<p>Mrs Borrow evidently made over her property to her husband
+during her lifetime, as there is no will in existence, and no
+application appears to have been made either by Borrow or anyone
+else for letters of administration.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX<br />
+JANUARY 1869&ndash;1881</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> death of his wife was a last
+blow to Borrow, and he soon retired from the world.&nbsp; At
+first he appears to have sought consolation in books, to judge
+from the number of purchases he made about this time; but it was,
+apparently, with pitiably unsuccessful results.&nbsp; In a letter
+to a friend Miss Cobbe gives a picture in his lonliness:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Poor old Borrow is in a sad state,&rdquo;
+she wrote.&nbsp; &ldquo;I hope he is starting in a day or two for
+Scotland.&nbsp; I sent C. with a note begging him to come and eat
+the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent back word,
+&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived,
+and in a most agitated manner said he had come to say &lsquo;he
+would rather not.&nbsp; He would not trouble anyone with his
+sorrows.&rsquo;&nbsp; I made him sit down, and talked as gently
+to him as possible, saying: &lsquo;It won&rsquo;t be a trouble
+Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me.&rsquo;&nbsp; But it was
+all of no use.&nbsp; He was so cross, so <i>rude</i>, I had the
+greatest difficulty in talking to him.&nbsp; I asked about his
+servant, and he said I could not help him.&nbsp; I asked him
+about Bowring, and he said: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t speak of
+it.&rsquo;&nbsp; (It was some dispute with Sir John Bowring, who
+was an acquaintance of mine, and with whom I offered to
+mediate.)&nbsp; &lsquo;I asked him would he look at the photos of
+the Siamese,&rsquo; and he said: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t show them to
+me!&rsquo;&nbsp; So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I
+had been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met
+Mr L&mdash;, who told me of certain curious books of
+medi&aelig;val history.&nbsp; &lsquo;Did he know
+them?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;No, and he <i>dare said</i> Mr L&mdash;
+did not, either!&nbsp; Who was Mr L&mdash;?&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+described that <i>obscure</i> individual, (one of the foremost
+writers of the day), and added that he was immensely liked by
+everybody.&nbsp; Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times,
+&lsquo;Immensely liked!&nbsp; As if a man could be immensely
+liked!&rsquo; quite insultingly.&nbsp; To make a diversion (I was
+very patient with him as he was in trouble), &lsquo;I said I had
+just come home from the Lyell&rsquo;s and had heard&mdash;&rsquo;
+. . .&nbsp; But there was no time to say what I had heard!&nbsp;
+Mr Borrow asked: &lsquo;Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man
+who stands at the door (of some den or other) and
+<i>bets</i>?&rsquo;&nbsp; I explained who Sir Charles was, <a
+name="citation459a"></a><a href="#footnote459a"
+class="citation">[459a]</a> (of course he knew very well), but he
+went on and on, till I said gravely: &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t think
+you will meet those sort of people here, Mr Borrow.&nbsp; We
+don&rsquo;t associate with blacklegs, exactly.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a
+name="citation459b"></a><a href="#footnote459b"
+class="citation">[459b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In the Autumn of 1870 Borrow became acquainted with Charles G.
+Leland (&ldquo;Hans Breitmann&rdquo;) as the result of receiving
+from him the following letter:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Brighton</span>, 24<i>th</i> <i>October</i>
+1870.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,&mdash;During the eighteen
+months that I have been in England, my efforts to find some
+mutual friend who would introduce me to you have been quite in
+vain.&nbsp; As the author of two or three works which have been
+kindly received in England, I have made the acquaintance of many
+literary men and enjoyed much hospitality; but I assure you very
+sincerely that my inability to find you out or get at you has
+been a source of great annoyance to me.&nbsp; As you never
+published a book which I have not read through five
+times&mdash;excepting <i>The Bible in Spain</i> and <i>Wild
+Wales</i>, which I have only read once&mdash;you will perfectly
+understand why I should be so desirous of meeting you.</p>
+<p>As you have very possibly never heard of me before, I would
+state that I wrote a collection of Ballads satirising Germany and
+the Germans under the title of <i>Hans Breitmann</i>.</p>
+<p>I never before in my life solicited the favour of any
+man&rsquo;s acquaintance, except through the regular medium of an
+introduction.&nbsp; If my request to be allowed the favour of
+meeting and seeing you does not seem too <i>outr&eacute;</i>, I
+would be to glad to go to London, or wherever you may be, if it
+can be done without causing you any inconvenience, and if I
+should not be regarded as an intruder.&nbsp; I am an American,
+and among us such requests are <i>parfaitment</i> (sic) <i>en
+r&eacute;gle</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">I am, . . .</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Charles G.
+Leland</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow replied on 2nd Nov.:</p>
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+<p>I have received your letter and am gratified by the desire you
+express to make my acquaintance.</p>
+<p>Whenever you please to come I shall be happy to see you.</p>
+<p>Truly yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">George
+Borrow</span>. <a name="citation460a"></a><a href="#footnote460a"
+class="citation">[460a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The meeting unquestionably took place at Hereford Square, and
+Leland found Borrow &ldquo;a tall, large, fine-looking man who
+must have been handsome in his youth.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation460b"></a><a href="#footnote460b"
+class="citation">[460b]</a>&nbsp; The result of the interview was
+that Leland sent to Borrow a copy of his <i>Ballads</i> and also
+<i>The Music Lesson of Confucius</i>, then about to appear.&nbsp;
+At the same time he wrote to Borrow drawing his attention to one
+of the ballads written in German Romany <i>jib</i>, and enquiring
+if it were worth anything.&nbsp; Whilst deprecating his
+&ldquo;impudence&rdquo; in writing a Romany <i>gili</i> and
+telling, as a pupil might a master, of his interest in and his
+association with the gypsies, he continues: &ldquo;My dear Mr
+Borrow, for all this you are entirely responsible.&nbsp; More
+than twenty years ago your books had an incredible influence on
+me, and now you see the results.&rdquo;&nbsp; After telling him
+that he can <i>never</i> thank him sufficiently for the
+instructions he has given in <i>The Romany Rye</i> as to how to
+take care of a horse on a thirty mile ride, he
+concludes&mdash;&ldquo;With apologies for the careless tone of
+this letter, and with sincere thanks for your kindness in
+permitting me to call on you and for your courteous note,&mdash;I
+am your sincere admirer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The account that Leland gives of this episode in his
+<i>Memoirs</i> is puzzling and contradictory in the light of his
+first letter.&nbsp; He writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There was another hard old character with
+whom I became acquainted in those days, and one who, though not a
+Carlyle, still, like him, exercised in a peculiar way a great
+influence on English literature.&nbsp; This was George
+Borrow.&nbsp; I was in the habit of reading a great deal in the
+British Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced to
+him. <a name="citation461a"></a><a href="#footnote461a"
+class="citation">[461a]</a>&nbsp; [Leland seems to be in error
+here; see <i>ante</i>, page 460.]&nbsp; He was busy with a
+venerable-looking volume in old Irish, and made the remark to me
+that he did not believe there was a man living who could read old
+Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was
+&lsquo;fished&rsquo; out of Sir W. Betham).&nbsp; We discussed
+several Gypsy words and phrases.&nbsp; I met him in the same
+place several times.&rdquo; <a name="citation461b"></a><a
+href="#footnote461b" class="citation">[461b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Leland states that he sent a note to Borrow, care of John
+Murray, asking permission to dedicate to him his forthcoming
+book, <i>The English Gypsies and Their Language</i>; but received
+no reply, although Murray assured him that the letter had been
+received by Borrow.&nbsp; &ldquo;He received my note on the
+Saturday,&rdquo; Leland writes&mdash;&ldquo;never answered
+it&mdash;and on Monday morning advertised in all the journals his
+own forthcoming work on the same subject.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation461c"></a><a href="#footnote461c"
+class="citation">[461c]</a>&nbsp; Had Borrow asked him to delay
+publishing his own book, Leland says he would have done so,
+&ldquo;for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of Gypsyism,
+that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with such
+a small sacrifice.&rdquo; <a name="citation462a"></a><a
+href="#footnote462a" class="citation">[462a]</a></p>
+<p>However Borrow may have heard that Leland had in preparation a
+book on the English Gypsies, he seemed to feel that it was a
+trespass upon ground that was peculiarly his own.&nbsp; Having
+revised and prepared for the press the new edition of the Gypsy
+St Luke for the Bible Society (published December 1872), and the
+one-volume editions of <i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i>,
+he set to work to forestall Leland with his own <i>Romano
+Lavo-Lil</i>.</p>
+<p>In spite of his haste, however, Borrow was beaten in the race,
+and Leland got his volume out first.&nbsp; When the <i>Romano
+Lavo-Lil</i> <a name="citation462b"></a><a href="#footnote462b"
+class="citation">[462b]</a> appeared in March 1874, Borrow found
+what, in all probability he had not dreamed of, that the
+thirty-three years intervening between its publication and that
+of <i>The Zincali</i>, had changed the whole literary world as
+regards &ldquo;things of Egypt.&rdquo;&nbsp; In 1841 Borrow had
+produced a unique book, such as only one man in England could
+have written, and that man himself <a name="citation462c"></a><a
+href="#footnote462c" class="citation">[462c]</a>; but in 1874 he
+found himself not only out of date, but out-classed.</p>
+<p>The title very thoroughly explains the scope of the
+work.&nbsp; The Vocabulary had existed in manuscript for many
+years.&nbsp; For some reason, difficult to explain, Borrow had
+omitted from this Vocabulary a number of the gypsy words that
+appeared in <i>Lavengro</i> and <i>The Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp; In
+spite of this &ldquo;Mr Borrow&rsquo;s present vocabulary makes a
+goodly show,&rdquo; wrote F. H. Groome, &ldquo;. . . containing
+no fewer than fourteen hundred words, of which about fifty will
+be entirely new to those who only know Romany in books.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation463a"></a><a href="#footnote463a"
+class="citation">[463a]</a></p>
+<p>After praising the Gypsy songs as the best portion of the
+book, Groome proceeds:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Of his prose I cannot say so much.&nbsp; It
+is the Romany of the study rather than of the tents [!]&nbsp; Mr
+Borrow has attempted to rehabilitate English Romany by enduing it
+with forms and inflections, of which some are still rarely to be
+heard, some extinct, and others absolutely incorrect; while Mr
+Leland has been content to give it as it really is.&nbsp; Of the
+two methods I cannot doubt that most readers will agree with me
+in thinking that Mr Leland&rsquo;s is the more
+satisfactory.&rdquo; <a name="citation463b"></a><a
+href="#footnote463b" class="citation">[463b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> sternly rebuked Borrow for seeming
+&ldquo;to make the mistake of confounding the amount of Rommanis
+which he has collected in this book with the actual extent of the
+language itself.&rdquo;&nbsp; The reviewer pays a somewhat
+grudging tribute to other portions of the book, the accounts of
+the Gypsyries and the biographical particulars of the Romany
+worthies, but the work suffers by comparison with those of
+Paspati and Leland.&nbsp; He acknowledges that Borrow was one of
+the pioneers of those who gave accounts of the Gypsies in
+English, who gave to many their present taste for Gypsy
+matters,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;but,&rdquo; he proceeds, &ldquo;we cannot
+allow merely sentimental considerations to prevent us from
+telling the honest truth.&nbsp; The fact is that the <i>Romano
+Lavo-Lil</i> is nothing more than a
+<i>r&eacute;chauff&eacute;</i> of the materials collected by Mr
+Borrow at an early stage of his investigations, and nearly every
+word and every phrase may be found in one form or another in his
+earlier works.&nbsp; Whether or not Mr Borrow <i>has</i> in the
+course of his long experience become the <i>deep</i> Gypsy which
+he has always been supposed to be, we cannot say; but it is
+certain that his present book contains little more than he gave
+to the public forty years ago, and does not by any means
+represent the present state of knowledge on the subject.&nbsp;
+But at the present day, when comparative philology has made such
+strides, and when want of accurate scholarship is as little
+tolerated in strange and remote languages as in classical
+literature, the <i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i> is, to speak mildly, an
+anachronism.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This notice, if Borrow read it, must have been very bitter to
+him.&nbsp; All the loyalty to, and enthusiasm for, Borrow cannot
+disguise the fact that his work, as far as the Gypsies were
+concerned, was finished.&nbsp; He had first explored the path,
+but others had followed and levelled it into a thoroughfare, and
+Borrow found his facts and theories obsolete&mdash;a humiliating
+discovery to a man so shy, so proud, and so sensitive.</p>
+<p>The <i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i> was Borrow&rsquo;s swan song.&nbsp;
+He lived for another seven years; but as far as the world was
+concerned he was dead.&nbsp; In an obituary notice of Robert
+Latham, Mr Watts-Dunton tells a story that emphasizes how
+thoroughly his existence had been forgotten.&nbsp; At one of Mrs
+Procter&rsquo;s &ldquo;at homes&rdquo; he was talking of Latham
+and Borrow, but when he happened to mention that both men were
+still alive, that is in the early Seventies, and that quite
+recently he had been in the company of each on separate
+occasions, he found that he had lost caste in the eyes of his
+hearers for talking about men as alive &ldquo;who were well known
+to have been dead years ago.&rdquo; <a name="citation464"></a><a
+href="#footnote464" class="citation">[464]</a></p>
+<p>There is an interesting picture of Borrow as he appeared in
+the Seventies, given by F. H. Groome, who writes:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The first time I ever saw him was at Ascot,
+the Wednesday evening of the Cup week in, I think, the year
+1872.&nbsp; I was stopping at a wayside inn, half-a-mile on the
+Windsor road, just opposite which inn there was a great
+encampment of Gypsies.&nbsp; One of their lads had on the Tuesday
+affronted a soldier; so two or three hundred redcoats came over
+from Windsor, intending to wreck the camp.&nbsp; There was a
+babel of cursing and screaming, much brandishing of belts and
+tent-rods, when suddenly an arbiter appeared, a white-haired,
+brown-eyed, calm Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking
+deep draughts of ale&mdash;in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins
+and Anselo Stanley were sworn friends over a loving-quart.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Mr Burroughs,&rdquo; said one of the Gypsies (it is the
+name by which Gypsies still speak of him), and I knew that at
+last I had met him whom of all men I most wished to meet.&nbsp;
+Matty Cooper, the &lsquo;celebrated Windsor Frog&rsquo;
+(<i>vide</i> Leland), presented me as &lsquo;a young gentleman,
+<i>Rya</i>, a scholard from Oxford&rsquo;; and
+&lsquo;H&rsquo;m,&rsquo; quoth Colossus, &lsquo;a good many fools
+come from Oxford.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was a bad beginning, but it
+ended well, by his asking me to walk with him to the station, and
+on the way inviting me to call on him in London.&nbsp; I did so,
+but not until nearly a twelve-month afterwards, when I found him
+in Hereford Square, and when he set strong ale before me, as
+again on the occasion of my third and last meeting with him in
+the tent of our common acquaintance, Shadrach Herne, at the
+Potteries, Notting Hill.&nbsp; Both these times we had much talk
+together, but I remember only that it was partly about East
+Anglia, and more about &lsquo;things of Egypt.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Conversations twenty years old are easy to imagine, hard to
+reproduce . . .&nbsp; Probably Borrow asked me the Romany for
+&lsquo;frying-pan,&rsquo; and I modestly answered, &lsquo;Either
+<i>maasalli</i> or <i>tasseromengri</i>&rsquo; (this is password
+No. 1), and then I may have asked him the Romany for
+&lsquo;brick,&rsquo; to which he will have answered, that
+&lsquo;there is no such word&rsquo; (this is No. 2).&nbsp; But
+one thing I do remember, that he was frank and kindly,
+interesting and interested; I was only a lad, and he was verging
+on seventy.&nbsp; I could tell him about a few
+&lsquo;travellers&rsquo; whom he had not recently
+seen&mdash;Charlie Pinfold, the hoary polygamist, Plato and
+Mantis Buckland, Cinderella Petulengro, and Old Tom Oliver
+(&lsquo;Ha! so he has seen Tom Oliver,&rsquo; I seem to remember
+that).&rdquo; <a name="citation466a"></a><a href="#footnote466a"
+class="citation">[466a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There was nothing now to keep Borrow in London.&nbsp; Nobody
+wanted to read his books, other stars had risen in the
+East.&nbsp; His publisher had exclaimed with energy, as Borrow
+himself would relate, &ldquo;I want to meet with good writers,
+but there are none to be had: I want a man who can write like
+Ecclesiastes.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is something tragic in the
+account that Mr Watts-Dunton gives of his last encounter with
+Borrow:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The last time I ever saw him,&rdquo; he
+writes, &ldquo;was shortly before he left London to live in the
+country.&nbsp; It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where
+I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking
+splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and
+boiling over the West-End.&nbsp; Borrow came up and stood leaning
+over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might
+be.&nbsp; Like most people born in flat districts, he had a
+passion for sunsets.&nbsp; Turner could not have painted that
+one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it . . . I
+never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo
+Bridge; and from its association with &lsquo;the last of
+Borrow,&rsquo; I shall never forget it.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation466b"></a><a href="#footnote466b"
+class="citation">[466b]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In 1874 Borrow withdrew to Oulton, there to end his lonely
+life, his spirit seeming to enjoy the dreary solitude of the
+Cottage, with its mournful surroundings.&nbsp; His stepdaughter,
+the Henrietta of old, remained in London with her husband, and
+Borrow&rsquo;s loneliness was complete.&nbsp; Sometimes he was to
+be seen stalking along the highways at a great pace, wearing a
+broad-brimmed hat and a Spanish cloak, a tragic figure of
+solitude and despair, speaking to no one, no one daring to speak
+to him, who locally was considered as &ldquo;a funny tempered
+man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In a fragment of a letter from Edward FitzGerald to W. B.
+Donne (June 1874), there is an interesting reference to
+Borrow:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; he writes.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have
+one little thing to tell you, which, little as it is, is worth
+all the rest, if you don&rsquo;t know already.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Borrow</i>&mdash;has got back to his own Oulton
+Lodge.&nbsp; My Nephew, Edmund Kerrich, now Adjutant to some
+Volunteer Battalion, wants a house <i>near</i>, not <i>in</i>,
+Lowestoft: and got some Agent to apply for
+Borrow&rsquo;s&mdash;who sent word that he is himself
+there&mdash;an old Man&mdash;wanting Retirement, etc.&nbsp; This
+was the account Edmund got.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I saw in some Athen&aelig;um a somewhat contemptuous
+notice of G. B.&rsquo;s &lsquo;Rommany Lil&rsquo; or whatever the
+name is.&nbsp; I can easily understand that B. should not meddle
+with <i>science</i> of any sort; but some years ago he would not
+have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have cooled him
+now.&rdquo; <a name="citation467"></a><a href="#footnote467"
+class="citation">[467]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow sent a message to FitzGerald through Edmund Kerrich of
+Geldeston, asking him to visit Oulton Cottage.&nbsp; The reply
+shows all the sweetness of the writer&rsquo;s nature:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">Little Grange</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Woodbridge</span>,<br />
+<i>Jan.</i> 10/75.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Borrow</span>,&mdash;My nephew
+Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation that you sent to me,
+through him, some while ago.&nbsp; I think the more of it because
+I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away from
+human company as much&mdash;as I have!&nbsp; For the last fifteen
+years I have not visited any one of my very oldest friends,
+except the daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and
+Donne&mdash;once only, and for half a day, just to assure myself
+by&mdash;my own eyes how he was after the severe illness he had
+last year, and which he never will quite recover from, I think;
+though he looked and moved better than I expected.</p>
+<p>Well&mdash;to tell you all about <i>why</i> I have thus fallen
+from my company would be a tedious thing, and all about
+one&rsquo;s self too&mdash;whom, Montaigne says, one never talks
+about without detriment to the person talked about.&nbsp; Suffice
+to say, &lsquo;so it is&rsquo;; and one&rsquo;s friends, however
+kind and &lsquo;loyal&rsquo; (as the phrase goes), do manage to
+exist and enjoy themselves pretty reasonably without one.</p>
+<p>So with me.&nbsp; And is it not much the same with you
+also?&nbsp; Are you not glad now to be mainly alone, and find
+company a heavier burden than the grasshopper?&nbsp; If one ever
+had this solitary habit, it is not likely to alter for the better
+as one grows older&mdash;as one grows <i>old</i>.&nbsp; I like to
+think over my old friends.&nbsp; There they are, lingering as
+ineffaceable portraits&mdash;done in the prime of life&mdash;in
+my memory.&nbsp; Perhaps we should not like one another so well
+after a fifteen-years separation, when all of us change and most
+of us for the worse.&nbsp; I do not say <i>that</i> would be your
+case; but you must, at any rate, be less inclined to disturb the
+settled repose into which you, I suppose, have fallen.&nbsp; I
+remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five years ago;
+then at Donne&rsquo;s in London; then at my own happy home in
+Regent&rsquo;s Park; then <i>ditto</i> at Gorleston&mdash;after
+which, I have seen nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me
+by my good sister Kerrich.</p>
+<p>So shall things rest?&nbsp; I could not go to you, after
+refusing all this while to go to older&mdash;if not
+better&mdash;friends, fellow Collegians, fellow schoolfellows;
+and yet will you still believe me (as I hope <i>they</i> do)</p>
+<p>Yours and theirs sincerely,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Edward
+FitzGerald</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Borrow was still a remarkably robust man.&nbsp; Mr
+Watts-Dunton tells how,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;At seventy years of age, after breakfasting
+at eight o&rsquo;clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to
+Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about
+Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with
+a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run
+about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the
+water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after
+fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would
+have done Sir Walter Scott&rsquo;s eyes good to see.&nbsp;
+Finally, he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late
+at night.&nbsp; And if the physique of the man was bracing, his
+conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his
+occasional fits of depression, was still more so.&nbsp; Its
+freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen could
+describe.&nbsp; There is a kind of humour the delight of which is
+that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as
+much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical,
+crotchetty, and odd as to draw them.&nbsp; This was the humour of
+Borrow.&rdquo; <a name="citation469a"></a><a href="#footnote469a"
+class="citation">[469a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He was seventy years of age when, one March day during a
+bitterly-cold east wind, he stripped and plunged into one of the
+Fen Ponds in Richmond Park, which was covered with ice, and dived
+and swam under the water for a time, reappearing some distance
+from the spot where he had entered the water. <a
+name="citation469b"></a><a href="#footnote469b"
+class="citation">[469b]</a></p>
+<p>The remaining years of Borrow&rsquo;s life were spent in
+Suffolk.&nbsp; He would frequently go to Norwich, however; for
+the old city seemed to draw him irresistibly from his
+hermitage.&nbsp; He would take a lodging there, and spend much of
+his time occupying a certain chair in the Norfolk Hotel in St
+Giles.&nbsp; There were so many old associations with Norwich
+that made it appear home to him.&nbsp; He was possessed of
+sentiment in plenty, it had caused his old mother to wish that
+&ldquo;dear George would not have such fancies about <i>the old
+house</i>&rdquo; in Willow Lane.</p>
+<p>Later, Dr and Mrs MacOubrey removed to Oulton (about 1878),
+and Borrow&rsquo;s life became less dismal and lonely; but he was
+nearing his end.&nbsp; Sometimes there would be a flash of that
+old unconquerable spirit.&nbsp; His stepdaughter relates how,</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;on the 21st of November [1878], the place
+[the farm] having been going to decay for fourteen months, Mr
+Palmer [the tenant] called to demand that Mr Borrow should put it
+in repair; otherwise he would do it himself and send in the
+bills, saying, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t care for the old farm or you
+either,&rsquo; and several other insulting things; whereupon Mr
+Borrow remarked very calmly, &lsquo;Sir, you came in by that
+door, you can go out by it&rsquo;&mdash;and so it ended.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation470a"></a><a href="#footnote470a"
+class="citation">[470a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was on an occasion such as this that Borrow yearned for a
+son to knock the rascal down.&nbsp; He was an infirm man, his
+body feeling the wear and tear of the strenuous open-air life he
+had led.&nbsp; In 1879, according to Mrs MacOubrey, he was
+&ldquo;unable to walk as far as the white gate,&rdquo; the
+boundary of his estate.&nbsp; He was obviously breaking-up very
+rapidly.&nbsp; The surroundings appear to have reflected the
+gloomy nature of the master of the estate.&nbsp; The house was
+dilapidated, &ldquo;with everything about it more or less
+untidy,&rdquo; <a name="citation470b"></a><a href="#footnote470b"
+class="citation">[470b]</a> although at this period his income
+amounted to upwards of five hundred pounds a year.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;During his latter years,&rdquo; writes Mr
+W. A. Dutt, &ldquo;his tall, erect, somewhat mysterious figure
+was often seen in the early hours of summer mornings or late at
+night on the lonely pathways that wind in and out from the banks
+of Oulton Broad . . . the village children used to hush their
+voices and draw aside at his approach.&nbsp; They looked upon him
+with fear and awe. . . .&nbsp; In his heart, Borrow was fond of
+the little ones, though it amused him to watch the impression his
+strange personality made upon them.&nbsp; Older people he seldom
+spoke to when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would
+flash out such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and
+shaggy eyebrows as would make timid country folk hasten on their
+way filled with vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation470c"></a><a href="#footnote470c"
+class="citation">[470c]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Even to the last the old sensitiveness occasionally flashed
+out, as on the occasion of a visit from the Vicar of Lowestoft,
+who drove over with an acquaintance of Borrow&rsquo;s to make the
+hermit&rsquo;s acquaintance.&nbsp; The visitor was so incautious
+as to ask the age of his host, when, with Johnsonian emphasis,
+came the reply: &ldquo;Sir, I tell my age to no man!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+This occurred some time during the year 1880.&nbsp; Immediately
+his discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to the
+summer-house, where he drew up the following apothegm on
+&ldquo;People&rsquo;s Age&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Never talk to people about their age.&nbsp;
+Call a boy a boy, and he will fly into a passion and say,
+&lsquo;Not quite so much of a boy either; I&rsquo;m a young
+man.&rsquo;&nbsp; Tell an elderly person that he&rsquo;s not so
+young as he was, and you will make him hate you for life.&nbsp;
+Compliment a man of eighty-five on the venerableness of his
+appearance, and he will shriek out: &lsquo;No more venerable than
+yourself,&rsquo; and will perhaps hit you with his
+crutch.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>On 1st December 1880 Borrow sent for his solicitor from
+Lowestoft, and made his will, by which he bequeathed all his
+property, real and personal, to his stepdaughter Henrietta,
+devising that it should be held in trust for her by his friend
+Elizabeth Harvey.&nbsp; It was evidently Borrow&rsquo;s intention
+so to tie up the bequest that Dr MacOubrey could not in any way
+touch his wife&rsquo;s estate.</p>
+<p>The end came suddenly.&nbsp; On the morning of 26th July 1881
+Dr and Mrs MacOubrey drove into Lowestoft, leaving Borrow alone
+in the house.&nbsp; When they returned he was dead.&nbsp;
+Throughout his life Borrow had been a solitary, and it seems
+fitting that he should die alone.&nbsp; It has been urged against
+his stepdaughter that she disregarded Borrow&rsquo;s appeals not
+to be left alone in the house, as he felt himself to be
+dying.&nbsp; He may have made similar requests on other
+occasions; still, whatever the facts, it was strange to leave so
+old and so infirm a man quite unattended.</p>
+<p>On 4th August the body was brought to London, and buried
+beside that of Mrs George Borrow in Brompton Cemetery.&nbsp; On
+the stone, which is what is known as a saddle-back, is
+inscribed:</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">In
+Loving Remembrance of</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">George Henry
+Borrow</span>, <span class="smcap">Esq</span>.,</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WHO DIED
+JULY 26TH, 1881 (AT HIS RESIDENCE &ldquo;OULTON COTTAGE,
+SUFFOLK&rdquo;)</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">IN HIS 79TH
+YEAR.</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<span class="smcap">Author of The
+Bible in Spain</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Lavengro</span>&mdash;<span class="smcap">and other
+works</span>.)</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">&ldquo;IN
+HOPE OF A GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.&rdquo;</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow
+to purchase the whole of Borrow&rsquo;s manuscripts, library, and
+papers for the Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a
+thousand pounds, was considered too high, and they passed into
+the possession of another.&nbsp; Eventually they found their way
+into the reverent hands of the man who subsequently made Borrow
+his hero, and who devoted years of his life to the writing of his
+biography&mdash;Dr W. J. Knapp.</p>
+<p>It was Borrow&rsquo;s fate, a tragic fate for a man so proud,
+to outlive the period of his fame.&nbsp; Not only were his books
+forgotten, but the world anticipated his death by some seven or
+eight years.&nbsp; His was a curiously complex nature, one that
+seems specially to have been conceived by Providence to arouse
+enmity among the many, and to awaken in the hearts of the few a
+sterling, unwavering friendship.&nbsp; It is impossible to
+reconcile the accounts of those who hated him with those whose
+love and respect he engaged.</p>
+<p>He was in sympathy with vagrants and vagabonds&mdash;a taste
+that was perhaps emphasised by the months he spent in preparing
+<i>Celebrated Trials</i>.&nbsp; If those months of hack work
+taught him sympathy with pariahs, it also taught him to write
+strong, nervous English.</p>
+<p>He was one of the most remarkable characters of his
+century&mdash;whimsical, eccentric, lovable, inexplicable;
+possessed of an odd, dry humour that sometimes failed him when
+most he needed it.&nbsp; He lived and died a stranger to the
+class to which he belonged, and was the intimate friend and
+associate of that dark and mysterious personage, Mr
+Petulengro.&nbsp; He hated his social equals, and admired
+Tamerlane and Jerry Abershaw.&nbsp; It has been said <a
+name="citation473"></a><a href="#footnote473"
+class="citation">[473]</a> that he was born three centuries too
+late, and that he belonged to the age when men dropped
+mysteriously down the river in ships, later to return with
+strange stories and great treasure from the Spanish Main.&nbsp;
+Mr Watts-Dunton has said:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;When Borrow was talking to people in his
+own class of life there was always in his bearing a kind of shy,
+defiant egotism.&nbsp; What Carlyle called the &lsquo;armed
+neutrality&rsquo; of social intercourse oppressed him.&nbsp; He
+felt himself to be in the enemy&rsquo;s camp.&nbsp; In his eyes
+there was always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking
+stock of his interlocutor and weighing him against himself.&nbsp;
+He seemed to be observing what effect his words were having, and
+this attitude repelled people at first.&nbsp; But the moment he
+approached a gypsy on the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or
+a homeless wanderer by the wayside, he became another man.&nbsp;
+He threw off the burden of restraint.&nbsp; The feeling of the
+&lsquo;armed neutrality&rsquo; was left behind, and he seemed to
+be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that could give
+him pleasure.&nbsp; This it was that enabled him to make friends
+so entirely with the gypsies.&nbsp; Notwithstanding what is
+called &lsquo;Romany guile&rsquo; (which is the growth of ages of
+oppression), the basis of the Romany character is a joyous
+frankness.&nbsp; Once let the isolating wall which shuts off the
+Romany from the &lsquo;Gorgio&rsquo; be broken through, and the
+communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins to show
+itself.&nbsp; The gypsies are extremely close observers; they
+were very quick to notice how different was Borrow&rsquo;s
+bearing towards themselves from his bearing towards people of his
+own race, and Borrow used to say that &lsquo;old Mrs Herne and
+Leonora were the only gypsies who suspected and disliked
+him.&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation474a"></a><a
+href="#footnote474a" class="citation">[474a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This convincing character sketch seems to show the real
+Borrow.&nbsp; It accounts even for that high-piping, artificial
+voice (a gypsy trait) that he assumed when speaking with those
+who were not his intimate friends, and which any sudden interest
+in the conversation would cause him to abandon in favour of his
+own deep, rich tones.&nbsp; Mr F. J. Bowring, himself no friend
+of Borrow&rsquo;s for very obvious reasons, has described this
+artificial intonation as something between a beggar&rsquo;s whine
+and the high-pitched voice of a gypsy&mdash;in sort, a
+falsetto.&nbsp; He tells how, on one occasion, when in
+conversation with Borrow, he happened to mention to him something
+of particular interest concerning the gypsies, Borrow became
+immensely interested, immediately dropped the falsetto and spoke
+in his natural voice, which Mr Bowring describes as deep and
+manly.</p>
+<p>Even his friends were led sometimes into criticisms that
+appear unsympathetic. <a name="citation474b"></a><a
+href="#footnote474b" class="citation">[474b]</a>&nbsp; He was, Dr
+Hake has said, &ldquo;essentially hypochondriacal.&nbsp; Society
+he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he might be pointed
+out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the prince that
+he felt himself in its midst.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation474c"></a><a href="#footnote474c"
+class="citation">[474c]</a>&nbsp; It is the son who shows the
+better understanding, although there is no doubt about Dr
+Hake&rsquo;s loyalty to Borrow.&nbsp; There is a faithful
+presentation of a man such as Borrow really seems to have been,
+in the following words:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Few men have ever made so deep an
+impression on me as George Borrow.&nbsp; His tall, broad figure,
+his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so bright yet soft, his
+thick white hair, his oval beardless face, his loud rich voice
+and bold heroic air were such as to impress the most indifferent
+lookers-on.&nbsp; Added to this there was something not easily
+forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to
+our gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly
+depart.&rdquo; <a name="citation475a"></a><a href="#footnote475a"
+class="citation">[475a]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>If Borrow wrote that he was ashamed of being an Englishman and
+referred to their &ldquo;pinched and mortified
+expressions,&rdquo; if he found the virtues of the Saxons
+&ldquo;uncouth and ungracious,&rdquo; he never permitted others
+to make disparaging remarks about his country or his countrymen.
+<a name="citation475b"></a><a href="#footnote475b"
+class="citation">[475b]</a>&nbsp; He was typically English in
+this: agree with his strictures, add a word or two of dispraise
+of the English, and there appeared a terrifying figure of a
+patriot; &ldquo;not only an Englishman but an East
+Englishman,&rdquo; which in Borrow&rsquo;s vocabulary meant the
+finest of the breed.&nbsp; He might with more truth have said a
+Cornishman.&nbsp; &ldquo;I could not command myself when I heard
+my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner,&rdquo; <a
+name="citation475c"></a><a href="#footnote475c"
+class="citation">[475c]</a> he once exclaimed.&nbsp; He permitted
+to himself, and to himself only, a certain latitude in such
+matters.</p>
+<p>That Borrow exaggerated is beyond all question, but it must
+not be called deliberate.&nbsp; He desired to give impressions of
+scenes and people, and he was inclined to emphasize certain
+features.&nbsp; Isopel Berners he wished it to be known was a
+queenly creature, and he described her as taller than himself (he
+was 6 feet 2 inches without his shoes).&nbsp; Exaggeration is
+colour, not form.&nbsp; A disbelief in his having encountered the
+convict son of the old apple-woman near Salisbury does not imply
+that the old woman herself is a fiction.&nbsp; Borrow insisted
+upon Norfolk as his county, &ldquo;where the people eat the best
+dumplings in the world, and speak the purest
+English.&rdquo;&nbsp; He even spoke with a strong, if imperfect,
+East Anglian accent.&nbsp; As a matter of fact his father was
+Cornish and his mother of Huguenot stock.&nbsp; It would be
+absurd to argue from this obvious exaggeration of the actual
+facts that Borrow was a myth.</p>
+<p>Then he has been taken to task for not being a philologist as
+well as a linguist.&nbsp; He may have used the word philologist
+somewhat loosely on occasion.&nbsp; &ldquo;Think what the reader
+would have lost,&rdquo; says one eminent but by no means
+prejudiced critic <a name="citation476"></a><a
+href="#footnote476" class="citation">[476]</a> with real sympathy
+and insight, &ldquo;had Borrow waited to verify his
+etymologies.&rdquo;&nbsp; In all probability Nature will never
+produce a Humboldt-Le Sage combination of intellect.&nbsp;
+Language was to Borrow merely the key that permitted him access
+to the chamber of men&rsquo;s minds.&nbsp; It must be confessed
+that sometimes he invaded the sacred precincts of
+philology.&nbsp; His chapter on the Basque language in <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i> has been described as &ldquo;utterly
+frantic,&rdquo; and German philologists, speechless in their
+astonishment, have expressed themselves upon his conclusions in
+marks of exclamation!&nbsp; He was not qualified to discourse
+upon the science of language.</p>
+<p>He was a staunch member of the Church of England, because he
+believed there was in it more religion than in any other Church;
+but this did not hinder him from consorting with the godless
+children of the tents, or contributing towards the upkeep of
+Nonconformist-schools.&nbsp; The gypsies honoured and trusted him
+because, crooked themselves, they appreciated straightness and
+clean living in another.&nbsp; They had never known him use a bad
+word or do a bad thing.&nbsp; He was, on occasion, arrogant,
+overbearing, ungracious, in short all the unattractive things
+that a proud and masterful man can be; but his friendship was as
+strong as the man himself; his charity above the narrow
+prejudices of sect.&nbsp; When he threw his tremendous power into
+any enterprise or undertaking, it was with the determination that
+it should succeed, if work and self-sacrifice could make
+it.&nbsp; &ldquo;The wisest course,&rdquo; he thought, was,
+&ldquo; . . . to blend the whole of the philosophy of the
+tombstone with a portion of the philosophy of the publican and
+something more, to enjoy one&rsquo;s pint and pipe and other
+innocent pleasures, and to think every now and then of death and
+judgment.&rdquo; <a name="citation477"></a><a href="#footnote477"
+class="citation">[477]</a></p>
+<p>Borrow loved mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able
+quite to penetrate into the inner fastness of his
+personality.&nbsp; Those who came nearest to it were probably
+Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent good-humour was an armour
+against a reserve that chilled most men.&nbsp; Of all
+Borrow&rsquo;s friends it is probable that none understood him so
+well as Hasfeldt.&nbsp; He recognised the strength of character
+of the white-haired man who sang when he was happy, and he
+refused to be affected by his gloomy moods.&nbsp; &ldquo;Write
+and tell me,&rdquo; he requests, &ldquo;if you have not fallen in
+love with some nun or Gypsy in Spain, or have met with some other
+romantic adventure worthy of a roaming knight.&rdquo;&nbsp; On
+another occasion (June 1845) he boasts with some justification,
+&ldquo;Heaven be praised, I can comprehend you as a reality,
+while many regard you as an imaginary, fantastic being.&nbsp; But
+they who portray you have not eaten bread and salt with
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s contemporary recognition was a chance; he was
+writing for another generation, and some of the friends that he
+left behind have loyally striven to erect to him the only
+monument an artist desires&mdash;the proclaiming of his
+works.</p>
+<p>Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of
+magnificence, and, lest he should be enticed away from her, had
+instilled into his soul a hatred of all things artificial and at
+variance with her august decrees.&nbsp; He was shy and suspicious
+with the men and women who regulated their lives by the narrow
+standards of civilisation and decorum; but with the children of
+the tents and the vagrants of the wayside he was a single-minded
+man, eager to learn the lore of the open air.&nbsp; He recognised
+in these vagabonds the true sons and daughters of &ldquo;the
+Great Mother who mixes all our bloods.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<h2>LIST OF BORROW&rsquo;S WORKS</h2>
+<h3>1825</h3>
+<p><i>Celebrated Trials</i>, <i>and Remarkable Cases of Criminal
+Jurisprudence</i>, <i>from the Earliest Records to the Year</i>
+1825.&nbsp; Six volumes, with plates.&nbsp; London.</p>
+<p><i>Faustus</i>: <i>His Life</i>, <i>Death</i>, <i>and Descent
+into Hell</i>.&nbsp; Translated from the German [of F. M. von
+Klinger].&nbsp; W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, London.</p>
+<h3>1826</h3>
+<p><i>Romantic Ballads</i>.&nbsp; Translated from the Danish: and
+Miscellaneous Pieces.&nbsp; S. Wilkin, Norwich.</p>
+<h3>1835</h3>
+<p><i>Targum</i>: <i>or</i>, <i>Metrical Translations from Thirty
+Languages and Dialects</i>.&nbsp; St Petersburgh.&nbsp; Reprinted
+later by Jarrold &amp; Sons, Norwich.</p>
+<p><i>The Talisman</i>.&nbsp; From the Russian of Alexander
+Pushkin.&nbsp; With <i>Other Pieces</i>.&nbsp; St Petersburg.</p>
+<h3>1841</h3>
+<p><i>The Zincali</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>An Account of the Gypsies of
+Spain</i>.&nbsp; With an Original Collection of their Songs and
+Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary of their Language.&nbsp; Two
+volumes.&nbsp; John Murray, London.</p>
+<h3>1842</h3>
+<p><i>The Bible in Spain</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>the Journeys</i>,
+<i>Adventures</i>, <i>and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an
+Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula</i>.&nbsp;
+Three volumes.&nbsp; John Murray, London.</p>
+<p><i>Lavengro</i>: The Scholar&mdash;The Gypsy&mdash;The
+Priest.&nbsp; Three volumes.&nbsp; John Murray, London.</p>
+<p><i>The Romany Rye</i>: <i>a Sequel to Lavengro</i>.&nbsp; Two
+volumes.&nbsp; John Murray, London.</p>
+<p><i>The Sleeping Bard</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>Visions of the
+World</i>, <i>Death</i>, <i>and Hell</i>.&nbsp; By Elis
+Wyn.&nbsp; Translated from the Cambrian British.&nbsp; John
+Murray, London.</p>
+<h3>1862</h3>
+<p><i>Wild Wales</i>: <i>Its People</i>, <i>Language</i>, <i>and
+Scenery</i>.&nbsp; Three volumes.&nbsp; John Murray, London.</p>
+<p><i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i>: <i>Word-Book of Romany</i>; <i>or</i>,
+<i>English Gypsy Language</i>.&nbsp; With Many Pieces in Gypsy,
+Illustrative of the Way of Speaking and Thinking of the English
+Gypsies; with Specimens of Their Poetry, and an Account of
+Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various
+Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England.&nbsp; John Murray,
+London.</p>
+<h3>1884</h3>
+<p><i>The Turkish Jester</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>the Pleasantries of
+Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi</i>.&nbsp; Translated from the
+Turkish.&nbsp; Jarrold &amp; Sons, Norwich.</p>
+<h3>1892</h3>
+<p><i>The Death of Balder</i>.&nbsp; Translated from the Danish
+of Evald.&nbsp; Jarrold &amp; Sons, Norwich.</p>
+<p>From the foregoing list has been omitted the mysterious
+<i>Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell</i>, <i>the Great
+Traveller</i>, and those works that Borrow edited or translated
+for the British and Foreign Bible Society.</p>
+<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3"
+class="footnote">[3]</a>&nbsp; Afterwards General Morshead and
+friend of the Duke of York.&nbsp; Captain Morshead, himself a
+Cornishman, is credited with doing everything in his power to
+dissuade Thomas Borrow from enlisting, but without result.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote4a"></a><a href="#citation4a"
+class="footnote">[4a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 2.&nbsp;
+References to Borrow&rsquo;s works throughout this volume are to
+the Standard Edition, published by John Murray.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote4b"></a><a href="#citation4b"
+class="footnote">[4b]</a>&nbsp; Ann, the third of eight children
+born to Samuel Perfrement and Mary his wife, 23rd January
+1772.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote4c"></a><a href="#citation4c"
+class="footnote">[4c]</a>&nbsp; Locally, the name is pronounced
+&ldquo;<i>Par</i>frement.&rdquo;&nbsp; This is quite in
+accordance with the Norfolk dialect, which changes
+&ldquo;e&rdquo; into &ldquo;a.&rdquo;&nbsp; Thus
+&ldquo;Ernest&rdquo; becomes &ldquo;Arnest&rdquo;;
+&ldquo;Earlham,&rdquo; &ldquo;Arlham&rdquo;;
+&ldquo;Erpingham,&rdquo; &ldquo;Arpingham,&rdquo; and so
+on.&nbsp; In Norfolk there are grave peculiarities of
+pronunciation, which have caused many a stranger to wish that he
+had never enquired his way, so puzzling are the replies hurled at
+him in an incomprehensible vernacular.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5"
+class="footnote">[5]</a>&nbsp; Married the Rev. Wm. Holland,
+rector of Walmer and afterwards rector of Brasted, Kent.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote6a"></a><a href="#citation6a"
+class="footnote">[6a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 5.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote6b"></a><a href="#citation6b"
+class="footnote">[6b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 5.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7a"></a><a href="#citation7a"
+class="footnote">[7a]</a>&nbsp; George in honour of the King, it
+is said, and Henry after his father&rsquo;s eldest brother.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7b"></a><a href="#citation7b"
+class="footnote">[7b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7c"></a><a href="#citation7c"
+class="footnote">[7c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7d"></a><a href="#citation7d"
+class="footnote">[7d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7e"></a><a href="#citation7e"
+class="footnote">[7e]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 7.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote7f"></a><a href="#citation7f"
+class="footnote">[7f]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 7.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote9a"></a><a href="#citation9a"
+class="footnote">[9a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 16.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote9b"></a><a href="#citation9b"
+class="footnote">[9b]</a>&nbsp; The widow of Sir John Fenn,
+editor of the <i>Paston Letters</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote9c"></a><a href="#citation9c"
+class="footnote">[9c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 15.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote10a"></a><a href="#citation10a"
+class="footnote">[10a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+398&ndash;9.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote10b"></a><a href="#citation10b"
+class="footnote">[10b]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Many years have not
+passed over my head, yet during those which I can call to
+remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, pass away, and
+become forgotten, except by myself, who, in spite of all my
+endeavours, never can forget
+anything.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lavengro</i>, page 166.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote10c"></a><a href="#citation10c"
+class="footnote">[10c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 16.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote11a"></a><a href="#citation11a"
+class="footnote">[11a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+19&ndash;20.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote11b"></a><a href="#citation11b"
+class="footnote">[11b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 22.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote12a"></a><a href="#citation12a"
+class="footnote">[12a]</a>&nbsp; The gypsies &ldquo;have a double
+nomenclature, each tribe or family having a public and private
+name, one by which they are known to the Gentiles, and another to
+themselves alone . . .&nbsp; There are only two names of trades
+which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper names,
+Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English gypsy
+dialect by <i>Vardo-mescro</i> and <i>Petulengro</i> (<i>Romano
+Lavo-Lil</i>, page 185).&nbsp; Thus the Smiths are known among
+themselves as the Petulengros.&nbsp; Petul, a horse shoe, and
+engro a &ldquo;masculine affix used in the formation of
+figurative names.&rdquo;&nbsp; Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes
+from Bosh a fiddle, Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor
+= to fight.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote12b"></a><a href="#citation12b"
+class="footnote">[12b]</a>&nbsp; The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard
+narrated at a provincial Bible Society&rsquo;s meeting that when
+Borrow first called at Earl Street &ldquo;he said that he had
+been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had passed several years
+with them, but had been recognised at a fair in Norfolk and
+brought home to his family by his uncle.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is,
+however, nothing to confirm this story.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote13a"></a><a href="#citation13a"
+class="footnote">[13a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 164.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote13b"></a><a href="#citation13b"
+class="footnote">[13b]</a>&nbsp; The prisoners occupied much of
+their time in straw-plait making; but the quality of their work
+was so much superior to that of the English that it was
+forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote13c"></a><a href="#citation13c"
+class="footnote">[13c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 45.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14"
+class="footnote">[14]</a>&nbsp; David Haggart, born 24th June
+1801, was an instinctive criminal, who, at Leith Races, in 1813,
+enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the West Norfolks.&nbsp;
+Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his career
+of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a
+policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, he was hanged
+at Edinburgh.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote15a"></a><a href="#citation15a"
+class="footnote">[15a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 138.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote15b"></a><a href="#citation15b"
+class="footnote">[15b]</a>&nbsp; John Crome (1768&ndash;1821),
+landscape painter.&nbsp; Apprenticed 1783 as sign-painter;
+introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded the Norwich
+School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy
+1806.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17"
+class="footnote">[17]</a>&nbsp; Borrow was always a magnificent
+horseman.&nbsp; &ldquo;Vaya! how you ride!&nbsp; It is dangerous
+to be in your way!&rdquo; said the Archbishop of Toledo to him
+years later.&nbsp; In <i>The Bible in Spain</i> he wrote that he
+had &ldquo;been accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a
+saddle.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Rev. Wentworth Webster states that in
+Madrid &ldquo;he used to ride with a Russian skin for a saddle
+and <i>without stirrups</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote20"></a><a href="#citation20"
+class="footnote">[20]</a>&nbsp; Letter from &ldquo;A
+School-fellow of <i>Lavengro</i>&rdquo; in <i>The Britannia</i>,
+26th April 1851.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote21a"></a><a href="#citation21a"
+class="footnote">[21a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;It is probable, that had
+I been launched about this time into some agreeable career, that
+of arms, for example, for which, being the son of a soldier, I
+had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I might have thought
+nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any kind; but,
+having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to my
+genius which appeared open to me.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lavengro</i>,
+page 89.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote21b"></a><a href="#citation21b"
+class="footnote">[21b]</a>&nbsp; The Rev. Thomas
+D&rsquo;Eterville, M.A., &ldquo;Poor Old Detterville,&rdquo; as
+the Grammar School boys called him, of Caen University, who
+arrived at Norwich in 1793.&nbsp; He acquired a small fortune by
+teaching languages.&nbsp; There were rumours that he was engaged
+in the contraband trade, an occupation more likely to bring
+fortune than teaching languages.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote21c"></a><a href="#citation21c"
+class="footnote">[21c]</a>&nbsp; Letter from &ldquo;A
+School-fellow of <i>Lavengro</i>&rdquo; in <i>The Britannia</i>,
+26th April 1851.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote22"></a><a href="#citation22"
+class="footnote">[22]</a>&nbsp; It was here, in 1827, that he saw
+the world&rsquo;s greatest trotter, Marshland Shales, and in
+common with other lovers of horses lifted his hat to salute
+&ldquo;the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother
+England.&rdquo;&nbsp; In <i>Lavengro</i> Borrow antedated this
+event by some nine years.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote23"></a><a href="#citation23"
+class="footnote">[23]</a>&nbsp; Manuscript autobiographical notes
+supplied by Borrow to Mr John Longe, 1862.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote24"></a><a href="#citation24"
+class="footnote">[24]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 134.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote25a"></a><a href="#citation25a"
+class="footnote">[25a]</a>&nbsp; This account is taken from a
+letter by &ldquo;A Schoolfellow of <i>Lavengro</i>&rdquo; in
+<i>The Britannia</i>, 26th April 1851.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote25b"></a><a href="#citation25b"
+class="footnote">[25b]</a>&nbsp; In a letter to Borrow, dated
+15th October 1862, John Longe, J.P., of Spixworth Park, Norwich,
+in acknowledging some biographical particulars that Borrow had
+sent him for inclusion in Burton&rsquo;s <i>Antiquities of the
+Royal School of Norwich</i>, wrote:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;You have omitted an important and
+characteristic anecdote of your early days (fifteen years of
+age).&nbsp; When at school you, with Theodosius and Francis W.
+Purland, <i>absented</i> yourself from home and school and took
+up your abode in a certain &lsquo;Robber&rsquo;s Cave&rsquo; at
+Acle, where you <i>resided</i> three days, and once more returned
+to your homes.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="footnote26"></a><a href="#citation26"
+class="footnote">[26]</a>&nbsp; According to the original
+manuscript of <i>Lavengro</i>, it appears that Roger Kerrison, a
+Norwich friend of Borrow&rsquo;s, strongly advised the law as
+&ldquo;an excellent profession . . . for those who never intend
+to follow it.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Life of George Borrow</i>, by Dr
+Knapp, i., 66.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote27a"></a><a href="#citation27a"
+class="footnote">[27a]</a>&nbsp; The Rev. Wm. Drake of Mundesley,
+in a letter which appeared in <i>The Eastern Daily Press</i>,
+22nd September 1892:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo; . . . I was at the Norwich Grammar School
+nine years, from 1820 to 1829, and during that time (probably in
+1824 and 1825) George Borrow was lodging in the Upper Close . .
+.&nbsp; The house was a low old-fashioned building with a garden
+in front of it, and the fact of Borrow&rsquo;s residence there is
+fixed in my memory because I had spent the first five or six
+years of my own life in the same house, from 1811 to 1816 or
+1817.&nbsp; My father occupied it in virtue of his being a minor
+canon in Norwich Cathedral.&nbsp; I remember Borrow very
+distinctly, because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who
+used to gather round the railings of his garden, and occasionally
+he would ask one or two of them to have tea with him.&nbsp; I
+have a faint recollection that he gave us some of our first
+notions of chess, but I am not sure of this.&nbsp; I . . .
+remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, usually
+dressed in black.&nbsp; In person he was not unlike another
+Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different
+notoriety from that which now belongs to Borrow&rsquo;s
+name.&nbsp; I mean John Thurtell, who murdered Mr
+Weare.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="footnote27b"></a><a href="#citation27b"
+class="footnote">[27b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 3.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote28a"></a><a href="#citation28a"
+class="footnote">[28a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 157.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote28b"></a><a href="#citation28b"
+class="footnote">[28b]</a>&nbsp; Forty years later Borrow wrote
+of these days:&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;How much more happy, innocent,
+and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I translated
+Iolo&rsquo;s ode than I am at the present time!&rsquo;&nbsp; Then
+covering my face with my hands I wept like a
+child.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Wild Wales</i>, page 448.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote30a"></a><a href="#citation30a"
+class="footnote">[30a]</a>&nbsp; There is no doubt that Borrow
+became possessed of a copy of <i>Ki&aelig;mpe Viser</i>, first
+collected by Anders Vedel, which may or may not have been given
+to him, with a handshake from the old farmer and a kiss from his
+wife, in recognition of the attention he had shown the pair in
+his official capacity.&nbsp; He refers to the volume repeatedly
+in <i>Lavengro</i>, and narrates how it was presented by some
+shipwrecked Danish mariners to the old couple in acknowledgment
+of their humanity and hospitality.&nbsp; It is, however, most
+likely that he was in error when he stated that &ldquo;in less
+than a month&rdquo; he was able &ldquo;to read the
+book.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lavengro</i>, pages 140&ndash;4.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote30b"></a><a href="#citation30b"
+class="footnote">[30b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 2.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote30c"></a><a href="#citation30c"
+class="footnote">[30c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 374.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote30d"></a><a href="#citation30d"
+class="footnote">[30d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 9.&nbsp;
+There is an interesting letter written to Borrow by the old
+lawyer&rsquo;s son on the appearance of <i>Lavengro</i>, in which
+he says: &ldquo;With tearful eyes, yet smiling lips, I have read
+and re-read your faithful portrait of my dear old father.&nbsp; I
+cannot mistake him&mdash;the creaking shoes, the florid face, the
+polished pate&mdash;all serve as marks of recognition to his
+youngest son!&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote31a"></a><a href="#citation31a"
+class="footnote">[31a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 374.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote31b"></a><a href="#citation31b"
+class="footnote">[31b]</a>&nbsp; During the five years that he
+was articled to Simpson &amp; Rackham, Borrow, according to Dr
+Knapp, studied Welsh, Danish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Gaelic, and
+Armenian.&nbsp; He already had a knowledge of Latin, Greek,
+Irish, French, Italian, and Spanish.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote31c"></a><a href="#citation31c"
+class="footnote">[31c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 235.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote32a"></a><a href="#citation32a"
+class="footnote">[32a]</a>&nbsp; Benjamin Robert Haydon
+(1786&ndash;1846), the historical painter.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote32b"></a><a href="#citation32b"
+class="footnote">[32b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 166.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote33a"></a><a href="#citation33a"
+class="footnote">[33a]</a>&nbsp; William Taylor (1765&ndash;1836)
+was an admirer of German literature and a defender of the French
+Revolution.&nbsp; He is credited with having first inspired his
+friend Southey with a liking for poetry.&nbsp; He travelled much
+abroad, met Goethe, attended the National Assembly debates in
+1790, translated from the German and contributed to a number of
+English periodicals.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote33b"></a><a href="#citation33b"
+class="footnote">[33b]</a>&nbsp; Harriet Martineau&rsquo;s
+<i>Autobiography</i>, 1877.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote33c"></a><a href="#citation33c"
+class="footnote">[33c]</a>&nbsp; Harriet Martineau&rsquo;s
+<i>Autobiography</i>, 1877.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote33d"></a><a href="#citation33d"
+class="footnote">[33d]</a>&nbsp; Letter from &ldquo;A
+School-fellow of <i>Lavengro</i>&rdquo; in The Britannia, 26th
+April 1851.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote34a"></a><a href="#citation34a"
+class="footnote">[34a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoir of Wm. Taylor</i>, by
+J. W. Robberds.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote34b"></a><a href="#citation34b"
+class="footnote">[34b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoir of Wm. Taylor</i>, by
+J. W. Robberds.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote34c"></a><a href="#citation34c"
+class="footnote">[34c]</a>&nbsp; Letter from &ldquo;A
+School-fellow of <i>Lavengro</i>&rdquo; in The Britannia, 26th
+April 1851.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote35a"></a><a href="#citation35a"
+class="footnote">[35a]</a>&nbsp; The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in a
+letter, 17th February 1887.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote35b"></a><a href="#citation35b"
+class="footnote">[35b]</a>&nbsp; Harriet Martineau&rsquo;s
+<i>Autobiography</i>, 1877.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote35c"></a><a href="#citation35c"
+class="footnote">[35c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 355.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote36a"></a><a href="#citation36a"
+class="footnote">[36a]</a>&nbsp; John Bowring, F.R.S.
+(1792&ndash;1872), began life in trade, went to the Peninsula for
+Milford &amp; Co., army contractors, in 1811, set up for himself
+as a merchant, travelled and acquired a number of
+languages.&nbsp; He was ambitious, energetic and shrewd.&nbsp; He
+became editor of <i>The Westminster Review</i> in 1824, and
+LL.D., Gr&ouml;nigen, in 1829.&nbsp; He was sent by the
+Government upon a commercial mission to Belgium, 1833; to Egypt;
+Syria and Turkey, 1837&ndash;8; M.P. for Clyde burghs,
+1835&ndash;7, and for Bolton, 1841; was instrumental in obtaining
+the issue of the florin as a first step toward a decimal system
+of currency; Consul of Canton, 1847; plenipotentiary to China;
+governor, commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral of Hong Kong,
+1854; knighted 1854; established diplomatic and commercial
+relations with Siam, 1855.&nbsp; He published a number of volumes
+of translations from various languages.&nbsp; He died full of
+years and honours in 1872.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote36b"></a><a href="#citation36b"
+class="footnote">[36b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page 368,
+<i>et seq.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote38"></a><a href="#citation38"
+class="footnote">[38]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+177&ndash;8.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote39"></a><a href="#citation39"
+class="footnote">[39]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+179&ndash;80.&nbsp; Captain Borrow was in his sixty-sixth year at
+his death; b. December 1758, d. 28th February 1824.&nbsp; He was
+buried in St Giles churchyard, Norwich, on 4th March 1824.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote40a"></a><a href="#citation40a"
+class="footnote">[40a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+302.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote40b"></a><a href="#citation40b"
+class="footnote">[40b]</a>&nbsp; In his will Captain Borrow
+bequeathed to George his watch and &ldquo;the small
+Portrait,&rdquo; and to John &ldquo;the large Portrait&rdquo; of
+himself; his mother to hold and enjoy them during her
+lifetime.&nbsp; Should Mrs Borrow die or marry again, elaborate
+provision was made for the proper distribution of the property
+between the two sons.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote41"></a><a href="#citation41"
+class="footnote">[41]</a>&nbsp; In particular Borrow believed in
+Ab Gwilym &ldquo;the greatest poetical genius that has appeared
+in Europe since the revival of literature&rdquo; (<i>Wild
+Wales</i>, page 6).&nbsp; &ldquo;The great poet of Nature, the
+contemporary of Chaucer, but worth half-a-dozen of the
+accomplished word-master, the ingenious versifier of Norman and
+Italian Tales.&rdquo; (<i>Wild Wales</i>, page xxviii.).</p>
+<p><a name="footnote42a"></a><a href="#citation42a"
+class="footnote">[42a]</a>&nbsp; Lines to Six-Foot-Three.&nbsp;
+<i>Romantic Ballads</i>.&nbsp; Norwich 1826.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote42b"></a><a href="#citation42b"
+class="footnote">[42b]</a>&nbsp; Sir Richard Phillips
+(1767&ndash;1840) before becoming a publisher was a schoolmaster,
+hosier, stationer, bookseller, and vendor of patent medicines at
+Leicester, where he also founded a newspaper.&nbsp; In 1795 he
+came to London, was sheriff in 1807, and received his knighthood
+a year later.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote43"></a><a href="#citation43"
+class="footnote">[43]</a>&nbsp; It has been urged against
+Borrow&rsquo;s accuracy that Sir Richard Phillips had retired to
+Brighton in 1823, vide <i>The Dictionary of National
+Biography</i>.&nbsp; In the January number (1824) of <i>The
+Monthly Magazine</i> appeared the following paragraph: &ldquo;The
+Editor [Sir Richard Phillips], having retired from his commercial
+engagements and removed from his late house of business in New
+Bridge Street, communications should be addressed to the
+appointed Publishers [Messrs Whittakers]; but personal interviews
+of Correspondents and interested persons may be obtained at his
+private residence in Tavistock Square.&rdquo;&nbsp; This proves
+conclusively that Sir Richard was to be seen in London in the
+early part of 1824.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote44a"></a><a href="#citation44a"
+class="footnote">[44a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Celebrated Trials and
+Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from the Earliest
+Records to the Year</i> 1825, 6 vols., with plates.&nbsp; London,
+1825.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote44b"></a><a href="#citation44b"
+class="footnote">[44b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Proximate Causes of the
+Material Phenomena of the Universe</i>.&nbsp; By Sir Richard
+Phillips.&nbsp; London, 1821.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote45a"></a><a href="#citation45a"
+class="footnote">[45a]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp identified the editor
+as &ldquo;William Gifford, editor of <i>The Quarterly Review</i>
+from 1809 to September 1824.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Life of George Borrow,
+i. 93.)&nbsp; The late Sir Leslie Stephen, however, cast very
+serious doubt upon this identification, himself concluding that
+the editor of <i>The Universal Review</i> was John Carey
+(1756&ndash;1826), whose name was actually associated with an
+edition of Quintilian published in 1822.&nbsp; Carey was a known
+contributor to two of Sir Richard Phillips&rsquo; magazines.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote45b"></a><a href="#citation45b"
+class="footnote">[45b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Monthly Magazine</i>,
+July 1824.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote46a"></a><a href="#citation46a"
+class="footnote">[46a]</a>&nbsp; It appeared in six volumes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote46b"></a><a href="#citation46b"
+class="footnote">[46b]</a>&nbsp; The work when completed
+contained accounts of over 400 trials.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote46c"></a><a href="#citation46c"
+class="footnote">[46c]</a>&nbsp; It appeared on 19th March
+following.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote46d"></a><a href="#citation46d"
+class="footnote">[46d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 210.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote47"></a><a href="#citation47"
+class="footnote">[47]</a>&nbsp; The picture was duly painted in
+the Heroic manner, the artist lending to the ex-mayor, for some
+reason or other, his own unheroically short legs.&nbsp; Haydon
+received his fee of a hundred guineas, and the picture now hangs
+in St Andrew&rsquo;s Hall, Norwich.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote48a"></a><a href="#citation48a"
+class="footnote">[48a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Roger Kerrison to
+John Borrow, 28th May 1824.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote48b"></a><a href="#citation48b"
+class="footnote">[48b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs</i>, <i>C. G.
+Leland</i> 1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote49a"></a><a href="#citation49a"
+class="footnote">[49a]</a>&nbsp; Borrow himself gave the sum as
+&ldquo;eighteen-pence a page.&rdquo;&nbsp; The books themselves
+apparently did not become the property of the
+reviewer.&mdash;<i>The Romany Rye</i>, page 324.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote49b"></a><a href="#citation49b"
+class="footnote">[49b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow says that he demanded
+lives of people who had never lived, and cancelled others that
+Borrow had prepared with great care, because be considered them
+as &ldquo;drugs.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+245&ndash;6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote50a"></a><a href="#citation50a"
+class="footnote">[50a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said
+he, &lsquo;you know nothing of German; I have shown your
+translation of the first chapter of my Philosophy to several
+Germans: it is utterly unintelligible to them.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Did they see the Philosophy?&rsquo; I replied.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;They did, sir, but they did not profess to understand
+English.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;No more do I,&rsquo; I replied,
+&lsquo;if the Philosophy be
+English.&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lavengro</i>, page 254.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote50b"></a><a href="#citation50b"
+class="footnote">[50b]</a>&nbsp; A German edition of the work
+appeared in Stuttgart in 1826.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote52a"></a><a href="#citation52a"
+class="footnote">[52a]</a>&nbsp; This sentence is quoted in
+<i>The Gypsies of Spain</i> as a heading to the section &ldquo;On
+Robber Language,&rdquo; page 335.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote52b"></a><a href="#citation52b"
+class="footnote">[52b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+216&ndash;7.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote52c"></a><a href="#citation52c"
+class="footnote">[52c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 271.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote53a"></a><a href="#citation53a"
+class="footnote">[53a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Faustus</i>: <i>His Life</i>,
+<i>Death and Descent into Hell</i>.&nbsp; Translated from the
+German.&nbsp; London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825, pages
+xxii., 251.&nbsp; Coloured Plate.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote53b"></a><a href="#citation53b"
+class="footnote">[53b]</a>&nbsp; A letter from Borrow to the
+publishers, which Dr Knapp quotes, and dates 15th September 1825,
+but without giving his reasons, was written from Norwich, and
+runs:</p>
+<blockquote><p>Dear Sir,&mdash;</p>
+<p>As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing
+to take thirty copies of <i>Faustus</i> instead of the
+money.&nbsp; The book has been <i>burnt</i> in both the libraries
+here, and, as it has been talked about, I may, perhaps, be able
+to dispose of some in the course of a year or so.&mdash;Yours, G.
+<span class="smcap">Borrow</span>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="footnote55a"></a><a href="#citation55a"
+class="footnote">[55a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 310.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote55b"></a><a href="#citation55b"
+class="footnote">[55b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, Appendix,
+page 303.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote57"></a><a href="#citation57"
+class="footnote">[57]</a>&nbsp; Probably it was only a portion of
+the whole amount of &pound;50 that Borrow drew after the
+completion of the work.&nbsp; One thing is assured, that Sir
+Richard Phillips was too astute a man to pay the whole amount
+before the completion of the work.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote58"></a><a href="#citation58"
+class="footnote">[58]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp&rsquo;s <i>Life of
+George Borrow</i>, i., page 141.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote60"></a><a href="#citation60"
+class="footnote">[60]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp gives the date as the
+22nd; but Mr John Sampson makes the date the 24th, which seems
+more likely to be correct.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote61a"></a><a href="#citation61a"
+class="footnote">[61a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 25th
+March 1899.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote61b"></a><a href="#citation61b"
+class="footnote">[61b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 362.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote62a"></a><a href="#citation62a"
+class="footnote">[62a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 362.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote62b"></a><a href="#citation62b"
+class="footnote">[62b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 374.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote63a"></a><a href="#citation63a"
+class="footnote">[63a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, pages
+431&ndash;2.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote64a"></a><a href="#citation64a"
+class="footnote">[64a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 451.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote64b"></a><a href="#citation64b"
+class="footnote">[64b]</a>&nbsp; Mr Watts-Dunton in a review of
+Dr Knapp&rsquo;s <i>Life of Borrow</i> says that she &ldquo;was
+really an East-Anglian road-girl of the finest type, known to the
+Boswells, and remembered not many years
+ago.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 25th March 1899.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote66a"></a><a href="#citation66a"
+class="footnote">[66a]</a>&nbsp; Mr Petulengro is made to say the
+&ldquo;Flying Tinker.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote66b"></a><a href="#citation66b"
+class="footnote">[66b]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp sees in the account of
+Murtagh&rsquo;s story of his travels Barrow&rsquo;s own
+adventures during 1826&ndash;7, but there is no evidence in
+support of this theory.&nbsp; Another contention of Dr
+Knapp&rsquo;s is more likely correct, viz., that the story of
+Finn MacCoul was that told him by Cronan the Cornish guide during
+the excursion to Land&rsquo;s End.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote67a"></a><a href="#citation67a"
+class="footnote">[67a]</a>&nbsp; It will be remembered that in
+<i>The Romany Rye</i> Borrow takes his horse to the Swan Inn at
+Stafford, meets his postilion friend and is introduced by him to
+the landlord, with the result that he arranges to act as
+&ldquo;general superintendent of the yard,&rdquo; and keep the
+hay and corn account.&nbsp; In return he and his horse are to be
+fed and lodged.&nbsp; Here Borrow encounters Francis Ardry, on
+his way to see the dog and lion fight at Warwick, and the man in
+black.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote67b"></a><a href="#citation67b"
+class="footnote">[67b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 360.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68"></a><a href="#citation68"
+class="footnote">[68]</a>&nbsp; Introduction to <i>The Romany
+Rye</i> in The Little Library, Methuen &amp; Co., Ltd.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote69a"></a><a href="#citation69a"
+class="footnote">[69a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+162.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote69b"></a><a href="#citation69b"
+class="footnote">[69b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+162.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote69c"></a><a href="#citation69c"
+class="footnote">[69c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+50.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote69d"></a><a href="#citation69d"
+class="footnote">[69d]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Let but the will of a
+human being be turned to any particular object, and it is ten to
+one that sooner or later he achieves
+it.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Lavengro</i>, page 16.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote73"></a><a href="#citation73"
+class="footnote">[73]</a>&nbsp; They appeared as <i>Romantic
+Ballads</i>, <i>translated from the Danish</i>, <i>and
+Miscellaneous Pieces</i>, by George Borrow.&nbsp; Norwich.&nbsp;
+S. Wilkin, 1826.&nbsp; Included in the volume were translations
+from the <i>Ki&aelig;mpe Viser</i> and from
+Oehlenschl&aelig;ger.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote74"></a><a href="#citation74"
+class="footnote">[74]</a>&nbsp; <i>Correspondence and Table-Talk
+of B. R. Haydon</i>.&nbsp; London, 1876.&nbsp; The position of
+the letter in the <i>Haydon Journal</i> is between November 1825
+and January 1826; but it is more likely that it was written some
+months later.&nbsp; Unfortunately, Borrow&rsquo;s portrait cannot
+be traced in any of Haydon&rsquo;s pictures.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75a"></a><a href="#citation75a"
+class="footnote">[75a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 9.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75b"></a><a href="#citation75b"
+class="footnote">[75b]</a>&nbsp; There was a tradition that
+Borrow became a foreign correspondent for the <i>Morning
+Herald</i>, and it was in this capacity that he travelled on the
+Continent in 1826&ndash;7; but Dr Knapp clearly showed that such
+a theory was untenable.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75c"></a><a href="#citation75c"
+class="footnote">[75c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 11.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75d"></a><a href="#citation75d"
+class="footnote">[75d]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+219.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75e"></a><a href="#citation75e"
+class="footnote">[75e]</a>&nbsp; Letter to his mother, August
+1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75f"></a><a href="#citation75f"
+class="footnote">[75f]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+172.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote75g"></a><a href="#citation75g"
+class="footnote">[75g]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 31.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76a"></a><a href="#citation76a"
+class="footnote">[76a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+703.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76b"></a><a href="#citation76b"
+class="footnote">[76b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+67.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76c"></a><a href="#citation76c"
+class="footnote">[76c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 19.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76d"></a><a href="#citation76d"
+class="footnote">[76d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Excursions Along the Shores
+of the Mediterranean</i>, by Lt.-Col. E. H. D. E. Napier.&nbsp;
+London, 1842.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76e"></a><a href="#citation76e"
+class="footnote">[76e]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+pages 10&ndash;11.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76f"></a><a href="#citation76f"
+class="footnote">[76f]</a>&nbsp; <i>Patteran</i>, or
+<i>Patrin</i>; a gypsy method of indicating by means of grass,
+leaves, or a mark in the dust to those behind the direction taken
+by the main body.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote76g"></a><a href="#citation76g"
+class="footnote">[76g]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 31.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote77a"></a><a href="#citation77a"
+class="footnote">[77a]</a>&nbsp; If he went abroad, he certainly
+did so without obtaining a passport from the Foreign
+Office.&nbsp; The only passports issued to him between the years
+1825&ndash;1840 were:</p>
+<p class="gutindent">27th July 1833, to St Petersburg;</p>
+<p class="gutindent">2nd November 1836 and 20th December 1838, to
+Spain,</p>
+<p>as far as the F. O. Registers show.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote77b"></a><a href="#citation77b"
+class="footnote">[77b]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp takes Borrow&rsquo;s
+statement, made 29th March 1839, &ldquo;I have been three times
+imprisoned and once on the point of being shot,&rdquo; as
+indicating that he was imprisoned at Pamplona in 1826.&nbsp; The
+imprisonments were September 1837, Finisterre; May 1838, Madrid;
+and another unknown.&nbsp; The occasion on which he was nearly
+shot, which may be assumed to be connected with one of the
+imprisonments (otherwise he was more than &ldquo;once nearly
+shot&rdquo;), was at Finisterre, when he, with his guide, was
+seized as a Carlist spy &ldquo;by the fishermen of the place, who
+determined at first on shooting us.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Letter to Rev.
+A. Brandram, 15th September 1837.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote78"></a><a href="#citation78"
+class="footnote">[78]</a>&nbsp; The incident is given in
+<i>Lavengro</i> under date of 1818, when Marshland Shales was
+fifteen years old.&nbsp; It was not, however, until 1827 that he
+appeared at the Norwich Horse Fair and was put up for
+auction.&nbsp; &ldquo;Such a horse as this we shall never see
+again; a pity that he is so old,&rdquo; was the opinion of those
+who lifted their hats as a token of respect.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote79"></a><a href="#citation79"
+class="footnote">[79]</a>&nbsp; This and subsequent letters from
+Borrow to Sir John Bowring not specially acknowledged have been
+courteously placed at the writer&rsquo;s disposal by Mr Wilfred
+J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring&rsquo;s grandson.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote81"></a><a href="#citation81"
+class="footnote">[81]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Monthly Review</i>,
+March 1830, there appeared among the literary announcements a
+paragraph to the same effect.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote83"></a><a href="#citation83"
+class="footnote">[83]</a>&nbsp; From the original draft of his
+letter of 20th May to Dr Bowring, omitted from the letter
+itself.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote86a"></a><a href="#citation86a"
+class="footnote">[86a]</a>&nbsp; Mr Thomas Seccombe in
+<i>Bookman</i>, February 1902.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote86b"></a><a href="#citation86b"
+class="footnote">[86b]</a>&nbsp; It is only fair to add that Mr
+Seccombe wrote without having seen the correspondence quoted from
+above.&nbsp; His words have been given as representing the
+opinion held by most people regarding the Borrow-Bowring
+dispute.&nbsp; It has been said that Bowring sought to suck
+Borrow&rsquo;s brains; it would appear, however, that Borrow
+strove rather to make every possible use that he could of
+Bowring.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote87a"></a><a href="#citation87a"
+class="footnote">[87a]</a>&nbsp; Preface to <i>The Sleeping
+Bard</i>, 1860.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote87b"></a><a href="#citation87b"
+class="footnote">[87b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote88a"></a><a href="#citation88a"
+class="footnote">[88a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+201.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote88b"></a><a href="#citation88b"
+class="footnote">[88b]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp gives the date as
+during the early days of September, but without mentioning his
+authority.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote90"></a><a href="#citation90"
+class="footnote">[90]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+362.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote91a"></a><a href="#citation91a"
+class="footnote">[91a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 403.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote91b"></a><a href="#citation91b"
+class="footnote">[91b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 446.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote92"></a><a href="#citation92"
+class="footnote">[92]</a>&nbsp; Vicar of Pakefield, in Norfolk,
+1814&ndash;1830; Lowestoft, 1830&ndash;63.&nbsp; He married a
+sister of J. J. Gurney of Earlham Hall.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote93a"></a><a href="#citation93a"
+class="footnote">[93a]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp was in error when he
+credited J. J. Gurney with the introduction.&nbsp; In a letter to
+the Rev. J. Jowett, 10th Feb. 1833, Borrow wrote, &ldquo;I must
+obtain a letter from him [Rev. F. Cunningham] to Joseph
+Gurney.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote93b"></a><a href="#citation93b"
+class="footnote">[93b]</a>&nbsp; T. Pell Platt, formerly the Hon.
+Librarian of the Society; W. Greenfield, its lately deceased
+Editorial Superintendent.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote94a"></a><a href="#citation94a"
+class="footnote">[94a]</a>&nbsp; S. V. Lipovzoff
+(1773&ndash;1841) had studied Chinese and Manchu at the National
+College of Pekin, and had lived in China for 20 years; belonged
+to the Russian Foreign Office (Asiatic section); head of Board of
+Censors for books in Eastern languages printed in Russia:
+Corresponding member of Academy of Sciences for department of
+Oriental Literature and Antiquities.&nbsp; &ldquo;A gentleman in
+the service of the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs, who has
+spent the greater part of an industrious life in Peking and the
+East.&rdquo;&mdash;J. P. H[asfeldt] in the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>,
+5th March 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote94b"></a><a href="#citation94b"
+class="footnote">[94b]</a>&nbsp; Asmus, Simondsen &amp; Co.,
+Sarepta House.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote95"></a><a href="#citation95"
+class="footnote">[95]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s report upon
+Puerot&rsquo;s translation, 23rd September 5th October, 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote96a"></a><a href="#citation96a"
+class="footnote">[96a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Journal of the Gypsy Lore
+Society</i>, vol. i., July 1888 to October 1899.&nbsp; In the MS.
+autobiographical note he wrote later for Mr John Longe, Borrow
+stated that he walked from London to Norwich in November
+1825.&nbsp; He may have performed the journey twice.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote96b"></a><a href="#citation96b"
+class="footnote">[96b]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to the Rev.
+Francis Cunningham, to whom he wrote on his return home,
+<i>circa</i> January, acquainting him with what had transpired in
+London, assuring him that &ldquo;I am returned with a firm
+determination to exert all my energies to attain the desired end
+[the learning of Manchu]; and I hope, Sir, that I shall have the
+benefit of your prayers for my speedy success, for the language
+is one of those which abound with difficulties against which
+human skill and labour, without the special favour of God, are as
+blunt hatchets against the oak; and though I shall almost weary
+Him with my own prayers, I wish not to place much confidence in
+them, being at present very far from a state of grace and
+regeneration, having a hard and stony heart, replete with worldy
+passions, vain wishes, and all kinds of ungodliness; so that it
+would be no wonder if God to prayers addressed from my lips were
+to turn away His head in wrath.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote97"></a><a href="#citation97"
+class="footnote">[97]</a>&nbsp; Borrow always writes Mandchow,
+but, for the sake of uniformity his spelling is corrected
+throughout.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote98"></a><a href="#citation98"
+class="footnote">[98]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. Francis
+Cunningham, <i>circa</i> January 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote99a"></a><a href="#citation99a"
+class="footnote">[99a]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp ascribes the
+translation to Dr Pazos Kanki, who undertook it at the instance
+of the Bishop of Puebla, but gives no authority.&nbsp; Dr Kanki
+was a native of La Paz, Peru, and translated St Luke into his
+native dialect Aimar&aacute;.&nbsp; He had no more connection
+with Mexico than &ldquo;stout Cortez&rdquo; with &ldquo;a peak in
+Darien.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote99b"></a><a href="#citation99b"
+class="footnote">[99b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Life of George Borrow</i>, by
+Dr Knapp, i., page 157.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote100a"></a><a href="#citation100a"
+class="footnote">[100a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th
+March 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote100b"></a><a href="#citation100b"
+class="footnote">[100b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th
+March 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote100c"></a><a href="#citation100c"
+class="footnote">[100c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev J. Jowett, 18th
+March 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote101"></a><a href="#citation101"
+class="footnote">[101]</a>&nbsp; Caroline Fox wrote in her
+<i>Memories of Old Friends</i> (1882): &ldquo;Andrew Brandram
+gave us at breakfast many personal recollections of curious
+people.&nbsp; J. J. Gurney recommended George Borrow to their
+Committee [!]; so he stalked up to London, and they gave him a
+hymn to translate into the Manchu language, and the same to one
+of their own people to translate also.&nbsp; When compared they
+proved to be very different.&nbsp; When put before their reader,
+he had the candour to say that Borrow&rsquo;s was much the better
+of the two.&nbsp; On this they sent him to St Petersburg, got it
+printed [!] and then gave him business in Portugal, which he took
+the liberty greatly to extend, and to do such good as occurred to
+his mind in a highly executive manner [22nd August
+1844].&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote102"></a><a href="#citation102"
+class="footnote">[102]</a>&nbsp; Mr Lipovzoff&rsquo;s unfortunate
+name was a great stumbling-block.&nbsp; Borrow spelt it many
+ways, varying from Lipoffsky to Lipofsoff.&nbsp; It has been
+thought advisable to adopt Mr Lipovzoff&rsquo;s <i>own</i>
+spelling of his name, in order to preserve some uniformity.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote104"></a><a href="#citation104"
+class="footnote">[104]</a>&nbsp; Minutes of the Editorial
+Sub-Committee, 29th July 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote105"></a><a href="#citation105"
+class="footnote">[105]</a>&nbsp; Harriet Martineau&rsquo;s
+<i>Autobiography</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote106"></a><a href="#citation106"
+class="footnote">[106]</a>&nbsp; Letter to his mother, 30th July
+1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote107a"></a><a href="#citation107a"
+class="footnote">[107a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th
+August 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote107b"></a><a href="#citation107b"
+class="footnote">[107b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th
+August 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108a"></a><a href="#citation108a"
+class="footnote">[108a]</a>&nbsp; Borrow is always puzzling when
+concerned with dates.&nbsp; He writes to his mother telling her
+that he left on the 7th, and later gives the date, in a letter to
+Mr Jowett, as 24th July, O.S. (5th August).&nbsp; The 7th seems
+to be the correct date.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108b"></a><a href="#citation108b"
+class="footnote">[108b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to his mother.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote109"></a><a href="#citation109"
+class="footnote">[109]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;If I had my choice of all
+the cities of the world to live in, I would choose Saint
+Petersburg.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Wild Wales</i>, page 665.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote110"></a><a href="#citation110"
+class="footnote">[110]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett,
+undated: received 26th September 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote111"></a><a href="#citation111"
+class="footnote">[111]</a>&nbsp; In a letter dated 3rd/15th
+August, the Prince wrote to Mr Venning at Norwich, &ldquo;On
+returning thence, your son came to introduce to me the Englishman
+who has come over here about the translation of the Manchu Bible,
+and who brought with him your letter.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Memorials
+of John Venning</i>, 1862.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote112a"></a><a href="#citation112a"
+class="footnote">[112a]</a>&nbsp; Best known for his Grammar,
+written in German.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote112b"></a><a href="#citation112b"
+class="footnote">[112b]</a>&nbsp; Nephew of J. C Adelung, the
+philologist.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote113"></a><a href="#citation113"
+class="footnote">[113]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett,
+undated, but received 26th September 1833.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote114a"></a><a href="#citation114a"
+class="footnote">[114a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th
+January/1st February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote114b"></a><a href="#citation114b"
+class="footnote">[114b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th
+January/1st February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote114c"></a><a href="#citation114c"
+class="footnote">[114c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th
+January/1st February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote115a"></a><a href="#citation115a"
+class="footnote">[115a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th
+January/1st February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote115b"></a><a href="#citation115b"
+class="footnote">[115b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th
+January/1st February 1834.&nbsp; Probably this means the New
+Testament only, as there was no intention of printing the Old
+Testament at that date.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote116"></a><a href="#citation116"
+class="footnote">[116]</a>&nbsp; In a letter to his mother, dated
+1st/13th Feb., Borrow writes: &ldquo;The Bible Society depended
+upon Dr Schmidt and the Russian translator Lipovzoff to manage
+this business [the obtaining of the official sanction], but
+neither the one nor the other would give himself the least
+trouble about the matter, or give me the slightest advice how to
+proceed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote117"></a><a href="#citation117"
+class="footnote">[117]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett,
+4th/16th February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote118a"></a><a href="#citation118a"
+class="footnote">[118a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote118b"></a><a href="#citation118b"
+class="footnote">[118b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote118c"></a><a href="#citation118c"
+class="footnote">[118c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. F.
+Cunningham, 17th/29th Nov. 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote119"></a><a href="#citation119"
+class="footnote">[119]</a>&nbsp; 1st/13th May 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote121a"></a><a href="#citation121a"
+class="footnote">[121a]</a>&nbsp; This spelling is adopted
+throughout for uniformity.&nbsp; Borrow writes Chiachta.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote121b"></a><a href="#citation121b"
+class="footnote">[121b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+4th/16th February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote121c"></a><a href="#citation121c"
+class="footnote">[121c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+4th/16th February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote121d"></a><a href="#citation121d"
+class="footnote">[121d]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+4th/16th February 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote123a"></a><a href="#citation123a"
+class="footnote">[123a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+15th/23rd April 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote123b"></a><a href="#citation123b"
+class="footnote">[123b]</a>&nbsp; In a letter dated 1st/13th May
+1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote123c"></a><a href="#citation123c"
+class="footnote">[123c]</a>&nbsp; A suburb of Norwich.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote126a"></a><a href="#citation126a"
+class="footnote">[126a]</a>&nbsp; Mrs Borrow eventually received
+from Allday Kerrison &pound;50, 11s. 1d., the amount realised
+from the sale of John&rsquo;s effects.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote126b"></a><a href="#citation126b"
+class="footnote">[126b]</a>&nbsp; This was partly on account of
+the Bible Society for storage purposes.&nbsp; In the minutes of
+the Sub-Committee, 18th August 1834, there is a record of an
+advice having been received from Borrow that he had drawn
+&ldquo;for 400 Roubles for one year&rsquo;s rent in advance for a
+suitable place of deposit for the Society&rsquo;s paper, etc.,
+part of which had been received.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote126c"></a><a href="#citation126c"
+class="footnote">[126c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to John P. Hasfeldt from
+Madrid, 29th April 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote129"></a><a href="#citation129"
+class="footnote">[129]</a>&nbsp; In the minutes of the
+Sub-Committee, 18th August (N.S.) 1834, there is a note of Borrow
+having drawn 210 roubles &ldquo;to pay for certain articles
+required to complete the Society&rsquo;s fount of Manchu
+type.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote132a"></a><a href="#citation132a"
+class="footnote">[132a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;My letters to my private
+friends have always been written during gleams of sunshine, and
+traced in the characters of hope.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote132b"></a><a href="#citation132b"
+class="footnote">[132b]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;You may easily judge of
+the state of book-binding here by the fact that for every volume,
+great or small, printed in Russia, there is a duty of 30 copecks,
+or threepence, to be paid to the Russian Government, if the said
+volume be exported unbound.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote135a"></a><a href="#citation135a"
+class="footnote">[135a]</a>&nbsp; John Hasfeldt.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote135b"></a><a href="#citation135b"
+class="footnote">[135b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Mr J. Tarn, Treasurer
+of the Bible Society, 15th/27th December 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote136"></a><a href="#citation136"
+class="footnote">[136]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. Joseph
+Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote138a"></a><a href="#citation138a"
+class="footnote">[138a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to the Rev.
+J. Jowett, 20th Feb./4th March 1834.&nbsp; In his Report on
+Puerot&rsquo;s translation, received on 23rd Sep. 1835, Borrow
+writes: &ldquo;To translate literally, or even closely, according
+to the common acceptation of the term, into the Manchu language
+is of all impossibilities the greatest; partly from the
+grammatical structure of the language, and partly from the
+abundance of its idioms.&rdquo;&nbsp; The lack of &ldquo;some of
+those conjunctions generally considered as indispensable&rdquo;
+was one of the chief difficulties.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote138b"></a><a href="#citation138b"
+class="footnote">[138b]</a>&nbsp; Letter, 31st Dec. 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote139a"></a><a href="#citation139a"
+class="footnote">[139a]</a>&nbsp; Letter, 31st Dec. 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote139b"></a><a href="#citation139b"
+class="footnote">[139b]</a>&nbsp; Letter, 20th Feb./4th Mar.
+1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote139c"></a><a href="#citation139c"
+class="footnote">[139c]</a>&nbsp; Letter, 20th Feb./4th Mar.
+1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote139d"></a><a href="#citation139d"
+class="footnote">[139d]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+3rd/15th May 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote139e"></a><a href="#citation139e"
+class="footnote">[139e]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote140"></a><a href="#citation140"
+class="footnote">[140]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+3rd/15th May 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote141a"></a><a href="#citation141a"
+class="footnote">[141a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Mr J. Tarn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote141b"></a><a href="#citation141b"
+class="footnote">[141b]</a>&nbsp; None of these translations ever
+appeared, owing to the refusal of the Russian Government to grant
+permission.&nbsp; John Hasfeldt wrote to Borrow, June 1837,
+apropos of the project: &ldquo;You know the Russian priesthood
+cannot suffer foreigners to mix themselves up in the affairs of
+the Orthodox Church.&nbsp; The same would have happened to the
+New Testament itself.&nbsp; You may certainly print in the
+Manchu-Tartar or what the d-l you choose, only not in Russian,
+for that the long-bearded he-goats do not like.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote142a"></a><a href="#citation142a"
+class="footnote">[142a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. F. Cunningham,
+27th/29th Nov. 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote142b"></a><a href="#citation142b"
+class="footnote">[142b]</a>&nbsp; The principal interest in
+Targum lies in the number of languages and dialects from which
+the poems are translated; for it must be confessed that
+Borrow&rsquo;s verse translations have no very great claim to
+attention on account of their literary merit.&nbsp; The
+&ldquo;Thirty Languages&rdquo; were, in reality, thirty-five,
+viz.:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Ancient British.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gaelic.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Portuguese.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Danish.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>German.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Proven&ccedil;al</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Irish.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Greek.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Romany.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Norse.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Hebrew.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Russian.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Anglo-Saxon.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Irish.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Spanish.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Arabic.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Italian.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Suabian.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Cambrian British.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Latin.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Swedish.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Chinese.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Malo-Russian.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tartar.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Danish.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Manchu.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tibetan.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Dutch.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Modern Greek.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Turkish.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Finnish.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Persian.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Welsh.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>French.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Polish.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote143a"></a><a href="#citation143a"
+class="footnote">[143a]</a>&nbsp; A copy was presented by John
+Hasfeldt to Pushkin, who expressed in a note to Borrow his
+gratification at receiving the book, and his regret at not having
+met the translator.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote143b"></a><a href="#citation143b"
+class="footnote">[143b]</a>&nbsp; These two volumes were printed
+in one and published at a later date by Messrs Jarrold &amp; Son,
+London &amp; Norwich.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote143c"></a><a href="#citation143c"
+class="footnote">[143c]</a>&nbsp; 5th March 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote143d"></a><a href="#citation143d"
+class="footnote">[143d]</a>&nbsp; From a letter to Borrow from Dr
+Gordon Hake.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote143e"></a><a href="#citation143e"
+class="footnote">[143e]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s Report to the
+Committee of the Bible Society, received 23rd September 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote144a"></a><a href="#citation144a"
+class="footnote">[144a]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s Report to the
+Committee of the Bible Society, received 23rd September 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote144b"></a><a href="#citation144b"
+class="footnote">[144b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote145a"></a><a href="#citation145a"
+class="footnote">[145a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Kak my tut kamasa</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote145b"></a><a href="#citation145b"
+class="footnote">[145b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s Report to the
+Committee of the Bible Society, received 23rd September
+1835.&nbsp; He gives an account of the episode in <i>The Gypsies
+of Spain</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote146a"></a><a href="#citation146a"
+class="footnote">[146a]</a>&nbsp; The Thirty-First Annual
+Report.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote146b"></a><a href="#citation146b"
+class="footnote">[146b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 5th
+March 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote147"></a><a href="#citation147"
+class="footnote">[147]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s Report to the
+Committee of the Bible Society, received 23rd September 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote148"></a><a href="#citation148"
+class="footnote">[148]</a>&nbsp; 18th/30th June 1834.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote149"></a><a href="#citation149"
+class="footnote">[149]</a>&nbsp; 27th October 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote150a"></a><a href="#citation150a"
+class="footnote">[150a]</a>&nbsp; His salary was paid
+continuously, and included the period of rest between the Russian
+and Peninsula expeditions.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote150b"></a><a href="#citation150b"
+class="footnote">[150b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 26th
+October 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote150c"></a><a href="#citation150c"
+class="footnote">[150c]</a>&nbsp; In a letter dated 27th October
+1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote151"></a><a href="#citation151"
+class="footnote">[151]</a>&nbsp; Minutes of the General Committee
+of the Bible Society, 2nd Nov. 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote153"></a><a href="#citation153"
+class="footnote">[153]</a>&nbsp; In his first letter from Spain,
+addressed to Rev. J. Jowett (30th Nov. 1835), Borrow tells of
+this incident in practically the same words as it appears in
+<i>The Bible in Spain</i>, pages 1&ndash;3.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote154a"></a><a href="#citation154a"
+class="footnote">[154a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,
+pages 73&ndash;4.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote154b"></a><a href="#citation154b"
+class="footnote">[154b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett,
+30th Nov. 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote155a"></a><a href="#citation155a"
+class="footnote">[155a]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp states that upon this
+expedition he was accompanied by Captain John Rowland Heyland of
+the 35th Regiment of Foot, whose acquaintance he had made on the
+voyage out.&mdash;<i>Life of George Borrow</i>, i., page 234.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote155b"></a><a href="#citation155b"
+class="footnote">[155b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 30th
+Nov. 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote155c"></a><a href="#citation155c"
+class="footnote">[155c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+15th Dec. 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote159a"></a><a href="#citation159a"
+class="footnote">[159a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Dr Bowring, 26th
+December 1835.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote159b"></a><a href="#citation159b"
+class="footnote">[159b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+67.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote159c"></a><a href="#citation159c"
+class="footnote">[159c]</a>&nbsp; Dated 8th and 10th January
+1836, giving an account of his journey to Evora.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote160a"></a><a href="#citation160a"
+class="footnote">[160a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+78.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote160b"></a><a href="#citation160b"
+class="footnote">[160b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,
+pages 77&ndash;8.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote161a"></a><a href="#citation161a"
+class="footnote">[161a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+87.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote161b"></a><a href="#citation161b"
+class="footnote">[161b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+88.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote162a"></a><a href="#citation162a"
+class="footnote">[162a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+99.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote162b"></a><a href="#citation162b"
+class="footnote">[162b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 191.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote162c"></a><a href="#citation162c"
+class="footnote">[162c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,
+pages 97&ndash;8.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote162d"></a><a href="#citation162d"
+class="footnote">[162d]</a>&nbsp; Not 5th Jan., as given in
+<i>The Bible in Spain</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote162e"></a><a href="#citation162e"
+class="footnote">[162e]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+103.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote164a"></a><a href="#citation164a"
+class="footnote">[164a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,
+Preface, page vi.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote164b"></a><a href="#citation164b"
+class="footnote">[164b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 179.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote164c"></a><a href="#citation164c"
+class="footnote">[164c]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Throughout my life the
+Gypsy race has always had a peculiar interest for me.&nbsp;
+Indeed I can remember no period when the mere mention of the name
+Gypsy did not awaken within me feelings hard to be
+described.&nbsp; I cannot account for this&mdash;I merely state
+it as a fact.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>, page
+1.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote165a"></a><a href="#citation165a"
+class="footnote">[165a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+pages 184&ndash;5.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote165b"></a><a href="#citation165b"
+class="footnote">[165b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 186.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote166a"></a><a href="#citation166a"
+class="footnote">[166a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+109.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote166b"></a><a href="#citation166b"
+class="footnote">[166b]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp states that the
+wedding described in <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i> took place
+during these three days.&mdash;<i>Life of George Borrow</i>, by
+Dr Knapp, i., page 242.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote167a"></a><a href="#citation167a"
+class="footnote">[167a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+162.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote167b"></a><a href="#citation167b"
+class="footnote">[167b]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;I am not partial to
+Madrid, its climate, or anything it can offer, if I except its
+unequalled gallery of pictures.&rdquo;&mdash;Letter to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 22nd March 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote167c"></a><a href="#citation167c"
+class="footnote">[167c]</a>&nbsp; 24th February 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote167d"></a><a href="#citation167d"
+class="footnote">[167d]</a>&nbsp; Letter to his mother, 24th
+February 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote168a"></a><a href="#citation168a"
+class="footnote">[168a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to his mother, 24th
+February 1836</p>
+<p><a name="footnote168b"></a><a href="#citation168b"
+class="footnote">[168b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote168c"></a><a href="#citation168c"
+class="footnote">[168c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote168d"></a><a href="#citation168d"
+class="footnote">[168d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote169"></a><a href="#citation169"
+class="footnote">[169]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+173.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote170a"></a><a href="#citation170a"
+class="footnote">[170a]</a>&nbsp; Born 1790, commissariat
+contractor in 1808 during the French invasion, he was of great
+assistance to his country.&nbsp; In 1823 he fled from the
+despotism of Ferdinand VII.; he returned twelve years later as
+Minister of Finance under Toreno.&nbsp; He resigned in 1837, was
+again in power in 1841, and died in 1853.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote170b"></a><a href="#citation170b"
+class="footnote">[170b]</a>&nbsp; George William Villiers,
+afterwards 4th Earl of Clarendon, born 12th Jan. 1800; created
+G.C.B., 19th Oct. 1837; succeeded his uncle as Earl of Clarendon,
+1838; K.G., 1849.&nbsp; He twice refused a Marquisate, also the
+Governor-generalship of India.&nbsp; He refused the Order of the
+Black Eagle (Prussia) and the Legion of Honour.&nbsp; Lord Privy
+Seal, 1839&ndash;41; Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
+1840&ndash;1, 1864&ndash;5; Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland,
+1847&ndash;52.&nbsp; Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
+1853&ndash;8, 1865&ndash;6, 1868&ndash;9.&nbsp; Died 27th June
+1870.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote171"></a><a href="#citation171"
+class="footnote">[171]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+165.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote173a"></a><a href="#citation173a"
+class="footnote">[173a]</a>&nbsp; Extracts accompanying letter to
+Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd March 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote173b"></a><a href="#citation173b"
+class="footnote">[173b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote173c"></a><a href="#citation173c"
+class="footnote">[173c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote174"></a><a href="#citation174"
+class="footnote">[174]</a>&nbsp; Letter of 22nd March 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175a"></a><a href="#citation175a"
+class="footnote">[175a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+22nd May 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175b"></a><a href="#citation175b"
+class="footnote">[175b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+22nd May 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175c"></a><a href="#citation175c"
+class="footnote">[175c]</a>&nbsp; Letter dated 6th April
+1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175d"></a><a href="#citation175d"
+class="footnote">[175d]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+20th April 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175e"></a><a href="#citation175e"
+class="footnote">[175e]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote176a"></a><a href="#citation176a"
+class="footnote">[176a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+20th April 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote176b"></a><a href="#citation176b"
+class="footnote">[176b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s destitution was entirely accidental, and
+immediately that his letter was received at Earl Street the sum
+of twenty-five pounds was forwarded to him.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote177"></a><a href="#citation177"
+class="footnote">[177]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th
+April 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote178a"></a><a href="#citation178a"
+class="footnote">[178a]</a>&nbsp; Letter of 9th May 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote178b"></a><a href="#citation178b"
+class="footnote">[178b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+30th June 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote178c"></a><a href="#citation178c"
+class="footnote">[178c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote178d"></a><a href="#citation178d"
+class="footnote">[178d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote179a"></a><a href="#citation179a"
+class="footnote">[179a]</a>&nbsp; The Duke&rsquo;s secretary who
+had shown so profound a respect for the decrees of the Council of
+Trent.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote179b"></a><a href="#citation179b"
+class="footnote">[179b]</a>&nbsp; Late of the Royal Navy, who for
+sheer love of the work distributed the Scriptures in Spain, and
+who later was to come into grave conflict with Borrow.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote180"></a><a href="#citation180"
+class="footnote">[180]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th
+June 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote181a"></a><a href="#citation181a"
+class="footnote">[181a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 7th
+July 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote181b"></a><a href="#citation181b"
+class="footnote">[181b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote181c"></a><a href="#citation181c"
+class="footnote">[181c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote181d"></a><a href="#citation181d"
+class="footnote">[181d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote182a"></a><a href="#citation182a"
+class="footnote">[182a]</a>&nbsp; Dr Usoz was a Spaniard of noble
+birth, a pupil of Mezzofanti, and one of the editors of <i>El
+Espa&ntilde;ol</i>.&nbsp; He occupied the chair of Hebrew at
+Valladolid.&nbsp; He was deeply interested in the work of the
+Bible Society, and was fully convinced that in nothing but the
+reading of the Bible could the liberty in Spain be found.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote182b"></a><a href="#citation182b"
+class="footnote">[182b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+25th December 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote182c"></a><a href="#citation182c"
+class="footnote">[182c]</a>&nbsp; La Granja was a royal palace
+some miles out of Madrid, to which the Queen Regent had
+withdrawn.&nbsp; On the night of 12th August, two sergeants had
+forced their way into the Queen Regent&rsquo;s presence, and
+successfully demanded that she should restore the Constitution of
+1812.&nbsp; This incident was called the Revolution of La
+Granja.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote183a"></a><a href="#citation183a"
+class="footnote">[183a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,
+pages 197&ndash;206.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote183b"></a><a href="#citation183b"
+class="footnote">[183b]</a>&nbsp; 30th July 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote183c"></a><a href="#citation183c"
+class="footnote">[183c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+10th August 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote184"></a><a href="#citation184"
+class="footnote">[184]</a>&nbsp; 17th October 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote185a"></a><a href="#citation185a"
+class="footnote">[185a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>,
+pages 209&ndash;11.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote185b"></a><a href="#citation185b"
+class="footnote">[185b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 211.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote186"></a><a href="#citation186"
+class="footnote">[186]</a>&nbsp; The Rev. Wentworth Webster in
+<i>The Journal of Gypsy Lore Society</i>, vol. i., July
+1888&ndash;Oct. 1889.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote187"></a><a href="#citation187"
+class="footnote">[187]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Rev. A. Brandram,
+6th Jan. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote188"></a><a href="#citation188"
+class="footnote">[188]</a>&nbsp; Isidor Just Severin, Baron
+Taylor (1789&ndash;1879), was a naturalised Frenchman and a great
+traveller.&nbsp; In 1821 he, with Charles Nodier, wrote the play
+<i>Bertram</i>, which was produced with great success at Paris in
+1821.&nbsp; Later he was made Commissaire du Th&eacute;&acirc;tre
+Fran&ccedil;ais, and authorised the production of <i>Hernani</i>
+and <i>Le Mariage de Figaro</i>.&nbsp; Later he became
+Inspecteur-G&eacute;n&eacute;ral des Beaux Arts (1838).&nbsp;
+When seen by Borrow in Seville he was collecting Spanish pictures
+for Louis-Philippe.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote189"></a><a href="#citation189"
+class="footnote">[189]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+221.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote190a"></a><a href="#citation190a"
+class="footnote">[190a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+237.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote190b"></a><a href="#citation190b"
+class="footnote">[190b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+26th Dec. 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote191a"></a><a href="#citation191a"
+class="footnote">[191a]</a>&nbsp; In letter to the Rev. A.
+Brandram (26th Dec. 1836), Borrow gives the quantity of brandy as
+two bottles.&nbsp; This letter was written within a few hours of
+the act and is more likely to be accurate.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote191b"></a><a href="#citation191b"
+class="footnote">[191b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+254.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote191c"></a><a href="#citation191c"
+class="footnote">[191c]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s letter to Rev.
+A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote191d"></a><a href="#citation191d"
+class="footnote">[191d]</a>&nbsp; He was authorised to purchase
+600 reams at 60 <i>reals</i> per ream, whereas he paid only 45
+<i>reals</i> a ream for a paper &ldquo;better,&rdquo; he wrote,
+&ldquo;than I could have purchased at 70.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote192a"></a><a href="#citation192a"
+class="footnote">[192a]</a>&nbsp; Author of <i>La Historia de las
+C&oacute;rtes de Espa&ntilde;a durante el Siglo XIX</i>. (1885)
+and other works of a political character.&nbsp; He was also
+proprietor and editor of <i>El Espa&ntilde;ol</i>.&nbsp; Isturitz
+had intended raising Borr&eacute;go to the position of minister
+of finance when his government suddenly terminated.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote192b"></a><a href="#citation192b"
+class="footnote">[192b]</a>&nbsp; General report prepared by
+Borrow in the Autumn of 1838 for the General Committee of the
+Bible Society detailing his labours in Spain.&nbsp; This was
+subsequently withdrawn, probably on account of its somewhat
+aggressive tone.&nbsp; In the course of this work the document
+will be referred to as <i>General Report</i>,
+<i>Withdrawn</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote192c"></a><a href="#citation192c"
+class="footnote">[192c]</a>&nbsp; To Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan.
+1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote193"></a><a href="#citation193"
+class="footnote">[193]</a>&nbsp; To Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan.
+1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote194a"></a><a href="#citation194a"
+class="footnote">[194a]</a>&nbsp; 27th January 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote194b"></a><a href="#citation194b"
+class="footnote">[194b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+27th Feb. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195a"></a><a href="#citation195a"
+class="footnote">[195a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Rev. A. Brandram to
+Borrow, 22nd March 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195b"></a><a href="#citation195b"
+class="footnote">[195b]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 25th Dec. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195c"></a><a href="#citation195c"
+class="footnote">[195c]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 27th February 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195d"></a><a href="#citation195d"
+class="footnote">[195d]</a>&nbsp; Rev. Wentworth Webster in
+<i>The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society</i>, vol. i., July
+1888&ndash;October 1889.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote196a"></a><a href="#citation196a"
+class="footnote">[196a]</a>&nbsp; <i>General Report</i>
+withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote196b"></a><a href="#citation196b"
+class="footnote">[196b]</a>&nbsp; <i>General Report</i>,
+withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote196c"></a><a href="#citation196c"
+class="footnote">[196c]</a>&nbsp; Borrow to Richard Ford.&nbsp;
+<i>Letters of Richard Ford</i> 1797&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Ed. R. E.
+Prothero.&nbsp; Murray, 1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote197a"></a><a href="#citation197a"
+class="footnote">[197a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 7th June 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote197b"></a><a href="#citation197b"
+class="footnote">[197b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote197c"></a><a href="#citation197c"
+class="footnote">[197c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote198"></a><a href="#citation198"
+class="footnote">[198]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to the Rev.
+A. Brandram, 27th February 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote199"></a><a href="#citation199"
+class="footnote">[199]</a>&nbsp; As the method adopted was
+practically the same in every town he visited, no further
+reference need be made to the fact, and in the brief survey of
+the journeys that Borrow himself has described so graphically,
+only incidents that tend to throw light upon his character or
+disposition, and such as he has not recorded himself, will be
+dealt with.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote200a"></a><a href="#citation200a"
+class="footnote">[200a]</a>&nbsp; Via Pitiegua, Pedroso, Medina
+del Campo, Due&ntilde;as Palencia.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suffered dreadfully during this journey,&rdquo;
+Borrow wrote, &ldquo;as did likewise my man and horses, for the
+heat was the fiercest which I have ever known, and resembled the
+breath of the simoon or the air from an oven&rsquo;s
+mouth.&rdquo;&mdash;Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 5th July
+1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote200b"></a><a href="#citation200b"
+class="footnote">[200b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 5th
+July 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote201"></a><a href="#citation201"
+class="footnote">[201]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, pages
+352&ndash;4.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote202"></a><a href="#citation202"
+class="footnote">[202]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+364.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote203a"></a><a href="#citation203a"
+class="footnote">[203a]</a>&nbsp; This is the story particularly
+referred to by Richard Ford in report upon the MS. of <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote203b"></a><a href="#citation203b"
+class="footnote">[203b]</a>&nbsp; In the Report to the General
+Committee of the Bible Society on Past and Future Operations in
+Spain, November 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote204a"></a><a href="#citation204a"
+class="footnote">[204a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+409.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote204b"></a><a href="#citation204b"
+class="footnote">[204b]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Bible in Spain</i>
+Borrow says he was arrested on suspicion of being the Pretender
+himself; but in a letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th September
+1837, he says that he and his guide were seized as Carlist spies,
+and makes no mention of Don Carlos.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote205a"></a><a href="#citation205a"
+class="footnote">[205a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+15th September 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote205b"></a><a href="#citation205b"
+class="footnote">[205b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+29th September 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote205c"></a><a href="#citation205c"
+class="footnote">[205c]</a>&nbsp; By way of Ferrol, Novales,
+Santa Mar&iacute;a, Coisa d&rsquo;Ouro, Viviero, Foz,
+Rivad&eacute;o, Castro P&oacute;l, Nav&aacute;ia, Luarca, the
+Caneiro, Las Bellotas, Soto Lui&ntilde;o, Muros, Avil&eacute;s
+and Gijon.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote205d"></a><a href="#citation205d"
+class="footnote">[205d]</a>&nbsp; To the Rev. A. Brandram, 29th
+Sept. 1837.&nbsp; The story also appears in <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i>, pages 479&ndash;480.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote206"></a><a href="#citation206"
+class="footnote">[206]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s original idea in
+printing only the New Testament was that in Spain and Portugal he
+deemed it better not to publish the whole Bible, at least not
+&ldquo;until the inhabitants become christianised,&rdquo; because
+the Old Testament &ldquo;is so infinitely entertaining to the
+carnal man,&rdquo; and he feared that in consequence the New
+Testament would be little read.&nbsp; Later he saw his mistake,
+and was constantly asking for Bibles, for which there was a big
+demand.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote207"></a><a href="#citation207"
+class="footnote">[207]</a>&nbsp; To Rev. A. Brandram, 29th
+September 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote208"></a><a href="#citation208"
+class="footnote">[208]</a>&nbsp; George Dawson Flinter, an
+Irishman in the service of Queen Isabella II., who fought for his
+adopted Queen with courage and distinction, and eventually
+committed suicide as a protest against the monstrously unjust
+conspiracy to bring about his ruin, September 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote209a"></a><a href="#citation209a"
+class="footnote">[209a]</a>&nbsp; By way of Ontan&eacute;da,
+O&ntilde;a, B&uacute;rgos, Vallodolid, Guadarrama.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote209b"></a><a href="#citation209b"
+class="footnote">[209b]</a>&nbsp; <i>General Report</i>,
+withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote209c"></a><a href="#citation209c"
+class="footnote">[209c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 1st
+November 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote210"></a><a href="#citation210"
+class="footnote">[210]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+507.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote211"></a><a href="#citation211"
+class="footnote">[211]</a>&nbsp; He was created G.C.B. 19th Oct.
+1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote212a"></a><a href="#citation212a"
+class="footnote">[212a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to the Rev.
+A. Brandram, 20th Nov. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote212b"></a><a href="#citation212b"
+class="footnote">[212b]</a>&nbsp; To the Rev. A. Brandram, 20th
+Nov. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote213a"></a><a href="#citation213a"
+class="footnote">[213a]</a>&nbsp; <i>History of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society</i>, W. Canton.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote213b"></a><a href="#citation213b"
+class="footnote">[213b]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 30th March 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote214a"></a><a href="#citation214a"
+class="footnote">[214a]</a>&nbsp; Mr Brandram wrote to Graydon
+(12th April 1838): &ldquo;Mr Rule being at Madrid and having
+conferred with Mr Borrow and Sir George Villiers, it appears to
+have struck them all three that a visit on your part to Cadiz and
+Seville could not at present be advantageous to our
+cause.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote214b"></a><a href="#citation214b"
+class="footnote">[214b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+20th November 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote214c"></a><a href="#citation214c"
+class="footnote">[214c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+28th November 1837.&nbsp; The comment on the badness of the
+London edition had reference to the translation, which Borrow had
+condemned with great vigour; he subsequently admitted that he had
+been too sweeping in his disapproval.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote215a"></a><a href="#citation215a"
+class="footnote">[215a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+28th November 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote215b"></a><a href="#citation215b"
+class="footnote">[215b]</a>&nbsp; Sir George Villiers to Viscount
+Palmerston, 5th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote215c"></a><a href="#citation215c"
+class="footnote">[215c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote216a"></a><a href="#citation216a"
+class="footnote">[216a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 241.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote216b"></a><a href="#citation216b"
+class="footnote">[216b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+25th Dec. 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote216c"></a><a href="#citation216c"
+class="footnote">[216c]</a>&nbsp; These Bibles fetched, the large
+edition (Borrow wrote &ldquo;I would give my right hand for a
+thousand of them&rdquo;) 17s. each, and the smaller 7s. each,
+whereas the New Testaments fetched about half-a crown.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote216d"></a><a href="#citation216d"
+class="footnote">[216d]</a>&nbsp; Letter dated 16th Jan.
+1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote217a"></a><a href="#citation217a"
+class="footnote">[217a]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Bible in Spain</i> he
+says &ldquo;the greater part,&rdquo; in <i>The Gypsies of
+Spain</i> he says &ldquo;the whole.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote217b"></a><a href="#citation217b"
+class="footnote">[217b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 275.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote218a"></a><a href="#citation218a"
+class="footnote">[218a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 280.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote218b"></a><a href="#citation218b"
+class="footnote">[218b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote218c"></a><a href="#citation218c"
+class="footnote">[218c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 282.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote219a"></a><a href="#citation219a"
+class="footnote">[219a]</a>&nbsp; On 25th December 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote219b"></a><a href="#citation219b"
+class="footnote">[219b]</a>&nbsp; It is strange that Borrow
+should insist that he had Sir George Villiers&rsquo; approval;
+for Sir George himself has clearly stated that he strongly
+opposed the opening of the <i>Despacho</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote220"></a><a href="#citation220"
+class="footnote">[220]</a>&nbsp; 15th January 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote221a"></a><a href="#citation221a"
+class="footnote">[221a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+30th March 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote221b"></a><a href="#citation221b"
+class="footnote">[221b]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>
+Borrow gives the number as 500 (page 281); but the Resolution,
+confirmed 20th March 1837, authorised the printing of 250 copies
+only.&nbsp; In all probability the figures given by Borrow are
+correct, as in a letter to Mr Brandram, dated 18th July 1839, he
+gives his unsold stock of books at Madrid as:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Of Testaments</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">962</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Of Gospels in the Gypsy Tongue</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">286</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Of ditto in Basque</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">394</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><a name="footnote222a"></a><a href="#citation222a"
+class="footnote">[222a]</a>&nbsp; Original Report, withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote222b"></a><a href="#citation222b"
+class="footnote">[222b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+pages 280&ndash;1.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote224a"></a><a href="#citation224a"
+class="footnote">[224a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 17th March 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote224b"></a><a href="#citation224b"
+class="footnote">[224b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The History of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society</i>, by W. Canton.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote225"></a><a href="#citation225"
+class="footnote">[225]</a>&nbsp; Mr Canton writes in <i>The
+History of the British and Foreign Bible Society</i>: &ldquo;His
+[Graydon&rsquo;s] opportunity was indeed unprecedented; and had
+he but more accurately appreciated the unstable political
+conditions of the country, the susceptibilities, suspicious and
+precarious tenure of ministers and placemen, the temper of the
+priesthood, their sensitive attachment to certain tenets of their
+faith, and their enormous influence over the civil power, there
+is reason to believe that he might have brought his mission to a
+happier and more permanent issue.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote226"></a><a href="#citation226"
+class="footnote">[226]</a>&nbsp; [11th] May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote227a"></a><a href="#citation227a"
+class="footnote">[227a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from George Borrow to
+Rev. A. Brandram [11th] May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote227b"></a><a href="#citation227b"
+class="footnote">[227b]</a>&nbsp; 23rd April 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote227c"></a><a href="#citation227c"
+class="footnote">[227c]</a>&nbsp; The Marin episode is
+amazing.&nbsp; The object of distributing the Scriptures was to
+enlighten men&rsquo;s minds and bring about conversion, and a
+priest was a distinct capture, more valuable by far than a
+peasant, and likely to influence others; yet when they had got
+him no one appears to have known exactly what to do, and all were
+anxious to get rid of him again.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote228a"></a><a href="#citation228a"
+class="footnote">[228a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+536.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote228b"></a><a href="#citation228b"
+class="footnote">[228b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote229a"></a><a href="#citation229a"
+class="footnote">[229a]</a>&nbsp; Original Report, withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote229b"></a><a href="#citation229b"
+class="footnote">[229b]</a>&nbsp; Original Report, withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote231"></a><a href="#citation231"
+class="footnote">[231]</a>&nbsp; Sometimes this personage is
+referred to in official papers as the &ldquo;Political
+Chief,&rdquo; a too literal translation of <i>Gef&eacute;
+Politico</i>.&nbsp; In all cases it has been altered to Civil
+Governor to preserve uniformity.&nbsp; Many of the official
+translations of Foreign Office papers can only be described as
+grotesque.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote232a"></a><a href="#citation232a"
+class="footnote">[232a]</a>&nbsp; This is the official
+translation among the Foreign Office papers at the Record
+Office.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote232b"></a><a href="#citation232b"
+class="footnote">[232b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+539.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote233"></a><a href="#citation233"
+class="footnote">[233]</a>&nbsp; There is an error in the dating
+of this letter.&nbsp; It should be 1st May.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote234a"></a><a href="#citation234a"
+class="footnote">[234a]</a>&nbsp; In a letter to Count Ofalia,
+Sir George Villiers states that &ldquo;George Borrow, fearing
+violence, prudently abstained from going to his ordinary place of
+abode.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote234b"></a><a href="#citation234b"
+class="footnote">[234b]</a>&nbsp; Borrow pays a magnificent and
+well-deserved tribute to this queen among landladies.&nbsp;
+(<i>The Bible in Spain</i>, pages 256&ndash;7.)&nbsp; She was
+always his friend and frequently his counsellor, thinking nothing
+of the risk she ran in standing by him during periods of
+danger.&nbsp; She refused all inducements to betray him to his
+enemies, and, thoroughly deserved the eulogy that Borrow
+pronounced upon her.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote234c"></a><a href="#citation234c"
+class="footnote">[234c]</a>&nbsp; It was subsequently stated that
+the arrest was ordered because Borrow had refused to recognise
+the Civil Governor&rsquo;s authority and made use &ldquo;of
+offensive expressions&rdquo; towards his person.&nbsp; The Civil
+Governor had no authority over British subjects, and Borrow was
+right in his refusal to acknowledge his jurisdiction.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote235"></a><a href="#citation235"
+class="footnote">[235]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+547.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote238a"></a><a href="#citation238a"
+class="footnote">[238a]</a>&nbsp; Dispatch from Sir George
+Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th May.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote238b"></a><a href="#citation238b"
+class="footnote">[238b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote239a"></a><a href="#citation239a"
+class="footnote">[239a]</a>&nbsp; Despatch from Sir George
+Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239b"></a><a href="#citation239b"
+class="footnote">[239b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote240a"></a><a href="#citation240a"
+class="footnote">[240a]</a>&nbsp; Despatch from Sir George
+Villiers to Viscount Palmerston.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote240b"></a><a href="#citation240b"
+class="footnote">[240b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+17th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote241a"></a><a href="#citation241a"
+class="footnote">[241a]</a>&nbsp; Despatch from Sir George
+Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote241b"></a><a href="#citation241b"
+class="footnote">[241b]</a>&nbsp; In a letter to the Rev. A.
+Brandram, 17th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote242a"></a><a href="#citation242a"
+class="footnote">[242a]</a>&nbsp; The Official Translation among
+the Foreign Office Papers at the Record Office.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote242b"></a><a href="#citation242b"
+class="footnote">[242b]</a>&nbsp; Mr William Mark&rsquo;s (the
+British Consul at Malaga) Official account of the occurrence,
+16th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote243a"></a><a href="#citation243a"
+class="footnote">[243a]</a>&nbsp; Mr William Mark&rsquo;s (the
+British Consul at Malaga) Official account of the occurrence,
+16th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote243b"></a><a href="#citation243b"
+class="footnote">[243b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote243c"></a><a href="#citation243c"
+class="footnote">[243c]</a>&nbsp; Despatch to Viscount
+Palmerston, 12th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote243d"></a><a href="#citation243d"
+class="footnote">[243d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote244a"></a><a href="#citation244a"
+class="footnote">[244a]</a>&nbsp; Despatch to Viscount
+Palmerston, 12th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote244b"></a><a href="#citation244b"
+class="footnote">[244b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote244c"></a><a href="#citation244c"
+class="footnote">[244c]</a>&nbsp;&nbsp; Sir George
+Villiers&rsquo; Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May
+1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote246a"></a><a href="#citation246a"
+class="footnote">[246a]</a>&nbsp; The Official Translation among
+the Foreign Office Papers at the Record Office.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote246b"></a><a href="#citation246b"
+class="footnote">[246b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+578.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote247a"></a><a href="#citation247a"
+class="footnote">[247a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 241.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote247b"></a><a href="#citation247b"
+class="footnote">[247b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+579.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote249"></a><a href="#citation249"
+class="footnote">[249]</a>&nbsp; <i>History of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society</i>.&nbsp; By W. Canton.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote252"></a><a href="#citation252"
+class="footnote">[252]</a>&nbsp; On [11th] May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote253"></a><a href="#citation253"
+class="footnote">[253]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th
+May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote254a"></a><a href="#citation254a"
+class="footnote">[254a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 25th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote255a"></a><a href="#citation255a"
+class="footnote">[255a]</a>&nbsp; The Official Translation among
+the Foreign Office Papers at the Record Office.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote255b"></a><a href="#citation255b"
+class="footnote">[255b]</a>&nbsp; Sir George Villiers to Count
+Ofalia, 25th May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote255c"></a><a href="#citation255c"
+class="footnote">[255c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Mr A. Brandram, 25th
+May 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote256a"></a><a href="#citation256a"
+class="footnote">[256a]</a>&nbsp; At the time of writing Borrow
+had not seen any of these tracts himself; but Sir George
+Villiers, who had, expressed the opinion that &ldquo;one or two
+of them were outrages not only to common sense but to
+decency.&rdquo;&mdash;Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 25th June
+1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote256b"></a><a href="#citation256b"
+class="footnote">[256b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+14th June 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote257a"></a><a href="#citation257a"
+class="footnote">[257a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 14th June 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote257b"></a><a href="#citation257b"
+class="footnote">[257b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote259"></a><a href="#citation259"
+class="footnote">[259]</a>&nbsp; The quotations from Lieut.
+Graydon&rsquo;s tracts were not sent by Borrow to Mr Brandram
+until some weeks later.&nbsp; They ran:&mdash;A True History of
+the Dolorous Virgin to whom the Rebellious and Fanatical Don
+Carlos Has Committed His Cause and the Ignorance which It
+Displays.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="smcap">Extracts</span>.</p>
+<p><i>Page</i> 17.&nbsp; You will readily see in all those
+grandiose epithets showered upon Mary, the work of the enemy of
+God, which tending essentially towards idolatry has managed,
+under the cloak of Christianity, to introduce idolatry, and
+endeavours to divert to a creature, and even to the image of that
+creature, the adoration which is due to God alone.&nbsp; Without
+doubt it is with this very object that on all sides we see
+erected statues of Mary, adorned with a crown, and bearing in her
+arms a child of tender years, as though to accustom the populace
+intimately to the idea of Mary&rsquo;s superiority over
+Jesus.</p>
+<p><i>Page</i> 30.&nbsp; This, then, is our conclusion.&nbsp; In
+recognising and sanctioning this cult, the Church of Rome
+constitutes itself an idolatrous Church, and every member of it
+who is incapable of detecting the truth behind the monstrous
+accumulation of impieties with which they veil it, is proclaimed
+by the Church as condemned to perdition.&nbsp; The guiding light
+of this Church, which they are not ashamed to smother or to
+procure the smothering of, by which nevertheless they hold their
+authority, to be plain, the word of God, should at least teach
+them, if they set any value on the Spirit of Christ, that their
+Papal Bulls would be better directed to the cleansing of the
+Roman Church from all its iniquities than to the promulgation of
+such unjust prohibitions.&nbsp; Yet in struggling against better
+things, this Church is protecting and hallowing in all directions
+an innumerable collection of superstitions and false cults, and
+it is clear that by this means it is abased and labelled as one
+of the principal agents of Anti-Christ.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote262"></a><a href="#citation262"
+class="footnote">[262]</a>&nbsp; <i>The History of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society</i>, by W. Canton.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote265a"></a><a href="#citation265a"
+class="footnote">[265a]</a>&nbsp; This letter reached Borrow when
+his &ldquo;foot was in the stirrup,&rdquo; as he phrased it,
+ready to set out for the Sagra of Toledo.&nbsp; He felt that it
+could only have originated with &ldquo;the enemy of mankind for
+the purpose of perplexing my already harrassed and agitated
+mind&rdquo;; but he continues, &ldquo;merely exclaiming
+&lsquo;Satan, I defy thee,&rsquo; I hurried to the Sagra. . . .
+But it is hard to wrestle with the great enemy.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+<i>General Report</i>, withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote265b"></a><a href="#citation265b"
+class="footnote">[265b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+14th July 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote265c"></a><a href="#citation265c"
+class="footnote">[265c]</a>&nbsp; Mr Brandram informed Borrow
+that the General Committee wished him to visit England if he
+could do so without injury to the cause (29th June).</p>
+<p><a name="footnote266"></a><a href="#citation266"
+class="footnote">[266]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th
+July 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote269a"></a><a href="#citation269a"
+class="footnote">[269a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+602.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote269b"></a><a href="#citation269b"
+class="footnote">[269b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 606.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote269c"></a><a href="#citation269c"
+class="footnote">[269c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 606.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote270a"></a><a href="#citation270a"
+class="footnote">[270a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+27th July 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote270b"></a><a href="#citation270b"
+class="footnote">[270b]</a>&nbsp; This would have been
+impossible.&nbsp; If his age were seventy-four, he would of
+necessity have been four years old in 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote271a"></a><a href="#citation271a"
+class="footnote">[271a]</a>&nbsp; By Mr A. G. Jayne in
+&ldquo;Footprints of George Borrow,&rdquo; in <i>The Bible in the
+World</i>, July 1908.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote271b"></a><a href="#citation271b"
+class="footnote">[271b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+17th July 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote273a"></a><a href="#citation273a"
+class="footnote">[273a]</a>&nbsp; This letter, in which there was
+a hint of desperation, disturbed the officials at Earl Street a
+great deal.&nbsp; Mr Brandram wrote (28th July) that he was
+convinced that the Committee would &ldquo;still feel that if you
+are to continue to act with them <i>they must see you</i>, and I
+will only add that it is <i>utterly foreign to their wishes</i>
+that you should <i>expose yourself in the daring manner you are
+now doing</i>.&nbsp; I lose not a post in conveying this
+impression to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote273b"></a><a href="#citation273b"
+class="footnote">[273b]</a>&nbsp; The Translation of this
+communication runs:&mdash;&ldquo;Madrid, 7th July 1838&mdash;I
+have the honour to inform your Excellency that according to
+official advices received in the first Secretary of State&rsquo;s
+Office, it appears that in Malaga, Murcia, Valladolid, and
+Santiago, copies of the New Testament of Padre Scio, without
+notes, have been exposed for sale, which have been deposited with
+the political chiefs of the said provinces, or in the hands of
+such persons as the chiefs have entrusted with them in Deposit;
+it being necessary further to observe that the parties giving
+them up have uniformly stated that they belonged to Mr Borrow,
+and that they were commissioned by him to sell and dispose of
+them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Under these circumstances, Her Majesty&rsquo;s
+Government have deemed it expedient that I should address your
+Excellency, in order that the above may be intimated to the
+beforementioned Mr Borrow, so that he may take care that the
+copies in question, as well as those which have been seized in
+this City, and which are packed up in cases or parcels marked and
+sealed, may be sent out of the Kingdom of Spain, agreeably to the
+Royal order with which your Excellency is already acquainted, and
+through the medium of the respective authorities who will be able
+to vouch for their Exportation.&nbsp; To this Mr Borrow will
+submit in the required form, and with the understanding that he
+formally binds himself thereto, they will remain in the meantime
+in the respective depots.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote275"></a><a href="#citation275"
+class="footnote">[275]</a>&nbsp; <i>General Report</i>,
+withdrawn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote277a"></a><a href="#citation277a"
+class="footnote">[277a]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s letter to the
+Rev. A. Brandram, 1st Sept. 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote277b"></a><a href="#citation277b"
+class="footnote">[277b]</a>&nbsp; To Lord William Hervey,
+Charg&eacute; d&rsquo;Affaires at Madrid (23rd Aug. 1838).</p>
+<p><a name="footnote278"></a><a href="#citation278"
+class="footnote">[278]</a>&nbsp; To Rev. G. Browne, one of the
+Secretaries of the Bible Society, 29th Aug. 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote279a"></a><a href="#citation279a"
+class="footnote">[279a]</a>&nbsp; To Rev. A. Brandram, 19th
+September 1838.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote279b"></a><a href="#citation279b"
+class="footnote">[279b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+621.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote279c"></a><a href="#citation279c"
+class="footnote">[279c]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Dr Usoz, 22nd Feb.
+1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote279d"></a><a href="#citation279d"
+class="footnote">[279d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote279e"></a><a href="#citation279e"
+class="footnote">[279e]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote280"></a><a href="#citation280"
+class="footnote">[280]</a>&nbsp; The Report has here been largely
+drawn upon and has been referred to as &ldquo;Original Report,
+withdrawn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote282"></a><a href="#citation282"
+class="footnote">[282]</a>&nbsp; <i>History of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote284"></a><a href="#citation284"
+class="footnote">[284]</a>&nbsp; On the publication of <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i> the Prophetess became famous.&nbsp; Thirty-six
+years later Dr Knapp found her still soliciting alms, and she
+acknowledged that she owed her celebrity to the <i>Ingl&eacute;s
+rubio</i>, the blonde Englishman.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote285a"></a><a href="#citation285a"
+class="footnote">[285a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+627.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote285b"></a><a href="#citation285b"
+class="footnote">[285b]</a>&nbsp; To Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Jan.
+1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote286"></a><a href="#citation286"
+class="footnote">[286]</a>&nbsp; On 6th Feb. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote288a"></a><a href="#citation288a"
+class="footnote">[288a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Mr W. Hitchin of the
+Bible Society, 9th March 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote288b"></a><a href="#citation288b"
+class="footnote">[288b]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+26th March 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote290"></a><a href="#citation290"
+class="footnote">[290]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 10th
+April 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote293"></a><a href="#citation293"
+class="footnote">[293]</a>&nbsp; Letter to the Rev. A. Brandram,
+2nd May 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote294a"></a><a href="#citation294a"
+class="footnote">[294a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Excursions Along the Shores
+of the Mediterranean</i>, by Lt.-Col. E. Napier, 46th Regt.&nbsp;
+Colburn, 1842, 2 vols.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote294b"></a><a href="#citation294b"
+class="footnote">[294b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote295"></a><a href="#citation295"
+class="footnote">[295]</a>&nbsp; <i>Excursions Along the Shores
+of the Mediterranean</i>, by Lt.-Col. E. Napier, 46th Regt.&nbsp;
+Colburn, 1842, 2 vols.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote297"></a><a href="#citation297"
+class="footnote">[297]</a>&nbsp; A reference to Charles Robert
+Maturin&rsquo;s <i>Melmoth the Wanderer</i>, 4 vols., 1820.&nbsp;
+This book was republished in 3 vols. in 1892, an almost
+unparalleled instance of the reissue of a practically forgotten
+book in a form closely resembling that of the original.&nbsp;
+Melmoth the Wanderer was referred to in the most enthusiastic
+terms by Balzac, Thackeray and Baudelaire among others.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote298"></a><a href="#citation298"
+class="footnote">[298]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+663.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote299"></a><a href="#citation299"
+class="footnote">[299]</a>&nbsp; Maria Diaz had written on 24th
+May: &ldquo;Calzado has been here to see if I would sell him the
+lamps that belong to the shop [the <i>Despacho</i>].&nbsp; He is
+willing to give four dollars for them, and he says they cost
+five, so if you want me to sell them to him, you must let me
+know.&nbsp; It seems he is going to set up a
+beer-shop.&rdquo;&nbsp; It is not on record whether or no the
+lamps from the Bible Society&rsquo;s <i>Despacho</i> eventually
+illuminated a beer-shop.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote300"></a><a href="#citation300"
+class="footnote">[300]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to the Rev.
+A. Brandram, 28th June 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote301"></a><a href="#citation301"
+class="footnote">[301]</a>&nbsp; 28th June.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote302"></a><a href="#citation302"
+class="footnote">[302]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 18th
+July 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307a"></a><a href="#citation307a"
+class="footnote">[307a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307b"></a><a href="#citation307b"
+class="footnote">[307b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote307c"></a><a href="#citation307c"
+class="footnote">[307c]</a>&nbsp; Mr John M. Brackenbury, in
+writing to Mr Brandram, made it quite clear that he had no doubt
+that the &ldquo;inhibition was assuredly accelerated, if not
+absolutely occasioned, by the indiscretion of some of those who
+entered Spain for the avowed object of circulating the
+Scriptures, and of others who, not being Agents of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society, were nevertheless considered to be
+connected with it, as they distributed your editions of the Old
+and New Testaments.&nbsp; Our objects were defeated and your
+interests injured, therefore, when the Spanish Government
+required the departure from this country of those who, by other
+acts and deeds wholly distinct from the distribution of Bibles
+and Testaments, had been infracting the Laws, Civil and
+Ecclesiastical.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307d"></a><a href="#citation307d"
+class="footnote">[307d]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+29th Sept. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote308a"></a><a href="#citation308a"
+class="footnote">[308a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+29th Sept. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote308b"></a><a href="#citation308b"
+class="footnote">[308b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote309"></a><a href="#citation309"
+class="footnote">[309]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th
+Nov. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote310"></a><a href="#citation310"
+class="footnote">[310]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th
+Nov. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote313"></a><a href="#citation313"
+class="footnote">[313]</a>&nbsp; From the Public Record
+Office.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote315"></a><a href="#citation315"
+class="footnote">[315]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th
+Nov. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote316"></a><a href="#citation316"
+class="footnote">[316]</a>&nbsp; Rev. Wentworth Webster in <i>The
+Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote317"></a><a href="#citation317"
+class="footnote">[317]</a>&nbsp; The phrasing of the official
+translation has everywhere been followed.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote319"></a><a href="#citation319"
+class="footnote">[319]</a>&nbsp; The Official Translation among
+the Foreign Office Papers at the Record Office.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote320"></a><a href="#citation320"
+class="footnote">[320]</a>&nbsp; 28th Dec. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote321"></a><a href="#citation321"
+class="footnote">[321]</a>&nbsp; Henrietta played
+&ldquo;remarkably well on the guitar&mdash;not the trumpery
+German thing so-called&mdash;but the real Spanish
+guitar.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Wild Wales</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote322"></a><a href="#citation322"
+class="footnote">[322]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote323a"></a><a href="#citation323a"
+class="footnote">[323a]</a>&nbsp; Letter to Rev. A. Brandram,
+18th March 1840.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote323b"></a><a href="#citation323b"
+class="footnote">[323b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote328a"></a><a href="#citation328a"
+class="footnote">[328a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+312.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote328b"></a><a href="#citation328b"
+class="footnote">[328b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 313.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote328c"></a><a href="#citation328c"
+class="footnote">[328c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+289.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote329a"></a><a href="#citation329a"
+class="footnote">[329a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 261.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote329b"></a><a href="#citation329b"
+class="footnote">[329b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+22.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote329c"></a><a href="#citation329c"
+class="footnote">[329c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Journals of Caroline
+Fox</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote330a"></a><a href="#citation330a"
+class="footnote">[330a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Letters of Richard
+Ford</i> 1797&ndash;1858.&mdash;Edited, R. E. Prothero, M.V.O.,
+1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote330b"></a><a href="#citation330b"
+class="footnote">[330b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote331a"></a><a href="#citation331a"
+class="footnote">[331a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page xiv.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote331b"></a><a href="#citation331b"
+class="footnote">[331b]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote331c"></a><a href="#citation331c"
+class="footnote">[331c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 238.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote332a"></a><a href="#citation332a"
+class="footnote">[332a]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote332b"></a><a href="#citation332b"
+class="footnote">[332b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote332c"></a><a href="#citation332c"
+class="footnote">[332c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote332d"></a><a href="#citation332d"
+class="footnote">[332d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote333a"></a><a href="#citation333a"
+class="footnote">[333a]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote333b"></a><a href="#citation333b"
+class="footnote">[333b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote333c"></a><a href="#citation333c"
+class="footnote">[333c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+41.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote334a"></a><a href="#citation334a"
+class="footnote">[334a]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote334b"></a><a href="#citation334b"
+class="footnote">[334b]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Eastern Daily
+Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.&nbsp; She also tells how &ldquo;at the
+Exhibition in 1851, whither we went with his step-daughter, he
+spoke to the different foreigners in their own languages, until
+his daughter saw some of them whispering together and looking as
+if they thought he was &lsquo;uncanny,&rsquo; and she became
+alarmed, and drew him away.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote334c"></a><a href="#citation334c"
+class="footnote">[334c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote334d"></a><a href="#citation334d"
+class="footnote">[334d]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page vii.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote335a"></a><a href="#citation335a"
+class="footnote">[335a]</a>&nbsp; <i>A Publisher and His
+Friends</i>.&nbsp; Samuel Smiles.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote335b"></a><a href="#citation335b"
+class="footnote">[335b]</a>&nbsp; Richard Ford,
+1796&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Critic and author.&nbsp; Spent several
+years in touring about Spain on horseback.&nbsp; Published in
+1845, <i>Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain</i>.&nbsp; Contributed
+to the <i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Quarterly</i>, and <i>Westminster</i>
+Reviews from 1837.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote335c"></a><a href="#citation335c"
+class="footnote">[335c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Letters of Richard
+Ford</i>, 1797&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Ed. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O.,
+1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote336a"></a><a href="#citation336a"
+class="footnote">[336a]</a>&nbsp; Dr. Knapp points out that the
+title is inaccurate, there being no such word as
+&ldquo;Zincali.&rdquo;&nbsp; It should be
+&ldquo;Zincal&eacute;.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote336b"></a><a href="#citation336b"
+class="footnote">[336b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Letters of Richard
+Ford</i>, 1797&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Ed. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O.,
+1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote337a"></a><a href="#citation337a"
+class="footnote">[337a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 1.&nbsp; As the current edition of <i>The Zincali</i> has
+been retitled <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>, reference is made to
+it throughout this work under that title and to the latest
+edition.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote337b"></a><a href="#citation337b"
+class="footnote">[337b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 32.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote338a"></a><a href="#citation338a"
+class="footnote">[338a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 81.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote338b"></a><a href="#citation338b"
+class="footnote">[338b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 186.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote338c"></a><a href="#citation338c"
+class="footnote">[338c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i>, page 283.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote339"></a><a href="#citation339"
+class="footnote">[339]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 274.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote340a"></a><a href="#citation340a"
+class="footnote">[340a]</a>&nbsp; Introduction to
+<i>Lavengro</i>.&nbsp; The Little Library, Methuen, 2 vols., 1,
+xxiii.-xxiv.&nbsp; C. G. Leland expressed himself to the same
+effect.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote340b"></a><a href="#citation340b"
+class="footnote">[340b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Academy</i>, 13th July
+1874.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote340c"></a><a href="#citation340c"
+class="footnote">[340c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+186.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote340d"></a><a href="#citation340d"
+class="footnote">[340d]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+64.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote341"></a><a href="#citation341"
+class="footnote">[341]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 81.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote343"></a><a href="#citation343"
+class="footnote">[343]</a>&nbsp; Ford to John Murray.&nbsp;
+<i>The Letters of Richard Ford</i>, 1797&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Ed. R.
+E. Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote344"></a><a href="#citation344"
+class="footnote">[344]</a>&nbsp; Ford to John Murray.&nbsp;
+<i>The Letters of Richard Ford</i>, 1797&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Ed. R.
+E. Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote347"></a><a href="#citation347"
+class="footnote">[347]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp&rsquo;s <i>Life of
+George Borrow</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote349"></a><a href="#citation349"
+class="footnote">[349]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Letters of Richard
+Ford</i>, 1797&ndash;1858.&nbsp; Edited, R. E. Prothero, M.V.O.,
+1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote352"></a><a href="#citation352"
+class="footnote">[352]</a>&nbsp; <i>Times</i>, 12th April 1843,
+Hansard&rsquo;s summary reads: &ldquo;It might have been said, to
+Mr Borrow with respect to Spain, that it would be impossible to
+distribute the Bible in that country in consequence of the danger
+of offending the prejudices which prevail there; yet he, a
+private individual, by showing some zeal in what he believed to
+be right, succeeded in triumphing over many obstacles.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote353"></a><a href="#citation353"
+class="footnote">[353]</a>&nbsp; This is obviously the letter
+that Borrow paraphrases at the end of Chapter XLII. of <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote354"></a><a href="#citation354"
+class="footnote">[354]</a>&nbsp; In the Appendix to <i>The Romany
+Rye</i> Borrow wrote, &ldquo;Having the proper pride of a
+gentleman and a scholar, he did not, in the year &rsquo;43,
+choose to permit himself to be exhibited and made a zany of in
+London.&rdquo;&nbsp; Page 355.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote355a"></a><a href="#citation355a"
+class="footnote">[355a]</a>&nbsp; Letters to John Murray, 27th
+Jan. and 13th March, 1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote355b"></a><a href="#citation355b"
+class="footnote">[355b]</a>&nbsp; Letters to John Murray, 27th
+Jan. and 13th March, 1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote355c"></a><a href="#citation355c"
+class="footnote">[355c]</a>&nbsp; Borrow wrote later on that he
+was &ldquo;a sincere member of the old-fashioned Church of
+England, in which he believes there is more religion, and
+consequently less cant, than in any other Church in the
+world&rdquo; (<i>The Romany Rye</i>, page 346).&nbsp; On another
+occasion he gave the following reason for his adherence to it:
+&ldquo;Because I believe it is the best religion to get to heaven
+by&rdquo; (<i>Wild Wales</i>, page 520).</p>
+<p><a name="footnote356"></a><a href="#citation356"
+class="footnote">[356]</a>&nbsp; No trace can be found among the
+Bible Society Records of any such translation.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote357"></a><a href="#citation357"
+class="footnote">[357]</a>&nbsp; This portrait has sometimes been
+ascribed to Thomas Phillips, R.A., in error.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote360a"></a><a href="#citation360a"
+class="footnote">[360a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memories of Old Friends</i>
+(1835&ndash;1871).&nbsp; London 1882.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote360b"></a><a href="#citation360b"
+class="footnote">[360b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memories of Eighty
+Years</i>, page 164.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote360c"></a><a href="#citation360c"
+class="footnote">[360c]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote360d"></a><a href="#citation360d"
+class="footnote">[360d]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Express</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote361"></a><a href="#citation361"
+class="footnote">[361]</a>&nbsp; <i>Journals and Correspondence
+of Lady Eastlake</i>, ed. by C. E. Smith, 1895.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote362a"></a><a href="#citation362a"
+class="footnote">[362a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+344.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote362b"></a><a href="#citation362b"
+class="footnote">[362b]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp&rsquo;s <i>Life of
+George Borrow</i>, ii. 44.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote362c"></a><a href="#citation362c"
+class="footnote">[362c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Hungary in</i> 1851.&nbsp;
+By Charles L. Brace.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote363"></a><a href="#citation363"
+class="footnote">[363]</a>&nbsp; Mrs Borrow to John Murray, 4th
+June 1844.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote364"></a><a href="#citation364"
+class="footnote">[364]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs</i>, C. G. Leland,
+1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote365a"></a><a href="#citation365a"
+class="footnote">[365a]</a>&nbsp; Both these MSS. were acquired
+by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1892 by purchase.&nbsp;
+The <i>Gypsy Vocabulary</i> runs to fifty-four Folios and the
+<i>Bohemian Grammar</i> to seventeen Folios.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote365b"></a><a href="#citation365b"
+class="footnote">[365b]</a>&nbsp; 24th April 1841.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote365c"></a><a href="#citation365c"
+class="footnote">[365c]</a>&nbsp; Dr Knapp&rsquo;s <i>Life of
+George Borrow</i>, ii. page 5.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote367"></a><a href="#citation367"
+class="footnote">[367]</a>&nbsp; As late even as 13th March 1851,
+Dr Hake wrote to Mrs Borrow: &ldquo;He [Borrow] had better carry
+on his biography in three more volumes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote372"></a><a href="#citation372"
+class="footnote">[372]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake in
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th Aug. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote374"></a><a href="#citation374"
+class="footnote">[374]</a>&nbsp; There is something inexplicable
+about these dates.&nbsp; On 6th November Borrow agrees to alter a
+passage that in the 14th of the previous July he refers to as
+already amended.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote375"></a><a href="#citation375"
+class="footnote">[375]</a>&nbsp; <i>Vestiges of Borrow</i>:
+<i>Some Personal Reminiscences</i>, <i>The Globe</i>, 21st July
+1896.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote376a"></a><a href="#citation376a"
+class="footnote">[376a]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake in
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th Aug. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote376b"></a><a href="#citation376b"
+class="footnote">[376b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Gypsies of Spain</i>,
+page 287.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote376c"></a><a href="#citation376c"
+class="footnote">[376c]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;His sympathies were
+confined to the gypsies.&nbsp; Where he came they followed.&nbsp;
+Where he settled, there they pitched their greasy and horribly
+smelling camps.&nbsp; It pleased him to be called their
+King.&nbsp; He was their Bard also, and wrote songs for them in
+that language of theirs which he professed to consider not only
+the first, but the finest of the human modes of speech.&nbsp; He
+liked to stretch himself large and loose-limbed before the wood
+fires of their encampment and watch their graceful movements
+among the tents&rdquo; (<i>Vestiges of Borrow</i>: <i>Some
+Personal Reminiscences</i>, <i>Globe</i>, 21st July 1896).</p>
+<p><a name="footnote376d"></a><a href="#citation376d"
+class="footnote">[376d]</a>&nbsp; This was said in the presence
+of Mr F. G. Bowring, son of Dr Bowring.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote378a"></a><a href="#citation378a"
+class="footnote">[378a]</a>&nbsp; Mr F. J. Bowring writes:
+&ldquo;I was myself present at Borrow&rsquo;s last call, when he
+came to take tea <i>as usual</i>, and not a word of the kind [as
+given in the Appendix], was delivered.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote378b"></a><a href="#citation378b"
+class="footnote">[378b]</a>&nbsp; There is no record of any
+correspondence with Borrow among the Museum Archives.&nbsp; Dr F.
+G. Kenyon, C.B., to whom I am indebted for this information,
+suggests that the communications may have been verbal.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote379"></a><a href="#citation379"
+class="footnote">[379]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty
+Years</i>.&nbsp; By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote380a"></a><a href="#citation380a"
+class="footnote">[380a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Annals of the Harford
+Family</i>.&nbsp; Privately printed, 1909.&nbsp; Mr Theodore
+Watts-Dunton, in the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 25th March 1899, has
+been successful in giving a convincing picture of Borrow:
+&ldquo;As to his countenance,&rdquo; he writes,
+&ldquo;&lsquo;noble&rsquo; is the only word that can be used to
+describe it.&nbsp; The silvery whiteness of the thick crop of
+hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty of the
+hairless face, but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this
+strangeness was intensified by a certain incongruity between the
+features (perfect Roman-Greek in type), and the Scandinavian
+complexion, luminous and sometimes rosy as an English
+girl&rsquo;s.&nbsp; An increased intensity was lent by the fair
+skin to the dark lustre of the eyes.&nbsp; What struck the
+observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of
+the man&rsquo;s appearance.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote380b"></a><a href="#citation380b"
+class="footnote">[380b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty
+Years</i>.&nbsp; By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote381a"></a><a href="#citation381a"
+class="footnote">[381a]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote381b"></a><a href="#citation381b"
+class="footnote">[381b]</a>&nbsp; The story is narrated by Dr
+Augustus Jessopp in the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 8th July 1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote381c"></a><a href="#citation381c"
+class="footnote">[381c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+487.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote381d"></a><a href="#citation381d"
+class="footnote">[381d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 36 et
+seq.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote382"></a><a href="#citation382"
+class="footnote">[382]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty
+Years</i>.&nbsp; By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote383a"></a><a href="#citation383a"
+class="footnote">[383a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty
+Years</i>.&nbsp; By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote383b"></a><a href="#citation383b"
+class="footnote">[383b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty
+Years</i>.&nbsp; By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote384a"></a><a href="#citation384a"
+class="footnote">[384a]</a>&nbsp; <i>George Borrow in East
+Anglia</i>.&nbsp; W. A. Dutt.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote384b"></a><a href="#citation384b"
+class="footnote">[384b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty
+Years</i>.&nbsp; By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote385a"></a><a href="#citation385a"
+class="footnote">[385a]</a>&nbsp; <i>William Bodham Donne and His
+Friends</i>.&nbsp; By Catherine B. Johnson.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote385b"></a><a href="#citation385b"
+class="footnote">[385b]</a>&nbsp; William Whewell
+(1794&ndash;1866), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge,
+1848&ndash;66; Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University,
+1843&ndash;56; secured in 1847 the election of the Prince Consort
+as Chancellor; enlarged the buildings of Trinity College and
+founded professorship and scholarships for international
+law.&nbsp; Published and edited many works on natural and
+mathematical science, philosophy, theology and sermons.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote386"></a><a href="#citation386"
+class="footnote">[386]</a>&nbsp; Mr John Murray in <i>Good
+Words</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote390"></a><a href="#citation390"
+class="footnote">[390]</a>&nbsp; To John Murray; the letter is in
+Mrs Borrow&rsquo;s hand but drafted by Borrow himself, 29th Jan.
+1855.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote391a"></a><a href="#citation391a"
+class="footnote">[391a]</a>&nbsp; 16th April 1845.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote391b"></a><a href="#citation391b"
+class="footnote">[391b]</a>&nbsp; See post.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote393a"></a><a href="#citation393a"
+class="footnote">[393a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+338.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote393b"></a><a href="#citation393b"
+class="footnote">[393b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Life of Frances Power
+Cable</i>, by herself.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote393c"></a><a href="#citation393c"
+class="footnote">[393c]</a>&nbsp; Borrow goes on to an
+anti-climax when he states that he &ldquo;believes him [Scott] to
+have been by far the greatest [poet], with perhaps the exception
+of Mickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate Poland, that Europe
+has given birth to during the last hundred years.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote393d"></a><a href="#citation393d"
+class="footnote">[393d]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, pages
+344&ndash;5.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote393e"></a><a href="#citation393e"
+class="footnote">[393e]</a>&nbsp; <i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i>, page
+274.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote393f"></a><a href="#citation393f"
+class="footnote">[393f]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+134.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote394a"></a><a href="#citation394a"
+class="footnote">[394a]</a>&nbsp; Letter from Borrow to Dr Usoz,
+22nd Feb. 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote394b"></a><a href="#citation394b"
+class="footnote">[394b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Macmillan&rsquo;s
+Magazine</i>, vol. 45.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote396"></a><a href="#citation396"
+class="footnote">[396]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Notes upon George
+Borrow&rdquo; prefaced to an edition of <i>Lavengro</i>.&nbsp;
+Ward, Lock &amp; Co.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote398"></a><a href="#citation398"
+class="footnote">[398]</a>&nbsp; Mr W. Elvin in the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 6th Aug. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote399a"></a><a href="#citation399a"
+class="footnote">[399a]</a>&nbsp; John Wilson Croker
+(1780&ndash;1857): Politician and Essayist; friend of Canning and
+Peel.&nbsp; At one time Temporary Chief Secretary for Ireland and
+later Secretary of the Admiralty.&nbsp; Supposed to have been the
+original of Rigby in Disraeli&rsquo;s <i>Coningsby</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote399b"></a><a href="#citation399b"
+class="footnote">[399b]</a>&nbsp; Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton,
+&ldquo;Notes upon George Borrow&rdquo; prefaced to an edition of
+<i>Lavengro</i>.&nbsp; Ward, Lock &amp; Co.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote400a"></a><a href="#citation400a"
+class="footnote">[400a]</a>&nbsp; The Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell
+in <i>Obiter Dicta</i>, and Series, 1887.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote400b"></a><a href="#citation400b"
+class="footnote">[400b]</a>&nbsp; Francis Hindes Groome in
+<i>Bookman</i>, May 1899.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote404a"></a><a href="#citation404a"
+class="footnote">[404a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Swimming is a noble
+exercise, but it certainly does not tend to mortify either the
+flesh or the spirit.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+688.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote404b"></a><a href="#citation404b"
+class="footnote">[404b]</a>&nbsp; Mr John Murray in <i>Good
+Words</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote404c"></a><a href="#citation404c"
+class="footnote">[404c]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Eastern Daily
+Press</i>, 1st October 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote405"></a><a href="#citation405"
+class="footnote">[405]</a>&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s reference is to
+the county motto, &ldquo;One and All.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote407a"></a><a href="#citation407a"
+class="footnote">[407a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of George
+Borrow</i>, by Dr Knapp, ii., 79&ndash;80.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote407b"></a><a href="#citation407b"
+class="footnote">[407b]</a>&nbsp; <i>George Borrow</i>, by R. A.
+J. Walling.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote407c"></a><a href="#citation407c"
+class="footnote">[407c]</a>&nbsp; <i>George Borrow</i>, by R. A.
+J. Walling.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote408"></a><a href="#citation408"
+class="footnote">[408]</a>&nbsp; <i>George Borrow</i>, by R. A.
+J. Walling.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote409"></a><a href="#citation409"
+class="footnote">[409]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of George
+Borrow</i>, by Dr Knapp.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote411"></a><a href="#citation411"
+class="footnote">[411]</a>&nbsp; This is rather awkwardly
+phrased, as Mrs Borrow was alive at that date.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote412a"></a><a href="#citation412a"
+class="footnote">[412a]</a>&nbsp; The first reference to the
+famous Appendix is contained in a letter to John Murray (11th
+Nov. 1853) in which Borrow writes: &ldquo;In answer to your
+inquiries about the fourth volume of <i>Lavengro</i>, I beg leave
+to say that I am occasionally occupied upon it.&nbsp; I shall
+probably add some notes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote412b"></a><a href="#citation412b"
+class="footnote">[412b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of George
+Borrow</i>, by Dr Knapp.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote413"></a><a href="#citation413"
+class="footnote">[413]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of George
+Borrow</i>, by Dr Knapp.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote415a"></a><a href="#citation415a"
+class="footnote">[415a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 6.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote415b"></a><a href="#citation415b"
+class="footnote">[415b]</a>&nbsp; There appears to have been a
+slight cast in his (Borrow&rsquo;s) left eye.&nbsp; The Queen of
+the Nokkums remarked that, like Will Faa, he had &ldquo;a
+skellying look with the left eye&rdquo; (<i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i>,
+page 267).&nbsp; Mr F. H. Bowring, who frequently met him, states
+that he &ldquo;had a slight cast in the eye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote416"></a><a href="#citation416"
+class="footnote">[416]</a>&nbsp; E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in <i>The
+Eastern Daily Press</i>, 1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote417a"></a><a href="#citation417a"
+class="footnote">[417a]</a>&nbsp; Ellen Jones actually
+wrote&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ellen Jones<br />
+yn pithyn pell<br />
+i gronow owen</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><a name="footnote417b"></a><a href="#citation417b"
+class="footnote">[417b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, pages
+227&ndash;8.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote418a"></a><a href="#citation418a"
+class="footnote">[418a]</a>&nbsp; This was the mason of whom
+Borrow enquired the way, and who &ldquo;stood for a moment or
+two, as if transfixed, a trowel motionless in one of his hands,
+and a brick in the other,&rdquo; who on recovering himself
+replied in &ldquo;tolerable Spanish.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Wild
+Wales</i>, page 225.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote418b"></a><a href="#citation418b"
+class="footnote">[418b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 5.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote418c"></a><a href="#citation418c"
+class="footnote">[418c]</a>&nbsp; These particulars have been
+courteously supplied by Mr George Porter of Denbigh, who
+interviewed Mrs Thomas on 27th Dec. 1910.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s
+accuracy in <i>Wild Wales</i> was photograph.&nbsp; The Norwich
+jeweller Rossi mentioned in <i>Wild Wales</i> (page 159 <i>et
+seq.</i>) was a friend of Borrow&rsquo;s with whom he frequently
+spent an evening: conversing in Italian, &ldquo;being anxious to
+perfect himself in that language.&rdquo;&nbsp; I quote from a
+letter from his son Mr Theodore Rossi.&nbsp; &ldquo;There was an
+entire absence of pretence about him and we liked him very
+much&mdash;he always seemed desirous of learning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote419a"></a><a href="#citation419a"
+class="footnote">[419a]</a>&nbsp; This story is told by Mr F. J.
+Bowring, son of Sir John Bowring.&nbsp; He heard it from Mrs
+Roberts, the landlady of the inn.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote419b"></a><a href="#citation419b"
+class="footnote">[419b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+274.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote419c"></a><a href="#citation419c"
+class="footnote">[419c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+130.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote419d"></a><a href="#citation419d"
+class="footnote">[419d]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+130.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote420a"></a><a href="#citation420a"
+class="footnote">[420a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+150.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote420b"></a><a href="#citation420b"
+class="footnote">[420b]</a>&nbsp; These carvels were written by
+such young people as thought themselves &ldquo;endowed with the
+poetic gift, to compose carols some time before Christmas, and to
+recite them in the parish churches.&nbsp; Those pieces which were
+approved of by the clergy were subsequently chanted by their
+authors through their immediate neighbourhoods.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+(Introduction to <i>Bayr Jairgey</i>, Borrow&rsquo;s projected
+book on the Isle of Man.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote422"></a><a href="#citation422"
+class="footnote">[422]</a>&nbsp; Painted by H. W. Phillips in
+1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote423a"></a><a href="#citation423a"
+class="footnote">[423a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Vestiges of Borrow</i>:
+<i>Some Personal Reminiscences</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Globe</i>, 21st
+July 1896.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote423b"></a><a href="#citation423b"
+class="footnote">[423b]</a>&nbsp; The Anglo-Saxon scholar
+(1795&ndash;1857), who though paralysed during the whole of her
+life visited Rome, Athens and other places.&nbsp; She was the
+first woman elected a member of the British Association.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote423c"></a><a href="#citation423c"
+class="footnote">[423c]</a>&nbsp; To judge from Borrow&rsquo;s
+opinion of O&rsquo;Connell previously quoted,
+&ldquo;notoriety&rdquo; would have been a more appropriate word
+in his case.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote424"></a><a href="#citation424"
+class="footnote">[424]</a>&nbsp; Given to the Rev. A. W. Upcher
+and related by him in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 22nd July
+1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote425a"></a><a href="#citation425a"
+class="footnote">[425a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Lavengro</i>, page 361.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote425b"></a><a href="#citation425b"
+class="footnote">[425b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Romany Rye</i>, page
+309.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote425c"></a><a href="#citation425c"
+class="footnote">[425c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+285.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote425d"></a><a href="#citation425d"
+class="footnote">[425d]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Eastern Daily Press</i>,
+1st Oct. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote427"></a><a href="#citation427"
+class="footnote">[427]</a>&nbsp; Garcin de Tassy.&nbsp; Note sur
+les Rub&acirc;&rsquo;&iuml;y&acirc;t de &rsquo;Omar Kha&iuml;yam,
+which appeared in the <i>Journal Asiatique</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote428a"></a><a href="#citation428a"
+class="footnote">[428a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Letters and Literary Remains
+of Edward FitzGerald</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote428b"></a><a href="#citation428b"
+class="footnote">[428b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Songs of Europe</i>, <i>or
+Metrical Translations from All the European Languages</i>,
+<i>With Brief Prefatory Remarks on Each Language and its
+Literature</i>.&nbsp; 2 vols.&nbsp; (Advertised as &ldquo;Ready
+for the Press&rdquo; at the end of <i>The Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp;
+See page 438.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote429"></a><a href="#citation429"
+class="footnote">[429]</a>&nbsp; Rev. Whitwell Elwin, editor of
+<i>The Quarterly Review</i>.&nbsp; See <i>post</i>, p. 431.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote431"></a><a href="#citation431"
+class="footnote">[431]</a>&nbsp; Elwin could not very well have
+known Borrow all his, Borrow&rsquo;s life, as Dr Knapp states,
+for he was fifteen years younger, being born 26th Feb. 1816.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote432a"></a><a href="#citation432a"
+class="footnote">[432a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Some XVIII. Century Men of
+Letters</i>.&nbsp; Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote432b"></a><a href="#citation432b"
+class="footnote">[432b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Some XVIII. Century Men of
+Letters</i>.&nbsp; Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote433"></a><a href="#citation433"
+class="footnote">[433]</a>&nbsp; <i>Some XVIII. Century Men of
+Letters</i>.&nbsp; Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote435"></a><a href="#citation435"
+class="footnote">[435]</a>&nbsp; Entitled <i>Roving Life in
+England</i>.&nbsp; March 1857.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote436"></a><a href="#citation436"
+class="footnote">[436]</a>&nbsp; Elwin had already testified,
+also in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, to the accuracy of
+Borrow&rsquo;s portrait of B. R. Haydon in <i>Lavengro</i>, as
+confirmed by documentary evidence, and this after first reading
+the account as &ldquo;a comic exaggeration.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote437a"></a><a href="#citation437a"
+class="footnote">[437a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Letters and Literary Remains
+of Edward FitzGerald</i>, 1889.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote437b"></a><a href="#citation437b"
+class="footnote">[437b]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake in
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th Aug. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote438"></a><a href="#citation438"
+class="footnote">[438]</a>&nbsp; Works by the Author of <i>The
+Bible in Spain</i>, ready for the Press.</p>
+<p>In Two Volumes, Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings.&mdash;In Two
+Volumes, Wild Wales, Its People, Language, and Scenery.&mdash;In
+Two Volumes, Songs of Europe; or, Metrical Translations From all
+the European Languages.&nbsp; With brief Prefatory Remarks on
+each Language and its Literature.&mdash;In Two Volumes, Koempe
+Viser; Songs about Giants and Heroes.&nbsp; With Romantic and
+Historical Ballads, Translated from the Ancient Danish.&nbsp;
+With an Introduction and Copious Notes.&mdash;In One Volume, The
+Turkish Jester; or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin
+Efendi.&nbsp; Translated from the Turkish.&nbsp; With an
+Introduction.&mdash;In Two Volumes, Penquite and Pentyre; or, The
+Head of the Forest and the Headland.&nbsp; A Book on
+Cornwall.&mdash;In One Volume, Russian Popular Tales, With an
+Introduction and Notes.&nbsp; Contents:&mdash;The Story of
+Emelian the Fool; The Story of the Frog and the Hero; The Story
+of the Golden Mountain; The Story of the Seven Sevenlings; The
+Story of the Eryslan; The Story of the Old Man and his Son, the
+Crane; The Story of the Daughter of the Stroey; The Story of
+Klim; The Story of Prince Vikor; The Story of Prince Peter; The
+Story of Yvashka with the Bear&rsquo;s Ear.&mdash;In One Volume,
+The Sleeping Bard; or, Visions of the World, Death, &amp;
+Hell.&nbsp; By Master Elis Wyn.&nbsp; Translated from the
+Cambrian British.&mdash;In Two Volumes (Unfinished),
+Northern-Skalds, Kings, and Earls.&mdash;The Death of Balder; A
+Heroic Play.&nbsp; Translated from the Danish of Evald.&mdash;In
+One Volume, Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo: The Red Path and the
+Black Valley.&nbsp; Wanderings in Quest of Manx Literature.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote439"></a><a href="#citation439"
+class="footnote">[439]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;She was a lady of
+striking figure and very graceful manners, perhaps more serious
+than vivacious.&rdquo;&mdash;Mr A. Egmont Hake in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th August 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote440a"></a><a href="#citation440a"
+class="footnote">[440a]</a>&nbsp; She bequeathed to her son by
+will &ldquo;all and every thing&rdquo; of which she died
+possessed, charging him with the delivery of any gift to any
+other person she might desire.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote440b"></a><a href="#citation440b"
+class="footnote">[440b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page
+548.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote442"></a><a href="#citation442"
+class="footnote">[442]</a>&nbsp; These particulars have been
+kindly supplied by Mr D. B. Hill of Mattishall, Norfolk.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote445a"></a><a href="#citation445a"
+class="footnote">[445a]</a>&nbsp; Mr. A. Egmont Hake in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th Aug. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote445b"></a><a href="#citation445b"
+class="footnote">[445b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of Frances Power
+Cobbe</i>, by Herself, 1894.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote446"></a><a href="#citation446"
+class="footnote">[446]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of Frances Power
+Cobbe</i>, by Herself, 1894.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote447a"></a><a href="#citation447a"
+class="footnote">[447a]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;In Defence of
+Borrow,&rdquo; prefixed to <i>The Romany Rye</i>.&nbsp; Ward,
+Locke &amp; Co.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote447b"></a><a href="#citation447b"
+class="footnote">[447b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Vestiges of Borrow</i>;
+<i>Some Personal Reminiscences</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Globe</i>, 21st
+July 1896.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote448"></a><a href="#citation448"
+class="footnote">[448]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th
+August 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote449a"></a><a href="#citation449a"
+class="footnote">[449a]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake in
+<i>Macmillan&rsquo;s Magazine</i>, November 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote449b"></a><a href="#citation449b"
+class="footnote">[449b]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th August 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote449c"></a><a href="#citation449c"
+class="footnote">[449c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty Years</i>,
+by Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote450"></a><a href="#citation450"
+class="footnote">[450]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 10th
+September 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote451a"></a><a href="#citation451a"
+class="footnote">[451a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 10th
+September 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote451b"></a><a href="#citation451b"
+class="footnote">[451b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th
+August 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote453"></a><a href="#citation453"
+class="footnote">[453]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Sherry drinkers, . . . I
+often heard him say in a tone of positive loathing, he
+<i>despised</i>.&nbsp; He had a habit of speaking in a measured
+syllabic manner, if he wished to express dislike or contempt,
+which was certainly very effective.&nbsp; He would say: &lsquo;If
+you want to have the Sherry <i>tang</i>, get Madeira
+(that&rsquo;s a gentleman&rsquo;s wine), and throw into it two or
+three pairs of old boots, and you&rsquo;ll get the taste of the
+pig skins they carry the Sherry about in.&rdquo;&mdash;Rev. J. R.
+P. Berkeley&rsquo;s <i>Recollections</i>.&nbsp; <i>The Life of
+George Borrow</i>, by Dr Knapp.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote456"></a><a href="#citation456"
+class="footnote">[456]</a>&nbsp; <i>Life of Frances Power
+Cobbe</i>, by Herself, 1894.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote459a"></a><a href="#citation459a"
+class="footnote">[459a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Geologist</i>,
+1797&ndash;1875.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote459b"></a><a href="#citation459b"
+class="footnote">[459b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of Frances Power
+Cobbe</i>, by Herself, 1894.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote460a"></a><a href="#citation460a"
+class="footnote">[460a]</a>&nbsp; <i>Charles Godfrey Leland</i>,
+by E. R. Pennell, 1908</p>
+<p><a name="footnote460b"></a><a href="#citation460b"
+class="footnote">[460b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs</i>, by C. G.
+Leland, 1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote461a"></a><a href="#citation461a"
+class="footnote">[461a]</a>&nbsp; In her biography of Leland, Mrs
+Pennell states that an American woman, a Mrs Lewis
+(&ldquo;Estelle&rdquo;) introduced Leland to Borrow at the
+British Museum and that they talked Gypsy.&nbsp; &ldquo;I hear he
+expressed himself as greatly pleased with me,&rdquo; was
+Leland&rsquo;s comment.&nbsp; The correspondence clearly shows
+that Leland called on Borrow.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote461b"></a><a href="#citation461b"
+class="footnote">[461b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs</i> of C. G. Leland,
+1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote461c"></a><a href="#citation461c"
+class="footnote">[461c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs</i> of C. G. Leland,
+1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote462a"></a><a href="#citation462a"
+class="footnote">[462a]</a>&nbsp; Leland&rsquo;s annoyance with
+Borrow did not prevent him paying to his memory the following
+tribute:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What I admire in Borrow to such a degree that before it
+his faults or failings seem very trifling, is his absolutely
+vigorous, marvellously varied originality, based on direct
+familiarity with Nature, but guided and cultured by the study of
+natural, simple writers, such as Defoe and Smollett.&nbsp; I
+think that the &lsquo;interest&rsquo; in, or rather sympathy for
+gypsies, in his case as in mine, came not from their being
+curious or dramatic beings, but because they are so much a part
+of free life, of out-of-doors Nature; so associated with
+sheltered nooks among rocks and trees, the hedgerow and birds,
+river-sides, and wild roads.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s heart was large
+and true as regarded English rural life; there was a place in it
+for everything which was of the open air and freshly
+beautiful.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Memoirs</i> of C. G. Leland, 1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote462b"></a><a href="#citation462b"
+class="footnote">[462b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i>.&nbsp;
+Word-Book of the Romany, or English Gypsy Language.&nbsp; With
+Specimens of Gypsy Poetry, and an Account of Certain Gypsyries or
+Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating to Gypsy
+Life in England.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote462c"></a><a href="#citation462c"
+class="footnote">[462c]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;There were not two
+educated men in England who possessed the slightest knowledge of
+Romany.&rdquo;&mdash;F. H. Groome in <i>Academy</i>,&mdash;13th
+June 1874.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote463a"></a><a href="#citation463a"
+class="footnote">[463a]</a>&nbsp; F. H. Groome in <i>Academy</i>,
+13th June 1874.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote463b"></a><a href="#citation463b"
+class="footnote">[463b]</a>&nbsp; <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote464"></a><a href="#citation464"
+class="footnote">[464]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 17th
+March 1888.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote466a"></a><a href="#citation466a"
+class="footnote">[466a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bookman</i>, February
+1893.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote466b"></a><a href="#citation466b"
+class="footnote">[466b]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 10th
+Sept. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote467"></a><a href="#citation467"
+class="footnote">[467]</a>&nbsp; <i>William Bodham Donne and His
+Friends</i>.&nbsp; Edited by Catherine B. Johnson, 1905.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote469a"></a><a href="#citation469a"
+class="footnote">[469a]</a>&nbsp; Mr T. Watts-Dunton, in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>, 3rd Sept. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote469b"></a><a href="#citation469b"
+class="footnote">[469b]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake, in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th Aug. 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote470a"></a><a href="#citation470a"
+class="footnote">[470a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Life of George
+Borrow</i>, by Dr Knapp.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote470b"></a><a href="#citation470b"
+class="footnote">[470b]</a>&nbsp; <i>East Anglia</i>, by J. Ewing
+Ritchie, 1883.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote470c"></a><a href="#citation470c"
+class="footnote">[470c]</a>&nbsp; <i>George Borrow in East
+Anglia</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote473"></a><a href="#citation473"
+class="footnote">[473]</a>&nbsp; W. E. Henley.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote474a"></a><a href="#citation474a"
+class="footnote">[474a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, 25th
+March 1899.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote474b"></a><a href="#citation474b"
+class="footnote">[474b]</a>&nbsp; Many attacks have been made
+upon Borrow&rsquo;s memory: one well-known man of letters and
+divine has gone to lengths that can only be described as
+unpardonable.&nbsp; It is undesirable to do more than deplore the
+lapse that no doubt the writer himself has already deeply
+regretted.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote474c"></a><a href="#citation474c"
+class="footnote">[474c]</a>&nbsp; <i>Memoirs of Eighty Years</i>,
+1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote475a"></a><a href="#citation475a"
+class="footnote">[475a]</a>&nbsp; Mr A. Egmont Hake in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>, 13th August 1881.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote475b"></a><a href="#citation475b"
+class="footnote">[475b]</a>&nbsp; In <i>The Bible in
+Spain</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;Next to the love of God, the love of
+country is the best preventative of crime.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Page
+53.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote475c"></a><a href="#citation475c"
+class="footnote">[475c]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Bible in Spain</i>, page
+97.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote476"></a><a href="#citation476"
+class="footnote">[476]</a>&nbsp; Mr Thomas Seccombe in <i>The
+Bookman</i>, Feb. 1892.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote477"></a><a href="#citation477"
+class="footnote">[477]</a>&nbsp; <i>Wild Wales</i>, page 628.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
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+
+This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
+from the 1912 John Murray edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF GEORGE BORROW
+
+by Herbert Jenkins
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+During the whole of Borrow's manhood there was probably only one
+period when he was unquestionably happy in his work and content with
+his surroundings.  He may almost be said to have concentrated into
+the seven years (1833-1840) that he was employed by the British and
+Foreign Bible Society in Russia, Portugal and Spain, a lifetime's
+energy and resource.  From an unknown hack-writer, who hawked about
+unsaleable translations of Welsh and Danish bards, a travelling
+tinker and a vagabond Ulysses, he became a person of considerable
+importance.  His name was acclaimed with praise and enthusiasm at
+Bible meetings from one end of the country to the other.  He
+developed an astonishing aptitude for affairs, a tireless energy, and
+a diplomatic resourcefulness that aroused silent wonder in those who
+had hitherto regarded him as a failure.  His illegal imprisonment in
+Madrid nearly brought about a diplomatic rupture between Great
+Britain and Spain, and later his missionary work in the Peninsula was
+referred to by Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons as an instance
+of what could be achieved by courage and determination in the face of
+great difficulties.
+
+Those seven rich and productive years realised to the full the
+strange talents and unsuspected abilities of George Borrow's unique
+character.  He himself referred to the period spent in Spain as the
+"five happiest years" of his life.  When, however, his life came to
+be written by Dr Knapp, than whom no biographer has approved himself
+more loyal or enthusiastic, it was found that the records of that
+period were not accessible.  The letters that he had addressed to the
+Bible Society had been mislaid.  These came to light shortly after
+the publication of Dr Knapp's work, and type-written copies were
+placed at my disposal by the General Committee long before they were
+given to the public in volume form.
+
+A systematic search at the Public Record Office has revealed a wealth
+of unpublished documents, including a lengthy letter from Borrow
+relating to his imprisonment at Seville in 1839.  From other sources
+much valuable information and many interesting anecdotes have been
+obtained, and through the courtesy of their possessor a number of
+unpublished Borrow letters are either printed in their entirety or
+are quoted from in this volume.
+
+My thanks are due in particular to the Committee of British and
+Foreign Bible Society for placing at my disposal the copies of the
+Borrow Letters, and also for permission to reproduce the interesting
+silhouette of the Rev. Andrew Brandram, and to the Rev. T. H. Darlow,
+M.A. (Literary Superintendent), whose uniform kindness and desire to
+assist me I find it impossible adequately to acknowledge.  My thanks
+are also due to the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Grey, M.P., for permission to
+examine the despatches from the British Embassy at Madrid at the
+Record Office, and the Registers of Passports at the Foreign Office,
+and to Mr F. H. Bowring (son of Sir John Bowring), Mr Wilfrid J.
+Bowring (who has placed at my disposal a number of letters from
+Borrow to his grandfather), Mr R. W. Brant, Mr Ernest H. Caddie, Mr
+William Canton, Mr S. D. Charles, an ardent Borrovian from whom I
+have received much kindness and many valuable suggestions, Mr A. I.
+Dasent, the editors of The Athenaeum and The Bookman, Mr Thomas Hake,
+Mr D. B. Hill of Mattishall, Norfolk, Mr James Hooper, Mr W. F. T.
+Jarrold (for permission to reproduce the hitherto unpublished
+portrait of Borrow painted by his brother), Dr F. G. Kenyon, C.B., Mr
+F. A. Mumby, Mr George Porter of Denbigh (for interesting particulars
+about Borrow's first visit to Wales), Mr Theodore Rossi, Mr Theodore
+Watts-Dunton, Mr Thomas Vade-Walpole, who have all responded to my
+appeal for help with great willingness.
+
+To one friend, who elects to be nameless, I am deeply grateful for
+many valuable suggestions and much help; but above all for the keen
+interest he has taken in a work which he first encouraged me to
+write.  To her who gave so plentifully of her leisure in transcribing
+documents at the Record Office and in research work at the British
+Museum and elsewhere, I am indebted beyond all possibility of
+acknowledgment.  To no one more than to Mr John Murray are my
+acknowledgments due for his unfailing kindness, patience and
+assistance.  It is no exaggeration to state that but for his aid and
+encouragement this book could not have been written.
+
+HERBERT JENKINS.
+January, 1912.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I:  1678-MAY 1816
+
+
+
+On 28th July 1783 was held the annual fair at Menheniot, and for
+miles round the country folk flocked into the little Cornish village
+to join in the festivities.  Among the throng was a strong contingent
+of young men from Liskeard, a town three miles distant, between whom
+and the youth of Menheniot an ancient feud existed.  In days when the
+bruisers of England were national heroes, and a fight was a fitting
+incident of a day's revelry, the very presence of their rivals was a
+sufficient challenge to the chivalry of Menheniot, and a contest
+became inevitable.  Some unrecorded incident was accepted by both
+parties as a sufficient cause for battle, and the two factions were
+soon fighting furiously midst collapsing stalls and tumbled
+merchandise.  Women shrieked and fainted, men shouted and struck out
+grimly, whilst the stall-holders, in a frenzy of grief and despair,
+wrung their hands helplessly as they saw their goods being trampled
+to ruin beneath the feet of the contestants.
+
+Slowly the men of Liskeard were borne back by their more numerous
+opponents.  They wavered, and just as defeat seemed inevitable, there
+arrived upon the scene a young man who, on seeing his townsmen in
+danger of being beaten, placed himself at their head and charged down
+upon the enemy, forcing them back by the impetuosity of his attack.
+
+The new arrival was a man of fine physique, above the medium height
+and a magnificent fighter, who, later in life, was to achieve
+something of which a Mendoza or a Belcher might have been proud.  He
+fought strongly and silently, inspiring his fellow townsmen by his
+example.  The new leader had entirely turned the tide of battle, but
+just as the defeat of the men of Menheniot seemed certain, a
+diversion was created by the arrival of the local constables.  Now
+that their own villagers were on the verge of disaster, there was no
+longer any reason why they should remain in the background.  They
+made a determined effort to arrest the leader of the Liskeard
+contingent, and were promptly knocked down by him.
+
+At that moment Mr Edmund Hambley, a much-respected maltster and the
+headborough of Liskeard, was attracted to the spot.  Seeing in the
+person of the outrageous leader of the battle one of his own
+apprentices, he stepped forward and threatened him with arrest.
+Goaded to desperation by the scornful attitude of the young man, the
+master-maltster laid hands upon him, and instantly shared the fate of
+the constables.  With great courage and determination the headborough
+rose to his feet and again attempted to enforce his authority, but
+with no better result.  When he picked himself up for a second time,
+it was to pass from the scene of his humiliation and, incidentally,
+out of the life of the young man who had defied his authority.
+
+The young apprentice was Thomas Borrow (born December 1758), eighth
+and posthumous child of John Borrow and of Mary his wife, of
+Trethinnick (the House on the Hill), in the neighbouring parish of St
+Cleer, two and a half miles north of Liskeard.  At the age of
+fifteen, Thomas had begun to work upon his father's farm.  At
+nineteen he was apprenticed to Edmund Hambley, maltster, of Liskeard,
+who five years later, in his official capacity as Constable of the
+Hundred of Liskeard, was to be publicly defied and twice knocked down
+by his insubordinate apprentice.
+
+A trifling affair in itself, this village fracas was to have a
+lasting effect upon the career of Thomas Borrow.  He was given to
+understand by his kinsmen that he need not look to them for sympathy
+or assistance in his wrongdoing.  The Borrows of Trethinnick could
+trace back further than the parish registers record (1678).  They
+were godly and law-abiding people, who had stood for the king and
+lost blood and harvests in his cause.  If a son of the house disgrace
+himself, the responsibility must be his, not theirs.  In the opinion
+of his family, Thomas Borrow had, by his vigorous conduct towards the
+headborough, who was also his master, placed himself outside the
+radius of their sympathy.  At this period Trethinnick, a farm of some
+fifty acres in extent, was in the hands of Henry, Thomas' eldest
+brother, who since his mother's death, ten years before, had assumed
+the responsibility of launching his youngest brother upon the world.
+
+Fearful of the result of his assault on the headborough, Thomas
+Borrow left St Cleer with great suddenness, and for five months
+disappeared entirely.  On 29th December he presented himself as a
+recruit before Captain Morshead, {3a} in command of a detachment of
+the Coldstream Guards, at that time stationed in the duchy.
+
+Thomas Borrow was no stranger to military training.  For five years
+he had been in the Yeomanry Militia, which involved a short annual
+training.  In the regimental records he is credited with five years
+"former service."  He remained for eight years with the Coldstream
+Guards, most of the time being passed in London barracks.  He had no
+money with which to purchase a commission, and his rise was slow and
+deliberate.  At the end of nine months he was promoted to the rank of
+corporal, and five years later he became a sergeant.  In 1792 he was
+transferred as Sergeant-Major to the First, or West Norfolk Regiment
+of Militia, whose headquarters were at East Dereham in Norfolk.
+
+It was just previous to this transfer that Sergeant Borrow had his
+famous encounter in Hyde Park with Big Ben Bryan, the champion of
+England; he "whose skin was brown and dusky as that of a toad."  It
+was a combat in which "even Wellington or Napoleon would have been
+heartily glad to cry for quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and
+even the Blacksmith Tartar would, perhaps, have shrunk from the
+opponent with whom, after having had a dispute with him," Sergeant
+Borrow "engaged in single combat for one hour, at the end of which
+time the champions shook hands and retired, each having experienced
+quite enough of the other's prowess." {4a}
+
+At East Dereham Thomas Borrow met Ann {4b} Perfrement, {4c} a
+strikingly handsome girl of twenty, whose dark eyes first flashed
+upon him from over the footlights.  It was, and still is, the custom
+for small touring companies to engage their supernumeraries in the
+towns in which they were playing.  The pretty daughter of Farmer
+Perfrement, whose farm lay about one and a half miles out of East
+Dereham, was one of those who took occasion to earn a few shillings
+for pin-money.  The Perfrements were of Huguenot stock.  On the
+revocation of the Edict of Nantes, their ancestors had fled from
+their native town of Caen and taken refuge in East Anglia, there to
+enjoy the liberty of conscience denied them in their beloved
+Normandy.  Thomas Borrow made the acquaintance of the young
+probationer, and promptly settled any aspirations that she may have
+had towards the stage by marrying her.  The wedding took place on
+11th February 1793 at East Dereham church, best known as the resting-
+place of the poet Cowper, Ann being twenty-one and Thomas thirty-four
+years of age.
+
+For the next seven years Thomas and Ann Borrow moved about with the
+West Norfolk Militia, which now marched off into Essex, a few months
+later doubling back again into Norfolk.  Then it dived into Kent and
+for a time hovered about the Cinque Ports, Thomas Borrow in the
+meantime being promoted to the rank of quarter-master (27th May
+1795).  It was not until he had completed fourteen years of service
+that he received a commission.  On 27th February 1798 he became
+Adjutant in the same regiment, a promotion that carried with it a
+captain's rank.
+
+Whilst at Sandgate Mrs Borrow became acquainted with John Murray, the
+son of the founder of the publishing house from which, forty-four
+years later, were to be published the books of her second son, then
+unborn.  The widow of John Murray the First had married in 1795
+Lieutenant Henry Paget of the West Norfolk Militia.  Years later
+(27th March 1843) George Borrow wrote to John Murray, Junr., third of
+the line:
+
+
+"I am at present in Norwich with my mother, who has been ill, but is
+now, thank God, recovering fast.  She begs leave to send her kind
+remembrances to Mr Murray.  She knew him at Sandgate in Kent FORTY-
+SIX years ago, when he came to see his mother, Mrs P[aget].  She was
+also acquainted with his sister, Miss Jane Murray, {5a} who used to
+ride on horseback with her on the Downs.  She says Captain [sic]
+Paget once cooked a dinner for Mrs P. and herself; and sat down to
+table with his cook's apron on.  Is not this funny?  Does it not
+'beat the Union,' as the Yankees say?"
+
+
+The first child of the marriage was born in 1800, it is not known
+exactly when or where.  This was John, "the brother some three years
+older than myself," whose beauty in infancy was so great "that
+people, especially those of the poorer classes, would follow the
+nurse who carried him about in order to look at and bless his lovely
+face," {6a} with its rosy cheeks and smiling, blue-eyed innocence.
+On one occasion even, an attempt was made to snatch him from the arms
+of his nurse as she was about to enter a coach.  The parents became a
+prey to anxiety; for the child seems to have possessed many endearing
+qualities as well as good looks.  He was quick and clever, and when
+the time came for instruction, "he mastered his letters in a few
+hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of people on the
+doors of houses and over the shop windows." {6b}  His cleverness
+increased as he grew up, and later he seems to have become, in the
+mind of Captain Borrow at least, a standard by which to measure the
+shortcomings of his younger son George, whom he never was able to
+understand.
+
+For the next three years, 1800-3, the regiment continued to hover
+about the home counties.  The Peace of Amiens released many of the
+untried warriors, who had enlisted "until the peace," their adjutant
+having to find new recruits to fill up the gaps.  War broke out again
+the following year (18th May 1803), and the Great Terror assumed a
+phase so critical as to subdue almost entirely all thought of party
+strife.  On 5th July Ann Borrow gave birth to a second son, in the
+house of her father.  At the time Captain Borrow was hunting for
+recruits in other parts of Norfolk, in order to send them to
+Colchester, where the regiment was stationed.  In due course the
+child was christened George Henry {7a} at the church of East Dereham,
+and, within a few weeks of his birth, he received his first
+experience of the vicissitudes of a soldier's life, by accompanying
+his father, mother, and brother to Colchester to rejoin the regiment.
+The whole infancy of George Borrow was spent in the same trailing
+restlessness.  Napoleon was alive and at large, and the West Norfolks
+seemed doomed eternally to march and countermarch in the threatened
+area, Sussex, Kent, Essex.
+
+No efforts appear to have been made to steal the younger brother,
+although "people were in the habit of standing still to look at me,
+ay, more than at my brother." {7b}  Unlike John in about everything
+that one child could be unlike another, George was a gloomy,
+introspective creature who considerably puzzled his parents.  He
+compares himself to "a deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines,
+cypresses and yews," {7c} beside which he once paused to contemplate
+"a beautiful stream . . . sparkling in the sunshine, and . . .
+tumbling merrily into cascades," {7d} which he likened to his
+brother.
+
+Slow of comprehension, almost dull-witted, shy of society, sometimes
+bursting into tears when spoken to, George became "a lover of nooks
+and retired corners," {7e} where he would sit for hours at a time a
+prey to "a peculiar heaviness . . . and at times . . . a strange
+sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror," {7f} for
+which there was no apparent cause.  In time he grew to be as much
+disliked as his brother was admired.  On one occasion an old Jew
+pedlar, attracted by the latent intelligence in the smouldering eyes
+of the silent child, who ignored his questions and continued tracing
+in the dust with his fingers curious lines, pronounced him "a
+prophet's child."  This carried to the mother's heart a quiet
+comfort; and reawakened in her hope for the future of her second son.
+
+The early childhood of George Borrow was spent in stirring times.
+Without, there was the menace of Napoleon's invasion; within, every
+effort was being made to meet and repel it.  Dumouriez was preparing
+his great scheme of defence; Captain Thomas Borrow was doing his
+utmost to collect and drill men to help in carrying it into effect.
+Sometimes the family were in lodgings; but more frequently in
+barracks, for reasons of economy.  Once, at least, they lived under
+canvas.
+
+The strange and puzzling child continued to impress his parents in a
+manner well-calculated to alarm them.  One day, with a cry of
+delight, he seized a viper that, "like a line of golden light," was
+moving across the lane in which he was playing.  Whilst making no
+effort to harm the child, who held and regarded it with awe and
+admiration, the reptile showed its displeasure towards John, his
+brother, by hissing and raising its head as if to strike.  This
+happened when George was between two and three years of age.  At
+about the same period he ate largely of some poisonous berries, which
+resulted in "strong convulsions," lasting for several hours.  He
+seems to have been a source of constant anxiety to his parents, who
+were utterly unable to understand the strange and gloomy child who
+had been vouchsafed to them by the inscrutable decree of providence.
+
+In the middle of the year 1809 the regiment returned from Essex to
+Norfolk, marching first to Norwich and thence to other towns in the
+county.  Captain Borrow and his family took up their quarters once
+more at Dereham.  George was now six years old, acutely observant of
+the things that interested him, but reluctant to proceed with studies
+which, in his eyes, seemed to have nothing to recommend them.  Books
+possessed no attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and
+could even read imperfectly.  The acquirement of book-learning he
+found a dull and dolorous business, to which he was driven only by
+the threats or entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern
+lest he should become an "arrant dunce."
+
+The intelligence that the old Jew pedlar had discovered still lay
+dormant, as if unwilling to manifest itself.  The boy loved best "to
+look upon the heavens, and to bask in the rays of the sun, or to sit
+beneath hedgerows and listen to the chirping of the birds, indulging
+the while in musing and meditation." {9a}  Meanwhile John was earning
+golden opinions for the astonishing progress he continued to make at
+school, unconsciously throwing into bolder relief the apparent
+dullness of his younger brother.  George, however, was as active
+mentally as the elder.  The one was studying men, the other books.
+George was absorbing impressions of the things around him:  of the
+quaint old Norfolk town, its "clean but narrow streets branching out
+from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with
+here and there a roof of venerable thatch"; of that exquisite old
+gentlewoman Lady Fenn, {9b} as she passed to and from her mansion
+upon some errand of bounty or of mercy, "leaning on her gold-headed
+cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance
+behind." {9c)  On Sundays, from the black leather-covered seat in the
+church-pew, he would contemplate with large-eyed wonder the rector
+and James Philo his clerk, "as they read their respective portions of
+the venerable liturgy," sometimes being lulled to sleep by the
+monotonous drone of their voices.
+
+On fine Sundays there was the evening walk "with my mother and
+brother--a quiet, sober walk, during which I would not break into a
+run, even to chase a butterfly, or yet more a honey-bee, being fully
+convinced of the dread importance of the day which God had hallowed.
+And how glad I was when I had got over the Sabbath day without having
+done anything to profane it.  And how soundly I slept on the Sabbath
+night after the toil of being very good throughout the day." {10a}
+
+During these early years there was being photographed upon the brain
+of George Borrow a series of impressions which, to the end of his
+life, remained as vivid as at the moment they were absorbed.  What
+appeared to those around him as dull-witted stupidity was, in
+reality, mental surfeit.  His mind was occupied with other things
+than books, things that it eagerly took cognisance of, strove to
+understand and was never to forget. {10b}  Hitherto he had taken "no
+pleasure in books . . . and bade fair to be as arrant a dunce as ever
+brought the blush of shame into the cheeks of anxious and
+affectionate parents." {10c}  His mind was not ready for them.  When
+the time came there was no question of dullness:  he proved an eager
+and earnest student.
+
+One day an intimate friend of Mrs Borrow's, who was also godmother to
+John, brought with her a present of a book for each of the two boys,
+a history of England for the elder and for the younger Robinson
+Crusoe.  Instantly George became absorbed.
+
+"The true chord had now been touched . . . Weeks succeeded weeks,
+months followed months, and the wondrous volume was my only study and
+principal source of amusement.  For hours together I would sit poring
+over a page till I had become acquainted with the import of every
+line.  My progress, slow enough at first, became by degrees more
+rapid, till at last, under a 'shoulder of mutton sail,' I found
+myself cantering before a steady breeze over an ocean of enchantment,
+so well pleased with my voyage that I cared not how long it might be
+ere it reached its termination.  And it was in this manner that I
+first took to the paths of knowledge." {11a}
+
+In the spring of 1810 the regiment was ordered to Norman Cross, in
+Huntingdonshire, situated at the junction of the Peterborough and
+Great North Roads.  At this spot the Government had caused to be
+erected in 1796 an extensive prison, covering forty acres of ground,
+in which to confine some of the prisoners made during the Napoleonic
+wars.  There were sixteen large buildings roofed with red tiles.
+Each group of four was surrounded by a palisade, whilst another
+palisade "lofty and of prodigious strength" surrounded the whole.  At
+the time when the West Norfolk Militia arrived there were some six
+thousand prisoners, who, with their guards, constituted a
+considerable-sized township.  From time to time fresh batches of
+captives arrived amid a storm of cheers and cries of "Vive
+L'Empereur!"  These were the only incidents in the day's monotony,
+save when some prisoner strove to evade the hospitality of King
+George, and was shot for his ingratitude.
+
+Captain Borrow rejoined his regiment at Norman C Cross, leaving his
+family to follow a few days later.  At the time the country round
+Peterborough was under water owing to the recent heavy rains, and at
+one portion of the journey the whole party had to embark in a species
+of punt, which was towed by horses "up to the knees in water, and, on
+coming to blind pools and 'greedy depths,' were not unfrequently
+swimming." {11b}  But they were all old campaigners and accepted such
+adventures as incidents of a soldier's life.
+
+At Norman Cross George made the acquaintance of an old snake-catcher
+and herbalist, a circumstance which, insignificant in itself, was to
+exercise a considerable influence over his whole life.  Frequently
+this curious pair were to be seen tramping the countryside together;
+a tall, quaint figure with fur cap and gaiters carrying a leathern
+bag of wriggling venom, and an eager child with eyes that now burned
+with interest and intelligence--and the talk of the two was the lore
+of the viper.  When the snake-catcher passed out of the life of his
+young disciple, he left behind him as a present a tame and fangless
+viper, which George often carried with him on his walks.  It was this
+well-meaning and inoffensive viper that turned aside the wrath of
+Gypsy Smith, {12a} and awakened in his heart a superstitious awe and
+veneration for the child, the Sap-engro, who might be a goblin, but
+who certainly would make a most admirable "clergyman and God
+Almighty," who read from a book that contained the kind of prayers
+particularly to his taste--perhaps the greatest encomium ever
+bestowed upon the immortal Robinson Crusoe.  Thus it came about that
+George Borrow was proclaimed brother to the gypsy's son Ambrose,
+{12b} who as Jasper Petulengro figures so largely in Lavengro and The
+Romany Rye, and is credited with that exquisitely phrased pagan
+glorification of mere existence:
+
+
+"Life is sweet, brother . . . There's night and day, brother, both
+sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's
+likewise the wind on the heath.  Life is very sweet, brother; who
+would wish to die?" {13a}
+
+
+The Borrows were nomads, permitted by God and the king to tarry not
+over long in any one place.  In the following July (1811) the West
+Norfolks proceeded to Colchester via Norfolk, after fifteen months of
+prison duty and straw-plait destroying. {13b}  Captain Borrow betook
+himself to East Dereham again to seek for likely recruits.  In the
+meantime George made his first acquaintance with that universal
+specific for success in life, for correctness of conduct, for
+soundness of principles--Lilly's Latin Grammar, which to learn by
+heart was to acquire a virtue that defied evil.  The good old
+pedagogue who advocated Lilly's Latin Grammar as a remedy for all
+ills, would have traced George Borrow's eventual success in life
+entirely to the fact that within three years of the date that the
+solemn exhortation was pronounced the boy had learned Lilly by heart,
+although without in the least degree comprehending him.
+
+Early in 1812 the regiment turned its head north, and by slow
+degrees, with occasional counter marchings, continued to progress
+towards Edinburgh, which was reached thirteen months later (6th April
+1813).  "With drums beating, colours flying, and a long train of
+baggage-waggons behind," {13c} the West Norfolk Militia wound its way
+up the hill to the Castle, the adjutant's family in a chaise forming
+part of the procession.  There in barracks the regiment might rest
+itself after long and weary marches, and the two young sons of the
+adjutant be permitted to continue their studies at the High School,
+without the probability that the morrow would see them on the road to
+somewhere else.
+
+Whilst at Edinburgh George met with his first experience of racial
+feeling, which, under uncongenial conditions, develops into race-
+hatred.  He discovered that one English boy, when faced by a throng
+of young Scots patriots, had best be silent as to the virtues of his
+own race.  He joined in and enjoyed the fights between the "Auld and
+the New Toon," and incidentally acquired a Scots accent that somewhat
+alarmed his loyal father, who had named him after the Hanoverian
+Georges.  Proving himself a good fighter, he earned the praise of his
+Scots acquaintances, and a general invitation to assist them in their
+"bickers" with "thae New Toon blackguards."
+
+He loved to climb and clamber over the rocks, peeping into "all
+manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses, where owls nestled
+and the weasel brought forth her young."  He would go out on all-day
+excursions, enjoying the thrills of clambering up to what appeared to
+be inaccessible ledges, until eventually he became an expert
+cragsman.  One day he came upon David Haggart {14a} sitting on the
+extreme verge of a precipice, "thinking of Willie Wallace."
+
+For fifteen months the regiment remained at Edinburgh.  In the spring
+of 1814 the waning star of Napoleon had, to all appearances, set, and
+he was on his way to his miniature kingdom, the Isle of Elba (28th
+April).  Europe commenced to disband its huge armies, Great Britain
+among the rest.  On 21st June the West Norfolks received orders to
+proceed to Norwich by ship via Leith and Great Yarmouth.  The
+Government, relieved of all apprehension of an invasion, had time to
+think of the personal comfort of the country's defenders.  With
+marked consideration, the orders provided that those who wished might
+march instead of embarking on the sea.  Accordingly Captain Borrow
+and his family chose the land route.  Arrived at Norwich, the
+regiment was formally disbanded amid great festivity.  The officers,
+at the Maid's Head, the queen of East Anglian inns, and the men in
+the spacious market-place, drank to the king's health and peace.  The
+regiment was formally mustered out on 19th July.
+
+The Borrows took up their quarters at the Crown and Angel in St
+Stephen's Street, a thoroughfare that connects the main roads from
+Ipswich and Newmarket with the city.  George, now eleven years old,
+had an opportunity of continuing his education at the Norwich Grammar
+School, whilst his brother proceeded to study drawing and painting
+with a "little dark man with brown coat . . . and top-boots, whose
+name will one day be considered the chief ornament of the old town,"
+{15a} and whose works are to "rank among the proudest pictures of
+England,"--the Norwich painter, "Old Crome." {15b}
+
+Whilst the two boys were thus occupied, Louis XVIII. was endeavouring
+to reorder his kingdom, and on a little island in the Mediterranean,
+Napoleon was preparing a bombshell that was to shatter the peace of
+Europe and send Captain Borrow hurrying hither and thither in search
+of the men who, a few months before, had left the colours, convinced
+that a generation of peace was before them.
+
+On 1st March Napoleon was at Cannes; eighteen days later Louis XVIII.
+fled from Paris.  Everywhere there were feverish preparations for
+war.  John Borrow threw aside pencil and brush and was gazetted
+ensign in his father's regiment (29th May).  Europe united against
+the unexpected and astonishing danger.  By the time Captain Borrow
+had finished his task, however, the crisis was past, Waterloo had
+been won and Napoleon was on his way to St Helena.
+
+By a happy inspiration it was decided to send the West Norfolks to
+Ireland, where "disturbances were apprehended" and private stills
+flourished.  On 31st August the regiment, some eight hundred strong,
+sailed in two vessels from Harwich for Cork, the passage occupying
+eight days.  The ship that carried the Borrows was old and crazy,
+constantly missing stays and shipping seas, until it seemed that only
+by a miracle she escaped "from being dashed upon the foreland."
+
+After a few days' rest at Cork, the "city of contradictions," where
+wealth and filth jostled one another in the public highways and
+"boisterous shouts of laughter were heard on every side," the
+regiment marched off in two divisions for Clonmel in Tipperary.
+Walking beside his father, who was in command of the second division,
+and holding on to his stirrup-leather, George found a new country
+opening out before him.  On one occasion, as they were passing
+through a village of low huts, "that seemed to be inhabited solely by
+women and children," he went up to an old beldam who sat spinning at
+the door of one of the hovels and asked for some water.  She
+"appeared to consider for a moment, then tottering into her hut,
+presently reappeared with a small pipkin of milk, which she offered .
+. . with a trembling hand."  When the lad tendered payment she
+declined the money, and patted his face, murmuring some
+unintelligible words.  Obviously there was nothing in the boy's
+nature now that appeared strange to simple-minded folk.  Probably the
+intercourse with other boys at Edinburgh and Norwich had been
+beneficial in its effect.  Keenly interested in everything around
+him, George fell to speculating as to whether he could learn Irish
+and speak to the people in their own tongue.
+
+At Clonmel the Borrows lodged with an Orangeman, who had run out of
+his house as the Adjutant rode by at the head of his men, and
+proceeded to welcome him with flowery volubility.  On the advice of
+his host Captain Borrow sent George to a Protestant school, where he
+met the Irish boy Murtagh, who figures so largely in Lavengro and The
+Romany Rye.  Murtagh settled any doubts that Borrow may have had as
+to his ability to acquire Erse, by teaching it to him in exchange for
+a pack of cards.
+
+On 23rd December 1815 Ensign John Thomas Borrow was promoted to the
+rank of lieutenant, he being then in his sixteenth year.  In the
+following January, after only a few months' stay, the West Norfolks
+were moved on to Templemore.  It was here that George learned to
+ride, and that without a saddle, and had awakened in him that
+"passion for the equine race" that never left him. {17a}
+
+The nine months spent in Ireland left an indelible mark upon Borrow's
+imagination.  In later life he repeatedly referred to his knowledge
+of the country, its people, and their language.  In overcoming the
+difficulties of Erse, he had opened up for himself a larger prospect
+than was to be enjoyed by a traveller whose first word of greeting or
+enquiry is uttered in a hated tongue.
+
+On 11th May 1816 the West Norfolk Militia was back again at Norwich.
+Peace was now finally restored to Europe, and every nation was far
+too impoverished, both as regards men and money, to nourish any
+schemes of aggression.  Napoleon was safe at St Helena, under the eye
+of that instinctive gaoler, Sir Hudson Lowe.  The army had completed
+its work and was being disbanded with all possible speed.  The turn
+of the West Norfolk Militia came on 17th June, when they were
+formally mustered out for the second time within two years.  Three
+years later their Adjutant was retired upon full-pay--eight shillings
+a day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II:  MAY 1816-MARCH 1824
+
+
+
+For the first time since his marriage, Captain Borrow found himself
+at liberty to settle down and educate his sons.  He had spent much of
+his life in Norfolk, and he decided to remain there and make Norwich
+his home.  It was a quiet and beautiful old-world city:  healthy,
+picturesque, ancient, and, above all, possessed of a Grammar School,
+where George could try and gather together the stray threads of
+education that he had acquired at various times and in various
+dialects.  It was an ideal city for a warrior to take his rest in;
+but probably what counted most with Captain Borrow was the Grammar
+School--more than the Norman Cathedral, the grim old Castle that
+stands guardian-like upon its mound, the fact of its being a garrison
+town, or even the traditions that surrounded the place.  He had two
+sons who must be appropriately sent out into the world, and Norwich
+offered facilities for educating both.  He accordingly took a small
+house in Willow Lane, to which access was obtained by a covered
+passage then called King's, but now Borrow's Court.
+
+During the most nomadic portion of his life, when, with discouraging
+rapidity, he was moving from place to place, Captain Borrow never for
+one moment seems to have forgotten his obligations as a father.
+Whenever he had been quartered in a town for a few months, he had
+sought out a school to which to send John and George, notably at
+Huddersfield and Sheffield.  Had he known it, these precautions were
+unnecessary; for he had two sons who were of what may be called the
+self-educating type:  John, by virtue of the quickness of his parts;
+George, on account of the strangeness of his interests and his thirst
+for a knowledge of men and the tongues in which they communicate to
+each other their ideas.  It would be impossible for an unconventional
+linguist, such as George Borrow was by instinct, to remain
+uneducated, and it was equally impossible to educate him.
+
+Quite unaware of the trend of his younger son's genius, Captain
+Borrow obtained for him a free-scholarship at the Grammar School,
+then under the headmastership of the Rev. Edward Valpy, B.D., whose
+principal claims to fame are his severity, his having flogged the
+conqueror of the "Flaming Tinman," and his destruction of the School
+Records of Admission, which dated back to the Sixteenth Century.
+Among Borrow's contemporaries at the Grammar School were "Rajah"
+Brooke of Sarawak (for whose achievements he in after life expressed
+a profound admiration), Sir Archdale Wilson of Delhi, Colonel Charles
+Stoddart, Dr James Martineau, and Thomas Borrow Burcham, the London
+Magistrate.
+
+Borrow was now thirteen, and, it would appear, as determined as ever
+to evade as much as possible academic learning.  He was "far from an
+industrious boy, fond of idling, and discovered no symptoms by his
+progress either in Latin or Greek of that philology, so prominent a
+feature of his last work (Lavengro)." {20a}  Borrow was an idler
+merely because his work was uncongenial to him.  "Mere idleness is
+the most disagreeable state of existence, and both mind and body are
+continually making efforts to escape from it," he wrote in later
+years concerning this period.  He wanted an object in life, an
+occupation that would prove not wholly uncongenial.  That he should
+dislike the routine of school life was not unnatural; for he had
+lived quite free from those conventional restraints to which other
+boys of his age had always been accustomed.  Occupation of some sort
+he must have, if only to keep at a distance that insistent melancholy
+that seems to have been for ever hovering about him, and the tempter
+whispered "Languages." {21a}  One day chance led him to a bookstall
+whereon lay a polyglot dictionary, "which pretended to be an easy
+guide to the acquirement of French, Italian, Low Dutch, and English."
+He took the two first, and when he had gleaned from the old volume
+all it had to teach him, he longed for a master.  Him he found in the
+person of an old French emigre priest, {21b} a study in snuff-colour
+and drab with a frill of dubious whiteness, who attended to the
+accents of a number of boarding-school young ladies.  The progress of
+his pupil so much pleased the old priest that "after six months'
+tuition, the master would sometimes, on his occasional absences to
+teach in the country, request his so forward pupil to attend for him
+his home scholars." {21c}  It was M. D'Eterville who uttered the
+second recorded prophecy concerning George Borrow:  "Vous serez un
+jour un grand philologue, mon cher," he remarked, and heard that his
+pupil nourished aspirations towards other things than mere philology.
+
+In the study of French, Spanish, and Italian, Borrow spent many hours
+that other boys would have devoted to pleasure; yet he was by no
+means a student only.  He found time to fish and to shoot, using a
+condemned, honey-combed musket that bore the date of 1746.  His
+fishing was done in the river Yare, which flowed through the estate
+of John Joseph Gurney, the Quaker-banker of Earlham Hall, two miles
+out of Norwich.  It was here that he was reproached by the voice,
+"clear and sonorous as a bell," of the banker himself; not for
+trespassing, but "for pulling all those fish out of the water, and
+leaving them to gasp in the sun."
+
+At Harford Bridge, some two miles along the Ipswich Road, lived "the
+terrible Thurtell," a patron and companion of "the bruisers of
+England," who taught Borrow to box, and who ultimately ended his own
+inglorious career by being hanged (9th January 1824) for the murder
+of Mr Weare, and incidentally figuring in De Quincey's "On Murder
+Considered As One of the Fine Arts."  It was through "the king of
+flash-men" that Borrow saw his first prize-fight at Eaton, near
+Norwich.
+
+The passion for horses that came suddenly to Borrow with his first
+ride upon the cob in Ireland had continued to grow.  He had an
+opportunity of gratifying it at the Norwich Horse Fair, held each
+Easter under the shadow of the Castle, and famous throughout the
+country. {22a}  It was here, in 1818, that Borrow encountered again
+Ambrose Petulengro, an event that was to exercise a considerable
+influence upon his life.  Mr Petulengro had become the head of his
+tribe, his father and mother having been transported for passing bad
+money.  He was now a man, with a wife, a child, and also a mother-in-
+law, who took a violent dislike to the tall, fair-haired gorgio.
+Borrow's life was much broadened by his intercourse with Mr
+Petulengro.  He was often at the gypsy encampment on Mousehold, a
+heath just outside Norwich, where, under the tuition of his host, he
+learned the Romany tongue with such rapidity as to astonish his
+instructor and earn for him among the gypsies the name of "Lav-
+engro," word-fellow or word-master.  He also boxed with the godlike
+Tawno Chikno, who in turn pronounced him worthy to bear the name
+"Cooro-mengro," fist-fellow or fist-master.  He frequently
+accompanied Mr Petulengro to neighbouring fairs and markets, riding
+one of the gypsy's horses.  At other times the two would roam over
+the gorse-covered Mousehold, discoursing largely about things Romany.
+
+The departure of Mr Petulengro and his retinue from Norwich threw
+Borrow back once more upon his linguistic studies, his fishing, his
+shooting, and his smouldering discontent at the constraints of school
+life.  It was probably an endeavour on Borrow's part to make himself
+more like his gypsy friends that prompted him to stain his face with
+walnut juice, drawing from the Rev. Edward Valpy the question:
+"Borrow, are you suffering from jaundice, or is it only dirt?"  The
+gypsies were not the only vagabonds of Borrow's acquaintance at this
+period.  There were the Italian peripatetic vendors of weather-
+glasses, who had their headquarters at Norwich.  In after years he
+met again more than one of these merchants.  They were always glad to
+see him and revive old memories of the Norwich days.
+
+About this time he saved a boy from drowning in the Yare. {23a}  It
+may be this act with which he generously credits his brother John
+when he says -
+
+
+"I have known him dash from a steep bank into a stream in his full
+dress, and pull out a man who was drowning; yet there were twenty
+others bathing in the water, who might have saved him by putting out
+a hand, without inconvenience to themselves, which, however, they did
+not do, but stared with stupid surprise at the drowning one's
+struggles." {24a}
+
+
+From the first Borrow had shown a strong distaste for the humdrum
+routine of school life.  In a thousand ways he was different from his
+fellows.  He had been accustomed to meet strange and, to him, deeply
+interesting people.  Now he was bidden adopt a course of life against
+which his whole nature rebelled.  It was impossible.  He missed the
+atmosphere of vagabondage that had inspired and stimulated his early
+boyhood.
+
+The crisis came at last.  There was only one way to avoid the awkward
+and distasteful destiny that was being forced upon him.  He entered
+into a conspiracy with three school-fellows, all younger than
+himself, to make a dash for a life that should offer wider
+opportunities to their adventurous natures.  The plan was to tramp to
+Great Yarmouth and there excavate on the seashore caves for their
+habitation.  From these headquarters they would make foraging
+expeditions, and live on what they could extract from the surrounding
+country, either by force or by the terror that they inspired.  One
+morning the four started on their twenty-mile trudge to the sea; but,
+when only a few miles out, one of their number became fearful and
+turned back.
+
+Encouraged by their leader, the others continued on their way.  The
+father of the other two boys appears to have got wind of the project
+and posted after them in a chaise.  He came up with them at Acle,
+about eleven miles from Norwich.  When they were first seen, Borrow
+was striving to hearten his fellow buccaneers, who were tired and
+dispirited after their long walk.  The three were unceremoniously
+bundled into the chaise and returned to their homes and,
+subsequently, to the wrath of the Rev. Edward Valpy. {25a}
+
+The names of the three confederates were John Dalrymple (whose heart
+failed him) and Theodosius and Francis Purland, sons of a Norwich
+chemist.  The Purlands are credited with robbing "the paternal till,"
+while Dalrymple confined himself to the less compromising duty of
+"gathering horse-pistols and potatoes."  If the boys robbed their
+father's till, why did they beg?  In the ballad entitled The
+Wandering Children and the Benevolent Gentleman, Borrow depicts the
+"eldest child" as begging for charity for these hungry children, who
+have had "no breakfast, save the haws."  This does not seem to
+suggest that the boys were in the possession of money.  Again, it was
+the father of one of their schoolfellows who was responsible for
+their capture, according to Dr Knapp, by asking them to dinner whilst
+he despatched a messenger to the Rev. Edward Valpy.  The story of
+Borrow's being "horsed" on Dr Martineau's back is apocryphal.
+Martineau himself denied it. {25b}
+
+There is no record of how Captain Borrow received the news of his
+younger son's breach of discipline.  It probably reminded him that
+the boy was now fifteen and it was time to think about his future.
+The old soldier was puzzled.  Not only had his second son shown a
+great partiality for acquiring Continental tongues, but he had
+learned Irish, and Captain Borrow seemed to think that by learning
+the language of Papists and rebels, his son had sullied the family
+honour.  To his father's way of thinking, this accomplishment seemed
+to bar him from most things that were at one and the same time
+honourable and desirable.
+
+The boy's own inclinations pointed to the army; but Captain Borrow
+had apparently seen too much of the army in war time, and the
+slowness of promotion, to think of it as offering a career suitable
+to his son, now that there was every prospect of a prolonged peace.
+He thought of the church as an alternative; but here again that fatal
+facility the boy had shown in learning Erse seemed to stand out as a
+barrier.  "I have observed the poor lad attentively and really I do
+not see what to make of him," Captain Borrow is said to have
+remarked.  What could be expected of a lad who would forsake Greek
+for Irish, or Latin for the barbarous tongue of homeless vagabonds?
+Certainly not a good churchman.  At length it became obvious to the
+distressed parents that there was only one choice left them--the law.
+
+About this period Borrow fell ill of some nameless and unclassified
+disease, which defied the wisdom of physicians, who shook their heads
+gravely by his bedside.  An old woman, however, cured him by a
+decoction prepared from a bitter root.  The convalescence was slow
+and laborious; for the boy's nerves were shattered, and that deep,
+haunting melancholy, which he first called the "Fear" and afterwards
+the "Horrors," descended upon him.
+
+On the 30th of March 1819 Borrow was articled for five years to
+Simpson & Rackham, solicitors, of Tuck's Court, St Giles, Norwich.
+{26a}  He consequently left home to take up his abode at the house of
+the senior partner in the Upper Close. {27a}  Mr William Simpson was
+a man of considerable importance in the city; for besides being
+Treasurer of the County, he was Chamberlain and Town Clerk, whilst
+his wife was famed for her hospitality, in particular her expensive
+dinners.
+
+With that unerring instinct of contrariety that never seemed to
+forsake him, Borrow proceeded to learn, not law but Welsh.  When the
+eyes of authority were on him he transcribed Blackstone, but when
+they were turned away he read and translated the poems of Ab Gwilym.
+He performed his tasks "as well as could be expected in one who was
+occupied by so many and busy thoughts of his own."
+
+At the end of Tuck's Court was a house at which was employed a Welsh
+groom, a queer fellow who soon attracted the notice of Simpson &
+Rackham's clerks, young gentlemen who were bent on "mis-spending the
+time which was not legally their own." {27b}  They would make audible
+remarks about the unfortunate and inoffensive Welsh groom, calling
+out after him "Taffy"--in short, rendering the poor fellow's life a
+misery with their jibes, until at last, almost distracted, he had
+come to the determination either to give his master notice or to hang
+himself, that he might get away from that "nest of parcupines."
+Borrow saw in the predicament of the Welsh groom the hand of
+providence.  He made a compact with him, that in exchange for lessons
+in Welsh, he, Borrow, should persuade his fellow clerks to cease
+their annoyance.
+
+From that time, each Sunday afternoon, the Welsh groom would go to
+Captain Borrow's house to instruct his son in Welsh pronunciation;
+for in book Welsh Borrow was stronger than his preceptor.  Borrow had
+learned the language of the bards "chiefly by going through Owen
+Pugh's version of 'Paradise Lost' twice" with the original by his
+side.  After which "there was very little in Welsh poetry that I
+could not make out with a little pondering." {28a}  This had occupied
+some three years.  The studies with the groom lasted for about twelve
+months, until he left Norwich with his family. {28b}
+
+Captain Borrow's thoughts were frequently occupied with the future of
+his younger son, a problem that had by no means been determined by
+signing the articles that bound him to Simpson & Rackham.  The boy
+was frank and honest and did not scruple to give expression to ideas
+of his own, and it was these ideas that alarmed his father.  Once at
+the house of Mr Simpson, and before the assembled guests, he told an
+archdeacon, worth 7000 pounds a year, that the classics were much
+overvalued, and compared Ab Gwilym with Ovid, to the detriment of the
+Roman.  To Captain Borrow the possession of ideas upon any subject by
+one so young was in itself a thing to be deplored; but to venture an
+opinion contrary to that commonly held by men of weight and substance
+was an unforgivable act of insubordination.
+
+The boy had been sent to Tuck's Court to learn law, and instead he
+persisted in acquiring languages, and such languages!  Welsh, Danish,
+Arabic, Armenian, Saxon; for these were the tongues with which he
+occupied himself.  None but a perfect mother such as Mrs Borrow could
+have found excuses for a son who pursued such studies, and her
+husband pointed out to her, it is "in the nature of women invariably
+to take the part of the second born."
+
+In one of those curiously self-revelatory passages with which his
+writings abound, Borrow tells how he continued to act as door-keeper
+long after it had ceased to be part of his duty.  As a student of men
+and a collector of strange characters, it was in keeping with his
+genius to do so, although he himself was unable to explain why he
+took pleasure in the task.  No one was admitted to the presence of
+the senior partner who did not first pass the searching scrutiny of
+his articled clerk.  Those who pleased him were admitted to Mr
+Simpson's private room; to those who did not he proved himself an
+almost insuperable obstacle.  Unfortunately Borrow's standards were
+those of the physiognomist rather than the lawyer; he inverted the
+whole fabric of professional desirability by admitting the goats and
+refusing the sheep.  He turned away a knight, or a baronet, and
+admitted a poet, until at last the distressed old gentleman in black,
+with the philanthropical head, his master, was forced to expostulate
+and adjure his clerk to judge, not by faces but by clothes, which in
+reality make the man.  Borrow bowed to the ruling of "the prince of
+English solicitors," revised his standards and continued to act as
+keeper of the door.
+
+Mr Simpson seems to have earned Borrow's thorough regard, no small
+achievement considering in how much he differed from his illustrious
+articled-clerk in everything, not excepting humour, of which the
+delightful, old-world gentleman seems to have had a generous share.
+He was doubtless puzzled to classify the strange being by whose
+instrumentality a stream of undesirable people was admitted to his
+presence, whilst distinguished clients were sternly and rigorously
+turned away.  He probably smiled at the story of the old yeoman and
+his wife who, in return for some civility shown to them by Borrow,
+presented him with an old volume of Danish ballads, which inspired
+him to learn the language, aided by a Danish Bible. {30a}  He was not
+only "the first solicitor in East Anglia," but "the prince of all
+English solicitors--for he was a gentleman!" {30b}  In another place
+Borrow refers to him as "my old master . . . who would have died
+sooner than broken his word.  God bless him!" {30c}  And yet again as
+"my ancient master, the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia." {30d}
+
+Borrow was always handsome in everything he did.  If he hated a man
+he hated him, his kith and kin and all who bore his name.  His
+friendship was similarly sweeping, and his regard for William Simpson
+prompted him to write subsequently of the law as "a profession which
+abounds with honourable men, and in which I believe there are fewer
+scamps than in any other.  The most honourable men I have ever known
+have been lawyers; they were men whose word was their bond, and who
+would have preferred ruin to breaking it." {31a}
+
+Fortunately for Borrow there was at the Norwich Guildhall a valuable
+library consisting of a large number of ancient folios written in
+many languages.  "Amidst the dust and cobwebs of the Corporation
+Library" he studied earnestly and, with a fine disregard for a
+librarian's feelings, annotated some of the volumes, his marginalia
+existing to this day.  One of his favourite works was the Danica
+Literatura Antiquissima of Olaus Wormius, 1636, which inspired him
+with the idea of adopting the name Olaus, his subsequent
+contributions to The New Magazine being signed George Olaus Borrow.
+
+Whilst Borrow was striving to learn languages and avoid the law,
+{31b} the question of his brother's career was seriously occupying
+the mind of their father.  Borrow loved and admired his brother.
+There is sincerity in all he writes concerning John, and there is
+something of nobility about the way in which he tells of his father's
+preference for him.  "Who," he asks, "cannot excuse the honest pride
+of the old man--the stout old man?" {31c}
+
+The Peace had closed to John Borrow the army as a profession, and he
+had devoted himself assiduously to his art.  Under Crome the elder he
+had made considerable progress, and had exhibited a number of
+pictures at the yearly exhibitions of the Norwich Society of Artists.
+He continued to study with Crome until the artist's death (22nd April
+1821), when a new master had to be sought.  With his father's
+blessing and 150 pounds he proceeded to London, where he remained for
+more than a year studying with B. R. Haydon. {32a}  Later he went to
+Paris to copy Old Masters.
+
+About this time Borrow had an opportunity of seeing many of "the
+bruisers of England."  In his veins flowed the blood of the man who
+had met Big Ben Bryan and survived the encounter undefeated.  "Let no
+one sneer at the bruisers of England," Borrow wrote--"What were the
+gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its palmiest
+days, compared to England's bruisers?" {32b} he asks.  On 17th July
+1820 Edward Painter of Norwich was to meet Thomas Oliver of London
+for a purse of a hundred guineas.  On the Saturday previous (the
+15th) the Norwich hotels began to fill with bruisers and their
+patrons, and men went their ways anxiously polite to the stranger,
+lest he turn out to be some champion whom it were dangerous to
+affront.  Thomas Cribb, the champion of England, had come to see the
+fight, "Teucer Belcher, savage Shelton, . . . the terrible Randall, .
+. . Bulldog Hudson, . . . fearless Scroggins, . . . Black Richmond, .
+. . Tom of Bedford," and a host of lesser lights of the "Fancy."
+
+On the Monday, upwards of 20,000 men swept out of the old city
+towards North Walsham, less than twenty miles distant, among them
+George Borrow, striding along among the varied stream of men and
+vehicles (some 2000 in number) to see the great fight, which was to
+end in the victory of the local man and a terrible storm, as if
+heaven were thundering its anger against a brutal spectacle.  The
+sportsmen were left to find their way to shelter, Borrow and Mr
+Petulengro, whom he had encountered just after the fight, with them,
+talking of dukkeripens (fortunes).
+
+Some time during the year 1820, a Jew named Levy (the Mousha of
+Lavengro), Borrow's instructor in Hebrew, introduced him to William
+Taylor, {33a} one of the most extraordinary men that Norwich ever
+produced.  In the long-limbed young lawyer's clerk, whose hair was
+rapidly becoming grey, Taylor showed great interest, and, as an act
+of friendship, undertook to teach him German.  He was gratified by
+the young man's astonishing progress, and much interested in his
+remarkable personality.  As a result Borrow became a frequent visitor
+at 21 King Street, Norwich, where Taylor lived and many strange men
+assembled.
+
+It is doubtful if William Taylor ever found another pupil so apt, or
+a disciple so enthusiastic among all the "harum-scarum young men"
+{33b} that he was so fond of taking up and introducing "into the best
+society the place afforded." {33c}  He was much impressed by Borrow's
+extraordinary memory and power of concentration.  Speaking one day of
+the different degrees of intelligence in men he said:- "I cannot give
+you a better example to explain my meaning than my two pupils (there
+was another named Cooke, who was said to be 'a genius in his way');
+what I tell Borrow once he ever remembers; whilst to the fellow Cooke
+I have to repeat the same thing twenty times, often without effect;
+and it is not from want of memory either, but he will never be a
+linguist." {33d}
+
+To a correspondent Taylor wrote:-
+
+
+"A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller's Wilhelm Tell,
+with the view of translating it for the press.  His name is George
+Henry Borrow, and he has learnt German with extraordinary rapidity;
+indeed, he has the gift of tongues, and, though not yet eighteen,
+understands twelve languages--English, Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek,
+Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; he
+would like to get into the Office for Foreign Affairs, but does not
+know how." {34a}
+
+This was in 1821; two years later Borrow is said to have "translated
+with fidelity and elegance from twenty different languages." {34b}
+In spite of his later achievements in learning languages, it seems
+scarcely credible that he acquired eight separate languages in two
+years, although it must be remembered that with him the learning of a
+language was to be able to read it after a rather laborious fashion.
+Taylor, however, uses the words "facility and elegance."
+
+In the autobiographical notes that Borrow supplied to Mr John Longe
+in 1862 there appears the following passage:-
+
+
+"At the expiration of his clerkship he knew little of the law, but he
+was well versed in languages, being not only a good Greek and Latin
+scholar, but acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic
+and Gothic dialects, and likewise with the peculiar language of the
+English Romany Chals or gypsies."
+
+
+At William Taylor's table Borrow met "the most intellectual and
+talented men of Norwich, as also those of note who visited the city."
+{34c}  Taylor was much interested in young men, into whose minds he
+did not hesitate to instil his own ideas, ideas that not only earned
+for him the name of "Godless Billy," but outraged his respectable
+fellow-citizens as much as did his intemperate habits.  "His face was
+terribly bloated from drink, and he had a look as if his intellect
+was almost as much decayed as his body," wrote a contemporary. {35a}
+"Matters grew worse in his old age," says Harriet Martineau, "when
+his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of ladies, and
+he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who
+thought they could set the whole world right by their destructive
+propensities.  One of his chief favourites was George Borrow." {35b}
+Borrow has given the following convincing picture of Taylor:
+
+
+"Methought I was in a small, comfortable room wainscotted with oak; I
+was seated on one side of a fireplace, close by a table on which were
+wine and fruit; on the other side of the fire sat a man in a plain
+suit of brown, with the hair combed back from the somewhat high
+forehead; he had a pipe in his mouth, which for some time he smoked
+gravely and placidly, without saying a word; at length, after drawing
+at the pipe for some time rather vigorously, he removed it from his
+mouth, and emitting an accumulated cloud of smoke, he exclaimed in a
+slow and measured tone:  'As I was telling you just now, my good
+chap, I have always been an enemy of humbug.'" {35c}
+
+
+William Taylor appears to have flattered "the harum-scarum young men"
+with whom he surrounded himself by talking to them as if they were
+his intellectual equals.  He encouraged them to form their own
+opinions, in itself a thing scarcely likely to make him popular with
+either parents or guardians, least of all with discipline-loving
+Captain Borrow, who declined even to return the salute of his son's
+friend on the public highway.
+
+Borrow now began to look to the future and speculate as to what his
+present life would lead to.  His cogitations seem to have ended,
+almost invariably, in a gloomy mist of pessimism and despair--in
+other words, an attack of the "Horrors."  If Mr Petulengro were
+encamped upon Mousehold, the antidote lay near to hand in his
+friend's pagan optimism; if, on the other hand, the tents of Egypt
+were pitched on other soil, there was no remedy, unless perhaps a
+prize-fight supplied the necessary stimulus to divert his thoughts
+from their melancholy trend.
+
+Borrow met at the house of his tutor and friend, in July 1821, Dr
+Bowring {36a} (afterwards Sir John) at a dinner given in his honour.
+Bowring had recently published Specimen of Russian Poets, in
+recognition of which the Czar (Alexander I.) had presented him with a
+diamond ring.  He had a considerable reputation as a linguist, which
+naturally attracted Borrow to him.  Dr Bowring was told of Borrow's
+accomplishments, and during the evening took a seat beside him.
+Borrow confessed to being "a little frightened at first" of the
+distinguished man, whom he described as having "a thin weaselly
+figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a
+large pair of spectacles."  It would be dangerous to accept entirely
+the account that Borrow gives of the meeting, {36b} because when that
+was written he had come to hate and despise the man whom he had begun
+by regarding with such awe.  Bowring appears to have ventilated his
+views with some freedom, and to have had a rather serious passage of
+arms with another guest whom he had rudely contradicted.  It is very
+probable that Borrow's dislike of Bowring prompted him to exaggerate
+his account of what happened at Taylor's house that evening.
+
+Whilst Borrow was industriously occupied in collecting vagabonds and
+imbibing the dangerous beliefs of William Taylor, there sat in an
+easy-chair in the small front-parlour of the little house in Willow
+Lane, in a faded regimental coat, a prematurely old man, whose frame
+still showed signs of the magnificent physique of his vigorous
+manhood.  "Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in meditation, and
+sometimes in reading the Scriptures," with his dog beside him,
+Captain Thomas Borrow, now sixty-five, was preparing for the end that
+he felt to be approaching.  He frequently meditated upon what was to
+become of his younger son George, who held his father in such awe as
+to feel ill at ease when alone with him.
+
+One day the inevitable interrogation took place.  "What do you
+propose to do?" and the equally inevitable reply followed, "I really
+do not know what I shall do."  In the course of a somewhat lengthy
+cross-examination, Captain Borrow discovered that his son knew the
+Armenian tongue, for which he very cunningly strove to enlist his
+father's interest by telling him that in Armenia was Mount Ararat,
+whereon the ark rested.  Captain Borrow also discovered that his son
+could not only shoe a horse, but also make the shoes; but, what was
+most important, he found that George had learned "very little" law.
+When asked if he thought he could support himself by Armenian or his
+"other acquirements," the younger man was not very hopeful, and
+horrified the old soldier by suggesting that if all else failed there
+was always suicide.
+
+The dying man was thus left to yearn for the return of his elder son,
+in whom all his hopes lay centred.  John appears to have been by no
+means dutiful to his parents in the matter of letters.  For six
+months he left them unacquainted even with his address in Paris,
+where he was still copying Old Masters in the Louvre.
+
+After their talk the father and younger son seem to have come to a
+better understanding.  George would frequently read aloud from the
+Bible, whilst Captain Borrow would tell about his early life.  His
+son "had no idea that he knew and had seen so much; my respect for
+him increased, and I looked upon him almost with admiration.  His
+anecdotes were in general highly curious; some of them related to
+people in the highest stations, and to men whose names are closely
+connected with some of the brightest glories of our native land."
+{38a}
+
+At last John arrived, apparently a little disillusioned with the
+world; but the coming of his favourite son produced no change for the
+better in Captain Borrow s health.  He was content and happy that God
+had granted his wish.  There remained nothing now to do but "to bless
+my little family and go."  George learned "that it is possible to
+feel deeply and yet make no outward sign."
+
+The end came on the morning of 28th February 1824.  It was by a
+strange chance that the old man should die in the arms of his younger
+son, who had run down on hearing his mother's anguished screams.
+Borrow has given a dramatic account of his father's last moments:-
+
+
+"At the dead hour of night, it might be about two, I was awakened
+from sleep by a cry which sounded from the room immediately below
+that in which I slept.  I knew the cry, it was the cry of my mother,
+and I also knew its import; yet I made no effort to rise, for I was
+for the moment paralysed.  Again the cry sounded, yet still I lay
+motionless--the stupidity of horror was upon me.  A third time, and
+it was then that, by a violent effort bursting the spell which
+appeared to bind me, I sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs.  My
+mother was running wildly about the room; she had awoke and found my
+father senseless in the bed by her side.  I essayed to raise him, and
+after a few efforts supported him in the bed in a sitting posture.
+My brother now rushed in, and snatching a light that was burning, he
+held it to my father's face.  'The surgeon, the surgeon!' he cried;
+then dropping the light, he ran out of the room followed by my
+mother; I remained alone, supporting the senseless form of my father;
+the light had been extinguished by the fall, and an almost total
+darkness reigned in the room.  The form pressed heavily against my
+bosom--at last methought it moved.  Yes, I was right, there was a
+heaving of the breast, and then a gasping.  Were those words which I
+heard?  Yes, they were words, low and indistinct at first, and then
+audible.  The mind of the dying man was reverting to former scenes.
+I heard him mention names which I had often heard him mention before.
+It was an awful moment; I felt stupified, but I still contrived to
+support my dying father.  There was a pause, again my father spoke:
+I heard him speak of Minden, and of Meredith, the old Minden
+sergeant, and then he uttered another name, which at one period of
+his life was much on his lips, the name of--but this is a solemn
+moment!  There was a deep gasp:  I shook, and thought all was over;
+but I was mistaken--my father moved and revived for a moment; he
+supported himself in bed without my assistance.  I make no doubt that
+for a moment he was perfectly sensible, and it was then that,
+clasping his hands, he uttered another name clearly, distinctly--it
+was the name of Christ.  With that name upon his lips, the brave old
+soldier sank back upon my bosom, and, with his hands still clasped,
+yielded up his soul." {39a}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III:  APRIL 1824-MAY 1825
+
+
+
+On 2nd April 1824, George Borrow was cast upon the world of London by
+the death of his father, "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." {40a}
+
+It had become necessary for him to earn his own livelihood.  Captain
+Borrow's pension had ceased with his death, and the old soldier's
+savings of a lifetime were barely sufficient to produce an income of
+a hundred pounds a year for his widow.  The provision made in the
+will for his younger son during his minority would operate only for
+about four months, as he would be of age in the following July. {40b}
+The clerkship with Simpson & Rackham would expire at the end of
+March.  Borrow had outlined his ambitions in a letter written on 20th
+January 1824, when he was ill and wretched, to Roger Kerrison, then
+in London:  "If ever my health mends [this has reference to a very
+unpleasant complaint he had contracted], and possibly it may by the
+time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live in London, write
+plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get myself prosecuted," for
+he was tired of the "dull and gloomy town."  It was therefore with a
+feeling of relief that, on the evening of 1st April, he took his seat
+on the top of the London coach, his hopes centred in a small green
+box that he carried with him.  It contained his stock-in-trade as an
+author:  his beloved manuscripts, "closely written over in a singular
+hand."
+
+Among the bundles of papers were:
+
+
+(i.)  The Ancient Songs of Denmark, heroic and romantic, translated
+by himself, with notes philological, critical and historical.
+
+(ii.)  The Songs of Ab Gwilym, the Welsh Bard, also translated by
+himself, with notes critical, philological and historical. {41a}
+
+(iii.)  A romance in the German style.
+
+
+In addition to his manuscripts, Borrow had some twenty or thirty
+pounds, his testimonials, and a letter from William Taylor to Sir
+Richard Phillips, the publisher, to whose New Magazine he had already
+contributed a number of translations of poems.  He had also printed
+in The Monthly Magazine and The New Monthly Magazine translations of
+verse from the German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish and Spanish, and an
+essay on Danish ballad writing.
+
+On the morning of 2nd April there arrived at 16 Milman Street,
+Bedford Row, London, W.C.,
+
+
+"A lad who twenty tongues can talk,
+And sixty miles a day can walk;
+Drink at a draught a pint of rum,
+And then be neither sick nor dumb;
+Can tune a song and make a verse,
+And deeds of Northern kings rehearse;
+Who never will forsake his friend
+While he his bony fist can bend;
+And, though averse to broil and strife,
+Will fight a Dutchman with a knife;
+O that is just the lad for me,
+And such is honest six-foot-three." {42a}
+
+
+It was through the Kerrisons that Borrow went to 16 Milman Street,
+where Roger was lodging.  His apartments seem to have been dismal
+enough, consisting of "a small room, up two pair of stairs, in which
+I was to sit, and another, still smaller, above it, in which I was to
+sleep."  After the first feeling of loneliness had passed, dispelled
+largely by a bright fire and breakfast, he sallied forth, the
+contents of the green box under his arm, to present his letter of
+introduction to Sir Richard Phillips, {42b} in whom centred his hopes
+of employment.
+
+On arriving at the publisher's house in Tavistock Square, he was
+immediately shown into Sir Richard's study, where he found "a tall,
+stout man, about sixty, dressed in a loose morning gown," and with
+him his confidential clerk Bartlett (the Taggart of Lavengro).  Sir
+Richard was at first enthusiastic and cordial, but when he learned
+from William Taylor's letter that Borrow had come up to earn his
+livelihood by authorship, his manner underwent a marked change.  The
+bluff, hearty expression gave place to "a sinister glance," and
+Borrow found that within that loose morning gown there was a second
+Sir Richard.
+
+He learned two things--first, that Sir Richard Phillips had retired
+from publishing and had reserved only The Monthly Magazine; {43a}
+secondly, that literature was a drug upon the market.  With airy
+self-assertiveness, the ex-publisher dismissed the contents of the
+green box that Borrow had brought with him, which had already aroused
+considerable suspicion in the mind of the maid who had admitted him
+to the publisher's presence.
+
+When he had thoroughly dashed the young author's hopes of employment,
+Sir Richard informed him of a new publication he had in preparation,
+The Universal Review [The Oxford Review of Lavengro], which was to
+support the son of the house and the wife he had married.  With a
+promise that he should become a contributor to the new review, an
+earnest exhortation to write a story in the style of The Dairyman's
+Daughter, and an invitation to dinner for the following Sunday, the
+first interview between George Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips ended,
+and Borrow left the great man's presence to begin his exploration of
+London, first leaving his manuscripts at Milman Street.  During the
+rest of the day he walked "scarcely less than thirty miles about the
+big city."  It was late when he returned to his lodgings, thoroughly
+tired, but with a copy of The Dairyman's Daughter, for "a well-
+written tale in the style" of which Sir Richard Phillips "could
+afford as much as ten pounds."  The day had been one of the most
+eventful in Borrow's life.
+
+On the following Sunday Borrow dined at Tavistock Square, and met
+Lady Phillips, young Phillips and his bride.  He learned that Sir
+Richard was a vegetarian of twenty years' standing and a total
+abstainer, although meat and wine were not banished from his table.
+When publisher and potential author were left alone, the son having
+soon followed the ladies into the drawing-room, Borrow heard of Sir
+Richard's amiable intentions towards him.  He was to compile six
+volumes of the lives and trials of criminals [the Newgate Lives and
+Trials of Lavengro], each to contain not less than a thousand pages.
+{44a}  For this work he was to receive the munificent sum of fifty
+pounds, which was to cover all expenses incurred in the purchase of
+books, papers and manuscripts necessary to the compilation of the
+work.  This was only one of the employments that the fertile brain of
+the publisher had schemed for him.  He was also to make himself
+useful in connection with the forthcoming Universal Review.
+"Generally useful, sir--doing whatever is required of you"; for it
+was not Sir Richard's custom to allow young writers to select their
+own subjects.
+
+With impressive manner and ponderous diction, Sir Richard Phillips
+unfolded his philanthropic designs regarding the young writer to whom
+his words meant a career.  He did not end with the appointment of
+Borrow as general utility writer upon The Universal Review; but
+proceeded to astonish him with the announcement that to him, George
+Borrow, understanding German in a manner that aroused the "strong
+admiration" of William Taylor, was to be entrusted the translating
+into that tongue of Sir Richard Phillips' book of Philosophy. {44b}
+If translations of Goethe into English were a drug, Sir Richard
+Phillips' Proximate Causes was to prove that neither he nor his book
+would be a drug in Germany.  For this work the remuneration was to be
+determined by the success of the translation, an arrangement
+sufficiently vague to ensure eventual disagreement.
+
+When Sir Richard had finished his account of what were his intentions
+towards his guest, he gave him to understand that the interview was
+at an end, at the same time intimating how seldom it was that he
+dealt so generously with a young writer.  Borrow then rose from the
+table and passed out of the house, leaving his host to muse, as was
+his custom on Sunday afternoons, "on the magnificence of nature and
+the moral dignity of man."
+
+For the next few weeks Borrow was occupied in searching in out-of-
+the-way corners for criminal biography.  If he flagged, a visit from
+his philosopher-publisher spurred him on to fresh effort.  He
+received a copy of Proximate Causes, with an injunction that he
+should review it in The Universal Review, as well as translate it
+into German.  He was taken to and introduced to the working editor
+{45a} of the new publication, which was only ostensibly under the
+control of young Phillips.
+
+In the provision that he should purchase at his own expense all the
+necessary materials for Celebrated Trials, Borrow found a serious tax
+upon his resources; but a harder thing to bear with patience and
+good-humour were the frequent visits he received from Sir Richard
+himself, who showed the keenest possible interest in the progress of
+the compilation.  He had already caused a preliminary announcement to
+be made {45b} to the effect that:
+
+
+"A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is
+printing, in five volumes. {46a}  It will include all famous cases,
+from that of Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of
+John Thurtell:  and those connected with foreign as well as English
+jurisprudence.  Mr Borrow, the editor, has availed himself of all the
+resources of the English, German, French, and Italian languages; and
+his work, including from 150 to 200 {46b} of the most interesting
+cases on record, will appear in October next." {46c}
+
+
+Sir Richard's visits to Milman Street were always accompanied by
+numerous suggestions as to criminals whose claims to be included in
+this literary chamber of horrors were in his, Sir Richard's, opinion
+unquestionable.  The English character of the compilation was soon
+sacrificed in order to admit notable malefactors of other
+nationalities, and the drain upon the editor's small capital became
+greater than ever.
+
+The leisure that he allowed himself, Borrow spent in exploring the
+city, or in the company of Francis Arden (Ardrey in Lavengro), whom
+he had met by chance in the coffee-room of a hotel.  The two appear
+to have been excellent friends, perhaps because of the dissimilarity
+of their natures.  "He was an Irishman," Borrow explains, "I an
+Englishman; he fiery, enthusiastic and opened-hearted; I neither
+fiery, enthusiastic, nor open-hearted; he fond of pleasure and
+dissipation, I of study and reflection." {46d}
+
+They went to the play together, to dog-fights, gaming-houses, in
+short saw the sights of London.  The arrival of Francis Arden at 16
+Milman Street was a signal for books and manuscripts to be thrown
+aside in favour either of some expedition or an hour or two's
+conversation.  Borrow, however, soon tired of the pleasures of
+London, and devoted himself almost entirely to work.  Although he saw
+less of Francis Arden in consequence, they continued to be excellent
+friends.
+
+After being some four weeks in London, Borrow received a surprise
+visit (29th April) from his brother, whom he found waiting for him
+one morning when he came down to breakfast.  John told him of his
+mother's anxiety at receiving only one letter from him since his
+departure, of her fits of crying, of the grief of Captain Borrow's
+dog at the loss of his master.  He also explained the reason for his
+being in London.  He had been invited to paint the portrait of Robert
+Hawkes, an ex-mayor of Norwich, for a fee of a hundred guineas.
+Lacking confidence in his own ability, he had declined the honour and
+suggested that Benjamin Haydon should be approached.  At the request
+of a deputation of his fellow citizens, which had waited upon him, he
+had undertaken to enter into negotiations with Haydon.  He even
+undertook to come up to London at his own expense, that he might see
+his old master and complete the bargain.  Borrow subsequently
+accompanied his brother when calling upon Haydon, and was enabled to
+give a thumbnail-sketch of the painter of the Heroic at work that has
+been pronounced to be photographic in its faithfulness.
+
+John returned to Norwich about a fortnight later accompanied by
+Haydon, who was to become the guest of his sitter, {47a} and George
+was left to the compilation of Celebrated Trials.  Sir Richard
+Phillips appears to have been a man as prolific of suggestion as he
+was destitute of tact.  He regarded his authors as the instruments of
+his own genius.  Their business it was to carry out his ideas in a
+manner entirely congenial to his colossal conceit.  His latest author
+he exposed "to incredible mortification and ceaseless trouble from
+this same rage for interference."
+
+The result of all this was an attack of the "Horrors."  Towards the
+end of May, Roger Kerrison received from Borrow a note saying that he
+believed himself to be dying, and imploring him to "come to me
+immediately."  The direct outcome of this note was, not the death of
+Borrow, but the departure from Milman Street of Roger Kerrison, lest
+he should become involved in a tragedy connected with Borrow's oft-
+repeated threat of suicide.  Kerrison became "very uneasy and
+uncomfortable on his account, so that I have found it utterly
+impossible to live any longer in the same lodgings with him." {48a}
+Looked at dispassionately it seems nothing short of an act of
+cowardice on Kerrison's part to leave alone a man such as Borrow, who
+might at any moment be assailed by one of those periods of gloom from
+which suicide seemed the only outlet.  On the other hand, from an
+anecdote told by C. G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), there seems to be
+some excuse for Kerrison's wish to live alone.  "I knew at that time
+[about 1870]," he writes, {48b} "a Mr Kerrison, who had been as a
+young man, probably in the Twenties, on intimate terms with Borrow.
+He told me that one night Borrow acted very wildly, whooping and
+vociferating so as to cause the police to follow him, and after a
+long run led them to the edge of the Thames, 'and there they thought
+they had him.'  But he plunged boldly into the water and swam in his
+clothes to the opposite shore, and so escaped."
+
+A serious misfortune now befell Borrow in the premature death of The
+Universal Review, which expired with the sixth number (March 1824--
+January 1825).  It is not known what was the rate of pay to young and
+impecunious reviewers {49a} certainly not large, if it may be judged
+by the amount agreed upon for Celebrated Trials.  Still, its end
+meant that Borrow was now dependent upon what he received for his
+compilation, and what he merited by his translation into German of
+Proximate Causes.
+
+There appears to have been some difficulty about payment for Borrow's
+contributions to the now defunct review, which considerably widened
+the breach that the Trials had created.  Sir Richard became more
+exacting and more than ever critical. {49b}  The end could not be far
+off.  Borrow had come to London determined to be an author, and by no
+juggling with facts could his present drudgery be considered as
+authorship.  Occasionally his mind reverted to the manuscripts in the
+green box, his faith in which continued undiminished.  He made
+further efforts to get his translations published, but everywhere the
+answer was the same, in effect, "A drug, sir, a drug!"
+
+At last he determined to approach John Murray (the Second), "Glorious
+John, who lived at the western end of the town"; but he called many
+times without being successful in seeing him.  Another seventeen
+years were to elapse before he was to meet and be published by John
+Murray.
+
+Yet another dispute arose between Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips.
+Neither appeared to have realised the supreme folly of entrusting to
+a young Englishman the translation into German of an English work.  A
+novel would have presented almost insurmountable difficulties; but a
+work of philosophy!  The whole project was absurd.  The diction of
+philosophy in all languages is individual, just as it is in other
+branches of science, and a very thorough knowledge of, and deep
+reading in both languages are necessary to qualify a man to translate
+from a foreign tongue into his own.  To expect an inexperienced youth
+to reverse the order seems to suggest that Sir Richard Phillips must
+have been a publisher whose enthusiasm was greater than his judgment.
+
+One day when calling at Tavistock Square, Borrow found Sir Richard in
+a fury of rage.  He had submitted the first chapter of the
+translation of Proximate Causes to some Germans, who found it utterly
+unintelligible.  This was only to be expected, as Borrow confesses
+that, when he found himself unable to comprehend what was the meaning
+of the English text, he had translated it LITERALLY INTO GERMAN!
+
+The result of the interview was that Borrow, after what appears to be
+a tactless, not to say impertinent, rejoinder, {50a} relapsed into
+silence and finally left the house, ordered back to his compilation
+by Sir Richard, as soon as he became sufficiently calm to appear
+coherent, and Borrow walked away musing on the "difference in clever
+men."
+
+The discovery of the inadequacy of the German translation apparently
+urged Borrow to hasten on with Celebrated Trials.  The Universal
+Review was dead, the German version of Proximate Causes {50b} had
+passed out of his hands.  It was desirable, therefore, that the
+remaining undertaking should be completed as soon as possible, that
+the two might part.  The last of the manuscript was delivered, the
+proofs passed for press, and on 19th March the work appeared, the six
+volumes, running to between three and four thousand pages, containing
+accounts of some four hundred trials, including that of Borrow's old
+friend Thurtell for the murder of Mr Weare.
+
+Borrow's name did not appear.  He was "the editor," and as such was
+referred to in the preface contributed by Sir Richard himself.  Among
+other things he tells of how, in some cases, "the Editor has
+compressed into a score of pages the substance of an entire volume."
+Sir Richard was a philosopher as well as a preface-writing publisher,
+and it was only natural that he should speculate as to the effect
+upon his editor's mind of months spent in reading and editing such
+records of vice.  "It may be expected," he writes, "that the Editor
+should convey to his readers the intellectual impressions which the
+execution of his task has produced on his mind.  He confesses that
+they are mournful."  Sir Richard was either a master of irony, or a
+man of singular obtuseness.
+
+One effect of this delving into criminal records had been to raise in
+Borrow's mind strange doubts about virtue and crime.  When a boy, he
+had written an essay in which he strove to prove that crime and
+virtue were mere terms, and that we were the creatures of necessity
+or circumstance.  These broodings in turn reawakened the theory that
+everything is a lie, and that nothing really exists except in our
+imaginations.  The world was "a maze of doubt."  These indications of
+an overtaxed brain increased, and eventually forced Borrow to leave
+London.  His work was thoroughly uncongenial.  He disliked reviewing;
+he had failed in his endeavours to render Proximate Causes into
+intelligible German; and it had taken him some time to overcome his
+dislike of the sordid stories of crime and criminals that he had to
+read and edit.  He became gloomy and depressed, and prone to compare
+the real conditions of authorship with those that his imagination had
+conjured up.
+
+The most important result of his labours in connection with
+Celebrated Trials was that upon his literary style.  There is a
+tremendous significance in the following passage.  It tells of the
+transition of the actual vagabond into the literary vagabond, with
+power to express in words what proved so congenial to Borrow's
+vagabond temperament:
+
+
+"Of all my occupations at this period I am free to confess I liked
+that of compiling the Newgate Lives and Trials [Celebrated Trials]
+the best; that is, after I had surmounted a kind of prejudice which I
+originally entertained.  The trials were entertaining enough; but the
+lives--how full were they of wild and racy adventures, and in what
+racy, genuine language were they told.  What struck me most with
+respect to these lives was the art which the writers, whoever they
+were, possessed of telling a plain story.  It is no easy thing to
+tell a story plainly and distinctly by mouth; but to tell one on
+paper is difficult indeed, so many snares lie in the way.  People are
+afraid to put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish
+their narratives, as they think, by philosophic speculations and
+reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are anxious to
+shine can never tell a plain story.  'So I went with them to a music
+booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk
+their flash language, which I did not understand,' {52a} says, or is
+made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years
+before the time of which I am speaking.  I have always looked upon
+this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so
+concise and yet so clear." {52b}
+
+
+By the time the work was published and Borrow had been paid his fee,
+all relations between editor and publisher had ceased, and there was
+"a poor author, or rather philologist, upon the streets of London,
+possessed of many tongues," which he found "of no use in the world."
+{52c}  A month after the appearance of Celebrated Trials (18th
+April), and a little more than a year after his arrival in London,
+Borrow published a translation of Klinger's Faustus. {53a}  He
+himself gives no particulars as to whether it was commissioned or no.
+It may even have been "the Romance in the German style" from the
+Green Box.  It is known that he received payment for it by a bill at
+five or six months, {53b} but there is no mention of the amount.  It
+would appear that the translation had long been projected, for in The
+Monthly Magazine, July 1824, there appeared, in conjunction with the
+announcement of Celebrated Trials, the following paragraph:  "The
+editor of the preceding has ready for the press, a Life of Faustus,
+his Death and Descent into Hell, which will also appear the next
+winter."
+
+Faustus did not meet with a very cordial reception.  The Literary
+Gazette (16th July 1825) characterised it as "another work to which
+no respectable publisher ought to have allowed his name to be put.
+The political allusion and metaphysics, which may have made it
+popular among a low class in Germany, do not sufficiently season its
+lewd scenes and coarse descriptions for British palates.  We have
+occasionally publications for the fireside,--these are only fit for
+the fire."
+
+Borrow had apparently been in some doubt about certain passages, for
+in a note headed "The Translator to the Public," he defends the work
+as moral in its general teaching:
+
+
+"The publication of the present volume may at first sight appear to
+require some brief explanation from the Translator, inasmuch as the
+character of the incidents may justify such an expectation on the
+part of the reader.  It is, therefore, necessary to state that,
+although scenes of vice and crime are here exhibited, it is merely in
+the hope that they may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and
+unwary from the shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked.  The
+work, when considered as a whole, is strictly moral."
+
+
+It must be confessed that Faustus does not err on the side of
+restraint.  Many of its scenes might appear "lewd . . . and coarse"
+to anyone who for a moment allowed his mind to wander from the
+morality of "its general teaching."  The attacks upon the lax morals
+of the priesthood must have proved particularly congenial to the
+translator.
+
+The more Borrow read his translations of Ab Gwilym, the more
+convinced he became of their merit and the profit they would bring to
+him who published them.  The booksellers, however, with singular
+unanimity, declined the risk of introducing to the English public
+either Welsh or Danish ballads; and their translator became so shabby
+in consequence, that he refrained from calling upon his friend Arden,
+for whom he had always cherished a very real friendship.  He began to
+lose heart.  His energy left him and with it went hope.  He was
+forced to review his situation.  Authorship had obviously failed, and
+he found himself with no reasonable prospect of employment.
+
+There is no episode in Borrow's life that has so exercised the minds
+of commentators and critics as his account of the book he terms in
+Lavengro, The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great
+Traveller.  Some dismiss the whole story as apocryphal; others see in
+it a grain of truth distorted into something of vital importance;
+whilst there are a number of earnest Borrovians that accept the whole
+story as it is written.  Dr Knapp has said that Joseph Sell "was not
+a book at all, and the author of it never said that it was."  This
+was obviously an error, for the bookseller is credited with saying,
+"I think I shall venture on sending your book to the press," {55a}
+referring to it as a "book" four times in nine lines.  Again, in
+another place, Borrow describes how he rescued himself "from
+peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original
+book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have written his
+Rasselas and Beckford his Vathek." {55b}  This removes all question
+of the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell being included in a
+collection of short stories.  The title would not be the same, the
+date is most probably wrongly given, as in the case of Marshland
+Shales; but the general accuracy of the account as written seems to
+be highly probable.  Many efforts have been made to trace the story;
+but so far unsuccessfully.  It must be remembered that Borrow loved
+to stretch the long arm of coincidence; but he loved more than
+anything else a dramatic situation.  He was always on the look out
+for effective "curtains."
+
+In favour of the story having been actually written, is the knowledge
+that Borrow invented little or nothing.  Collateral evidence has
+shown how little he deviated from actual happenings, although he did
+not hesitate to revise dates or colour events.  The strongest
+evidence, however, lies in the atmosphere of truth that pervades
+Chapters LV.-LVII. of Lavengro.  They are convincing.  At one time or
+another during his career, it would appear that Borrow wrote against
+time from grim necessity; otherwise he must have been a master of
+invention, which everything that is known about him clearly shows
+that he was not.
+
+Joseph Sell has disappeared, a most careful search of the Registers
+at Stationers' Hall can show no trace of that work, or any book that
+seems to suggest it, and the contemporary literary papers render no
+assistance.
+
+According to Borrow's own account, one morning on getting up he found
+that he had only half a crown in the world.  It was this
+circumstance, coupled with the timely notice that he saw affixed to a
+bookseller's window to the effect that "A Novel or Tale is much
+wanted," that determined him to endeavour to emulate Dr Johnson and
+William Beckford.  He had tired of "the Great City," and his thoughts
+turned instinctively to the woods and the fields, where he could be
+free to meditate and muse in solitude.
+
+When he returned to Milman Street after seeing the bookseller's
+advertisement, he found that his resources had been still further
+reduced to eighteen-pence.  He was too proud to write home for
+assistance, he had broken with Sir Richard Phillips, and he had no
+reasonable expectation of obtaining employment of any description;
+for his accomplishments found no place in the catalogue of everyday
+wants.  He was a proper man with his hands, and knew some score or
+more languages.  No matter how he regarded the situation, the facts
+were obvious.  Between him and actual starvation there was the
+inconsiderable sum of eighteen-pence and the bookseller's
+advertisement.  The gravity of the situation banished the cloud of
+despondency that threatened to settle upon him, and also the doubts
+that presented themselves as to whether he possessed the requisite
+ability to produce what the bookseller required.  The all-important
+question was, could he exist sufficiently long on eighteen-pence to
+complete a story?  Sir Richard Phillips had told him to live on bread
+and water.  He now did so.
+
+For a week he wrote ceaselessly at the Life and Adventures of Joseph
+Sell, the Great Traveller.  He wrote with the feverish energy of a
+man who sees the shadow of actual starvation cast across his
+manuscript.  When the tale was finished there remained the work of
+revision, and after that, worst of all, fears lest the bookseller
+were already suited.
+
+Fortune, however, was kind to him, and he was successful in
+extracting for his story the sum of twenty pounds.  Borrow had not
+mixed among gypsies for nothing.  He, a starving and unknown author,
+succeeded in extracting from a bookseller twenty pounds for a story,
+twice the amount offered by Sir Richard Phillips for a novel on the
+lines of The Dairyman's Daughter.  It was an achievement.
+
+The first argument against the story, as related by Borrow, is that
+he was not without resources at the time.  Why should he be so
+impoverished a few weeks after receiving payment for Celebrated
+Trials? {57a}  Above all, why did he not realise upon Simpkin &
+Marshall's bill for Faustus?  He would have experienced no difficulty
+in discounting a bill accepted by such a firm.  It seems hardly
+conceivable that he should preserve this piece of paper when he had
+only eighteen-pence in the world.  Everything seems to point to the
+fact that in May 1825 Borrow was not in want of money, and if he were
+not, why did he almost kill himself by writing the Life and
+Adventures of Joseph Sell?  Again, at that period he had met with no
+adventures such as might be included in the life of a "Great
+Traveller," and Borrow was not an inventive writer.  Later he
+possessed plenty of material; for there can be no question that he
+roamed about the world for a considerable portion of those seven
+mysterious years of his life that came to be known as the "Veiled
+Period."  His accuracy as to actual occurrences has been so
+emphasised that this particular argument holds considerable
+significance.
+
+The strongest evidence against Joseph Sell having been written in
+1825, however, lies in the fact that Greenwich Fair was held on 23rd
+May, and not 12th May, as given by Dr Knapp.  By his error Dr Knapp
+makes Borrow leave London a day before the Fair took place that he
+describes.  Borrow must have left London on the day following
+Greenwich Fair (24th May).  If he left later, then those things which
+tend to confirm his story of the life in the Dingle do not fit in, as
+will be seen.  He certainly could not have left before Greenwich Fair
+was held.
+
+In one of his brother John's letters, written at the end of 1829,
+there is a significant passage, "Let me know how you sold your
+manuscript." {58a}  What manuscript is it that is referred to?  There
+is no record of George having sold a manuscript in the autumn of
+1829.  The passage can scarcely have reference to some article or
+translation; it seems to suggest something of importance, an event in
+George's life that his brother is anxious to know more about.  If
+this be Joseph Sell, then it explains where Borrow got the money from
+to go up to London at the end of 1829, when he entered into relations
+with Dr Bowring.  It is merely a theory, it must be confessed; but
+there is certain evidence that seems to support it.  In the first
+place, Borrow was a chronicler before all else.  He possessed an
+amazing memory and a great gift for turning his experiences into
+literary material.  If he coloured facts, he appears to have done so
+unconsciously, to judge from those portions of The Bible in Spain
+that were covered by letters to the Bible Society.  Not only are the
+facts the same, but, with very slight changes, the words in which he
+relates them.  He never hesitated to change a date if it served his
+purpose, much as an artist will change the position of a tree in a
+landscape to suit the exigencies of composition.  His five volumes of
+autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they were
+actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius on record
+for attracting to himself strange adventures.  He met the sailor son
+of the old Apple-Woman returning from his enforced exile; Murtagh
+tells him of how the postilion frightened the Pope at Rome by his
+denunciation, a story Borrow had already heard from the postilion
+himself; the Hungarian at Horncastle narrates how an Armenian once
+silenced a Moldavian, the same Moldavian whom Borrow had encountered
+in London; the postilion meets the man in black again.  There are
+scores of such coincidences, which must be accepted as dramatic
+embellishments.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV:  MAY-SEPTEMBER 1825
+
+
+
+Fourteen months in London had shown Borrow how hard was the road of
+authorship.  He confessed that he was not "formed by nature to be a
+pallid indoor student."  "The peculiar atmosphere of the big city"
+did not agree with him, and this fact, together with the anxiety and
+hard work of the past twelve months, caused him to flag, and his
+first thought was how to recover his health.  He was disillusioned as
+to the busy world, and the opportunities it offered to a young man
+fired with ambition to make a stir in it.  He determined to leave
+London, which he did towards the end of May, {60a} first despatching
+his trunk "containing a few clothes and books to the old town
+[Norwich]."  He struck out in a south-westerly direction, musing on
+his achievements as an author, and finding that in having preserved
+his independence and health, he had "abundant cause to be grateful."
+
+Throughout his life Borrow was hypnotised by independence.  Like many
+other proud natures, he carried his theory of independence to such an
+extreme as to become a slave to it and render himself unsociable,
+sometimes churlish.  It was this virtue carried to excess that drove
+Borrow from London.  He must tell men what was in his mind, and his
+one patron, Sir Richard Phillips, he had mortally offended in this
+manner.
+
+Finding that he was unequal to much fatigue, after a few hours'
+walking he hailed a passing coach, which took him as far as Amesbury
+in Wiltshire.  From here he walked to Stonehenge and on to Salisbury,
+"inspecting the curiosities of the place," and endeavouring by sleep
+and good food to make up the wastage of the last few months.  The
+weather was fine and his health and spirits rapidly improved as he
+tramped on, his "daily journeys varying from twenty to twenty-five
+miles."  He encountered the mysterious stranger who "touched" against
+the evil eye.  F. H. Groome asserts, on the authority of W. B. Donne,
+that this was in reality William Beckford.  Borrow must have met him
+at some other time and place, as he had already left Fonthill in
+1825.  It is, however, interesting to recall that Borrow himself
+"touched" against the evil eye.  Mr Watts-Dunton has said:
+
+
+"There was nothing that Borrow strove against with more energy than
+the curious impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr Johnson,
+to touch the objects along his path in order to save himself from the
+evil chance.  He never conquered the superstition.  In walking
+through Richmond Park he would step out of his way constantly to
+touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he was with seemed to
+observe it." {61a}
+
+
+The chance meeting with Jack Slingsby (in fear of his life from the
+Flaming Tinman, and bound by oath not to continue on the same beat)
+gave Borrow the idea of buying out Slingsby, beat, plant, pony and
+all.  "A tinker is his own master, a scholar is not," {61b} he
+remarks, and then proceeds to draw tears and moans from the
+dispirited Slingsby and his family by a description of the joys of
+tinkering, "the happiest life under heaven . . . pitching your tent
+under the pleasant hedge-row, listening to the song of the feathered
+tribes, collecting all the leaky kettles in the neighbourhood,
+soldering and joining, earning your honest bread by the wholesome
+sweat of your brow." {62a}
+
+By the expenditure of five pounds ten shillings, plus the cost of a
+smock-frock and some provisions, George Borrow, linguist, editor and
+translator, became a travelling tinker.  With his dauntless little
+pony, Ambrol, he set out, a tinkering Ulysses, indifferent to what
+direction he took, allowing the pony to go whither he felt inclined.
+At first he experienced some apprehension at passing the night with
+only a tent or the stars as a roof.  Rain fell to mar the opening day
+of the adventure, but the pony, with unerring instinct, led his new
+master to one of Slingsby's usual camping grounds.
+
+In the morning Borrow fell to examining what it was beyond the pony
+and cart that his five pounds ten shillings had purchased.  He found
+a tent, a straw mattress and a blanket, "quite clean and nearly new."
+There were also a frying-pan, a kettle, a teapot (broken in three
+pieces) and some cups and saucers.  The stock-in-trade "consisted of
+various tools, an iron ladle, a chafing-pan, and small bellows,
+sundry pans and kettles, the latter being of tin, with the exception
+of one which was of copper, all in a state of considerable
+dilapidation."  The pans and kettles were to be sold after being
+mended, for which purpose there was "a block of tin, sheet-tin, and
+solder."  But most precious of all his possessions was "a small anvil
+and bellows of the kind which are used in forges, and two hammers
+such as smiths use, one great, and the other small." {62b}  Borrow
+had learned the blacksmith's art when in Ireland, and the anvil,
+bellows and smith's hammers were to prove extremely useful.
+
+A few days after pitching his tent, Borrow received from his old
+enemy Mrs Herne, Mr Petulengro's mother-in-law, a poisoned cake,
+which came very near to ending his career.  He then encountered the
+Welsh preacher ("the worthiest creature I ever knew") and his wife,
+who were largely instrumental in saving him from Mrs Herne's poison.
+Having remained with his new friends for nine days, he accompanied
+them as far as the Welsh border, where he confessed himself the
+translator of Ab Gwilym, giving as an excuse for not accompanying
+them further that it was "neither fit nor proper that I cross into
+Wales at this time, and in this manner.  When I go into Wales, I
+should wish to go in a new suit of superfine black, with hat and
+beaver, mounted on a powerful steed, black and glossy, like that
+which bore Greduv to the fight of Catraeth.  I should wish,
+moreover," he continued, "to see the Welshmen assembled on the border
+ready to welcome me with pipe and fiddle, and much whooping and
+shouting, and to attend me to Wrexham, or even as far as
+Machynllaith, where I should wish to be invited to a dinner at which
+all the bards should be present, and to be seated at the right hand
+of the president, who, when the cloth was removed, should arise, and
+amidst cries of silence, exclaim--'Brethren and Welshmen, allow me to
+propose the health of my most respectable friend the translator of
+the odes of the great Ab Gwilym, the pride and glory of Wales.'"
+{63a}
+
+He returned with Mr Petulengro, who directed him to Mumber Lane
+(Mumper's Dingle), near Willenhall, in Staffordshire, "the little
+dingle by the side of the great north road."  Here Borrow encamped
+and shod little Ambrol, who kicked him over as a reminder of his
+clumsiness.
+
+He had refused an invitation from Mr Petulengro to become a Romany
+chal and take a Romany bride, the granddaughter of his would-be
+murderess, who "occasionally talked of" him.  He yearned for solitude
+and the country's quiet.  He told Mr Petulengro that he desired only
+some peaceful spot where he might hold uninterrupted communion with
+his own thoughts, and practise, if so inclined, either tinkering or
+the blacksmith's art, and he had been directed to Mumper's Dingle,
+which was to become the setting of the most romantic episode in his
+life.
+
+In the dingle Borrow experienced one of his worst attacks of the
+"Horrors"--the "Screaming Horrors."  He raged like a madman, a prey
+to some indefinable, intangible fear; clinging to his "little horse
+as if for safety and protection." {64a}  He had not recovered from
+the prostrating effects of that night of tragedy when he was called
+upon to fight Anselo Herne, "the Flaming Tinman," who somehow or
+other seemed to be part of the bargain he had made with Jack
+Slingsby, and encounter the queen of road-girls, Isopel Berners.  The
+description of the fight has been proclaimed the finest in our
+language, and by some the finest in the world's literature.
+
+Isopel Berners is one of the great heroines of English Literature.
+As drawn by Borrow, with her strong arm, lion-like courage and tender
+tearfulness, she is unique.  However true or false the account of her
+relations with Borrow may be, she is drawn by him as a living woman.
+He was incapable of conceiving her from his imagination.  It may go
+unquestioned that he actually met an Isopel Berners, {64b} but
+whether or no his parting from her was as heart-rendingly tragic as
+he has depicted it, is open to very grave question.
+
+With this queen of the roads he seems to have been less reticent and
+more himself than with any other of his vagabond acquaintance, not
+excepting even Mr Petulengro.  To the handsome, tall girl with "the
+flaxen hair, which hung down over her shoulders unconfined," and the
+"determined but open expression," he showed a more amiable side of
+his character; yet he seems to have treated her with no little
+cruelty.  He told her about himself, how he "had tamed savage mares,
+wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with ferocious publishers,"
+bringing tears to her eyes, and when she grew too curious, he
+administered an antidote in the form of a few Armenian numerals.  If
+his Autobiography is to be credited, Isopel loved him, and he was
+aware of it; but the knowledge did not hinder him from torturing the
+poor girl by insisting that she should decline the verb "to love" in
+Armenian.
+
+Borrow's attitude towards Isopel was curiously complex; he seemed to
+find pleasure in playing upon her emotions.  At times he appeared as
+deliberately brutal to her, as to the gypsy girl Ursula when he
+talked with her beneath the hedge.  He forced from Isopel a
+passionate rebuke that he sought only to vex and irritate "a poor
+ignorant girl . . . who can scarcely read or write."  He asked her to
+marry him, but not until he had convinced her that he was mad.  How
+much she had become part of his life in the dingle he did not seem to
+realise until after she had left him.  Isopel Berners was a woman
+whose character was almost masculine in its strength; but she was
+prepared to subdue her spirit to his, wished to do so even.  With her
+strength, however, there was wisdom, and she left Borrow and the
+dingle, sending him a letter of farewell that was certainly not the
+composition of "a poor girl" who could "scarcely read or write."  The
+story itself is in all probability true; but the letter rings false.
+Isopel may have sent Borrow a letter of farewell, but not the one
+that appears in The Romany Rye.
+
+Among Borrow's papers Dr Knapp discovered a fragment of manuscript in
+which Mr Petulengro is shown deliberating upon the expediency of
+emulating King Pharaoh in the number of his wives.  Mrs Petulengro
+desires "a little pleasant company," and urges her husband to take a
+second spouse.  He proceeds:-
+
+
+"Now I am thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the
+kind of person both for my wife and myself.  My wife wants something
+gorgiko, something genteel.  Now Bess is of blood gorgious; if you
+doubt it, look at her face, all full of pawno ratter, white blood,
+brother; and as for gentility, nobody can make exceptions to Bess's
+gentility, seeing she was born in the workhouse of Melford the
+Short."
+
+
+Mr Petulengro sees in Bess another advantage.  If "the Flaming
+Tinman" {66a} were to descend upon them, as he once did, with the
+offer to fight the best of them for nothing, and Tawno Chikno were
+absent, who was to fight him?  Mr Petulengro could not do so for less
+than five pounds; but with Bess as a second wife the problem would be
+solved.  She would fight "the Flaming Tinman."
+
+This proves nothing, one way or the other, and can scarcely be said
+to "dispel any allusions," as Dr Knapp suggests, or confirm the story
+of Isopel.  Why did Borrow omit it from Lavengro?  Not from caprice
+surely.  It has been stated that those who know the gypsies can vouch
+for the fact that no such suggestion could have been made by a gypsy
+woman.
+
+It would appear that Isopel Berners existed, but the account of her
+given by Borrow in Lavengro and The Romany Rye is in all probability
+coloured, just as her stature was heightened by him.  If she were
+taller than he, she must have appeared a giantess.  Borrow was an
+impressionist, and he has probably succeeded far better in giving a
+faithful picture of Isopel Berners than if he had been
+photographically accurate in his measurements.
+
+According to Borrow's own account, he left Willenhall mounted upon a
+fine horse, purchased with money lent to him by Mr Petulengro, a
+small valise strapped to the saddle, and "some desire to meet with
+one of those adventures which upon the roads of England are generally
+as plentiful as blackberries."  From this point, however, The Romany
+Rye becomes dangerous as autobiography. {66b}
+
+For one thing, it was unlike Borrow to remain in debt, and it is
+incredible that he should have ridden away upon a horse purchased
+with another man's money, without any set purpose in his mind.
+Therefore the story of his employment at the Swan Inn, Stafford,
+where he found his postilion friend, and the subsequent adventures
+must be reluctantly sacrificed.  They do not ring true, nor do they
+fit in with the rest of the story.  That he experienced such
+adventures is highly probable; but it is equally probable that he
+took some liberty with the dates.
+
+Up to the point where he purchases the horse, Borrow's story is
+convincing; but from there onwards it seems to go to pieces, that is
+as autobiography.  The arrival of Ardry (Arden) at the inn, {67a}
+PASSING THROUGH STAFFORD ON HIS WAY TO WARWICK to be present at a dog
+and lion fight that had already taken place (26th July), is in itself
+enough to shake our confidence in the whole episode of the inn.  In
+The Gypsies of Spain Mr Petulengro is made to say:
+
+
+"I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen years ago, when you made
+horseshoes in the little dingle by the side of the great north road,
+I lent you fifty cottors [guineas] to purchase the wonderful trotting
+cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days
+after you sold for two hundred.  Well, brother, if you had wanted the
+two hundred instead of the fifty, I could have lent them to you, and
+would have done so, for I knew you would not be long pazorrhus
+[indebted] to me." {67b}
+
+
+It seems more in accordance with Borrow's character to repay the loan
+within three days than to continue in Mr Petulengro's debt for weeks,
+at one time making no actual effort to realise upon the horse.  The
+question as to whether Borrow received a hundred and fifty (as he
+himself states) or two hundred pounds is immaterial.  It is quite
+likely that he sold the horse before he left the dingle, and that the
+adventures he narrates may be true in all else save the continued
+possession of his steed, that is, with the exception of the Francis
+Ardry episode, the encounter with the man in black, and the arrival
+at Horncastle during the fair.  If Borrow left London on 24th May,
+and he could not have left earlier, as has been shown, he must have
+visited the Fair (Tamworth) with Mr Petulengro on 26th July, and set
+out from Willenhall about 2nd August.
+
+It has been pointed out by that distinguished scholar and gentleman-
+gypsy, Mr John Sampson, {68a} that as the Horse Fair at Horncastle
+was held 12th-21st August, if Borrow took the horse there it could
+not have been in the manner described in The Romany Rye, where he is
+shown as spending some considerable time at the inn, if we may judge
+by the handsome cheque (10 pounds) offered to him by the landlord as
+a bonus on account of his services.  Then there was the accident and
+the consequent lying-up at the house of the man who knew Chinese, but
+could not tell what o'clock it was.  To confirm Borrow's itinerary
+all this must have been crowded into less than three weeks, fully a
+third of which Borrow spent in recovering from his fall.  This would
+mean that for less than a fortnight's work, the innkeeper offered him
+ten pounds as a gratuity, in addition to the bargain he had made,
+which included the horse's keep.
+
+Mr Sampson has supported his itinerary with several very important
+pieces of evidence.  Borrow states in Lavengro that "a young moon
+gave a feeble light" as he mounted the coach that was to take him to
+Amesbury.  The moon was in its first quarter on 24th May.  There
+actually was a great thunderstorm in the Willenhall district about
+the time that Borrow describes (18th July).  It is Mr Sampson also
+who has identified the fair to which Borrow went with the gypsies as
+that held at Tamworth on 26th July.
+
+Whatever else Borrow may have been doing immediately after leaving
+the dingle, he appears to have been much occupied in speculating as
+to the future.  Was he not "sadly misspending his time?"  He was
+forced to the conclusion that he had done nothing else throughout his
+life but misspend his time.  He was ambitious.  He chafed at his
+narrow life.  "Oh! what a vast deal may be done with intellect,
+courage, riches, accompanied by the desire of doing something great
+and good!" {69a} he exclaims, and his thoughts turned instinctively
+to the career of his old school-fellow, Rajah Brooke of Sarawak.
+{69b}  He was now, by his own confession, "a moody man, bearing on my
+face, as I well knew, the marks of my strivings and my strugglings,
+of what I had learnt and unlearnt." {69c}  He recognised the
+possibilities that lay in every man, only awaiting the hour when they
+should be called forth.  He believed implicitly in the power of the
+will. {69d}  He possessed ambition and a fine workable theory of how
+success was to be obtained; but he lacked initiative.  He expected
+fortune to wait for him on the high-road, just as he knew adventures
+awaited him.  He would not go "across the country," to use a phrase
+of the time common to postilions.  He was too independent, perhaps
+too sensitive of being patronised, to seek employment.  That he cared
+"for nothing in this world but old words and strange stories," was an
+error into which his friend Mr Petulengro might well fall.  The
+mightiness of the man's pride could be covered only by a cloak of
+assumed indifference.  He must be independent of the world, not only
+in material things, but in those intangible qualities of the spirit.
+It was this that lost him Isopel Berners, whose love he awakened by a
+strong right arm and quenched with an Armenian noun.  Again, his
+independence stood in the way of his happiness.  A man is a king, he
+seemed to think, and the attribute of kings is their splendid
+isolation, their godlike solitude.  If his Ego were lonely and crying
+out for sympathy, Borrow thought it a moment for solitude, in which
+to discipline his insurgent spirit.  The "Horrors" were the result of
+this self-repression.  When they became unbearable, his spirit broke
+down, the yearning for sympathy and affection overmastered him, and
+he stumbled to his little horse in the desolate dingle, and found
+comfort in the faithful creature's whinny of sympathy and its
+affectionate licking of his hand.  The strong man clung to his dumb
+brute friend as a protection against the unknown horror--the
+screaming horror that had gripped him.
+
+One quality Borrow possessed in common with many other men of strange
+and taciturn personality.  He could always make friends when he
+chose.  Ostlers, scholars, farmers, gypsies; it mattered not one jot
+to him what, or who they were.  He could earn their respect and
+obtain their good-will, if he wished to do so.  He demanded of men
+that they should have done things, or be capable of doing things.
+They must know everything there was to be known about some one thing;
+and the ostler, than whom none could groom a horse better, was worthy
+of being ranked with the best man in the land.  He demanded of every
+man that he should justify his existence, and was logical in his
+attitude, save in the insignificant particular that he applied the
+same rule to himself only in theory.
+
+He was shrewd and a good judge of character, provided it were
+Protestant character, and could hold his own with a Jew or a Gypsy.
+He was fully justified in his boast of being able to take "precious
+good care of" himself, and "drive a precious hard bargain"; yet these
+qualities were not to find a market until he was thirty years of age.
+
+Sometime during the autumn (1825) Borrow returned to Norwich, where
+he busied himself with literary affairs, among other things writing
+to the publishers of Faustus about the bill that was shortly to fall
+due.  The fact of the book having been destroyed at both the Norwich
+libraries, gave him the idea that he might make some profit by
+selling copies of the suppressed volume.  Hence his offer to Simpkin
+& Marshall to take copies in lieu of money.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V:  SEPTEMBER 1825-DECEMBER 1832
+
+
+
+From the autumn of 1825 until the winter of 1832, when he obtained an
+introduction to the British & Foreign Bible Society, only fragmentary
+details of Borrow's life exist.  He decided to keep sacred to himself
+the "Veiled Period," as it came to be called.  In all probability it
+was a time of great hardship and mortification, and he wished it to
+be thought that the whole period was devoted to "a grand philological
+expedition," or expeditions.  There is no doubt that some portion of
+the mysterious epoch was so spent, but not all.  Many of the
+adventures ascribed to characters in Lavengro and The Romany Rye
+were, most probably, Borrow's own experiences during that period of
+mystery and misfortune.  Time after time he was implored to "lift up
+a corner of the curtain"; but he remained obdurate, and the seven
+years are in his life what the New Orleans days were in that of Walt
+Whitman.
+
+Soon after his return to Norwich, Borrow seems to have turned his
+attention to the manuscripts in the green box.  In the days of happy
+augury, before he had quarrelled with Sir Richard Phillips, there had
+appeared in The Monthly Magazine the two following paragraphs:-
+
+
+"We have heard and seen much of the legends and popular superstitions
+of the North, but, in truth, all the exhibitions of these subjects
+which have hitherto appeared in England have been translations from
+the German.  Mr Olaus Borrow, who is familiar with the Northern
+Languages, proposes, however, to present these curious reliques of
+romantic antiquity directly from the Danish and Swedish, and two
+elegant volumes of them now printing will appear in September.  They
+are highly interesting in themselves, but more so as the basis of
+most of the popular superstitions of England, when they were
+introduced during the incursions and dominion of the Danes and
+Norwegians."  (1st September 1824.)
+
+"We have to acknowledge the favour of a beautiful collection of
+Danish songs and ballads, of which a specimen will be seen among the
+poetical articles of the present month.  One, or more, of these very
+interesting translations will appear in each succeeding number."
+(1st December 1824.)
+
+
+It seems to have been Borrow's plan to run his ballads serially
+through The Monthly Magazine and then to publish them in book-form.
+His initial contribution to The Monthly Magazine had appeared in
+October 1823.  The first of the articles, entitled "Danish Traditions
+and Superstitions," appeared August 1824, and continued, with the
+omission of one or two months, until December 1825, there being in
+all nine articles; but there was only one instalment of "Danish Songs
+and Ballads." {73a}
+
+Borrow was determined that these ballads, at least, should be
+published, and he set to work to prepare them for the press.  Allan
+Cunningham, with whom Borrow was acquainted, contributed, at his
+request, a metrical dedication.  The volume appeared on 10th May, in
+an edition of five hundred copies at ten shillings and sixpence each.
+It appears that some two hundred copies were subscribed for, thus
+ensuring the cost of production.  The balance, or a large proportion
+of it, was consigned to John Taylor, the London publisher, who
+printed a new title-page and sold them at seven shillings each,
+probably the trade price for a half-guinea book.
+
+Cunningham wrote to Borrow advising him to send out freely copies for
+review, and with each a note saying that it was the translator's
+ultimate intention to publish an English version of the whole Kiaempe
+Viser with notes; also to "scatter a few judiciously among literary
+men."  It is doubtful if this sage counsel were acted upon; for there
+is no record of any review or announcement of the work.  This in
+itself was not altogether a misfortune; for Borrow did not prove
+himself an inspired translator of verse.  Apart from the two hundred
+copies sold to subscribers, the book was still-born.
+
+After the publication of Romantic Ballads, Borrow appears to have
+returned to London, not to his old lodging at Milman Street, possibly
+on account of the associations, but to 26 Bryanston Street, Portman
+Square, from which address he wrote to Benjamin Haydon the following
+note:- {74a}
+
+
+DEAR SIR, -
+
+I should feel extremely obliged if you would allow me to sit to you
+as soon as possible.  I am going to the South of France in little
+better than a fortnight, and I would sooner lose a thousand pounds
+than not have the honour of appearing in the picture.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+GEORGE BORROW.
+
+
+In his account of how he first became acquainted with Haydon, Borrow
+shows himself as anything but desirous of appearing in a picture.
+When John tells of the artist's wish to include him as one of the
+characters in a painting upon which he is engaged, Borrow replies:
+"I have no wish to appear on canvas."  It is probable that in some
+way or other Haydon offended his sitter, who, regretting his
+acquiescence, antedated the episode and depicted himself as refusing
+the invitation.  Such a liberty with fact and date would be quite in
+accordance with Borrow's autobiographical methods.
+
+Borrow wrote in Lavengro, "I have been a wanderer the greater part of
+my life; indeed I remember only two periods, and these by no means
+lengthy, when I was, strictly speaking, stationary." {75a}  One of
+the "two periods" was obviously the eight years spent at Norwich,
+1816-24, the other is probably the years spent at Oulton.  Thus the
+"Veiled Period" may be assumed to have been one of wandering.  The
+seven years are gloomy and mysterious, but not utterly dark.  There
+is a hint here, a suggestion there--a letter or a paragraph, that
+gives in a vague way some idea of what Borrow was doing, and where.
+It seems comparatively safe to assume that after the publication of
+Romantic Ballads he plunged into a life of roving and vagabondage,
+which, in all probability, was brought to an abrupt termination by
+either the loss or the exhaustion of his money.  Anything beyond this
+is pure conjecture. {75b}
+
+After he became associated with the British & Foreign Bible Society,
+his movements are easily accounted for; but all we have to guide us
+as to what countries he had seen before 1833 is an occasional hint.
+He casually admits having been in Italy, {75c} at Bayonne, {75d}
+Paris, {75e} Madrid, {75f} the south of France. {75g}  "I have
+visited most of the principal capitals of the world," he writes in
+1843; and again in the same year, "I have heard the ballad of Alonzo
+Guzman chanted in Danish, by a hind in the wilds of Jutland." {76a}
+"I have lived in different parts of the world, much amongst the
+Hebrew race, and I am well acquainted with their words and
+phraseology," {76b} he writes; and on another occasion:  "I have seen
+gypsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish; and I have
+also seen the legitimate children of most countries of the world."
+{76c}  An even more significant admission is that made when Colonel
+Elers Napier, whom Borrow met in Seville in 1839, enquired where he
+had obtained his knowledge of Moultanee.  "Some years ago, in
+Moultan," was the reply; then, as if regretting that he had confessed
+so much, showed by his manner that he intended to divulge nothing
+more. {76d}
+
+"Once, during my own wanderings in Italy," Borrow writes, "I rested
+at nightfall by the side of a kiln, the air being piercingly cold; it
+was about four leagues from Genoa." {76e}  Again, "Once in the south
+of France, when I was weary, hungry, and penniless, I observed one of
+these last patterans {76f} [a cross marked in the dust], and
+following the direction pointed out, arrived at the resting-place of
+'certain Bohemians,' by whom I was received with kindness and
+hospitality, on the faith of no other word of recommendation than
+patteran." {76g}  In a letter of introduction to the Rev. E. Whitely,
+of Oporto, the Rev. Andrew Brandram, of the Bible Society, wrote in
+1835:  "With Portugal he [Borrow] is already acquainted, and speaks
+the language."  This statement is significant, for only during the
+"Veiled Period" could Borrow have visited Portugal.
+
+It may be argued that Borrow was merely posing as a great traveller,
+but the foregoing remarks are too casual, too much in the nature of
+asides, to be the utterances of a poseur.  A man seeking to impress
+himself upon the world as a great traveller would probably have been
+a little more definite.
+
+The only really reliable information as to Borrow's movements after
+his arrival in London is contained in the note to Haydon.  In all
+probability he went to Paris, where possibly he met Vidocq, the
+master-rogue turned detective. {77a}  It has been suggested by Dr
+Knapp that he went to Paris, and thence on foot to Bayonne and
+Madrid, after which he tramped to Pamplona, where he gets into
+trouble, is imprisoned, and is released on condition that he leave
+the country; he proceeds towards Marseilles and Genoa, where he takes
+ship and is landed safely in London.  The data, however, upon which
+this itinerary is constructed are too frail to be convincing.  There
+is every probability that he roamed about the Continent and met with
+adventures--he was a man to whom adventures gravitated quite
+naturally--but the fact of his saying that he had been imprisoned on
+three occasions, and there being only two instances on record at the
+time, cannot in itself be considered as conclusive evidence of his
+having been arrested at Pamplona. {77b}
+
+In the spring of 1827 Borrow was unquestionably at Norwich, for he
+saw the famous trotting stallion Marshland Shales on the Castle Hill
+(12th April), and did for that grand horse "what I would neither do
+for earl or baron, doffed my hat." {78a}  Borrow apparently remained
+with his mother for some months, to judge from certain entries (29th
+September to 19th November) in his hand that appear in her account
+books.
+
+In December 1829 he was back again in London at 77 Great Russell
+Street, W.C.  He was as usual eager to obtain some sort of work.  He
+wrote to "the Committee of the Honourable and Praiseworthy
+Association, known by the name of the Highland Society . . . a body
+animate with patriotism, which, guided by philosophy, produces the
+noblest results, and many of whose members stand amongst the very
+eminent in the various departments of knowledge."
+
+The project itself was that of translating into English "the best and
+most approved poetry of the Ancient and Modern Scoto-Gaelic Bards,
+with such notes on the usages and superstitions therein alluded to,
+as will enable the English reader to form a clear and correct idea of
+the originals."  In the course of a rather ornate letter, Borrow
+offers himself as the translator and compiler of such a work as he
+suggests, avowing his willingness to accept whatsoever remuneration
+might be thought adequate compensation for his expenditure of time.
+Furthermore, he undertakes to complete the work within a period of
+two years.
+
+On 7th December he wrote to Dr Bowring, recently returned from
+Denmark:-
+
+
+"Lest I should intrude upon you when you are busy, I write to enquire
+when you will be unoccupied.  I wish to show you my translation of
+The Death of Balder, Ewald's most celebrated production, which, if
+you approve of, you will perhaps render me some assistance in
+bringing forth, for I don't know many publishers.  I think this will
+be a proper time to introduce it to the British public, as your
+account of Danish literature will doubtless cause a sensation." {79a}
+
+
+On 29th December he wrote again:-
+
+
+"When I had last the pleasure of being at yours, you mentioned that
+we might at some future period unite our strength in composing a kind
+of Danish Anthology.  Suppose we bring forward at once the first
+volume of the Danish Anthology, which should contain the heroic
+supernatural songs of the K[iaempe] V[iser]."
+
+
+It was suggested that there should be four volumes in all, and the
+first, with an introduction that Borrow expressed himself as not
+ashamed of, was ready and "might appear instanter, with no further
+trouble to yourself than writing, if you should think fit, a page or
+two of introductory matter."  Dr Bowring replied by return of post
+that he thought that no more than two volumes could be ventured on,
+and Borrow acquiesced, writing:  "The sooner the work is advertised
+the better, FOR I AM TERRIBLY AFRAID OF BEING FORESTALLED IN THE
+KIAEMPE VISER BY SOME OF THOSE SCOTCH BLACKGUARDS, who affect to
+translate from all languages, of which they are fully as ignorant as
+Lockhart is of Spanish."
+
+Borrow was full of enthusiasm for the project, and repeated that the
+first volume was ready, adding:  "If we unite our strength in the
+second, I think we can produce something worthy of fame, for we shall
+have plenty of matter to employ talent upon."  A later letter, which
+was written from 7 Museum Street (8th January), told how he had "been
+obliged to decamp from Russell St. for the cogent reason of an
+execution having been sent into the house, and I thought myself happy
+in escaping with my things."
+
+He drew up a prospectus, endeavouring "to assume a Danish style,"
+which he submitted to his collaborator, begging him to "alter . . .
+whatever false logic has crept into it, find a remedy for its
+incoherencies, and render it fit for its intended purpose.  I have
+had for the two last days a rising headache which has almost
+prevented me doing anything."
+
+It would appear that Dr Bowring did not altogether approve of the
+"Danish style," for on 14th January Borrow wrote, "I approve of the
+prospectus in every respect; it is business-like, and there is
+nothing flashy in it.  I do not wish to suggest one alteration . . .
+When you see the foreign Editor," he continues, "I should feel much
+obliged if you would speak to him about my reviewing Tegner, and
+enquire whether a GOOD article on Welsh poetry would be received.  I
+have the advantage of not being a Welshman.  I would speak the truth,
+and would give translations of some of the best Welsh poetry; and I
+really believe that my translations would not be the worst that have
+been made from the Welsh tongue."
+
+The prospectus, which appeared in several publications ran as
+follows:-
+
+
+"Dr Bowring and Mr George Borrow are about to publish, dedicated to
+the King of Denmark, by His Majesy's permission, THE SONGS OF
+SCANDINAVIA, in 2 vols. 8vo, containing a Selection of the most
+interesting of the Historical and Romantic Ballads of North-Western
+Europe, with Specimens of the Danish and Norwegian Poets down to the
+present day.
+
+Price to Subscribers, 1 pound, 1s.--to Non-Subscribers 1 pound, 5s.
+The First Volume will be devoted to Ancient Popular Poetry; the
+Second will give the choicest productions of the Modern School,
+beginning with Tullin." {81a}
+
+
+The Songs of Scandinavia now became to Borrow what the Celebrated
+Trials had been four years previously, a source of constant toil.  On
+one occasion he writes to Dr Bowring telling him that he has just
+translated an ode "as I breakfasted."  What Borrow lived on at this
+period it is impossible to say.  It may be assumed that Mrs Borrow
+did not keep him, for, apart from the slender proportions of the
+income of the mother, the unconquerable independence of the son must
+be considered; and Borrow loved his mother too tenderly to allow her
+to deprive herself of luxuries even to keep him.  He borrowed money
+from her at various times; but he subsequently faithfully repaid her.
+Even John was puzzled.  "You never tell me what you are doing," he
+writes to his brother at the end of 1832; "you can't be living on
+nothing."
+
+Borrow appears to have kept Dr Bowring well occupied with suggestions
+as to how that good-natured man might assist him.  Although he is to
+see him on the morrow, he writes on the evening of 21st May regarding
+another idea that has just struck him:
+
+
+"As at present no doubt seems to be entertained of Prince Leopold's
+accepting the sovereignty of Greece, would you have any objection to
+write to him concerning me?  I should be very happy to go to Greece
+in his service.  I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic capacity,
+and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such situations have been
+long since filled up; I wish to go in a military one, for which I am
+qualified by birth and early habits.  You might inform the Prince
+that I have been for years on the Commander-in-Chiefs list for a
+commission, but that I have not had sufficient interest to procure an
+appointment.  One of my reasons for wishing to reside in Greece is,
+that the mines of Eastern literature would be accessible to me.  I
+should soon become an adept in Turkish, and would weave and transmit
+to you such an anthology as would gladden your very heart.  As for
+the Songs of Scandinavia, all the ballads would be ready before
+departure, and as I should have books, I would in a few months send
+you translations of the modern Lyric Poetry.  I hope this letter will
+not displease you.  I do not write it from FLIGHTINESS, but from
+thoughtfulness.  I am uneasy to find myself at four and twenty
+drifting on the sea of the world, and likely to continue so."
+
+
+On 22nd May Dr Bowring introduced Borrow to Dr Grundtvig, the Danish
+poet, who required some transcriptions done.  On 7th June, Borrow
+wrote to Dr Bowring:
+
+
+"I have looked over Mr Gruntvig's (sic) manuscript.  It is a very
+long affair, and the language is Norman Saxon.  40 pounds would not
+be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told him at the
+Museum.  However, as I am doing nothing particular at present, and as
+I might learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for 20
+pounds.  He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then, if you
+please, you may recommend me.  The character closely resembles the
+ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my competency."
+
+
+At this time there were a hundred schemes seething through Borrow's
+eager brain.  Hearing that "an order has been issued for the making a
+transcript of the celebrated Anglo-Saxon Codex of Exeter, for the use
+of the British Museum," he applied to some unknown correspondent for
+his interest and help to obtain the appointment as transcriber.  The
+work, however, was carried out by a Museum official.
+
+Another project appears to have been to obtain a post at the British
+Museum.  On 9th March 1830 he had written to Dr Bowring:
+
+
+"I have thought over the Museum matter, which we were talking about
+last night, and it appears to me that it would be the very thing for
+me, provided that it could be accomplished.  I should feel obliged if
+you would deliberate upon the best mode of proceeding, so that when I
+see you again I may have the benefit of your advice."
+
+
+In reply Dr Bowring commended the scheme, and promised to assist "by
+every sort of counsel and exertion.  But it would injure you," he
+proceeds, "if I were to take the initiative.  [The Gibraltar house of
+Bowring & Murdock had recently failed.]  Quietly make yourself master
+of that department of the Museum.  We must then think of how best to
+get at the Council.  If by any management they can be induced to ask
+my opinion, I will give you a character which shall take you to the
+top of Hecla itself.  You have claims, strong ones, and I should
+rejoice to see you NICHED in the British Museum."
+
+Again failure!  Disappointment seemed to be dogging Borrow's
+footsteps at this period.  For years past he had been seeking some
+sort of occupation, into which he could throw all that energy and
+determination of character that he possessed.  He was earnest and
+able, and he knew that he only required an opportunity of showing to
+the world what manner of man he was.  He seemed doomed to meet
+everywhere with discouragement; for no one wanted him, just as no one
+wanted his translations of the glorious Ab Gwilym.  He appeared
+before the world as a failure, which probably troubled him very
+little; but there was another aspect of the case that was in his
+eyes, "the most heartbreaking of everything, the strange, the
+disadvantageous light in which I am aware that I must frequently have
+appeared to those whom I most love and honour." {83a}
+
+On 14th September he wrote to Dr Bowring:
+
+
+"I am going to Norwich for some short time, as I am very unwell and
+hope that cold bathing in October and November may prove of service
+to me.  My complaints are, I believe, the offspring of ennui and
+unsettled prospects.  I have thoughts of attempting to get into the
+French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve under Clausel
+in the next Bedouin campaign.  I shall leave London next Sunday and
+will call some evening to take my leave; I cannot come in the
+morning, as early rising kills me."
+
+A year later he writes again to Dr Bowring, who once more has been
+exerting himself on his friend's behalf:
+
+
+"WILLOW LANE, NORWICH,
+11th September 1831.
+
+MY DEAR SIR, -
+
+I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd
+inst., and though you have not been successful in your application to
+the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full well that you did
+your utmost, and am only sorry that at my instigation you attempted
+an impossibility.
+
+The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion
+of the great Cyrus who gives this advice to his captains.  'Take no
+heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as
+ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but
+those of merit.'  The Belgians will only have such recruits as are
+born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in which the
+native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign in the
+last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for their
+determination?  It is rather singular, however, that resolved as they
+are to be served only by themselves they should have sent for 5000
+Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have
+generally been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, but
+who, if they had fair play given them, would long ere this time have
+replanted the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the
+Belgians what they deserve to be, hewers of wood and drawers of
+water.
+
+And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of
+your letter; you ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in
+the British service, because in that case you would speak to the
+Secretary at War about me.  I must inform you therefore that my name
+has been for several years upon the list for the purchase of a
+commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to procure
+an appointment.  If I can do nothing better I shall be very glad to
+purchase; but I will pause two or three months before I call upon you
+to fulfil your kind promise.  It is believed that the Militia will be
+embodied in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and
+provided I can obtain a commission in one of them, and they are kept
+in service, it would be better than spending 500 pounds about one in
+the line.  I am acquainted with the Colonels of the two Norfolk
+regiments, and I daresay that neither of them would have any
+objection to receive me.  If they are not embodied I will most
+certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that
+being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages,
+I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern Colonies.
+I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I
+could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity; there
+is much talk at present about translating European books into the two
+great languages, the Arabic and Persian; now I believe that with my
+enthusiasm for these tongues I could, if resident in the East, become
+in a year or two better acquainted with them than any European has
+been yet, and more capable of executing such a task.  Bear this in
+mind, and if before you hear from me again you should have any
+opportunity to recommend me as a proper person to fill any civil
+situation in those countries or to attend any expedition thither, I
+pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever give
+you reason to repent it.
+
+I remain,
+My Dear Sir,
+Your most obliged and obedient Servant,
+GEORGE BORROW.
+
+P.S.--Present my best remembrances to Mrs B. and to Edgar, and tell
+them that they will both be starved.  There is now a report in the
+street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within twenty miles of
+this place.  I have lately been wandering about Norfolk, and I am
+sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state
+of excitement; I have repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest-
+field swear that not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be
+eaten, and that they would as lieve be hanged as live.  I am afraid
+all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.
+
+
+It was pride that prompted Borrow to ask Dr Bowring to stay his hand
+for the moment about a commission.  There was no reasonable
+possibility of his being able to raise 500 pounds.  Even if his
+mother had possessed it, which she did not, he would not have drained
+her resources of so large an amount.  His subsequent attitude towards
+the Belgians was characteristic of him.  To his acutely sensitive
+perceptions, failure to obtain an appointment he sought was a rebuff,
+and his whole nature rose up against what, at the moment, appeared to
+be an intolerable slight.
+
+Nothing came of the project of collaboration between Bowring and
+Borrow beyond an article on Danish and Norwegian literature that
+appeared in The Foreign Quarterly Review (June 1830), in which Borrow
+supplied translations of the sixteen poems illustrating Bowring's
+text.  In all probability the response to the prospectus was deemed
+inadequate, and Bowring did not wish to face a certain financial
+loss.
+
+From Borrow's own letters there is no question that Dr Bowring was
+acting towards him in a most friendly manner, and really endeavouring
+to assist him to obtain some sort of employment.  It may be, as has
+been said, and as seems extremely probable, that Bowring used his
+"facility in acquiring and translating tongues deliberately as a
+ladder to an administrative post abroad," {86a} but if Borrow "put a
+wrong construction upon his sympathy" and was led into "a veritable
+cul-de-sac of literature," {86b} it was no fault of Bowring's.
+
+Borrow's relations with Dr Bowring continued to be most cordial for
+many years, as his letters show.  "Pray excuse me for troubling you
+with these lines," he writes years later; "I write to you, as usual,
+for assistance in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none
+which it may be in your power to afford, more especially when by so
+doing you will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow-
+creatures."  This is very significant as indicating the nature of the
+relations between the two men.
+
+Borrow was to experience yet another disappointment.  A Welsh
+bookseller, living in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, commissioned
+him to translate into English Elis Wyn's The Sleeping Bard, a book
+printed originally in 1703.  The bookseller foresaw for the volume a
+large sale, not only in England but in Wales; but "on the eve of
+committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian-Briton felt his
+small heart give way within him.  'Were I to print it,' said he, 'I
+should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would
+frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and
+I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett . . . Myn
+Diawl!  I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn
+had been such a terrible fellow.'" {87a}
+
+With this Borrow had to be content and retire from the presence of
+the little bookseller, who told him he was "much obliged . . . for
+the trouble you have given yourself on my account," {87b} and his
+bundle of manuscript, containing nearly three thousand lines, the
+work probably of some months, was to be put aside for thirty years
+before eventually appearing in a limited edition.
+
+It cannot be determined with exactness when Borrow relinquished the
+unequal struggle against adverse circumstances in London.  He had met
+with sufficient discouragement to dishearten him from further effort.
+Perhaps his greatest misfortune was his disinclination to make
+friends with anybody save vagabonds.  He could attract and earn the
+friendship of an apple-woman, thimble-riggers, tramps, thieves,
+gypsies, in short with any vagrant he chose to speak to; but his
+hatred of gentility was a great and grave obstacle in the way of his
+material advancement.  His brother John seemed to recognise this; for
+in 1831 he wrote, "I am convinced that YOUR WANT OF SUCCESS IN LIFE
+is more owing to your being unlike other people than to any other
+cause."
+
+It would appear that, finding nothing to do in London, Borrow once
+more became a wanderer.  He was in London in March; but on 27th,
+28th, and 29th July 1830 he was unquestionably in Paris.  Writing
+about the Revolution of La Granja (August 1836) and of the energy,
+courage and activity of the war correspondents, he says:
+
+
+"I saw them [the war correspondents] during the three days at Paris,
+mingled with canaille and gamins behind the barriers, whilst the
+mitraille was flying in all directions, and the desperate cuirassiers
+were dashing their fierce horses against these seemingly feeble
+bulwarks.  There stood they, dotting down their observations in their
+pocket-books as unconcernedly as if reporting the proceedings of a
+reform meeting in Covent Garden or Finsbury Square." {88a}
+
+
+This can have reference only to the "Three Glorious Days" of
+Revolution, 27th to 29th July 1830, during which Charles X. lost, and
+Louis-Philippe gained, a throne.  He returned to Norwich sometime
+during the autumn of 1830. {88b}  In November he was entering upon
+his epistolary duel with the Army Pay Office in connection with
+John's half-pay as a lieutenant in the West Norfolk Militia.
+
+In 1826 John had gone to Mexico, then looked upon as a land of
+promise for young Englishmen, who might expect to find fortunes in
+its silver mines.  Allday, brother of Roger Kerrison, was there, and
+John Borrow determined to join him.  Obtaining a year's leave of
+absence from his colonel, together with permission to apply for an
+extension, he entered the service of the Real del Monte Company,
+receiving a salary of three hundred pounds a year.  He arranged that
+his mother should have his half-pay, and it was in connection with
+this that George entered upon a correspondence with the Army Pay
+Office that was to extend over a period of fifteen months.
+
+Originally John had arranged for the amounts to be remitted to
+Mexico, and he sent them back again to his mother.  This involved
+heavy losses in connection with the bills of exchange, and wishing to
+avoid this tax, John sent to his brother an official copy of a
+Mexican Power of Attorney, which George strove to persuade the Army
+Pay Office was the original.
+
+Tact was unfortunately not one of George Borrow's acquirements at
+this period, and in this correspondence he adopted an attitude that
+must have seriously prejudiced his case.  "I am a solicitor myself,
+Sir," he states, and proceeds to threaten to bring the matter before
+Parliament.  He writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury "as a member
+of the same honourable profession to which I was myself bred up," and
+demands whether he has not law, etc., on his side.  The outcome of
+the correspondence was that the disembodied allowance was refused on
+the plea "that Lieutenant Borrow having been absent without Leave
+from the Training of the West Norfolk Militia has, under the
+provisions of the 12th Section of the Militia Pay and Clothing Act,
+forfeited his Allowance."  In consequence, payment was made only for
+the amount due from 25th June 1829 to 24th December 1830.  The whole
+tone of Borrow's letters was unfortunate for the cause he pleaded.
+He wrote to the Secretary of State for War as he might have written
+to the little Welsh bookseller with "the small heart."  He was
+indignant at what he conceived to be an injustice, and was unable to
+dissemble his anger.
+
+George had thought of joining his brother, but had not received any
+very marked encouragement to do so.  John despised Mexican methods.
+On one occasion he writes apropos of George's suggestion of the army,
+"If you can raise the pewter, come out here rather than that, and
+ROB."  One sage thing at least John is to be credited with, when he
+wrote to his brother, "Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec."  It
+would have been for George Borrow.
+
+Among the papers left at Borrow's death was a fragment of a political
+article in dispraise of the Radicals.  The editorial "We" suggests
+that Borrow might possibly have been engaged in political journalism.
+The statement made by him that he "frequently spoke up for
+Wellington" {90a} may or may not have had reference to contributions
+to the press.  The fragment itself proves nothing.  Many would-be
+journalists write "leaders" that never see the case-room.
+
+It is useless to speculate further regarding the period that Borrow
+himself elected to veil from the eyes, not only of his
+contemporaries, but those of another generation.  Men who have
+overcome adverse conditions and achieved fame are not as a rule
+averse from publishing, or at least allowing to be known, the
+difficulties that they had to contend with.  Borrow was in no sense
+of the word an ordinary man.  He unquestionably suffered acutely
+during the years of failure, when it seemed likely that his life was
+to be wasted, barren of anything else save the acquirement of a score
+or more languages; keys that could open literary storehouses that
+nobody wanted to explore, to the very existence of which, in fact,
+the public was frigidly indifferent.
+
+"Poor George . . .  I wish he was making money . . . He works hard
+and remains poor," is the comment of his brother John, written in the
+autumn of 1830.  To no small degree Borrow was responsible for his
+own failure, or perhaps it would be more just to say that he had been
+denied many of the attributes that make for success.  His
+independence was aggressive, and it offended people.  Even with the
+Welsh Preacher and his wife he refused to unbend.
+
+"'What a disposition!'" Winifred had exclaimed, holding up her hands;
+"'and this is pride, genuine pride--that feeling which the world
+agrees to call so noble.  Oh, how mean a thing is pride! never before
+did I see all the meanness of what is called pride!'" {91a}
+
+This pride, magnificent as the loneliness of kings, and about as
+unproductive of a sympathetic view of life, always constituted a
+barrier in the way of Borrow's success.  There were innumerable other
+obstacles:  his choice of friends, his fierce denunciatory hatred of
+gentility, together with humbug, which he always seemed to confuse
+with it, the attacks of the "Horrors," his grave bearing, which no
+laugh ever disturbed, and, above all, his uncompromising hostility to
+the things that the world chose to consider excellent.  The world in
+return could make nothing of a man who was a mass of moods and
+sensibilities, strange tastes and pursuits.  It is not remarkable
+that he should fail to make the stir that he had hoped to make.
+
+With the unerring instinct of a hypersensitive nature, he knew his
+merit, his honesty, his capacity--knew that he possessed one thing
+that eventually commands success, which "through life has ever been
+of incalculable utility to me, and has not unfrequently supplied the
+place of friends, money, and many other things of almost equal
+importance--iron perseverance, without which all the advantages of
+time and circumstance are of very little avail in any undertaking."
+{91b}  It was this dogged determination that was to carry him through
+the most critical period of his life, enable him to earn the approval
+of those in whose interests he worked, and eventually achieve fame
+and an unassailable place in English literature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI:  JANUARY-JULY 1833
+
+
+
+It is not a little curious that no one should have thought of putting
+Borrow's undoubted gifts as a linguist to some practical use.  He
+himself had frequently cast his eyes in the direction of a political
+appointment abroad.  It remained, however, for the Rev. Francis
+Cunningham, {92a} vicar of Lowestoft, in Suffolk, to see in this
+young man against whom the curse of Babel was inoperative, a sword
+that, in the hands of the British and Foreign Bible Society, might be
+wielded with considerable effect against the heathen.
+
+Borrow appears to have become acquainted with the Rev. Francis
+Cunningham through the Skeppers of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft, of
+whom it is necessary to give some account.  Edmund Skepper had
+married Anne Breame of Beetley, who, on the death of her father, came
+into 9000 pounds.  She and her husband purchased the Oulton Hall
+estate, upon which Anne Skepper seems to have been given a five per
+cent. mortgage.  There were two children of the marriage, Breame
+(born 1794) and Mary (born 1796).  The boy inherited the estate, and
+the girl the mortgage, worth about 450 pounds per annum.  Mary
+married Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Navy (26th July 1817), who
+within eight months died of consumption.  Two months later Mrs Clarke
+gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Henrietta Mary.  Mrs
+Clarke became acquainted with the Cunninghams while they were at
+Pakefield, and there is every reason to believe that she was
+instrumental in introducing Borrow to Cunningham.  It is most
+probable that they met during Borrow's visit at Oulton Hall in
+November 1832.
+
+The Rev. Francis Cunningham appears to have been impressed by
+Borrow's talent for languages, and fully alive to his value to an
+institution such as the Bible Society, of which he, Cunningham, was
+an active member.  He accordingly addressed {93a} to the secretary,
+the Rev. Andrew Brandram, the following letter:
+
+
+LOWESTOFT VICARAGE,
+27th Dec. 1832.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND, -
+
+A young farmer in this neighbourhood has introduced me to-day to a
+person of whom I have long heard, who appears to me to promise so
+much that I am induced to offer him to you as a successor of Platt
+and Greenfield. {93b}  He is a person without University education,
+but who has read the Bible in thirteen languages.  He is independent
+in circumstances, of no very defined denomination of Christians, but
+I think of certain Christian principle.  I shall make more enquiry
+about him and see him again.  Next week I propose to meet him in
+London, and I could wish that you should see him, and, if you please,
+take him under your charge for a few days.  He is of the middle order
+in Society, and a very produceable person.
+
+I intend to be in town on Tuesday morning to go to the Socy. P. C. K.
+On Wednesday is Dr Wilson's meeting at Islington.  He may be in town
+on Monday evening, and will attend to any appointment.
+
+Will you write me word by return of post, and believe me ever
+
+Most truly and affectionately yours,
+
+F. CUNNINGHAM.
+
+
+The recommendation was well-timed, for the Bible Society at that
+particular moment required such a man as Borrow for a Manchu-Tartar
+project it had in view.  In 1821 the Bible Society had commissioned
+Stepan Vasilievitch Lipovzoff, {94a} of St Petersburg, to translate
+the New Testament into Manchu, the court and diplomatic language of
+China.  A year later, an edition of 550 copies of the First Gospel
+was printed from type specially cast for the undertaking.  A hundred
+copies were despatched to headquarters in London, and the remainder,
+together with the type, placed with the Society's bankers at St
+Petersburg, {94b} until the time should arrive for the distribution
+of the books.
+
+Three years after (1824), the overflowing Neva flooded the cellars in
+which the books were stored, causing their irretrievable ruin, and
+doing serious damage to the type.  This misfortune appeared
+temporarily to discourage the authorities at home, although Mr
+Lipovzoff was permitted to proceed with the work of translation,
+which he completed in two years from the date of the inundation.
+
+In 1832 the Rev. Wm. Swann, of the London Missionary Society,
+discovered in the famous library of Baron Schilling de Canstadt at St
+Petersburg the manuscript of a Manchu translation of "the principal
+part of the Old Testament," and two books of the New.  The discovery
+was considered to be so important that Mr Swann decided to delay his
+departure for his post in Siberia and make a transcription, which he
+did.  The Manchu translation was the work of Father Puerot,
+"originally a Jesuit emissary at Pekin [who] passed the latter years
+of his life in the service of the Russian Mission in the capacity of
+physician." {95a}
+
+The immediate outcome of Mr Cunningham's letter was an interview
+between Borrow and the Bible Society's officials.  With
+characteristic energy and determination, Borrow trudged up to London,
+covering the 112 miles on foot in 27.5 hours.  His expenses by the
+way amounted to fivepence-halfpenny for the purchase of a roll, two
+apples, a pint of ale and a glass of milk.  On reaching London he
+proceeded direct to the Bible Society's offices in Earl Street, in
+spite of the early hour, and there awaited the arrival of the Rev.
+Andrew Brandram (Secretary), and the Rev. Joseph Jowett (Literary
+Superintendent).
+
+The story of Borrow's arrival at Earl Street was subsequently told,
+by one of the secretaries at a provincial meeting in connection with
+the Bible Society.  The Rev. Wentworth Webster writes:
+
+
+"I was little more than a boy when I first heard George Borrow spoken
+of at the annual dinner given by a connection of my family to the
+deputation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in a country town
+near London . . . I can distinctly recall one of the secretaries
+telling of his first meeting with Borrow, whom he found waiting at
+the offices of the Society one morning;--how puzzled he was by his
+appearance; how, after he had read his letter of introduction, he
+wished to while away the time until a brother secretary should
+arrive, and did not want to say anything to commit himself to such a
+strange applicant; so he began by politely hoping that Borrow had
+slept well.  'I am not aware that I fell asleep on the road,' was the
+reply; I have walked from Norwich to London.'" {96a}
+
+
+It would appear that this conference took place on Friday, 4th
+January; for on that day there is an entry in the records of the
+Society of the loan to George Borrow of several books from the
+Society's library.  On this and subsequent occasions, Borrow was
+examined as to his capabilities, the result appearing to be quite
+satisfactory.  To judge from the books lent to Borrow, one of the
+subjects would seem to have been Arabic.
+
+Borrow appeared before the Committee on 14th January, with the result
+that they seemed to be "quite satisfied with me and my philological
+capabilities," which they judged of from the report given by the
+Secretary and his colleague.  A more material sign of approval was
+found in the undertaking to defray "the expenses of my journey to and
+from London, and also of my residence in that city, in the most
+handsome manner." {96b}  That is to say, the Committee voted him the
+sum of ten pounds.
+
+Borrow had been formally asked if he were prepared to learn Manchu
+sufficiently well to edit, or translate, into that language such
+portions of the Scriptures as the Society might decide to issue,
+provided means of acquiring the language were put within his reach,
+and employment should follow as soon as he showed himself proficient.
+To this Borrow had willingly agreed.  At this period, the idea
+appears to have been to execute the work in London.
+
+Shortly after appearing before the Committee Borrow returned to
+Norwich, this time by coach, with several books in the Manchu-Tartar
+dialect, including the Gospel of St Matthew and Amyot's Manchu-French
+Dictionary.  His instructions were to learn the language and come up
+for examination in six months' time.  Possibly the time limit was
+suggested by Borrow himself, for he had said that he believed he
+could master any tongue in a few months.
+
+After two or three weeks of incessant study of a language that Amyot
+says "one may acquire in five or six years," Borrow, who, it should
+be remembered, possessed no grammar of the tongue, wrote to Mr
+Jowett:
+
+
+"It is, then, your opinion that, from the lack of anything in the
+form of Grammar, I have scarcely made any progress towards the
+attainment of Manchu:  {97a} perhaps you will not be perfectly
+miserable at being informed that you were never more mistaken in your
+life.  I can already, with the assistance of Amyot, translate Manchu
+with no great difficulty, and am perfectly qualified to write a
+critique on the version of St Matthew's Gospel, which I brought with
+me into the country . . . I will now conclude by beseeching you to
+send me, as soon as possible, WHATEVER CAN SERVE TO ENLIGHTEN ME IN
+RESPECT TO MANCHU GRAMMAR, for, had I a Grammar, I should in a
+month's time be able to send a Manchu translation of Jonah."
+
+
+The racy style of Borrow's letters must have been something of a
+revelation to the Bible Society's officers, who seem to have shown
+great tact and consideration in dealing with their self-confident
+correspondent There is something magnificent in the letters that
+Borrow wrote about this period; their directness and virility, their
+courage and determination suggest, not a man who up to the thirtieth
+year of his age has been a conspicuous failure, as the world gauges
+failure; but one who had grown confident through many victories and
+is merely proceeding from one success to another.
+
+Whilst in London, Borrow had discussed with Mr Brandram "the Gypsies
+and the profound darkness as to religion and morality that envolved
+them." {98a}  The Secretary told him of the Southampton Committee for
+the Amelioration of the Condition of the Gypsies that had recently
+been formed by the Rev. James Crabbe for the express purpose of
+enlightening and spreading the Gospel among the Romanys.
+Furthermore, Mr Brandram, on hearing of Borrow's interest in, and
+knowledge of, the gypsies, had requested him immediately on his
+return to Norwich to draw up a vocabulary of Mr Petulengro's
+language, during such time as he might have free from his other
+studies.  Borrow showed himself, as usual, prolific of suggestions,
+all of which involved him in additional labour.  He enquired through
+Mr Jowett if Mr Brandram would write about him to the Southampton
+Committee.  He wished to translate into the gypsy tongue the Gospel
+of St John, "which I could easily do," he tells Mr Jowett, "with the
+assistance of one or two of the old people, but then they must be
+paid, for the gypsies are more mercenary than the Jews."
+
+He also informed Mr Jowett that he had a brother in Mexico,
+subsequently assuring him that he had no doubt of John's willingness
+to assist the Society in "flinging the rays of scriptural light o'er
+that most benighted and miserable region."  He sent to his brother,
+at Mr Jowett's request, first a sheet, and afterwards a complete
+copy, of the Gospel of St Luke translated into Nahuatl, the
+prevailing dialect of the Mexican Indians, by Mariano Paz y Sanchez.
+{99a}
+
+In addition to learning Manchu, Borrow is credited with correcting
+and passing for press the Nahuatl version of St. Luke. {99b}  The
+Bible Society's records, however, point to the fact that this work
+was carried through by John Hattersley, who later was to come up with
+Borrow for examination in Manchu.  In the light of this, the
+following passage from one of John's letters is puzzling in the
+extreme:- "I have just received your letter of the 16th of February,
+together with your translation of St Luke.  I am glad you have got
+the job, but I must say that the Bible Society are just throwing away
+their time."
+
+He goes on to explain how many dialects there are in Mexico.  "The
+job" can only refer to the Mexican translation, as, at that period,
+Borrow was merely studying Manchu.  He had received no appointment
+from the Society.  It may have happened that Borrow expressed a wish
+to look through the proofs and that a set was sent to him for this
+purpose; but there seems no doubt that the actual official
+responsibility for the work rested with Hattersley.  A very important
+point in support of this view is that there is no record of Borrow
+being paid anything in connection with this Mexican translation,
+beyond the amount of fifteen shillings and fivepence, which he had
+expended in postage on the advance sheet and complete copy sent to
+John.  To judge from the subsequent financial arrangements between
+the Society and its agent, it is very improbable that he was given
+work to do without payment.
+
+After seven weeks' study Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett:
+
+
+"I am advancing at full gallop, and . . . able to translate with
+pleasure and facility the specimens of the best authors who have
+written in the language contained in the compilation of the Klaproth.
+But I confess that the want of a Grammar has been, particularly in
+the beginning of my course, a great clog to my speed, and I have
+little doubt that had I been furnished with one I should have
+attained my present knowledge of Manchu in half the time.  I was
+determined, however, not to be discouraged, and, not having a hatchet
+at hand to cut down the tree with, to attack it with my knife; and I
+would advise every one to make the most of the tools which happen to
+be in his possession until he can procure better ones, and it is not
+improbable that by the time the good tools arrive he will find he has
+not much need of them, having almost accomplished his work." {100a}
+
+
+There is a hint of the difficulties he was experiencing in his
+confession that tools would still be of service to him, in particular
+"this same tripartite Grammar which Mr Brandram is hunting for, my
+ideas respecting Manchu construction being still very vague and
+wandering." {100b}  There is also a request for "the original
+grammatical work of Amyot, printed in the Memoires." {100c}
+
+Borrow had been studying Manchu for seven weeks when, feeling that
+his glowing report of the progress he was making might be regarded as
+"a piece of exaggeration and vain boasting," he enclosed a specimen
+translation from Manchu into English.  This he accompanied with an
+assurance that, if required, he could at that moment edit any book
+printed in the Manchu dialect.  About this period Mr Jowett and his
+colleagues passed from one sensation to another.  The calm confidence
+of this astonishing man was more than justified by his performance.
+His attitude towards life was strange to Earl Street.
+
+Nineteen weeks from the date of commencing his study of Manchu,
+Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett with unmistakable triumph:  "I have
+mastered Manchu, and I should feel obliged by your informing the
+Committee of the fact, and also my excellent friend Mr Brandram."  He
+proceeds to indicate some of the many difficulties with which he has
+had to contend, the absolute difference of Manchu from all the other
+languages that he has studied, with the single exception of Turkish;
+the number of its idiomatic phrases, which must of necessity be
+learnt off by heart; the little assistance he has had in the nature
+of books.  Finally he acknowledges "the assistance of God," and asks
+"to be regularly employed, for though I am not in want, my affairs
+are not in a very flourishing condition."
+
+The response to this letter was an invitation to proceed to London to
+undergo an examination.  His competitor was John Hattersley, upon
+whom, in the event of Borrow's failure, would in all probability have
+devolved the duty of assisting Mr Lipovzoff.  A Manchu hymn, a paean
+to the great Futsa, was the test.  Each candidate prepared a
+translation, which was handed to the examiners, who in turn were to
+report to the Sub-Committee.  Borrow returned to Norwich to await the
+result.  This was most probably towards the end of June. {101a}
+
+Mr Jowett wrote encouragingly to Borrow of his prospects of obtaining
+the coveted appointment.  In acknowledgment of this letter, Borrow
+dashed off a reply, magnificent in its confidence and manly
+sincerity.  It was a defiance to the fate that had so long dogged his
+footsteps.
+
+
+"What you have written has given me great pleasure," he wrote, "as it
+holds out hope that I may be employed usefully to the Deity, to man,
+and myself.  I shall be very happy to visit St Petersburg and to
+become the coadjutor of Lipovzoff, {102a} and to avail myself of his
+acquirements in what you very happily designate a most singular
+language, towards obtaining a still greater proficiency in it.  I
+flatter myself that I am for one or two reasons tolerably well
+adapted for the contemplated expedition, for besides a competent
+knowledge of French and German, I possess some acquaintance with
+Russian, being able to read without much difficulty any printed
+Russian book, and I have little doubt that after a few months
+intercourse with the natives, I should be able to speak it fluently.
+It would ill become me to bargain like a Jew or a Gypsy as to terms;
+all I wish to say on that point is, that I have nothing of my own,
+having been too long dependent on an excellent mother, who is not
+herself in very easy circumstances."
+
+
+Whilst still waiting for the confirmation by the General Committee of
+the Sub-Committee's resolution, which was favourable to Borrow, Mr
+Jowett wrote to him (5th July), telling him how good were his
+prospects; but warning him not to be too confident of success.  The
+Sub-Committee had recommended that Borrow's services should be
+engaged that he might go to St Petersburg and assist Mr Lipovzoff in
+editing St Luke and the Acts and any other portions of the New
+Testament that it was thought desirable to publish in Manchu.  Should
+the Russian Government refuse to permit the work to be proceeded
+with, Borrow was to occupy himself in assisting the Rev. Wm. Swan to
+transcribe and collate the manuscript of the Old Testament in Manchu
+that had recently come to light.  At the same time, he was to seize
+every opportunity that presented itself of perfecting himself in
+Manchu.  For this he was to receive a salary of two hundred pounds a
+year to cover all expenses, save those of the journey to and from St
+Petersburg, for which the Society was to be responsible.  Borrow was
+advised to think carefully over the proposal, and, if it should prove
+attractive to him, to hold himself in readiness to start as soon as
+the General Committee should approve of the recommendation that was
+to be placed before it.  In conclusion, Mr Jowett proceeded to
+administer a gentle rebuke to the confident pride with which the
+candidate indited his letters.  Only a quotation can show the tact
+with which the admonition was conveyed.
+
+"Excuse me," wrote the Literary Superintendent, "if as a clergyman,
+and your senior in years though not in talent, I venture, with the
+kindest of motives, to throw out a hint which may not be without its
+use.  I am sure you will not be offended if I suggest that there is
+occasionally a tone of confidence in speaking of yourself, which has
+alarmed some of the excellent members of our Committee.  It may have
+been this feeling, more than once displayed before, which prepared
+one or two of them to stumble at an expression in your letter of
+yesterday, in which, till pointed out, I confess I was not struck
+with anything objectionable, but at which, nevertheless, a humble
+Christian might not unreasonably take umbrage.  It is where you speak
+of the prospect of becoming 'useful to the Deity, to man, and to
+yourself.'  Doubtless you meant the prospect of glorifying God."
+
+Borrow had yet to learn the idiom of Earl Street, which he showed
+himself most anxious to acquire.  He clearly recognised that the
+Bible Society required different treatment from the Army Pay Office,
+or the Solicitor of the Treasury.  It was accustomed to humility in
+those it employed, and a trust in a higher power, and Borrow's self-
+confident letters alarmed the members of the Committee.  How
+thoroughly Borrow appreciated what was required is shown in a letter
+that he wrote to his mother from Russia, when anticipating the return
+of his brother.  "Should John return home," he warns her, "by no
+means let him go near the Bible Society, for he would not do for
+them."
+
+Borrow's reply to the Literary Superintendent's kindly worded
+admonition was entirely satisfactory and "in harmony with the rule
+laid down by Christ himself."  It was something of a triumph, too,
+for Mr Jowett to rebuke a man of such sensitiveness as Borrow,
+without goading him to an impatient retort.
+
+The meeting of the General Committee that was to decide upon Borrow's
+future was held on 22nd July, and on the following day Mr Jowett
+informed him that the recommendation of the Sub-Committee had been
+adopted and confirmed, at the same time requesting him to be at Earl
+Street on the morning of Friday, 26th July, that he might set out for
+St Petersburg the following Tuesday.  On 25th July Borrow took the
+night coach to London.  On the 29th he appeared before the Editorial
+Sub-Committee and heard read the resolution of his appointment, and
+drafts of letters recommending him to the Rev. Wm. Swan and Dr I. J.
+Schmidt, a correspondent of the Society's in St Petersburg and a
+member of the Russian Board of Censors.  Finally, there was impressed
+upon him "the necessity of confining himself closely to the one
+object of his mission, carefully abstaining from mingling himself
+with political or ecclesiastical affairs during his residence in
+Russia.  Mr Borrow assured them of his full determination religiously
+to comply with this admonition, and to use every prudent method for
+enlarging his acquaintance with the Manchu language." {104a}
+
+The salary was to date from the day he embarked, and on account of
+expenses to St Petersburg he drew the sum of 37 pounds.  The actual
+amount he expended was 27 pounds, 7s. 6d., according to the account
+he submitted, which was dated 2nd October 1834.  It is to be feared
+that Borrow was not very punctual in rendering his accounts, as Mr
+Brandram wrote to him (18th October 1837): --"I know you are no
+accountant, but do not forget that there are some who are.  My memory
+was jogged upon this subject the other day, and I was expected to say
+to you that a letter of figures would be acceptable."
+
+It is not unnatural that those who remembered Borrow as one of
+William Taylor's "harum-scarum" young men, who at one time intended
+to "abuse religion and get prosecuted," should find in his
+appointment as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society a
+subject for derisive mirth.  Harriet Martineau's voice was heard well
+above the rest.  "When this polyglott gentleman appeared before the
+public as a devout agent of the Bible Society in foreign parts," she
+wrote, "there was one burst of laughter from all who remembered the
+old Norwich days." {105a}  Like hundreds of other men, Borrow had, in
+youth, been led to somewhat hasty and ill-considered conclusions; but
+this in itself does not seem to be sufficiently strong reason why he
+should not change his views.  Many young men pass through an
+aggressively irreligious phase without suffering much harm.  Harriet
+Martineau was rather too precipitate in assuming that what a man
+believes, or disbelieves, at twenty, he holds to at thirty; such a
+view negatives the reformer.  Perhaps the chief cause of the change
+in Borrow's views was that he had touched the depths of failure.
+Here was an opening that promised much.  He was a diplomatist when it
+suited his purpose, and if the old poison were not quite gone out of
+his system, he would hide his wounds, or allow the secretaries to
+bandage them with mild reproof.
+
+Very different from the attitude of Harriet Martineau was that of
+John Venning, an English merchant resident at Norwich and recently
+returned from St Petersburg, where his charity and probity had placed
+him in high favour with the Emperor and the Goverment officials.  Mr
+Venning gave Borrow letters of introduction to a number of
+influential personages at St Petersburg, including Prince Alexander
+Galitzin and Baron Schilling de Canstadt.  Dr Bowring obtained a
+letter from Lord Palmerston to someone whose name is not known.
+There were letters of introduction from other hands, so that when he
+was ready to sail Borrow found himself "loaded with letters of
+recommendation to some of the first people in Russia.  Mr Venning's
+packet has arrived with letters to several of the Princes, so that I
+shall be protected if I am seized as a spy; for the Emperor is
+particularly cautious as to the foreigners whom he admits.  It costs
+2 pounds, 7s. 6d. merely for permission to go to Russia, which alone
+is enough to deter most people." {106a}
+
+Before leaving England, Borrow paid into his mother's account at her
+bank the sum of seventeen pounds, an amount that she had advanced to
+him either during his unproductive years, or on account of his
+expenses in connection with the expedition to St Petersburg.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII:  AUGUST 1833-JANUARY 1834
+
+
+
+On 19th/31st July 1833 Borrow set out on a journey that was to some
+extent to realise his ambitions.  He was to be trusted and encouraged
+and, what was most important of all, praised for what he
+accomplished; for Borrow's was a nature that responded best to the
+praise and entire confidence of those for whom he worked.
+
+Travelling second class for reasons of economy, he landed at Hamburg
+at seven in the morning of the fourth day, after having experienced
+"a disagreeable passage of three days, in which I suffered much from
+sea-sickness." {107a}  Exhausted by these days of suffering and want
+of sleep, the heat of the sun brought on "a transient fit of
+delirium," {107b} in other words, an attack of the "Horrors."  Two
+fellow-passengers (Jews), with whom he had become acquainted,
+conveyed him to a comfortable hotel, where he was visited by a
+physician, who administered forty drops of laudanum, caused his head
+to be swathed in wet towels, ordered him to bed, and charged a fee of
+seven shillings.  The result was that by the evening he had quite
+recovered.
+
+One of Borrow's first duties was to write a lengthy letter to Mr
+Jowett, telling him of his movements, describing the city, the
+service at a church he attended, the lax morality of the Hamburgers
+in permitting rope-dancers in the park, and the opening of dancing-
+saloons, "most infamous places," on the Lord's day.  "England, with
+all her faults," he proceeds, "has still some regard to decency, and
+will not tolerate such a shameless display of vice on so sacred a
+season, when a decent cheerfulness is the freest form in which the
+mind or countenance ought to invest themselves."  In conclusion, he
+announced his intention of leaving for Lubeck on the sixth, {108a}
+and he would be on the Baltic two days later en route for St
+Petersburg.  "My next letter, provided it pleases the Almighty to
+vouchsafe me a happy arrival, will be from the Russian capital."  By
+"a fervent request that you will not forget me in your prayers," he
+demonstrated that Mr Jowett's hint had not been forgotten.
+
+The distance between Hamburg and Lubeck is only about thirty miles,
+yet it occupied Borrow thirteen hours, so abominable was the road,
+which "was paved at intervals with huge masses of unhewn rock, and
+over this pavement the carriage was very prudently driven at a
+snail's pace; for, had anything approaching speed been attempted, the
+entire demolition of the wheels in a few minutes must have been the
+necessary result.  No sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement
+than we sank to our axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to
+render the journey perfectly delectable, the rain fell in torrents
+and ceaselessly." {108b}  The state of the road Borrow attributed to
+the ill-nature of the King of Denmark, for immediately on leaving his
+dominions it improved into an excellent carriageway.
+
+On 28th July/9th August Borrow took steamer from Travemunde, and
+three days later landed at St Petersburg.  His first duty was to call
+upon Mr Swan, whom he found "one of the most amiable and interesting
+characters" he had ever met.  The arrival of a coadjutor caused Mr
+Swan considerable relief, as he had suffered in health in consequence
+of his uninterrupted labours in transcribing the Manchu manuscript.
+
+Borrow was enthusiastic in his admiration of the capital of "our dear
+and glorious Russia."  St Petersburg he considered "the finest city
+in the world" {109a} other European capitals were unworthy of
+comparison.  The enormous palaces, the long, straight streets, the
+grandeur of the public buildings, the noble Neva that flows
+majestically through "this Queen of the cities," the three miles long
+Nevsky Prospect, paved with wood; all aroused in him enthusiasm and
+admiration.  "In a word," he wrote to his mother, "I can do little
+else but look and wonder."  All that he had read and heard of the
+capital of All the Russias had failed to prepare him for this scene
+of splendour.  The meeting and harmonious mixing of East and West
+early attracted his attention.  The Oriental cultivation of a twelve-
+inch beard among the middle and lower classes, placed them in marked
+contrast with the moustached or clean-shaven patricians and
+foreigners.  In short, Russia gripped hold of and warmed Borrow's
+imagination.  Here were new types, curious blendings of nationalities
+unthought of and strange to him, a mine of wealth to a man whose
+studies were never books, except when they helped him the better to
+understand men.
+
+Another thing that attracted him to Russia was the great kindness
+with which he was received, both by the English Colony and the
+natives:  to the one he appealed by virtue of a common ancestry; to
+the other, on account of his knowledge of the Russian tongue, not to
+speak of his mission, which acted as a strong recommendation to their
+favour.  On his part Borrow reciprocated the esteem.  If he were an
+implacable enemy, he was also a good friend, and he thoroughly
+appreciated the manner in which he was welcomed by his countrymen,
+especially the invitation he received from one of them to make his
+house his home until he found a suitable dwelling.  To his mother he
+wrote:
+
+
+"The Russians are the best-natured, kindest people in the world, and
+though they do not know as much as the English [he was not referring
+to the Colony], they have not their fiendish, spiteful dispositions,
+and if you go amongst them and speak their language, however badly,
+they would go through fire and water to do you a kindness."  Later,
+when in Portugal, he heartily wished himself "back in Russia . . .
+where I had left cherished friends and warm affections."
+
+
+High as was his opinion of the Russians, he was at a loss to
+understand how they had earned their reputation as "the best general
+linguists in the world."  He found Russian absolutely necessary to
+anyone who wished to make himself understood.  French and German as
+equivalents were of less value in St Petersburg than in England.
+
+At first Borrow took up his residence "for nearly a fortnight in a
+hotel, as the difficulty of procuring lodgings in this place is very
+great, and when you have procured them you have to furnish them
+yourself at a considerable expense . . . eventually I took up my
+abode with Mr Egerton Hubbard, a friend of Mr Venning's [at 221
+Galernoy Ulitza], where I am for the present very comfortably
+situated." {110a}  He stayed with Mr Hubbard for three months; but
+was eventually forced to leave on account of constant interruptions,
+probably by his fellow-boarders, in consequence of which he could
+neither perform his task of transcription nor devote himself to
+study.  He therefore took a small lodging at a cost of nine shillings
+a week, including fires, where he could enjoy quiet and solitude.
+His meals he got at a Russian eating-house, dinner costing fivepence,
+"consequently," he writes to his mother, "I am not at much expense,
+being able to live for about sixty pounds a year and pay a Russian
+teacher, who has five shillings for one lesson a week."
+
+One of Borrow's earliest thoughts on arriving at St Petersburg had
+been to present his letters of introduction.  Within two days of
+landing he called upon Prince Alexander Galitzin, {111a} accompanied
+by his fellow-lodger, young Venning.  One of the most important, and
+at the same time useful, friendships that he made was with Baron
+Schilling de Canstadt, the philologist and savant, who, later, with
+his accustomed generosity, was to place his unique library at
+Borrow's disposition.  The Baron was one of the greatest bibliophiles
+of his age, and possessed a collection of Eastern manuscripts and
+other priceless treasures that was world-famous.  He spared neither
+expense nor trouble in procuring additions to his collection, which
+after his death was acquired by the Imperial Academy of Science at St
+Petersburg.  In this literary treasure-house Borrow found facilities
+for study such as he nowhere else could hope to obtain.
+
+Another friendship that Borrow made was with John P. Hasfeldt, a man
+of about his own age attached to the Danish Legation, who also gave
+lessons in languages.  Borrow seems to have been greatly attracted to
+Hasfeldt, who wrote to him with such cordiality.  It was Hasfeldt who
+gave to Borrow as a parting gift the silver shekel that he invariably
+carried about with him, and which caused him to be hailed as blessed
+by the Gibraltar Jews.
+
+In his letter Hasfeldt shows himself a delightful correspondent.  His
+generous camaraderie seemed to warm Borrow to response, as indeed
+well it might.  Who could resist the breezy good humour of the
+following from a letter addressed to Borrow by Hasfeldt years later?
+-
+
+
+"Do you still eat Pike soup?  Do you remember the time when you lived
+on that dish for more than six weeks, and came near exterminating the
+whole breed?  And the pudding that accompanied it, that always lay as
+hard as a stone on the stomach?  This you surely have not forgotten.
+Yes, your kitchen was delicately manipulated by Machmoud, your Tartar
+servant, who only needed to give you horse-meat to have merited a
+diploma.  Do you still sing when you are in a good humour?  Doubtless
+you are not troubled with many friends to visit you, for you are not
+of the sort who are easily understood, nor do you care to have
+everyone understand you; you prefer to have people call you grey and
+let you gae."
+
+
+Other friends Borrow made, including Nikolai Ivanovitch Gretch,
+{112a} the grammarian, and Friedrich von Adelung, {112b}} who
+assisted him with the loan of books and MSS. in Oriental tongues.
+
+The story of Borrow's labours in connection with the printing of the
+Manchu version of the New Testament, forms a remarkable study of
+unswerving courage and will-power triumphing over apparently
+insurmountable obstacles.  The mere presence of difficulties seemed
+to increase his eagerness and determination to overcome them.
+Disappointments he had in plenty; but his indomitable courage and
+untiring energy, backed up by the earnest support he received from
+Earl Street, enabled him to emerge from his first serious undertaking
+with the knowledge that he had succeeded where failure would not have
+been discreditable.
+
+He threw himself into his work with characteristic eagerness.  At the
+end of the first two months he had transcribed the Second Book of
+Chronicles and the Gospel of St Matthew.  He formed a very high
+opinion of the work of the translator, and took the opportunity of
+paying a tribute to the followers of Ignatius Loyola (Father Puerot
+was a Jesuit).  "When," he writes, "did a Jesuit any thing which he
+undertook, whether laudable or the reverse, not far better than any
+other person?" yet they laboured in vain, for "they thought not of
+His glory, but of the glory of their order." {113a}
+
+Borrow discovered that Mr Lipovzoff knew nothing of the Bible
+Society's scheme for printing the New Testament in Manchu; but he
+found, what was of even greater importance to him, that the old man
+knew no European language but Russian.  Thus the frequent
+conversations and explanations all tended to improve Borrow's
+knowledge of the language of the people among whom he was living.
+
+Mr Lipovzoff struck Borrow as being "rather a singular man," as he
+took occasion to inform Mr Jowett, apparently utterly indifferent as
+to the fate of his translation, excellent though it was.  As a matter
+of fact, Mr Lipovzoff was occupied with his own concerns, and, as an
+official in the Russian Foreign Office, most likely saw the
+inexpediency of a too eager enthusiasm for the Bible Society's
+Manchu-Tartar programme.  He was probably bewildered by the fierce
+energy of its honest and compelling agent, who had descended upon St
+Petersburg to do the Society's bidding with an impetuosity and
+determination foreign to Russian official life.  Borrow was on fire
+with zeal and impatient of the apathy of those around him.
+
+He soon began to show signs of that singleness of purpose and
+resourcefulness that, later, was to arouse so much enthusiasm among
+the members of the Bible Society at home.  The transcribing and
+collating Puerot's version of the Scriptures occupied the remainder
+of the year.  On the completion of this work, it had been arranged
+that Mr Swan should return to his mission-station in Siberia.  The
+next step was to obtain official sanction to print the Lipovzoff
+version of the New Testament.  Dr Schmidt, to whom Borrow turned for
+advice and information, was apparently very busily occupied with his
+own affairs, which included the compilation of a Mongolian Grammar
+and Dictionary.  The Doctor was optimistic, and promised to make
+enquiries about the steps to be taken to obtain the necessary
+permission to print; but Borrow heard nothing further from him.
+
+
+"Thus circumstanced, and being very uneasy in my mind," he writes, "I
+determined to take a bold step, and directly and without further
+feeling my way, to petition the Government in my own name for
+permission to print the Manchu Scriptures.  Having communicated this
+determination to our beloved, sincere, and most truly Christian
+friend Mr Swan (who has lately departed to his station in Siberia,
+shielded I trust by the arm of his Master), it met with his perfect
+approbation and cordial encouragement.  I therefore drew up a
+petition, and presented it with my own hand to His Excellence Mr
+Bludoff, Minister of the Interior." {114a}
+
+
+The minister made reply that he doubted his jurisdiction in the
+matter; but that he would consider.  Fearful lest the matter should
+miscarry or be shelved, Borrow called on the evening of the same day
+upon the British Minister, the Hon. J. D. Bligh, "a person of superb
+talents, kind disposition, and of much piety," {114b} whose
+friendship Borrow had "assiduously cultivated," and who had shown him
+"many condescending marks of kindness." {114c}  But Mr Bligh was out.
+Nothing daunted, Borrow wrote a note entreating his interest with the
+Russian officials.  On calling for an answer in the morning, he was
+received by Mr Bligh, when "he was kind enough to say that if I
+desired it he would apply officially to the Minister, and exert all
+his influence in his official character in order to obtain the
+accomplishment of my views, but at the same time suggested that it
+would, perhaps, be as well at a private interview to beg it as a
+personal favour." {115a}
+
+There was hesitation, perhaps suspicion, in official quarters.  It is
+easy to realise that the Government was not eager to assist the agent
+of an institution closely allied to the Russian Bible Society, which
+it had recently been successful in suppressing.  It might with
+impunity suppress a Society; but in George Borrow it soon became
+evident that the officials had to deal with a man of purpose and
+determination who used a British Minister as a two-edged sword.
+Borrow was invited to call at the Asiatic Department:  he did so, and
+learned that if permission were granted, Mr Lipovzoff (who was a
+clerk in the Department) was to be censor (over his own translation!)
+and Borrow editor.  There was still the "If."  Borrow waited a
+fortnight, then called on Mr Bligh.  By great good chance Mr Bludoff
+was dining that evening with the British Minister.  The same night
+Borrow received a message requesting him to call on Mr Bludoff the
+next day.  On presenting himself he was given a letter to the
+Director of Worship, which he delivered without delay, and was told
+to call again on the first day of the following week.
+
+"On calling there I FOUND THAT PERMISSION HAD BEEN GRANTED TO PRINT
+THE MANCHU SCRIPTURE." {115b}  Baron Schilling had rendered some
+assistance in getting the permission, and Borrow was requested to
+inform him of "the deep sense of obligation" of the Bible Society, to
+which was added a present of some books.
+
+Borrow clearly viewed this as only a preliminary success; he had in
+mind the eventual printing of the whole Bible.  He was beginning to
+feel conscious of his own powers.  Mr Swan had gone, and upon
+Borrow's shoulders rested the whole enterprise.  A mild wave of
+enthusiasm passed over the Head Office at Earl Street on receipt of
+the news that permission to print had been obtained.
+
+"You cannot conceive," Borrow wrote to Mr Jowett, "the cold,
+heartless apathy in respect to the affair, on which I have been
+despatched hither as an ASSISTANT, which I have found in people to
+whom I looked not unreasonably for encouragement and advice." {116a}
+Well might he underline the word "assistant."  In this same letter,
+with a spasmodic flicker of the old self-confidence, he adds, "In
+regard to what we have yet to do, let it be borne in mind, that we
+are by no means dependent upon Mr Lipovzoff, though certainly to
+secure the services, which he is capable of performing, would be
+highly desirable, and though he cannot act outwardly in the character
+of Editor (he having been appointed censor), he may privately be of
+great utility to us."  Borrow seems to have formed no very high
+opinion of Mr Lipovzoff's capacity for affairs, although he
+recognised his skill as a translator.
+
+At first Borrow seems to have found the severity of the winter very
+trying.  "The cold when you go out into it," he writes to his mother
+(1st/13th Feb. 1834), "cuts your face like a razor, and were you not
+to cover it with furs the flesh would be bitten off.  The rooms in
+the morning are heated with a stove as hot as ovens, and you would
+not be able to exist in one for a minute; but I have become used to
+them and like them much, though at first they made me dreadfully sick
+and brought on bilious headaches."
+
+There was still at the Sarepta House, the premises of the Bible
+Society's bankers in St Petersburg, the box of Manchu type, which had
+not been examined since the river floods.  In addition to this, the
+only other Manchu characters in St Petersburg belonged to Baron
+Schilling, who possessed a small fount of the type, which he used
+"for the convenience of printing trifles in that tongue," as Borrow
+phrased it.  This was to be put at Borrow's disposal if necessary;
+but first the type at the Sarepta House had to be examined.  Borrow's
+plan was, provided the type were not entirely ruined, to engage the
+services of a printer who was accustomed to setting Mongolian
+characters, which are very similar to those of Manchu, who would, he
+thought, be competent to undertake the work.  He suggested following
+the style of the St Matthew's Gospel already printed, giving to each
+Gospel and the Acts a volume and printing the Epistles and the
+Apocalypse in three more, making eight volumes in all.
+
+These he proposed putting "in a small thin wooden case, covered with
+blue stuff, precisely after the manner of Chinese books, in order
+that they may not give offence to the eyes of the people for whom
+they are intended by a foreign and unusual appearance, for the mere
+idea that they are barbarian books would certainly prevent them being
+read, and probably cause their destruction if ever they found their
+way into the Chinese Empire." {117a}  Borrow left nothing to chance;
+he thought out every detail with great care before venturing to put
+his plans into execution.
+
+Although busily occupied in an endeavour to stimulate Russian
+government officials to energy and decision, Borrow was not
+neglecting what had been so strongly urged upon him, the perfecting
+of himself in the Manchu dialect.  In reply to an enquiry from Mr
+Jowett as to what manner of progress he was making, he wrote
+
+
+ "For some time past I have taken lessons from a person who was
+twelve years in Pekin, and who speaks Manchu and Chinese with
+fluency.  I pay him about six shillings English for each lesson,
+which I grudge not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of
+my most ardent wishes." {118a}
+
+
+This person Borrow subsequently recommended to the Society "to assist
+me in making a translation into Manchu of the Psalms and Isaiah," but
+the pundit proved "of no utility at all, but only the cause of
+error."
+
+Borrow was soon able to transcribe the Manchu characters with greater
+facility and speed than he could English.  In addition to being able
+to translate from and into Manchu, he could compose hymns in the
+language, and even prepared a Manchu rendering of the second Homily
+of the Church of England, "On the Misery of Man."  He had, however,
+made the discovery that Manchu was far less easy to him than it had
+at first appeared, and that Amyot was to some extent justified in his
+view of the difficulties it presented.  "It is one of those deceitful
+tongues," he confesses in a letter to Mr Jowett, "the seeming
+simplicity of whose structure induces you to suppose, after applying
+to it for a month or two, that little more remains to be learned, but
+which, should you continue to study a year, as I have studied this,
+show themselves to you in their veritable colours, amazing you with
+their copiousness, puzzling with their idioms."{118b}  Its
+difficulties, however, did not discourage him; for he had a great
+admiration for the language which "for majesty and grandeur of sound,
+and also for general copiousness is unequalled by any existing
+tongue." {118c}
+
+However great his exertions or discouragements, Borrow never forgot
+his mother, to whom he was a model son.  On 1st/13th February he sent
+her a draft for twenty pounds, being the second since his arrival six
+months previously.  Thus out of his first half-year's salary of a
+hundred pounds, he sent to his mother forty pounds (in addition to
+the seventeen pounds he had paid into her account before sailing),
+and with it a promise that "next quarter I shall try and send you
+thirty," lest in the recent storms of which he had heard, some of her
+property should have suffered damage and be in need of repair.  The
+larger remittance, however, he was unable to make on account of the
+illness that had necessitated the drinking of a bottle of port wine
+each day (by doctor's orders); but he was punctual in remitting the
+twenty pounds.  The attack which required so drastic a remedy
+originated in a chill caught as the ice was breaking up.  "I went
+mad," he tells his mother, "and when the fever subsided, I was seized
+with the 'Horrors,' which never left me day or night for a week."
+{119a}  During this illness everyone seems to have been extremely
+kind and attentive, the Emperor's apothecary, even, sending word that
+Borrow was to order of him anything, medical or otherwise, that he
+found himself in need of.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII:  FEBRUARY-OCTOBER 1834
+
+
+
+Borrow had at last found work that was thoroughly congenial to him.
+It was not in his nature to exist outside his occupations, and his
+whole personality became bound up in the mission upon which he was
+engaged.  Not content with preparing the way for printing the New
+Testament in Manchu, he set himself the problem of how it was to be
+distributed when printed.  He foresaw serious obstacles to its
+introduction into China, on account of the suspicion with which was
+regarded any and everything European.  With a modest disclaimer that
+his suggestion arose "from a plenitude of self-conceit and a
+disposition to offer advice upon all matters, however far they may be
+above my understanding," he proceeds to deal with the difficulties of
+distribution with great clearness.
+
+To send the printed books to Canton, to be distributed by English
+missionaries, he thought would be productive of very little good, nor
+would it achieve the object of the Society, to distribute copies at
+seaports along the coasts, because it was unlikely that there would
+be many Tartars or people there who understood Manchu.  There was a
+further obstacle in the suspicion in which the Chinese held all
+things English.  On the other hand, he tells Mr Jowett,
+
+
+"there is a most admirable opening for the work on the Russian side
+of the Chinese Empire.  About five thousand miles from St Petersburg,
+on the frontiers of Chinese Tartary, and only nine hundred miles
+distant from Pekin, the seat of the Tartar Monarchy, stands the town
+of Kiakhta, {121a} which properly belongs to Russia, but the
+inhabitants of which are a medley of Tartary, Chinese, and Russ
+(sic).  As far as this town a Russian or foreigner is permitted to
+advance, but his further progress is forbidden, and if he make the
+attempt he is liable to be taken up as a spy or deserter, and sent
+back under guard.  This town is the emporium of Chinese and Russian
+trade.  Chinese caravans are continually arriving and returning,
+bringing and carrying away articles of merchandise.  There are
+likewise a Chinese and a Tartar Mandarin, also a school where Chinese
+and Tartar are taught, and where Chinese and Tartar children along
+with Russian are educated." {121b}
+
+
+The advantages of such a town as a base of operations were obvious.
+Borrow was convinced that he could dispose "of any quantity of
+Testaments to the Chinese merchants who arrive thither from Pekin and
+other places, and who would be glad to purchase them on speculation."
+{121c}
+
+Russia and China were friendly to each other, so much so, that there
+was at Pekin a Russian mission, the only one of its kind.  These good
+relations rendered Borrow confident that books from Russia,
+especially books which had not an outlandish appearance, would be
+purchased without scruple.  "In a word, were an agent for the Bible
+Society to reside at this town [Kiakhta] for a year or so, it is my
+humble opinion, and the opinion of much wiser people, that if he were
+active, zealous and likewise courageous, the blessings resulting from
+his labours would be incalculable." {121d}
+
+He might even make excursions into Tartary, and become friendly with
+the inhabitants, and eventually perhaps, "with a little management
+and dexterity," he might "penetrate even to Pekin, and return in
+safety, after having examined the state of the land.  I can only say
+that if it were my fortune to have the opportunity, I would make the
+attempt, and should consider myself only to blame if I did not
+succeed."  Borrow was to revert to this suggestion on many occasions,
+in fact it seems to have been in his mind during the whole period of
+his association with the Bible Society.
+
+Acting upon instructions from Earl Street, Borrow proceeded to find
+out the approximate cost of printing the Manchu New Testament.  He
+early discovered that in Russia "the wisdom of the serpent is quite
+as necessary as the innocence of the dove," as he took occasion to
+inform Mr Jowett.  The Russians rendered him estimates of cost as if
+of the opinion that "Englishmen are made of gold, and that it is only
+necessary to ask the most extravagant price for any article in order
+to obtain it."
+
+In St Petersburg Borrow was taken for a German, a nation for which he
+cherished a cordial dislike.  This mistake as to nationality,
+however, did not hinder the Russian tradesmen from asking exorbitant
+prices for their services or their goods.  At first Borrow "was quite
+terrified at the enormous sums which some of the printers . . .
+required for the work."  At length he applied to the University
+Press, which asked 30 roubles 60 copecks (24s. 8d.) per sheet of two
+pages for composition and printing.  A young firm of German printers,
+Schultz & Beneze, was, however, willing to undertake the same work at
+the rate of 12.5 roubles (10s.) per two sheets.
+
+In contracting for the paper Borrow showed himself quite equal to the
+commercial finesse of the Russian.  He scoured the neighbourhood
+round St Petersburg in a calash at a cost of about four pounds.
+Russian methods of conducting business are amazing to the English
+mind.  At Peterhof, a town about twenty miles out of St Petersburg,
+he found fifty reams of a paper such as he required.  "Concerning the
+price of this paper," he writes, "I could obtain no positive
+information, for the Director and first and second clerks were
+invariably absent, and the place abandoned to ignorant understrappers
+(according to the custom of Russia).  And notwithstanding I found out
+the Director in St Petersburg, he himself could not tell me the
+price." {123a}
+
+Eventually 75 roubles (3 pounds) a ream was quoted for the stock, and
+100 roubles (4 pounds) a ream for any further quantity required.
+Thus the paper for a thousand copies would run to 40,000 roubles
+(1600 pounds), or 32s. a copy.  Borrow found that the law of commerce
+prevalent in the East was that adopted in St Petersburg.  A price is
+named merely as a basis of negotiation, and the customer beats it
+down to a figure that suits him, or he goes elsewhere.  Borrow was a
+master of such methods.  The sum he eventually paid for the paper was
+25 roubles (1 pound) a ream!  Of all these negotiations he kept Mr
+Jowett well informed.  By June he had received from Earl Street the
+official sanction to proceed, together with a handsome remittance.
+
+For some time past Borrow had been anxious on account of his brother
+John.  On 9th/21st November, he had written to his mother telling her
+to write to John urging him to come home at once, as he had seen in
+the Russian newspapers how the town of Guanajuato had been taken and
+sacked by the rebels, and also that cholera was ravaging Mexico.
+Later {123b} he tells her of that nice house at Lakenham, {123c}
+which he means to buy, and how John can keep a boat and amuse himself
+on the river, and adds, "I dare say I shall continue for a long time
+with the Bible Society, as they see that I am useful to them and can
+be depended upon."
+
+On the day following that on which Borrow wrote asking his mother to
+urge his brother to return home, viz., 10th/22nd November, John died.
+He was taken ill suddenly in the morning and passed away the same
+afternoon.
+
+In February 1832 John Borrow had, much against the advice of his
+friends, left the United Mexican Company, which he had become
+associated with the previous year.  He was of a restless disposition,
+never content with what he was doing.  Thinking he could better
+himself, and having saved a few hundred dollars, he resigned his
+post.  He appears soon to have discovered his mistake.  First he
+indulged in an unfortunate speculation, by which he was a
+considerable loser, then cholera broke out.  Without a thought of
+himself he turned nurse and doctor, witnessing terrible scenes of
+misery and death and ministering to the poor with an energy and
+humanity that earned for him the admiration of the whole township.
+Finally, finding himself in serious financial difficulties, he
+entered the service of the Colombian Mining Company, and was to be
+sent to Colombia "for the purpose of introducing the Mexican system
+of beneficiating there."  It only remained for the agreement to be
+signed, when he was taken ill.
+
+In the letter in which she tells George of their loss, Mrs Borrow
+expresses fear that he does "not live regular.  When you find
+yourself low," she continues, "take a little wine, but not too much
+at one time; it will do you the more good; I find that by myself."
+Her solicitude for George's health is easily understandable.  He is
+now her "only hope," as she pathetically tells him.  "Do not grieve,
+my dear George," she proceeds tenderly, "I trust we shall all meet in
+heaven.  Put a crape on your hat for some time."
+
+George wrote immediately to acknowledge his mother's letter
+containing the news of John's death, which had given him "the
+severest stroke I ever experienced.  It [the letter] quite stunned
+me, and since reading its contents I have done little else but moan
+and lament . . . O that our darling John had taken the advice which I
+gave him nearly three years since, to abandon that horrid country and
+return to England! . . . Would that I had died for him! for I loved
+him dearly, dearly."  Borrow's affection for his bright and
+attractive brother is everywhere manifest in his writings.  He never
+showed the least jealousy when his father held up his first-born as a
+model to the strange and incomprehensible younger son.  His love for
+and admiration of John were genuine and deep-rooted.  In the same
+letter he goes on to assure his mother that he was never better in
+his life, and that experience teaches him how to cure his disorders.
+"The 'Horrors,' for example.  Whenever they come I must drink strong
+Port wine, and then they are stopped instantly.  But do not think
+that I drink habitually, for you ought to know that I abhor drink.
+The 'Horrors' are brought on by weakness."
+
+He goes on to reassure his mother as to the care he takes of himself,
+telling her that he has three meals a day, although, as a rule,
+dinner is a poor one, "for the Russians, in the first place, are very
+indifferent cooks, and the meat is very bad, as in fact are almost
+all the provisions."  The fish is without taste, Russian salmon
+having less savour than English skate; the fowls are dry because no
+endeavour is made to fatten them, and the "mutton stinks worst than
+carrion, for they never cut the wool."
+
+With great thought and tenderness he tells her that he wishes her "to
+keep a maid, for I do not like that you should live alone.  Do not
+take one of the wretched girls of Norwich," he advises her, but
+rather the daughter of one of her tenants.  "What am I working for
+here and saving money, unless it is for your comfort? for I assure
+you that to make you comfortable is my greatest happiness, almost my
+only one."  Urging her to keep up her spirits and read much of the
+things that interest her, he concludes with a warning to her not to
+pay any debts contracted by John. {126a}  The letter concludes with
+the postscript:  "I have got the crape."
+
+In July 1834 Borrow again changed his quarters, taking an unfurnished
+floor, {126b} at the same time hiring a Tartar servant named Mahmoud,
+{126c} "the best servant I ever had." {126d}  The wages he paid this
+prince of body-servants was thirty shillings a month, out of which
+Mahmoud supplied himself "with food and everything."  Borrow's reason
+for making this change in his lodgings was that he wanted more room
+than he had, and furnished apartments were very expensive.  The
+actual furnishing was not a very costly matter to a man of Borrow's
+simple wants; for the expenditure of seven pounds he provided himself
+with all he required.
+
+After the letter of 27th June/9th July the Bible Society received no
+further news of what was taking place in St Petersburg.  Week after
+week passed without anything being heard of its Russian agent's
+movements or activities.  On 25th September/7th October Mr Jowett
+wrote an extremely moderate letter beseeching Borrow to remember "the
+very lively interest" taken by the General Committee in the printing
+of the Manchu version of the New Testament; that people were asking,
+"What is Mr Borrow doing?" that the Committee stands between its
+agents and an eager public, desirous of knowing the trials and
+tribulations, the hopes and fears of those actively engaged in
+printing or disseminating the Scriptures.  "You can have no
+difficulty," he continues, "in furnishing me with such monthly
+information as may satisfy the Committee that they are not expending
+a large sum of money in vain."  There was also a request for
+information as to how "some critical difficulty has been surmounted
+by the translator, or editor, or both united, not to mention the
+advance already made in actual printing."  On 1st/13th Oct. Borrow
+had written a brief letter giving an account of his disbursements
+during the journey to St Petersburg FIFTEEN MONTHS PREVIOUSLY; but he
+made no mention of what was taking place with regard to the printing.
+
+The letter in which Borrow replied to Mr Jowett is probably the most
+remarkable he ever wrote.  It presents him in a light that must have
+astonished those who had been so eager to ridicule his appointment as
+an agent of the Bible Society.  The letter runs:-
+
+
+ST PETERSBURG,
+8th [20th] October 1834.
+
+I have just received your most kind epistle, the perusal of which has
+given me both pain and pleasure--pain that from unavoidable
+circumstances I have been unable to gratify eager expectation, and
+pleasure that any individual should have been considerate enough to
+foresee my situation and to make allowance for it.  The nature of my
+occupations during the last two months and a half has been such as
+would have entirely unfitted me for correspondence, had I been aware
+that it was necessary, which, on my sacred word, I was not.  Now, and
+only now, when by the blessing of God I have surmounted all my
+troubles and difficulties, I will tell, and were I not a Christian I
+should be proud to tell, what I have been engaged upon and
+accomplished during the last ten weeks.  I have been working in the
+printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen
+hours every day during that period; the result of this is that St
+Matthew's Gospel, printed from such a copy as I believe nothing was
+ever printed from before, has been brought out in the Manchu
+language; two rude Esthonian peasants, who previously could barely
+compose with decency in a plain language which they spoke and were
+accustomed to, have received such instruction that with ease they can
+each compose at the rate of a sheet a day in the Manchu, perhaps the
+most difficult language for composition in the whole world.
+Considerable progress has also been made in St Mark's Gospel, and I
+will venture to promise, provided always the Almighty smiles upon the
+undertaking, that the entire work of which I have the superintendence
+will be published within eight months from the present time.  Now,
+therefore, with the premise that I most unwillingly speak of myself
+and what I have done and suffered for some time past, all of which I
+wished to keep locked up in my own breast, I will give a regular and
+circumstantial account of my proceedings from the day when I received
+your letter, by which I was authorised by the Committee to bespeak
+paper, engage with a printer, and cause our type to be set in order.
+
+My first care was to endeavour to make suitable arrangements for the
+obtaining of Chinese paper.  Now those who reside in England, the
+most civilised and blessed of countries, where everything is to be
+obtained at a fair price, have not the slightest idea of the anxiety
+and difficulty which, in a country like this, harass the foreigner
+who has to disburse money not his own, if he wish that his employers
+be not shamefully and outrageously imposed upon.  In my last epistle
+to you I stated that I had been asked 100 roubles per ream for such
+paper as we wanted.  I likewise informed you that I believed that it
+was possible to procure it for 35 roubles, notwithstanding our
+Society had formerly paid 40 roubles for worse paper than the samples
+I was in possession of.  Now I have always been of opinion that in
+the expending of money collected for sacred purposes, it behoves the
+agent to be extraordinarily circumspect and sparing.  I therefore was
+determined, whatever trouble it might cost me, to procure for the
+Society unexceptionable paper at a yet more reasonable rate than 35
+roubles.  I was aware that an acquaintance of mine, a young Dane, was
+particularly intimate with one of the first printers of this city,
+who is accustomed to purchase vast quantities of paper every month
+for his various publications.  I gave this young gentleman a specimen
+of the paper I required, and desired him (he was under obligations to
+me) to inquire of his friend, AS IF FROM CURIOSITY, the least
+possible sum per ream at which THE PRINTER HIMSELF (who from his
+immense demand for paper should necessarily obtain it cheaper than
+any one else) could expect to purchase the article in question.  The
+answer I received within a day or two was 25 roubles.  Upon hearing
+this I prevailed upon my acquaintance to endeavour to persuade his
+friend to bespeak the paper at 25 roubles, and to allow me,
+notwithstanding I was a perfect stranger, to have it at that price.
+All this was brought about.  I was introduced to the printer, Mr
+Pluchard, by the Dane, Mr Hasfeldt, and between the former gentleman
+and myself a contract was made to the effect that by the end of
+October he should supply me with 450 reams of Chinese paper at 25
+roubles per ream, the first delivery to be made on the 1st of August;
+for as my order given at an advanced period of the year, when all the
+paper manufactories were at full work towards the executing of orders
+already received, it was but natural that I should verify the old
+apophthegm, 'Last come, last served.'  As no orders are attended to
+in Russia unless money be advanced upon them, I deposited in the
+hands of Mr Pluchard the sum of 2000 roubles, receiving his receipt
+for that amount.
+
+Having arranged this most important matter to my satisfaction, I
+turned my attention to the printing process.  I accepted the offer of
+Messrs Schultz & Beneze to compose and print the Manchu Testament at
+the rate of 25 roubles per sheet [of four pages], and caused our
+fount of type to be conveyed to their office.  I wish to say here a
+few words respecting the state in which these types came into my
+possession.  I found them in a kind of warehouse, or rather cellar.
+They had been originally confined in two cases; but these having
+burst, the type lay on the floor trampled amidst mud and filth.  They
+were, moreover, not improved by having been immersed within the
+waters of the inundation of '27 [1824].  I caused them all to be
+collected and sent to their destination, where they were purified and
+arranged--a work of no small time and difficulty, at which I was
+obliged to assist.  Not finding with the type what is called
+'Durchschuss' by the printers here, consisting of leaden wedges of
+about six ounces weight each, which form the spaces between the
+lines, I ordered 120 pounds weight of those at a rouble a pound,
+being barely enough for three sheets. {129a}  I had now to teach the
+compositors the Manchu alphabet, and to distinguish one character
+from another.  This occupied a few days, at the end of which I gave
+them the commencement of St Matthew's Gospel to copy.  They no sooner
+saw the work they were called upon to perform than there were loud
+murmurs of dissatisfaction, and . . . 'It is quite impossible to do
+the like,' was the cry--and no wonder.  The original printed Gospel
+had been so interlined and scribbled upon by the author, in a hand so
+obscure and irregular, that, accustomed as I was to the perusal of
+the written Manchu, it was not without the greatest difficulty that I
+could decipher the new matter myself.  Moreover, the corrections had
+been so carelessly made that they themselves required far more
+correction than the original matter.  I was therefore obliged to be
+continually in the printing-office, and to do three parts of the work
+myself.  For some time I found it necessary to select every character
+with my own fingers, and to deliver it to the compositor, and by so
+doing I learnt myself to compose.  We continued in this way till all
+our characters were exhausted, for no paper had arrived.  For two
+weeks and more we were obliged to pause, the want of paper being
+insurmountable.  At the end of this period came six reams; but partly
+from the manufacturers not being accustomed to make this species of
+paper, and partly from the excessive heat of the weather, which
+caused it to dry too fast, only one ream and a half could be used,
+and this was not enough for one sheet; the rest I refused to take,
+and sent back.  The next week came fifteen reams.  This paper, from
+the same causes, was as bad as the last.  I selected four reams, and
+sent the rest back.  But this paper enabled us to make a beginning,
+which we did not fail to do, though we received no more for upwards
+of a fortnight, which caused another pause.  At the end of that time,
+owing to my pressing remonstrances and entreaties, a regular supply
+of about twelve reams per week of most excellent paper commenced.
+This continued until we had composed the last five sheets of St
+Matthew, when some paper arrived, which in my absence was received by
+Mr Beneze, who, without examining it, as was his duty, delivered it
+to the printers to use in the printing of the said sheets, who
+accordingly printed upon part of it.  But the next day, when my
+occupation permitted me to see what they were about, I observed that
+the last paper was of a quality very different from that which had
+been previously sent.  I accordingly instantly stopped the press,
+and, notwithstanding eight reams had been printed upon, I sent all
+the strange paper back, and caused Mr Beneze to recompose three
+sheets, which had been broken up, at his own expense.  But this
+caused the delay of another week.
+
+This last circumstance made me determine not to depend in future for
+paper on one manufactory alone.  I therefore stated to Mr P[luchard]
+that, as his people were unable to furnish me with the article fast
+enough, I should apply to others for 250 reams, and begged him to
+supply me with the rest as fast as possible.  He made no objection.
+Thereupon I prevailed upon my most excellent friend, Baron Schilling,
+to speak to his acquaintance, State-Councillor Alquin, who is
+possessed of a paper-factory, on the subject.  M. Alquin, as a
+personal favour to Baron Schilling (whom, I confess, I was ashamed to
+trouble upon such an affair, and should never have done so had not
+zeal for the cause induced me), consented to furnish me with the
+required paper on the same terms as Mr P.  At present there is not
+the slightest risk of the progress of our work being retarded--at
+present, indeed, the path is quite easy; but the trouble, anxiety,
+and misery which have till lately harassed me, alone in a situation
+of great responsibility, have almost reduced me to a skeleton.
+
+My dearest Sir, do me the favour to ask our excellent Committee,
+Would it have answered any useful purpose if, instead of continuing
+to struggle with difficulties and using my utmost to overcome them, I
+had written in the following strain--and what else could I have
+written if I had written at all?--'I was sent out to St Petersburg to
+assist Mr Lipovzoff in the editing of the Manchu Testament.  That
+gentleman, who holds three important Situations under the Russian
+Government, and who is far advanced in years, has neither time,
+inclination, nor eyesight for the task, and I am apprehensive that my
+strength and powers unassisted are incompetent to it' (praised be the
+Lord, they were not!), 'therefore I should be glad to return home.
+Moreover, the compositors say they are unaccustomed to compose in an
+unknown tongue from such scribbled and illegible copy, and they will
+scarcely assist me to compose.  Moreover, the working printers say
+(several went away in disgust) that the paper on which they have to
+print is too thin to be wetted, and that to print on dry requires a
+twofold exertion of strength, and that they will not do such work for
+double wages, for it ruptures them.'  Would that have been a welcome
+communication to the Committee?  Would that have been a communication
+suited to the public?  I was resolved 'to do or die,' and, instead of
+distressing and perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write
+nothing until I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I
+now can; {132a} and to bring about that result I have spared neither
+myself nor my own money.  I have toiled in a close printing-office
+the whole day, during ninety degrees of heat, for the purpose of
+setting an example, and have bribed people to work when nothing but
+bribes would induce them so to do.
+
+I am obliged to say all this in self-justification.  No member of the
+Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what I have
+undergone but for the question, 'What has Mr Borrow been about?'  I
+hope and trust that question is now answered to the satisfaction of
+those who do Mr Borrow the honour to employ him.  In respect to the
+expense attending the editing of such a work as the New Testament in
+Manchu, I beg leave to observe that I have obtained the paper, the
+principal source of expense, at fifteen roubles per ream less than
+the Society formerly paid for it--that is to say, at nearly half the
+price.
+
+As St Matthew's Gospel has been ready for some weeks, it is high time
+that it should be bound; for if that process be delayed, the paper
+will be dirtied and the work injured.  I am sorry to inform you that
+book-binding in Russia is incredibly dear, {132b} and that the
+expenses attending the binding of the Testament would amount, were
+the usual course pursued, to two-thirds of the entire expenses of the
+work.  Various book-binders to whom I have applied have demanded one
+rouble and a half for the binding of every section of the work, so
+that the sum required for the binding of one Testament alone would be
+twelve roubles.  Doctor Schmidt assured me that one rouble and forty
+copecks, or, according to the English currency, fourteenpence
+halfpenny, were formerly paid for the binding of every individual
+copy of St Matthew's Gospel.
+
+I pray you, my dear Sir, to cause the books to be referred to, for I
+wish to know if that statement be correct.  In the meantime
+arrangements have to be made, and the Society will have to pay for
+each volume of the Testament the comparatively small sum of forty-
+five copecks, or fourpence halfpenny, whereas the usual price here
+for the most paltry covering of the most paltry pamphlet is
+fivepence.  Should it be demanded how I have been able to effect
+this, my reply is that I have had little hand in the matter.  A
+nobleman who honours me with particular friendship, and who is one of
+the most illustrious ornaments of Russia and of Europe, has, at my
+request, prevailed on his own book-binder, over whom he has much
+influence, to do the work on these terms.  That nobleman is Baron
+Schilling.
+
+Commend me to our most respected Committee.  Assure them that in
+whatever I have done or left undone, I have been influenced by a
+desire to promote the glory of the Trinity and to give my employers
+ultimate and permanent satisfaction.  If I have erred, it has been
+from a defect of judgment, and I ask pardon of God and them.  In the
+course of a week I shall write again, and give a further account of
+my proceedings, for I have not communicated one-tenth of what I have
+to impart; but I can write no more now.  It is two hours past
+midnight; the post goes away to-morrow, and against that morrow I
+have to examine and correct three sheets of St Mark's Gospel, which
+lie beneath the paper on which I am writing.  With my best regards to
+Mr Brandram,
+
+I remain, dear Sir,
+Most truly yours,
+G. BORROW.
+
+Rev. JOSEPH JOWETT.
+
+
+Closely following upon this letter, and without waiting for a reply,
+Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett, 13th/25th October, enclosing a
+certificate from Mr Lipovzoff, which read:-
+
+"Testifio:- Dominum Burro ab initio usque ad hoc tempus summa cum
+diligentia et studio in re Mantshurica laborasse, Lipovzoff."
+
+He also reported progress as regards the printing, and promised
+(D.V.) that the entire undertaking should be completed by the first
+of May; but the letter was principally concerned with the projected
+expedition to Kiakhta, to distribute the books he was so busily
+occupied in printing.  He repeated his former arguments, urging the
+Committee to send an agent to Kiakhta.  "I am a person of few words,"
+he assured Mr Jowett, "and will therefore state without
+circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent.  I speak Russ,
+Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian Steppes, and
+have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve."
+As regards the danger to himself of such a hazardous undertaking, the
+conversion of the Tartar would never be achieved without danger to
+someone.  He had become acquainted with many of the Tartars resident
+in St Petersburg, whose language he had learned through conversing
+with his servant (a native of Bucharia [Bokhara]), and he had become
+"much attached to them; for their conscientiousness, honesty, and
+fidelity are beyond all praise."
+
+To this further offer Mr Jowett replied:-
+
+
+"Be not disheartened, even though the Committee postpone for the
+present the consideration of your enterprising, not to say intrepid,
+proposal.  Thus much, however, I may venture to say:  that the offer
+is more likely to be accepted now, than when you first made it.  If,
+when the time approaches for executing such a plan, you give us
+reason to believe that a more mature consideration of it in all its
+bearings still leaves you in hope of a successful result, and in
+heart for making the attempt, my own opinion is that the offer will
+ultimately be accepted, and that very cordially."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX:  NOVEMBER 1834-SEPTEMBER 1835
+
+
+
+Borrow was an unconventional editor.  He foresaw the interminable
+delays likely to arise from allowing workmen to incorporate his
+corrections in the type.  To obviate these, he first corrected the
+proof, then, proceeding to the printing office, he made with his own
+hands the necessary alterations in the type.  This involved only two
+proofs, the second to be submitted to Mr Lipovzoff, instead of some
+half a dozen that otherwise would have been necessary.  During these
+days Borrow was ubiquitous.  Even the binder required his assistance,
+"for everything goes wrong without a strict surveillance."
+
+Borrow had passed through THE crisis in his career.  Stricken with
+fever, which was followed by an attack of the "Horrors" (only to be
+driven away by port wine), he had scarcely found time in which to eat
+or sleep.  He had emerged triumphantly from the ordeal, and if he had
+"almost killed Beneze and his lads"{135a} with work, he had not
+spared himself.  If he had to report, as he did, that "my two
+compositors, whom I had instructed in all the mysteries of Manchu
+composition, are in the hospital, down with the brain fever," {135b}
+he himself had grown thin from the incessant toil.
+
+The simple manliness and restrained dignity of his justification had
+produced a marked effect upon the authorities at home.  If the rebuke
+administered by Mr Jowett had been mild, his acknowledgment of the
+reply that it had called forth was most cordial and friendly.  After
+assuring Borrow of the Committee's high satisfaction at the way in
+which its interests had been looked after, he proceeds sincerely to
+deprecate anything in his previous letter which may have caused
+Borrow pain, and continues:
+
+
+"Yet I scarcely know how to be sorry for what has been the occasion
+of drawing from you (what you might otherwise have kept locked up in
+your own breast) the very interesting story of your labours,
+vexations, disappointments, vigilance, address, perseverance, and
+successes.  How you were able in your solitude to keep up your
+spirits in the face of so many impediments, apparently
+insurmountable, I know not . . . Do not fear that WE should in any
+way interrupt your proceedings.  We know our interest too well to
+interfere with an agent who has shown so much address in planning,
+and so much diligence in effecting, the execution of our wishes."
+
+
+These encouraging words were followed by a request that he would keep
+a careful account of all extraordinary expenses, that they might be
+duly met by the Society:-
+
+
+"I allude, you perceive, to such things," the letter goes on to
+explain, "as your journies huc et illuc in quest of a better market,
+and to the occasional bribes to disheartened workmen.  In all matters
+of this kind the Society is clearly your debtor."  Borrow replied
+with a flash of his old independent spirit:  "I return my most
+grateful thanks for this most considerate intimation, which,
+nevertheless, I cannot avail myself of, as, according to one of the
+articles of my agreement, my salary of 200 pounds was to cover all
+extra expenses.  Petersburg is doubtless the dearest capital in
+Europe, and expenses meet an individual, especially one situated as I
+have been, at every turn and corner; but an agreement is not to be
+broken on that account." {136a}
+
+That the Committee, even before this proof of his ability, had been
+well pleased with their engagement of Borrow is shown by the
+acknowledgment made in the Society's Thirtieth Annual Report:  "Mr
+Borrow has not disappointed the expectation entertained."
+
+There were other words of encouragement to cheer him in his labours.
+His mother wrote in September of that year, telling him how, at a
+Bible Society's gathering at Norwich, which had lasted the whole of a
+week, his name "was sounded through the Hall by Mr Gurney and Mr
+Cunningham"; telling how he had left his home and his friends to do
+God's work in a foreign land, calling upon their fellow-citizens to
+offer up prayers beseeching the Almighty to vouchsafe to him health
+and strength that the great work he had undertaken might be
+completed.  "All this is very pleasing to me," added the proud old
+lady.  "God bless you!"
+
+From Mrs Clarke of Oulton Hall, with whom he kept up a
+correspondence, he heard how his name had been mentioned at many of
+the Society's meetings during the year, and how the Rev. Francis
+Cunningham had referred to him as "one of the most extraordinary and
+interesting individuals of the present day."  Even at that date,
+viz., before the receipt of the remarkable account of his labours,
+the members and officials of the Bible Society seem to have come to
+the conclusion that he had achieved far more than they had any reason
+to expect of him.  Their subsequent approval is shown by the manner
+in which they caused his two letters of 8th/20th and 13th/25th
+October to be circulated among the influential members of the
+Society, until at last they had reached the Rev. F. Cunningham and
+Mrs Clarke.
+
+About the middle of January (old style) 1835, Borrow placed in the
+hands of Baron Schilling a copy of each of the four Gospels in
+Manchu, to be conveyed to the Bible Society by one of the couriers
+attached to the Foreign Department at St Petersburg; but they did not
+reach Earl Street until several weeks later.  There were however,
+still the remaining four volumes to complete, and many more
+difficulties to overcome.
+
+One vexation that presented itself was a difference of opinion
+between Borrow and Lipovzoff, who "thought proper, when the Father
+Almighty is addressed, to erase the personal and possessive pronouns
+thou or thine, as often as they occur, and in their stead to make use
+of the noun as the case may require.  For example, 'O Father! thou
+art merciful' he would render, 'O Father! the Father is merciful.'"
+Borrow protested, but Lipovzoff, who was "a gentleman, whom the
+slightest contradiction never fails to incense to a most incredible
+degree," told him that he talked nonsense, and refused to concede
+anything. {138a}  Lipovzoff, who had on his side the Chinese scholars
+and unlimited powers as official censor (from whose decree there was
+no appeal) over his own work, carried his point.  He urged that
+"amongst the Chinese and Tartars, none but the dregs of society were
+ever addressed in the second person; and that it would be most
+uncouth and indecent to speak of the Almighty as if He were a servant
+or a slave."  This difficulty of the verbal ornament of the East was
+one that the Bible Society had frequently met with in the past.  It
+was rightly considered as ill-fitting a translation of the words of
+Christ.  Simplicity of diction was to be preserved at all costs,
+whatever might be the rule with secular books.  Mr Jowett had warned
+Borrow to "beware of confounding the two distinct ideas of
+translation and interpretation!" {138b} and also informed him that
+"the passion for honorific-abilitudinity is a vice of Asiatic
+languages, which a Scripture translator, above all others, ought to
+beware of countenancing." {139a}
+
+Well might Borrow write to Mr Jowett, "How I have been enabled to
+maintain terms of friendship and familiarity with Mr Lipovzoff, and
+yet fulfil the part which those who employ me expect me to fulfil, I
+am much at a loss to conjecture; and yet such is really the case."
+{139b}  On the whole, however, the two men worked harmoniously
+together, the censor-translator being usually amenable to editorial
+reason and suggestion; and Borrow was able to assure Mr Jowett that
+with the exception of this one instance "the word of God has been
+rendered into Manchu as nearly and closely as the idiom of a very
+singular language would permit."
+
+Borrow's mind continued to dwell upon the project of penetrating into
+China and distributing the Scriptures himself.  He wrote again,
+repeating "the assurance that I am ready to attempt anything which
+the Society may wish me to execute, and, at a moment's warning, will
+direct my course towards Canton, Pekin, or the court of the Grand
+Lama." {139c}  The project had, however, to be abandoned.  The
+Russian Government, desirous of maintaining friendly relations with
+China, declined to risk her displeasure for a missionary project in
+which Russia had neither interest nor reasonable expectation of gain.
+In agreeing to issue a passport such as Borrow desired, it stipulated
+that he should carry with him "not one single Manchu Bible thither."
+{139d}  In spite of this discouragement, Borrow wrote to Mr Jowett
+with regard to the Chinese programme, "I AGAIN REPEAT THAT I AM AT
+COMMAND." {139e}
+
+This determination on Borrow's part to become a missionary filled his
+mother with alarm.  She had only one son now, and the very thought of
+his going into wild and unknown regions seemed to her tantamount to
+his going to his death.  Mrs Clarke also expressed strong disapproval
+of the project.  "I must tell you," she wrote, "that your letter
+chilled me when I read your intention of going as a Missionary or
+Agent, with the Manchu Scriptures in your hand, to the Tartars, the
+land of incalculable dangers."
+
+By the middle of May 1835 Borrow saw the end of his labours in sight.
+On 3rd/15th May he wrote asking for instructions relative to the
+despatch of the bulk of the volumes, and also as to the disposal of
+the type.  "As for myself," he continues, "I suppose I must return to
+England, as my task will be speedily completed.  I hope the Society
+are convinced that I have served them faithfully, and that I have
+spared no labour to bring out the work, which they did me the honor
+of confiding to me, correctly and within as short a time as possible.
+At my return, if the Society think that I can still prove of utility
+to them, I shall be most happy to devote myself still to their
+service. 1 am a person full of faults and weaknesses, as I am every
+day reminded by bitter experience, but I am certain that my zeal and
+fidelity towards those who put confidence in me are not to be
+shaken." {140a}
+
+On 15th/27th June he reported the printing completed and six out of
+the eight volumes bound, and that as soon as the remaining two
+volumes were ready, he intended to take his departure from St
+Petersburg; but a new difficulty arose.  The East had laid a heavy
+hand upon St Petersburg.  "To-morrow, please God!" met the energetic
+Westerner at every turn.  The bookbinder delayed six weeks because he
+could not procure some paper he required.  But the real obstacle to
+the despatch of the books was the non-arrival of the Government
+sanction to their shipment.  Nothing was permitted to move either in
+or out of the sacred city of the Tsars without official permission.
+Probably those responsible for the administration of affairs had
+never in their experience been called upon to deal with a man such as
+Borrow.  To apply to him the customary rules of procedure was to
+bring upon "the House of Interior Affairs" a series of visits and
+demands that must have left it limp with astonishment.
+
+On 16th/28th July Borrow wrote to the Bible Society, "I herewith send
+you a bill of lading for six of the eight parts of the New Testament,
+which I have at last obtained permission to send away, after having
+paid sixteen visits to the House of Interior Affairs." {141a}  He
+expresses a hope that in another fortnight he will have despatched
+the remaining two volumes and have "bidden adieu to Russia"; but it
+was dangerous to anticipate the official course of events in Russia.
+Even to the last Borrow was tormented by red tape.  Early in August
+the last two volumes were ready for shipment to England; but he could
+not obtain the necessary permission.  He was told that he ought never
+to have printed the work, in spite of the license that had been
+granted, and that grave doubts existed in the official mind as to
+whether or no he really were an agent of the Bible Society.  At
+length Borrow lost patience and told the officials that during the
+week following the books would be despatched, with or without
+permission, and he warned them to have a care how they acted.  These
+strong measures seem to have produced the desired result.
+
+Despite his many occupations on behalf of the Bible Society, Borrow
+found time in which to translate into Russian the first three
+Homilies of the Church of England, and into Manchu the Second.  His
+desire was that the Homily Society should cause these translations to
+be printed, and in a letter to the Rev. Francis Cunningham he strove
+to enlist his interest in the project, offering the translations
+without fee to the Society if they chose to make use of them. {141b}
+As "a zealous, though most unworthy, member of the Anglican Church,"
+he found that his "cheeks glowed with shame at seeing dissenters,
+English and American, busily employed in circulating Tracts in the
+Russian tongue, whilst the members of the Church were following their
+secular concerns, almost regardless of things spiritual in respect to
+the Russian population." {142a}
+
+Borrow also translated into English "one of the sacred books of
+Boudh, or Fo," from Baron Schilling de Canstadt's library.  The
+principal occupation of his leisure hours, however, was a collection
+of translations, which he had printed by Schultz & Beneze, and
+published (3rd/ 15th June 1835) under the title of Targum, or
+Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects. {142b}  In
+a prefatory note, the collection is referred to as "selections from a
+huge and undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several
+years devoted to philological pursuits."  Three months later he
+published another collection entitled The Talisman, From the Russian
+of Alexander Pushkin.  With Other Pieces. {143a}  There were seven
+poems in all, two after Pushkin, one from the Malo-Russian, one from
+Mickiewicz, and three "ancient Russian Songs."  Again the printers
+were Schultz & Beneze.  Each of these editions appears to have been
+limited to one hundred copies. {143b}
+
+Writing in the Athenaeum, {143c} J. P. H[asfeldt] says:- "The work is
+a pearl in literature, and, like pearls, derives value from its
+scarcity, for the whole edition was limited to about a hundred
+copies."  W. B. Donne admired the translations immensely, considering
+"the language and rhythm as vastly superior to Macaulay's Lays of
+Ancient Rome." {143d}
+
+Whilst the last two volumes of the Manchu New Testament were waiting
+for paper (probably for end-papers), Borrow determined to pay a
+hurried visit to Moscow, "by far the most remarkable city it has ever
+been my fortune to see."  One of his principal objects in visiting
+the ancient capital of Russia was to see the gypsies, who flourished
+there as they flourished nowhere else in Europe.  They numbered
+several thousands, and many of them inhabited large and handsome
+houses, drove in their carriages, and were "distinguishable from the
+genteel class of the Russians only . . . by superior personal
+advantages and mental accomplishments." {143e}  For this unusual
+state of prosperity the women were responsible, "having from time
+immemorial cultivated their vocal powers to such an extent that,
+although in the heart of a country in which the vocal art has arrived
+at greater perfection than in any other part of the world, the
+principal Gypsy choirs in Moscow are allowed by the general voice of
+the public to be unrivalled and to bear away the palm from all
+competitors.  It is a fact notorious in Russia that the celebrated
+Catalani was so filled with admiration for the powers of voice
+displayed by one of the Gypsy songsters, who, after the former had
+sung before a splendid audience at Moscow, stepped forward and with
+an astonishing burst of melody ravished every ear, that she
+[Catalani] tore from her own shoulders a shawl of immense value which
+had been presented to her by the Pope, and embracing the Gypsy,
+compelled her to accept it, saying that it had been originally
+intended for the matchless singer, which she now discovered was not
+herself." {144a}
+
+These Russian gypsy singers lived luxurious lives and frequently
+married Russian gentry or even the nobility.  It was only the
+successes, however, who achieved such distinction, and there were "a
+great number of low, vulgar, and profligate females who sing in
+taverns, or at the various gardens in the neighbourhood, and whose
+husbands and male connections subsist by horse-jobbing and such kinds
+of low traffic." {144b}
+
+One fine evening Borrow hired a calash and drove out to Marina Rotze,
+"a kind of sylvan garden," about one and a half miles out of Moscow,
+where this particular class of Romanys resorted.  "Upon my arriving
+there," he writes, "the Gypsies swarmed out of their tents and from
+the little tracteer or tavern, and surrounded me.  Standing on the
+seat of the calash, I addressed them in a loud voice in the dialect
+of the English Gypsies, with which I have some slight acquaintance.
+A scream of wonder instantly arose, and welcomes and greetings were
+poured forth in torrents of musical Romany, amongst which, however,
+the most pronounced cry was:  ah kak mi toute karmuma {145a}--'Oh how
+we love you'; for at first they supposed me to be one of their
+brothers, who, they said, were wandering about in Turkey, China, and
+other parts, and that I had come over the great pawnee, or water, to
+visit them." {145b}
+
+On several other occasions during his stay at Moscow, Borrow went out
+to Marina Rotze, to hold converse with the gypsies.  He "spoke to
+them upon their sinful manner of living," about Christianity and the
+advent of Christ, to which the gypsies listened with attention, but
+apparently not much profit.  The promise that they would soon be able
+to obtain the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in their own tongue
+interested them far more on account of the pleasurable strangeness of
+the idea, than from any anticipation that they might derive spiritual
+comfort from such writings.
+
+Returning to St Petersburg from Moscow, after four-days' absence,
+Borrow completed his work, settled up his affairs, bade his friends
+good-bye, and on 28th August/9th September left for Cronstadt to take
+the packet for Lubeck.  The authorities seem to have raised no
+objection to his departure.  His passport bore the date 28th August
+O/S (the actual day he left) and described him as "of stature, tall--
+hair, grey--face, oval--forehead, medium--eyebrows, blonde--eyes,
+brown--nose and mouth, medium--chin, round."
+
+Borrow's work at St Petersburg gave entire satisfaction to the Bible
+Society.  The Official Report for the year 1835 informed the members
+that -
+
+
+"The printing of the Manchu New Testament in St Petersburg is now
+drawing to a conclusion.  Mr G. Borrow, who has had to superintend
+the work, has in every way afforded satisfaction to the Committee.
+They have reason to believe that his acquirements in the language are
+of the most respectable order; while the devoted diligence with which
+he has laboured, and the skill he has shown in surmounting
+difficulties, and conducting his negotiations for the advantage of
+the Society, justly entitle him to this public acknowledgment of his
+services." {146a}
+
+
+Of the actual work itself John Hasfeldt justly wrote:
+
+
+"I can only say, that it is a beautiful edition of an oriental work--
+that it is printed with great care on a fine imitation of Chinese
+paper, made on purpose.  At the outset, Mr Borrow spent weeks and
+months in the printing office to make the compositors acquainted with
+the intricate Manchu types; and that, as for the contents, I am
+assured by well-informed persons, that this translation is remarkable
+for the correctness and fidelity with which it has been executed."
+{146b}
+
+
+The total cost to the Society of his labours in connection with the
+transcription of Puerot's MS., and printing and binding one thousand
+copies of Lipovzoff's New Testament had reached the very considerable
+sum of 2600 pounds.  What the amount would have been if Borrow had
+not proved a prince of bargainers, it is impossible to imagine.  The
+entire edition was sent to Earl Street, and eventually distributed in
+China as occasion offered.  An edition of the Gospels in this version
+has recently been reprinted, and is still in use among certain tribes
+in Mongolia.
+
+Borrow arrived in London somewhere about 20th September (new style),
+after an absence of a little more than two years.  He went to St
+Petersburg "prejudiced against the country, the government, and the
+people; the first is much more agreeable than is generally supposed;
+the second is seemingly the best adapted for so vast an empire; and
+the third, even the lowest classes, are in general kind, hospitable,
+and benevolent." {147a}
+
+On 23rd September Borrow was still in London writing his report to
+the General Committee upon his recent labours.  In all probability he
+left immediately afterwards for Norwich, there to await events.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X:  OCTOBER 1835-JANUARY 1836
+
+
+
+Borrow had strong hopes that the Bible Society would continue to
+employ him.  Mr Brandram had written (5th June 1835) that the
+Committee "will not very willingly suffer themselves to be deprived
+of your services.  From Russia Borrow had written to his mother:
+{148a}
+
+
+"They [the Bible Society] place great confidence in me, and I am
+firmly resolved to do all in my power to prove that they have not
+misplaced that confidence.  I dare say that when I return home they
+will always be happy to employ me to edit their Bibles, and there is
+no employment in the whole world which I should prefer and for which
+I am better fitted.  I shall, moreover, endeavour to get ordained."
+
+
+On another occasion he wrote, also to his mother:
+
+
+"I hope that the Bible Society will employ me upon something new, for
+I have of late led an active life, and dread the thought of having
+nothing to do except studying as formerly, and I am by no means
+certain that I could sit down to study now.  I can do anything if it
+is to turn to any account; but it is very hard to dig holes in the
+sand and fill them up again, as I used to do.  However, I hope God
+will find me something on which I can employ myself with credit and
+profit.  I should like very much to get into the Church, though I
+suppose that that, like all other professions, is overstocked."
+
+
+Mrs Borrow reminded him that he had a good home ready to receive him,
+and a mother grown lonely with long waiting.  She told him, among
+other things, that she had spent none of the money that he had so
+generously and unsparingly sent her.
+
+Borrow certainly had every reason to expect further employment.  He
+had proved himself not only a thoroughly qualified editor; but had
+discovered business qualities that must have astonished and delighted
+the General Committee.  Above all he had brought to a most successful
+conclusion a venture that, but for his ability and address, would in
+all probability have failed utterly.  The application for permission
+to proceed with the distribution had, it is true, been unsuccessful;
+but there was, as Mr Brandram wrote, the "seed laid up in the
+granary; but 'it is not yet written' that the sowers are to go forth
+to sow."
+
+After remaining for a short time with his mother at Norwich, Borrow
+appears to have paid a visit to his friends the Skeppers of Oulton.
+Old Mrs Skepper, Mrs Clarke's mother, had just died, and it is a
+proof of Borrow's intimacy with the family that he should be invited
+to stay with them whilst they were still in mourning.  Although there
+is no record of the date when he arrived at Oulton, he is known to
+have been there on 9th October, when he addressed a Bible Society
+meeting, about which he wrote the following delectable postscript to
+a letter he addressed to Mr Brandram:  {149a}
+
+
+"There has been a Bible meeting at Oulton, in Suffolk, to which I was
+invited.  The speaking produced such an effect, that some of the most
+vicious characters in the neighbourhood have become weekly
+subscribers to the Branch Society.  So says the Chronicle of Norfolk
+in its report."  The actual paragraph read:
+
+"It will doubtless afford satisfaction to the Christian public to
+learn that many poor individuals in this neighbourhood, who previous
+to attending this meeting were averse to the cause or indifferent to
+it, had their feelings so aroused by what was communicated to them,
+that they have since voluntarily subscribed to the Bible Society,
+actuated by the hope of becoming humbly instrumental in extending the
+dominion of the true light, and of circumscribing the domains of
+darkness and of Satan."
+
+
+On returning to the quiet of the old Cathedral city, Borrow had an
+opportunity of resting and meditating upon the events of the last two
+years; but he soon became restless and tired of inaction. {150a}  "I
+am weary of doing nothing, and am sighing for employment," {150b} he
+wrote.  He had impatiently awaited some word from Earl Street, where,
+seemingly, he had discussed various plans for the future, including a
+journey to Portugal and Spain, as well as the printing in Armenian of
+an edition of the New Testament.  Hearing nothing from Mr Jowett, he
+wrote begging to be excused for reminding him that he was ready to
+undertake any task that might be allotted to him.
+
+On the day following, he received a letter from Mr Brandram telling
+of how a resolution had been passed that he should go to Portugal.
+Then the writer's heart misgave him.  In his mind's eye he saw Borrow
+set down at Oporto.  What would he do?  Fearful that the door was not
+sufficiently open to justify the step, he had suggested the
+suspension of the resolution.  Borrow was asked what he himself
+thought.  What did he think of China, and could he foresee any
+prospect for the distribution of the Scriptures there?  "Favour us
+with your thoughts," Mr Brandram wrote.  "Experimental agency in a
+Society like ours is a formidable undertaking."  Borrow replied the
+same day, {150c}
+
+
+"As you ask me to favour you with my thoughts, I certainly will; for
+I have thought much upon the matters in question, and the result I
+will communicate to you in a very few words.  I decidedly approve
+(and so do all the religious friends whom I have communicated it to)
+of the plan of a journey to Portugal, and am sorry that it has been
+suspended, though I am convinced that your own benevolent and
+excellent heart was the cause, unwilling to fling me into an
+undertaking which you supposed might be attended with peril and
+difficulty.  Therefore I wish it to be clearly understood that I am
+perfectly willing to undertake the expedition, nay, to extend it into
+Spain, to visit the town and country, to discourse with the people,
+especially those connected with institutions for infantine education,
+and to learn what ways and opportunities present themselves for
+conveying the Gospel into those benighted countries.  I will moreover
+undertake, with the blessing of God, to draw up a small volume of
+what I shall have seen and heard there, which cannot fail to be
+interesting, and if patronised by the Society will probably help to
+cover the expenses of the expedition.  On my return I can commence
+the Armenian Testament, and whilst I am editing that, I may be
+acquiring much vulgar Chinese from some unemployed Lascar or stray
+Cantonman whom I may pick up upon the wharves, and then . . . to
+China.  I have no more to say, for were I to pen twenty pages, and I
+have time enough for so doing, I could communicate nothing which
+would make my views more clear."
+
+The earnestness of this letter seems effectually to have dissipated
+Mr Brandram's scruples, for events moved forward with astonishing
+rapidity.  Four days after the receipt of Borrow's letter, a
+resolution was adopted by the Committee to the following effect:-
+
+
+"That Mr Borrow be requested to proceed forthwith to Lisbon and
+Oporto for the purpose of visiting the Society's correspondents
+there, and of making further enquiries respecting the means and
+channels which may offer for promoting the circulation of the Holy
+Scriptures in Portugal." {151a}
+
+
+Mr Brandram gave Borrow two letters of introduction, one to John
+Wilby, a merchant at Lisbon, and the other to the British Chaplain,
+the Rev. E. Whiteley.  Having explained to Mr Whiteley how Borrow had
+recently been eventually going to employed in St Petersburg in
+editing the Manchu New Testament, he wrote:-
+
+
+"We have some prospect of his China; but having proved by experience
+that he possesses an order of talent remarkably suited to the
+purposes of our Society, we have felt unwilling to interrupt our
+connection with him with the termination of his engagement at St
+Petersburg.  In the interval we have thought that he might
+advantageously visit Portugal, and strengthen your hands and those of
+other friends, and see whether he could not extend the promising
+opening at present existing.  He has no specific instructions, though
+he is enjoined to confer very fully with yourself and Mr Wilby of
+Lisbon.
+
+"I have mentioned his recent occupation at St Petersburg, and you may
+perhaps think that there is little affinity between it and his
+present visit to Portugal.  But Mr Borrow possesses no little tact in
+addressing himself to anything.  With Portugal he is already
+acquainted, and speaks the language.  He proposes visiting several of
+the principal cities and towns . . .
+
+"Our correspondence about Spain is at this moment singularly
+interesting, and if it continues so, and the way seems to open, Mr
+Borrow will cross the frontier and go and enquire what can be done
+there.  We believe him to be one who is endowed with no small portion
+of address and a spirit of enterprise.  I recommend him to your kind
+attentions, and I anticipate your thanks for so doing, after you
+shall have become acquainted with him.  Do not, however, be too hasty
+in forming your judgment."
+
+
+This letter outlines very clearly what was in the minds of the
+Committee in sending Borrow to Portugal.  He was to spy out the land
+and advise the home authorities in what direction he would be most
+likely to prove useful.  He was in particular to direct his attention
+to schools, and was "authorised to be liberal in GIVING New
+Testaments."  Furthermore, he was to be permitted to draw upon the
+Society's agents to the extent of one hundred pounds.
+
+The most significant part of this letter is the passage relating to
+China.  It leaves no doubt that Borrow's reiterated requests to be
+employed in distributing the Manchu New Testament had appealed most
+strongly to the General Committee.  Mr Brandram was evidently in
+doubt as to how Borrow would strike his correspondent as an agent of
+the Bible Society, hence his warning against a hasty judgment.
+Apparently this letter was never presented, as it was found among
+Borrow's papers, and Mr Whiteley had to form his opinion entirely
+unaided.
+
+On 6th November Borrow sailed from the Thames for Lisbon in the
+steamship London Merchant.  The voyage was fair for the time of year,
+and was marked only by the tragic occurrence of a sailor falling from
+the cross-trees into the sea and being drowned.  The man had dreamed
+his fate a few minutes previously, and had told Borrow of the
+circumstances on coming up from below. {153a}
+
+Borrow had scarcely been in Lisbon an hour before he heartily wished
+himself "back in Russia . . . where I had left cherished friends and
+warm affections."  The Customs-house officers irritated him, first
+with their dilatoriness, then by the minuteness with which they
+examined every article of which he was possessed.  Again, there was
+the difficulty of obtaining a suitable lodging, which when eventually
+found proved to be "dark, dirty and exceedingly expensive without
+attendance."  Mr Wilby was in the country and not expected to return
+for a week.  It would also appear that the British Chaplain was
+likewise away.  Thus Borrow found himself with no one to advise him
+as to the first step he should take.  This in itself was no very
+great drawback; but he felt very much a stranger in a city that
+struck him as detestable.
+
+Determined to commence operations according to the dictates of his
+own judgment, he first engaged a Portuguese servant that he might
+have ample opportunities of perfecting himself in the language.  He
+was fortunate in his selection, for Antonio turned out an excellent
+fellow, who "always served me with the greatest fidelity, and . . .
+exhibited an assiduity and a wish to please which afforded me the
+utmost satisfaction." {154a}
+
+When Borrow arrived in Portugal, it was to find it gasping and dazed
+by eight years of civil war (1826-1834).  In 1807, when Junot invaded
+the country, the Royal House of Braganza had sailed for Brazil.  In
+1816 Dom Joao succeeded to the thrones of Brazil and Portugal, and
+six years later he arrived in Portugal, leaving behind him as Viceroy
+his son Dom Pedro, who promptly declared himself Emperor of Brazil.
+Dom Joao died in 1826, leaving, in addition to the self-styled
+Emperor of Brazil, another son, Miguel.  Dom Pedro relinquished his
+claim to the throne of Portugal in favour of his seven years old
+daughter, Maria da Gloria, whose right was contested by her uncle Dom
+Miguel.  In 1834 Dom Miguel resigned his imaginary rights to the
+throne by the Convention of Evora, and departed from the country that
+for eight years had been at war with itself, and for seven with a
+foreign invader.
+
+Borrow proceeded to acquaint himself with the state of affairs in
+Lisbon and the surrounding country, that he might transmit a full
+account to the Bible Society.  He visited every part of the city,
+losing no opportunity of entering into conversation with anyone with
+whom he came in contact.  The people he found indifferent to
+religion, the lower orders in particular.  They laughed in his face
+when he enquired if ever they confessed themselves, and a muleteer on
+being asked if he reverenced the cross, "instantly flew into a rage,
+stamped violently, and, spitting on the ground, said it was a piece
+of stone, and that he should have no more objection to spit upon it
+than the stones on which he trod." {154b}
+
+Many of the people could read, as they proved when asked to do so
+from the Portuguese New Testament; but of all those whom he addressed
+none appeared to have read the Scriptures, or to know anything of
+what they contain.
+
+After spending four or five days at Lisbon, Borrow, accompanied by
+Antonio, proceeded to Cintra. {155a}  Here he pursued the same
+method, also visiting the schools and enquiring into the nature of
+the religious instruction.  During his stay of four days, he
+"traversed the country in all directions, riding into the fields,
+where I saw the peasants at work, and entering into discourse with
+them, and notwithstanding many of my questions must have appeared to
+them very singular, I never experienced any incivility, though they
+frequently answered me with smiles and laughter." {155b}
+
+From Cintra he proceeded on horseback to Mafra, a large village some
+three leagues distant.  Everywhere he subjected the inhabitants to a
+searching cross-examination, laying bare their minds upon religious
+matters, experiencing surprise at the "free and unembarrassed manner
+in which the Portuguese peasantry sustain a conversation, and the
+purity of the language in which they express their thoughts," {155c}
+although few could read or write.
+
+On the return journey from Mafra to Cintra he nearly lost his life,
+owing to the girth of his saddle breaking during his horse's
+exertions in climbing a hill.  Borrow was cast violently to the
+ground; but fortunately on the right side, otherwise he would in all
+probability have been bruised to death by tumbling down the steep
+hill-side.  As it was, he was dazed, and felt the effects of his
+mishap for several days.
+
+On his return to Lisbon, Borrow found that Mr Wilby was back, and he
+had many opportunities of taking counsel with him as to the best
+means to be adopted to further the Society's ends.  He learned that
+four hundred copies of the Bible and the New Testament had arrived,
+and it was decided to begin operations at once.  Mr Wilby recommended
+the booksellers as the best medium of distribution; but Borrow urged
+strongly that at least half of the available copies "should be
+entrusted to colporteurs," who were to receive a commission upon
+every copy sold.  To this Mr Wilby agreed, provided the operations of
+the colporteurs were restricted to Lisbon, as there was considerable
+danger in the country, where the priests were very powerful and might
+urge the people to mishandle, or even assassinate, the bearers of the
+Word.
+
+By nature Borrow was not addicted to half measures.  His whole record
+as an agent of the Bible Society was of a series of determined
+onslaughts upon the obstacles animate and inanimate, that beset his
+path.  Sometimes he took away the breath of his adversaries by the
+very vigour of his attack, and, like the old Northern leaders, whose
+deeds he wished to give to an uneager world in translated verse, he
+faced great dangers and achieved great ends.  Recognising that the
+darkest region is most in need of light, he enquired of Mr Wilby in
+what province of Portugal were to be found the most ignorant and
+benighted people, and on being told the Alemtejo (the other side of
+the Tagus), he immediately announced his intention of making a
+journey through it, in order to discover how dense spiritual gloom
+could really be in an ostensibly Christian country.
+
+The Alemtejo was an unprepossessing country, consisting for the most
+part of "heaths, broken by knolls and gloomy dingles, swamps and
+forests of stunted pine," with but few hills and mountains.  The
+place was infested with banditti, and robberies, accompanied by
+horrible murders, were of constant occurrence.  On 6th December,
+accompanied by his servant Antonio, Borrow set out for Evora, the
+principal town, formerly a seat of the dreaded Inquisition, which
+lies about sixty miles east of Lisbon.  After many adventures, which
+he himself has narrated, including a dangerous crossing of the Tagus,
+and a meeting with Dom Geronimo Joze d'Azveto, secretary to the
+government of Evora, Borrow arrived at his destination, having spent
+two nights on the road.  During the journey he had been constantly
+mindful of his mission; beside the embers of a bandit's fire he left
+a New Testament, and the huts that mark the spot where Dom Pedro and
+Dom Miguel met, he sweetened with some of the precious little
+tracts."
+
+He had brought with him to Evora twenty Testaments and two Bibles,
+half of which he left with an enlightened shopkeeper, to whom he had
+a letter of introduction.  The other half he subsequently bestowed
+upon Dom Geronimo, who proved to be a man of great earnestness,
+deeply conscious of his countrymen's ignorance of true Christianity.
+Each day during his stay at Evora, Borrow spent two hours beside the
+fountain where the cattle were watered, entering into conversation
+with all who approached, the result being that before he left the
+town, he had spoken to "about two hundred . . of the children of
+Portugal upon matters connected with their eternal welfare."
+Sometimes his hearers would ask for proofs of his statements that
+they were not Christians, being ignorant of Christ and his teaching,
+and that the Pope was Satan's prime minister.  He invariably replied
+by calling attention to their own ignorance of the Scripture, for if
+the priests were in reality Christ's ministers, why had they kept
+from their flocks the words of their Master?
+
+When not engaged at the fountain, Borrow rode about the neighbourhood
+distributing tracts.  Fearful lest the people might refuse them if
+offered by his own hand, he dropped them in their favourite walks, in
+the hope that they would be picked up out of curiosity.  He caused
+the daughter of the landlady of the inn at which he stopped to burn a
+copy of Volney's Ruins of Empire, because the author was an "emissary
+of Satan," the girl standing by telling her beads until the book were
+entirely consumed.
+
+Borrow had been greatly handicapped through the lack of letters of
+introduction to influential people in Portugal.  He wrote, therefore,
+to Dr Bowring, now M.P. for Kilmarnock, telling him of his wanderings
+among the rustics and banditti of Portugal, with whom he had become
+very popular; but, he continues:
+
+
+"As it is much more easy to introduce oneself to the cottage than the
+hall (though I am not utterly unknown in the latter), I want you to
+give or procure me letters to the most liberal and influential minds
+in Portugal.  I likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office to
+Lord [Howard] de Walden.  In a word, I want to make what interest I
+can towards obtaining the admission of the Gospel of Jesus into the
+public schools of Portugal, which are about to be established.  I beg
+leave to state that this is MY PLAN and no other person's, as I was
+merely sent over to Portugal to observe the disposition of the
+people, therefore I do not wish to be named as an Agent of the B.S.,
+but as a person who has plans for the mental improvement of the
+Portuguese; should I receive THESE LETTERS within the space of six
+weeks it will be time enough, for before setting up my machine in
+Portugal, I wish to lay the foundations of something similar in
+Spain."
+
+P.S.--"I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want letters something
+similar (there is impudence for you) for Madrid, WHICH I SHOULD LIKE
+TO HAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  I do not much care at present for an
+introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I shall not commence
+operations seriously in Spain until I have disposed of Portugal.  I
+will not apologise for writing to you in this manner, for you know
+me, but I will tell you one thing, which is, that the letter which
+you procured for me, on my going to St Petersburg, from Lord
+Palmerston, assisted me wonderfully; I called twice at your domicile
+on my return; the first time you were in Scotland--the second in
+France, and I assure you I cried with vexation.  Remember me to Mrs
+Bowring, and God bless you." {159a}
+
+
+In this letter Borrow gives another illustration of his shrewdness.
+He saw clearly the disadvantage of appealing for assistance as an
+agent of the Bible Society, a Protestant institution which was
+anathema in a Roman Catholic country, whereas if he posed merely as
+"a gentleman who has plans for the mental improvement of the
+Portuguese," he could enlist the sympathetic interest of any and
+every broad-minded Portuguese mindful of his country's intellectual
+gloom.  In response to this request Dr Bowring, writing from
+Brussels, sent two letters of introduction, one each for Lisbon and
+Madrid.
+
+After remaining at Evora for a week (8th to 17th December) Borrow
+returned to Lisbon, thoroughly satisfied with the results of his
+journey.  The next fortnight he spent in a further examination of
+Lisbon, and becoming acquainted with the Jews of the city, by whom he
+was welcomed as a powerful rabbi.  He favoured the mistake, with the
+result that in a few days he "knew all that related to them and their
+traffic in Lisbon." {159b}
+
+Borrow's methods seem to have impressed Earl Street most favourably.
+In a letter of acknowledgment Mr Brandram wrote:-
+
+
+"We have been much interested by your two communications. {159c}
+They are both very painful in their details, and you develop a truly
+awful state of things.  You are probing the wound, and I hope
+preparing the way for our pouring in by and by the healing balsam of
+the Scripture.  We shall be anxious to hear from you again.  We often
+think of you in your wanderings.  We like your way of communicating
+with the people, meeting them in their own walks."
+
+
+Thoroughly convinced as to the irreligious state of Portugal, Borrow
+determined to set out for Spain, in order that he might examine into
+the condition of the people, and report to the Bible Society their
+state of preparedness to receive the Scriptures.  On the afternoon of
+1st January 1836 he set out, bound for Badajos, a hundred miles south
+of Lisbon.  From Badajos he intended to take the diligence on to
+Madrid, which he decided to make his headquarters.
+
+Having taken leave of his servant Antonio (who had accompanied him as
+far as Aldea Gallega) almost with tears, Borrow mounted a hired mule,
+and with no other companion than an idiot lad, who, when spoken to,
+made reply only with an uncouth laugh, he plunged once more into the
+dangerous and desolate Alemtejo on a four days' journey "over the
+most savage and ill-noted track in the whole kingdom."  At first he
+was overwhelmed with a sense of loneliness, and experienced a great
+desire for someone with whom to talk.  There was no one to be seen--
+he was hemmed in by desolation and despair.
+
+At Montemor Novo Borrow appears in a new light when he kisses his
+hand repeatedly to the tittering nuns who, with "dusky faces and
+black waving hair," {160a} strove to obtain a glance of the stranger
+who, a few minutes previously, had dared to tell one of their number
+that he had come "to endeavour to introduce the gospel of Christ into
+a country where it is not known." {160b}
+
+One adventure befel him that might have ended in tragedy.  Soon after
+leaving Arrayolos he overtook a string of carts conveying ammunition
+into Spain.  One of the Portuguese soldiers of the guard began to
+curse foreigners in general and Borrow, whom he mistook for a
+Frenchmen, in particular, because "the devil helps foreigners and
+hates the Portuguese."  When about forty yards ahead of the advance
+guard, with which the discontented soldier marched, Borrow had the
+imprudence to laugh, with the result that the next moment two well-
+aimed bullets sang past his ears.  Taking the hint, Borrow put spurs
+to his mule, and, followed by the terrified guide, soon outdistanced
+these official banditti.  With great naivete he remarks, "Oh, may I
+live to see the day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated in any
+civilised, or at least Christian country!" {161a}
+
+For two and a half days the idiot guide had met Borrow's most
+dexterous cross-examination with a determined silence; but on
+reaching a hill overlooking Estremoz he suddenly found tongue, and,
+in an epic of inspiration, told of the wonderful hunting that was to
+be obtained on the Serre Dorso, the Alemtejo's finest mountain.  "He
+likewise described with great minuteness a wonderful dog, which was
+kept in the neighbourhood for the purpose of catching the wolves and
+wild boars, and for which the proprietor had refused twenty
+moidores." {161b}  From this it would appear that the idiocy of the
+guide was an armour to be assumed at will by one who preferred the
+sweetness of his own thoughts to the cross-questionings of his
+master's clients.
+
+At Elvas, which he reached on 5th January, Borrow showed very
+strongly one rather paradoxical side of his character.  Never
+backward in his dispraise of Englishmen and things English, in
+particular those responsible for the administration of the nation's
+affairs, past and present, he demonstrated very clearly, in his
+expressions of indignation at the Portuguese attitude towards
+England, that he reserved this right of criticism strictly to
+himself.  At the inn where he stayed, he thoroughly discomfited a
+Portuguese officer who dared to criticise the English Government for
+its attitude in connection with the Spanish civil war.  When refused
+entrance to the fort, where he had gone in order to satisfy his
+curiosity, Borrow exclaims, "This is one of the beneficial results of
+protecting a nation, and squandering blood and treasure in its
+defence." {162a}
+
+Borrow was essentially an Englishman and proud of his blood, prouder
+perhaps of that which came to him from Norfolk, {162b} and although
+permitting himself and his fellow-countrymen considerable license in
+the matter of caustic criticism of public men and things, there the
+matter must end.  Let a foreigner, a Portuguese, dare to say a word
+against his, Borrow's, country, and he became subjected to either a
+biting cross-examination, or was denounced in eloquent and telling
+periods.  "I could not command myself," he writes in extenuation of
+his unchristian conduct in discomfiting the officer at Elvas, "when I
+heard my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner.  By
+whom?  A Portuguese?  A native of a country which has been twice
+liberated from horrid and detestable thraldom by the hands of
+Englishmen." {162c}
+
+On 6th January 1836, {162d} having sent back the "idiot" guide with
+the two mules, Borrow "spurred down the hill of Elvas to the plain,
+eager to arrive in old, chivalrous, romantic Spain," and having
+forded the stream that separates the two countries, he crossed the
+bridge over the Guadiana and entered the North Gate of Badajos,
+immortalised by Wellington and the British Army.  He had reached
+Spain "in the humble hope of being able to cleanse some of the foul
+stains of Popery from the minds of its children." {162e}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI:  JANUARY-OCTOBER 1836
+
+
+
+When Borrow entered Spain she was in the throes of civil war.  In
+1814 British blood and British money had restored to the throne
+Ferdinand VII., who, immediately he found himself secure, and
+forgetting his pledges to govern constitutionally, dissolved the
+Cortes and became an absolute monarch.  All the old abuses were
+revived, including the re-establishment of the Inquisition.  For six
+years the people suffered their King's tyranny, then they revolted,
+with the result that Ferdinand, bending to the wind, accepted a re-
+imposition of the Constitution.  In 1823 a French Army occupied
+Madrid in support of Ferdinand, who promptly reverted to absolutism.
+
+In 1829 Ferdinand married for the fourth time, and, on the birth of a
+daughter, declared that the Salic law had no effect in Spain, and the
+young princess was recognised as heir-apparent to the throne.  This
+drew from his brother, Don Carlos, who immediately left the country,
+a protest against his exclusion from the succession.  When his
+daughter was four years of age, Ferdinand died, and the child was
+proclaimed Queen as Isabel II.
+
+A bitter war broke out between the respective adherents of the Queen
+and her uncle Don Carlos.  Prisoners and wounded were massacred
+without discrimination, and an uncivilised and barbarous warfare
+waged when Borrow crossed the Portuguese frontier "to undertake the
+adventure of Spain."
+
+Spain had always appealed most strongly to Borrow's imagination.
+
+
+"In the day-dreams of my boyhood," he writes, "Spain always bore a
+considerable share, and I took a particular interest in her, without
+any presentiment that I should, at a future time, be called upon to
+take a part, however humble, in her strange dramas; which interest,
+at a very early period, led me to acquire her noble language, and to
+make myself acquainted with the literature (scarcely worthy of the
+language), her history and traditions; so that when I entered Spain
+for the first time I felt more at home than I should otherwise have
+done." {164a}
+
+
+Whilst standing at the door of the Inn of the Three Nations on the
+day following his arrival at Badajos, meditating upon the deplorable
+state of the country he had just entered, Borrow recognised in the
+face of one of two men who were about to pass him the unmistakable
+lineaments of Egypt.  Uttering "a certain word," he received the
+reply he expected and forthwith engaged in conversation with the two
+men, who both proved to be gypsies.  These men spread the news abroad
+that staying at the Inn of the Three Nations was a man who spoke
+Romany.  "In less than half an hour the street before the inn was
+filled with the men, women, and children of Egypt."  Borrow went out
+amongst them, and confesses that "so much vileness, dirt, and misery
+I had never seen among a similar number of human beings; but worst of
+all was the evil expression of their countenances." {164b}  He soon
+discovered that their faces were an accurate index to their hearts,
+which were capable of every species of villainy.  The gypsies
+clustered round him, fingering his hands, face and clothes, as if he
+were a holy man.
+
+Gypsies had always held for Borrow a strange attraction, {164c} and
+he determined to prolong his stay at Badajos in order that he might
+have an opportunity of becoming "better acquainted with their
+condition and manners, and above all to speak to them of Christ and
+His Word; for I was convinced, that should I travel to the end of the
+universe, I should meet with no people more in need of a little
+Christian exhortation." {165a}
+
+Intimate though his acquaintance with the gypsies of other countries
+had been, Borrow was aghast at the depravity of those of Spain.  The
+men were drunkards, brigands, and murderers; the women unchaste, and
+inveterate thieves.  Their language was terrifying in its foulness.
+They seemed to have no religion save a misty glimmering of
+metempsychosis, which had come down to them through the centuries,
+and having been very wicked in this world they asked, with some show
+of reason, why they should live again.  They were incorrigible
+heathens, keenly interested in the demonstration that their language
+was capable of being written and read, but untouched by the parables
+of Lazarus or the Prodigal Son, which Borrow read and expounded to
+them.  "Brother," exclaimed one woman, "you tell us strange things,
+though perhaps you do not lie; a month since I would sooner have
+believed these tales, than that this day I should see one who could
+read Romany." {165b}
+
+Neither by exhortation nor by translating into Romany a portion of
+the Gospel of St Luke could Borrow make any impression upon the minds
+of the gypsies, therefore when one of them, Antonio by name,
+announced that "the affairs of Egypt" called for his presence "on the
+frontiers of Costumbra," and that he and Borrow might as well journey
+thus far together, he decided to avail himself of the opportunity.
+It was arranged that Borrow's luggage should be sent on ahead, for,
+as Antonio said, "How the Busne [the Spaniards] on the road would
+laugh if they saw two Cales [Gypsies] with luggage behind them."
+{166a}  Thus it came about that an agent of the British and Foreign
+Bible Society, mounted upon a most uncouth horse "of a spectral
+white, short in the body, but with remarkably long legs" and high in
+the withers, set out from Badajos on 16th January 1836, escorted by a
+smuggler astride a mule; for the affairs of Egypt on this occasion
+were the evasion of the Customs dues.
+
+Towards evening on the first day the curiously assorted pair arrived
+at Merida, and proceeded to a large and ruinous house, a portion of
+which was occupied by some connections of the gypsy Antonio's.  In
+the large hall of the old mansion they camped, and here, acting on
+the gypsy's advice, Borrow remained for three days.  Antonio himself
+was absent from early morning until late at night, occupied with his
+own affairs. {166b}
+
+The fourth night was spent in the forest by the campfire of some more
+of Antonio's friends.  On one occasion, but for the fortunate
+possession of a passport, the affairs of Egypt would have involved
+Borrow in some difficulties with the authorities.  At another time,
+for safety's sake, he had to part from Antonio and proceed on his way
+alone, picking up the contrabandista further on the road.
+
+When some distance beyond Jaraicejo, it was discovered that the
+affairs of Egypt had ended disastrously in the discomfiture and
+capture of Antonio's friends by the authorities.  The news was
+brought by the gypsy's daughter.  Antonio must return at once, and as
+the steed Borrow was riding, which belonged to Antonio, would be
+required by him, Borrow purchased the daughter's donkey, and having
+said good-bye to the smuggler, he continued his journey alone.
+
+By way of Almaraz and Oropesa Borrow eventually reached Talavera
+(24th Jan.).  On the advice of a Toledo Jew, with whom he had become
+acquainted during the last stage of his journey, he decided to take
+the diligence from Talavera to Madrid, the more willingly because the
+Jew amiably offered to purchase the donkey.  On the evening of 25th
+Jan. Borrow accordingly took his place on the diligence, and reached
+the capital the next morning.
+
+On arriving at Madrid, Borrow first went to a Posada; but a few days
+later he removed to lodgings in the Calle de la Zarza (the Street of
+the Brambles),--"A dark and dirty street, which, however, was close
+to the Puerta del Sol, the most central point of Madrid, into which
+four or five of the principal streets debouche, and which is, at all
+times of the year, the great place of assemblage for the idlers of
+the capital, poor or rich." {167a}
+
+The capital did not at first impress Borrow very favourably. {167b}
+"Madrid is a small town," he wrote to his mother, {167c} "not larger
+than Norwich, but it is crammed with people, like a hive with bees,
+and it contains many fine streets and fountains . . .  Everything in
+Madrid is excessively dear to foreigners, for they are made to pay
+six times more than natives . . .  I manage to get on tolerably well,
+for I make a point of paying just one quarter of what I am asked."
+
+He suffered considerably from the frost and cold.  From the snow-
+covered mountains that surround the city there descend in winter such
+cold blasts "that the body is drawn up like a leaf." {167d}  Then
+again there were the physical discomforts that he had to endure.
+
+"You cannot think," he wrote, {168a} "what a filthy, uncivilised set
+of people the Spanish and Portuguese are.  There is more comfort in
+an English barn than in one of their palaces; and they are rude and
+ill-bred to a surprising degree."
+
+Borrow was angry with Spain, possibly for being so unlike his "dear
+and glorious Russia."  He saw in it a fertile and beautiful country,
+inhabited by a set of beings that were not human, "almost as bad as
+the Irish, with the exception that they are not drunkards." {168b}
+They were a nation of thieves and extortioners, who regarded the
+foreigner as their legitimate prey.  Even his own servant was "the
+greatest thief and villain that ever existed; who, if I would let
+him, would steal the teeth out of my head," {168c} and who seems
+actually to have destroyed some of his master's letters for the sake
+of the postage.  Being forced to call upon various people whose
+addresses he did not know, Borrow found it necessary to keep the man,
+in spite of his thievish proclivities, for he was clever, and had he
+been dismissed his place would, in all probability, have been taken
+by an even greater rogue.
+
+At night he never went out, for the streets were thronged with
+hundreds of people of the rival factions, bent on "cutting and
+murdering one another; . . . for every Spaniard is by nature a cruel,
+cowardly tiger.  Nothing is more common than to destroy a whole town,
+putting man, woman, and child to death, because two or three of the
+inhabitants have been obnoxious." {168d}  Thus he wrote to his
+mother, all-unconscious of the anxiety and alarm that he was causing
+her lest he, her dear George, should be one of the cut or murdered.
+
+Later, Borrow seems to have revised his opinion of Madrid and of its
+inhabitants.  He confesses that of all the cities he has known Madrid
+interested him the most, not on account of its public buildings,
+squares or fountains, for these are surpassed in other cities; but
+because of its population.  "Within a mud wall scarcely one league
+and a half in circuit, are contained two hundred thousand human
+beings, certainly forming the most extraordinary vital mass to be
+found in the entire world." {169a}  In the upper classes he had
+little interest.  He mixed but little with them, and what he saw did
+not impress him favourably.  It was the Spaniard of the lower orders
+that attracted him.  He regarded this class as composed not of common
+beings, but of extraordinary men.  He admired their spirit of proud
+independence, and forgave them their ignorance.  His first
+impressions of Spain had been unfavourable because, as a stranger, he
+had been victimised by the amiable citizens, who were merely doing as
+their fathers had done before them.  Once, however, he got to know
+them, he regarded with more indulgence their constitutional
+dishonesty towards the stranger, a weakness they possessed in common
+with the gypsies, and hailed them as "extraordinary men."  Borrow's
+impulsiveness frequently led him to ill-considered and hasty
+conclusions, which, however, he never hesitated to correct, if he saw
+need for correction.
+
+The disappointment he experienced as regards Madrid and the Spaniards
+is not difficult to understand.  He arrived quite friendless and
+without letters of introduction, to find the city given over to the
+dissensions and strifes of the supporters of Isabel II. and Don
+Carlos.  His journey had been undertaken in "the hope of obtaining
+permission from the Government to print the New Testament in the
+Castilian language, without the notes insisted on by the Spanish
+clergy, for circulation in Spain," and there seemed small chance of
+those responsible for the direction of affairs listening to the
+application of a foreigner for permission to print the unannotated
+Scriptures.  For one thing, any acquiescence in such a suggestion
+would draw forth from the priesthood bitter reproaches and, most
+probably, active and serious opposition.  It is only natural that
+despondency should occasionally seize upon him who sought to light
+the lamp of truth amidst such tempests.
+
+The man to approach was the premier, Juan Alvarez y Mendizabal,
+{170a} a Christianised Jew.  He was enormously powerful, and Borrow
+decided to appeal to him direct; for, armed with the approval of
+Mendizabal, no one would dare to interfere with his plans or
+proceedings.  Borrow made several attempts to see Mendizabal, who
+"was considered as a man of almost unbounded power, in whose hands
+were placed the destinies of the country."  Without interest or
+letters of introduction, he found it utterly impossible to obtain an
+audience.  Recollecting the assistance he had received from the Hon.
+J. D. Bligh at St Petersburg, Borrow determined to make himself known
+to the British Minister at Madrid, the Hon. George Villiers, {170b}
+and, "with the freedom permitted to a British subject . . . ask his
+advice in the affair."  Borrow was received with great kindness, and,
+after conversing upon various topics for some time, he introduced the
+subject of his visit.  Mr Villiers willingly undertook to help him as
+far as lay in his power, and promised to endeavour to procure for him
+an audience with the Premier.  In this he was successful, and Borrow
+had an interview with Mendizabal, who was almost inaccessible to all
+but the few.
+
+At eight o'clock on the morning of 7th February Borrow presented
+himself at the palace, where Mendizabal resided, and after waiting
+for about three hours, was admitted to the presence of the Prime
+Minister of Spain, whom he found--"A huge athletic man, somewhat
+taller than myself, who measure six foot two without my shoes.  His
+complexion was florid, his features fine and regular, his nose quite
+aquiline, and his teeth splendidly white; though scarcely fifty years
+of age, his hair was remarkably grey.  He was dressed in a rich
+morning gown, with a gold chain round his neck, and morocco slippers
+on his feet." {171a}
+
+Borrow began by assuring Mendizabal that he was labouring under a
+grave error in thinking that the Bible Society had sought to
+influence unduly the slaves of Cuba, that they had not sent any
+agents there, and they were not in communication with any of the
+residents.  Mr Villiers had warned Borrow that the premier was very
+angry on account of reports that had reached him of the action in
+Cuba of certain people whom he insisted were sent there by the Bible
+Society.  In vain Borrow suggested that the disturbers of the
+tranquillity of Spain's beneficent rule in the Island were in no way
+connected with Earl Street; he was several times interrupted by
+Mendizabal, who insisted that he had documentary proof.  Borrow with
+difficulty restrained himself from laughing in the premier s face.
+He pointed out that the Committee was composed of quiet, respectable
+English gentlemen, who attended to their own concerns and gave a
+little of their time to the affairs of the Bible Society.
+
+On Borrow asking for permission to print at Madrid the New Testament
+in Spanish without notes, he was met with an unequivocal refusal.  In
+spite of his arguments that the whole tenor of the work was against
+bloodshedding and violence, he could not shake the premier's opinion
+that it was "an improper book."
+
+At first Borrow had experienced some difficulty in explaining
+himself, on account of the Spaniard's habit of persistent
+interruption, and at last he was forced in self-defence to hold on in
+spite of Mendizabal's remarks.  The upshot of the interview was that
+he was told to renew his application when the Carlists had been
+beaten and the country was at peace.  Borrow then asked permission to
+introduce into Spain a few copies of the New Testament in the Catalan
+dialect, but was refused.  He next requested to be allowed to call on
+the following day and submit a copy of the Catalan edition, and
+received the remarkable reply that the prime-minister refused his
+offer to call lest he should succeed in convincing him, and
+Mendizabal did not wish to be convinced.  This seemed to show that
+the Mendizabal was something of a philosopher and a little of a
+humorist.
+
+With this Borrow had to be content, and after an hour's interview he
+withdrew.  The premier was unquestionably in a difficult position.
+On the one hand, he no doubt desired to assist a man introduced to
+him by the representative of Great Britain, to whom he looked for
+assistance in suppressing Carlism; on the other hand, he had the
+priesthood to consider, and they would without question use every
+means of which they stood possessed to preserve the prohibition
+against the dissemination of the Scriptures, without notes, a
+prohibition that had become almost a tradition.
+
+But Borrow was not discouraged.  He wrote in a most hopeful strain
+that he foresaw the speedy and successful termination of the
+Society's negotiations in the Peninsula.  He looked forward to the
+time when only an agent would be required to superintend the
+engagement of colporteurs, and to make arrangements with the
+booksellers.  He proceeds to express a hope that his exertions have
+given satisfaction to the Society.
+
+Borrow received an encouraging letter from Mr Brandram, telling him
+of the Committee's appreciation of his work, but practically leaving
+with him the decision as to his future movements.  They were inclined
+to favour a return to Lisbon, but recognised that "in these wondrous
+days opportunities may open unexpectedly."  In the matter of the
+Gospel of St Luke in Spanish Romany, the publication of extracts was
+authorised, but there was no enthusiasm for the project.  "We say,"
+wrote Mr Brandram, "festina lente.  You will be doing well to occupy
+leisure hours with this work; but we are not prepared for printing
+anything beyond portions at present."
+
+In the meantime, however, an article in the Madrid newspaper, El
+Espanol, upon the history, aims, and achievements of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, had determined Borrow to remain on at Madrid
+for a few weeks at least.
+
+
+"Why should Spain, which has explored the New World, why should she
+alone be destitute of Bible Societies," asked the Espanol.  "Why
+should a nation eminently Catholic continue isolated from the rest of
+Europe, without joining in the magnificent enterprise in which the
+latter is so busily engaged?" {173a}
+
+
+This article fired Borrow, and with the promise of assistance from
+the liberal-minded Espanol, he set to work "to lay the foundation of
+a Bible Society at Madrid." {173b}  As a potential head of the
+Spanish organization, Borrow's eyes were already directed towards the
+person of "a certain Bishop, advanced in years, a person of great
+piety and learning, who has himself translated the New Testament"
+{173c} and who was disposed to print and circulate it.
+
+Nothing, however, came of the project.  Mr Brandram wrote to Borrow:-
+"With regard to forming a Bible Society in Madrid, and appointing Dr
+Usoz Secretary, it is so out of our usual course that the Committee,
+for various reasons, cannot comply with your wishes--of the
+desirableness of forming such a Society at present, you and your
+friend must be the best judges.  If it is to be an independent
+society, as I suppose must be the case," Mr Brandram continues, and
+the Bible Society's aid or that of its agent is sought, the new
+Society must be formed on the principles of the British and Foreign
+Bible Society, admitting, "on the one hand, general cooperation, and
+on the other, that it does not circulate Apocryphal Bibles."  There
+was doubt at Earl Street as to whether the time was yet ripe; so the
+decision was very properly left with Borrow, and he was told that he
+"need not fear to hold out great hopes of encouragement in the event
+of the formation of such a Society." {174a}
+
+A serious difficulty now arose in the resignation of Mendizabal
+(March 1836).  Two of his friends and supporters, in the persons of
+Francisco de Isturitz and Alcala Galiano, seceded from his party,
+and, under the name of moderados, formed an opposition to their Chief
+in the Cortes.  They had the support of the Queen Regent and General
+Cordova, whom Mendizabal had wished to remove from his position as
+head of the army on account of his great popularity with the
+soldiers, whose comforts and interests he studied.  Isturitz became
+Premier, Galiano Minister of Marine (a mere paper title, as there was
+no navy at the time), and the Duke of Rivas Minister of the Interior.
+
+Conscious of the advantage of possessing powerful friends, especially
+in a country such as Spain, Borrow had used every endeavour to
+enlarge the circle of his acquaintance among men occupying
+influential positions, or likely to succeed those who at present
+filled them.  The result was that he was able to announce to Mr
+Brandram that the new ministry, which had been formed, was composed
+"entirely of MY friends." {175a}  With Galiano in particular he was
+on very intimate terms.  Everything promised well, and the new
+Cabinet showed itself most friendly to Borrow and his projects, until
+the actual moment arrived for writing the permission to print the
+Scriptures in Spanish.  Then doubts arose, and the decrees of the
+Council of Trent loomed up, a threatening barrier, in the eyes of the
+Duke of Rivas and his secretary.
+
+So hopeful was Borrow after his first interview with the Duke that he
+wrote: --"I shall receive the permission, the Lord willing, in a few
+days . . . The last skirts of the cloud of papal superstition are
+vanishing below the horizon of Spain; whoever says the contrary
+either knows nothing of the matter or wilfully hides the truth."
+{175b}
+
+At Earl Street the good news about the article in the Espanol gave
+the liveliest satisfaction.  "Surely a new and wonderful thing in
+Spain," wrote Mr Brandram {175c} in a letter in which he urged Borrow
+to "guard against becoming too much committed to one political
+party," and asked him to write more frequently, as his letters were
+always most welcome.  This letter reached Madrid at a time when
+Borrow found himself absolutely destitute.
+
+"For the last three weeks," he writes, {175d} "I have been without
+money, literally without a farthing."  Everything in Madrid was so
+dear.  A month previously he had been forced to pay 12 pounds, 5s.
+for a suit of clothes, "my own being so worn that it was impossible
+to appear longer in public with them." {175e}  He had written to Mr
+Wilby, but in all probability his letter had gone astray, the post to
+Estremadura having been three times robbed.  "The money may still
+come," he continues, {176a} "but I have given up all hopes of it, and
+I am compelled to write home, though what I am to do till I can
+receive your answer I am at a loss to conceive . . . whatever I
+undergo, I shall tell nobody of my situation, it might hurt the
+Society and our projects here.  I know enough of the world to be
+aware that it is considered as the worst of crimes to be without
+money." {176b}
+
+For weeks Borrow devoted himself to the task of endeavouring to
+obtain permission to print the Scriptures in Spanish.  The Duke of
+Rivas referred him to his secretary, saying, "He will do for you what
+you want!"  But the secretary retreated behind the decrees of the
+Council of Trent.  Then Mr Villiers intervened, saw the Duke and gave
+Borrow a letter to him.  Again the Council of Trent proved to be the
+obstacle.  Galiano took up the matter and escorted Borrow to the
+Bureau of the Interior, and had an interview with the Duke's
+secretary.  When Galiano left, there remained nothing for the
+conscientious secretary to do but to write out the formal permission,
+all else having been satisfactorily settled; but no sooner had
+Galiano departed, than the recollection of the Council of Trent
+returned to the secretary with terrifying distinctness, and no
+permission was given.
+
+Tired of the Council of Trent and the Duke's secretary, Borrow would
+sometimes retire to the banks of the canal and there loiter in the
+sun, watching the gold and silver fish basking on the surface of its
+waters, or gossiping with the man who sold oranges and water under
+the shade of the old water-tower.  Once he went to see an execution--
+anything to drive from his mind the conscientious secretary and the
+Council of Trent, the sole obstacles to the realisation of his plans.
+
+Borrow informed Mr Brandram at the end of May that the Cabinet was
+unanimously in favour of granting his request; nothing happened.
+There seems no doubt that the Cabinet's policy was one of subterfuge.
+It could not afford to offend the British Minister, nor could it, at
+that juncture, risk the bitter hostility of the clergy, consequently
+it promised and deferred.  A petition to the Ecclesiastical Committee
+of Censors, although strongly backed by the Civil Governor of Madrid
+(within whose department lay the censorship), produced no better
+result.  There was nothing heard but "To-morrow, please God!"
+
+Foiled for the time being in his constructive policy, Borrow turned
+his attention to one of destruction.  He had already announced to the
+Bible Society that the authority of the Pope was in a precarious
+condition.
+
+
+"Little more than a breath is required to destroy it," he writes,
+{177a} "and I am almost confident that in less than a year it will be
+disowned.  I am doing whatever I can in Madrid to prepare the way for
+an event so desirable.  I mix with the people, and inform them who
+and what the Pope is, and how disastrous to Spain his influence has
+been.  I tell them that the indulgences, which they are in the habit
+of purchasing, are of no more intrinsic value than so many pieces of
+paper, and were merely invented with the view of plundering them.  I
+frequently ask:  'Is it possible that God, who is good, would
+sanction the sale of sin? and, supposing certain things are sinful,
+do you think that God, for the sake of your money, would permit you
+to perform them?'  In many instances my hearers have been satisfied
+with this simple reasoning, and have said that they would buy no more
+indulgences."
+
+
+Mr Brandram promptly wrote warning Borrow against becoming involved
+in any endeavour to hasten the fall of the Pope.  Although deeply
+interested in what their agent had to say, there was a strong
+misgiving at headquarters that for a few moments Borrow had
+"forgotten that our hopes of the fall of -- are founded on the simple
+distribution of the Scriptures," {178a} and he was told that, as
+their agent, he must not pursue the course that he described.  The
+warning was carefully worded, so that it might not wound Borrow's
+feelings or lessen his enthusiasm.
+
+Borrow had found that the climate of Madrid did not agree with him.
+It had proved very trying during the winter; but now that summer had
+arrived the heat was suffocating and the air seemed to be filled with
+"flaming vapours," and even the Spaniards would "lie gasping and
+naked upon their brick floors." {178b}  In spite of the heat,
+however, he was occupied "upon an average ten hours every day,
+dancing attendance on one or another of the Ministers." {178c}
+
+Sometimes the difficulties that he had to contend with reduced him
+almost to despair of ever obtaining the permission he sought.  "Only
+those," he writes, {178d} "who have been in the habit of dealing with
+Spaniards, by whom the most solemn promises are habitually broken,
+can form a correct idea of my reiterated disappointments, and of the
+toil of body and agony of spirit which I have been subjected to.  One
+day I have been told, at the Ministry, that I had only to wait a few
+moments and all I wished would be acceded to; and then my hopes have
+been blasted with the information that various difficulties, which
+seemed insurmountable, had presented themselves, whereupon I have
+departed almost broken-hearted; but the next day I have been summoned
+in a great hurry and informed that 'all was right,' and that on the
+morrow a regular authority to print the Scriptures would be delivered
+to me, but by that time fresh and yet more terrible difficulties had
+occurred--so that I became weary of my life."
+
+Mr Villiers evidently saw through the Spanish Cabinet's policy of
+delay; for he spoke to the ministers collectively and individually,
+strongly recommending that the petition be granted.  He further
+pointed out the terrible condition of the people, who lacked
+religious instruction of any kind, and that a nation of atheists
+would not prove very easy to govern.  It may have been these
+arguments, or, what is more likely, a desire on the part of the
+Cabinet to please the representative of Great Britain, in any case a
+greater willingness was now shown to give the necessary permission.
+Measures were accordingly taken to evade the law and protect the
+printer into whose hands the work was to be entrusted, until an
+appropriate moment arrived for repealing the existing statute.
+
+Borrow forwarded to Earl Street the following interesting letter that
+he had received from Mr Villiers, which confirms his words as to the
+keen interest taken by the British Minister in the endeavour to
+obtain the permission to print the New Testament in Spanish
+
+
+DEAR SIR,
+
+I have had a long conversation with Mr Isturitz upon the subject of
+printing the Testament, in which he showed himself to be both
+sagacious and liberal.  He assured me that the matter should have his
+support whenever the Duque de Ribas brought it before the Cabinet,
+and that as far as he was concerned the question MIGHT BE CONSIDERED
+AS SETTLED.
+
+You are quite welcome to make any use you please of this note with
+the D. de Ribas or Mr Olivan. {179a}
+
+I am, Dear Sir,
+Yours faithfully,
+GEORGE VILLIERS.
+June 23rd [1836].
+
+
+It was unquestionably Borrow's personality that was responsible for
+Mr Villiers' interest in the scheme, as when Lieutenant Graydon
+{179b} had applied to him on a previous occasion he declined to
+interfere.
+
+At Borrow's suggestion the President of the Bible Society, Lord
+Bentley, wrote to Mr Villiers thanking him for the services he had
+rendered in connection with the Spanish programme.  It was
+characteristic of Borrow that he added to his letter as a reason for
+his request, that "I may be again in need of Mr V's. assistance
+before I leave Spain." {180a}  Borrow was always keenly alive to the
+advantage of possessing influential friends who would be likely to
+assist him in his labours for the Society.  He was not a profound
+admirer of the Society of Jesus for nothing, and although he would
+scorn to exercise tact in regard to his own concerns, he was fully
+prepared to make use of it in connection with those of the Bible
+Society.  He was a Jesuit at heart, and would in all probability have
+preferred a good compositor who had been guilty of sacrilege to a bad
+one who had not.  He saw that besides being something of a
+diplomatist, an agent of the Bible Society had also to be a good
+business man.  He has been called tactless, until the word seems to
+have become permanently identified with his name; how unjustly is
+shown by a very hasty examination of his masterly diplomacy, both in
+Russia and Spain.  Diplomacy, as Borrow understood it, was the art of
+being persuasive when persuasion would obtain for him his object, and
+firm, even threatening, when strong measures were best calculated to
+suit his ends.  It is only the fool who defines tact as the gentle
+art of pleasing everybody.  Diplomacy is the art of getting what you
+want at the expense of displeasing as few people as possible.
+
+"The affair is settled--thank God!!! and we may begin to print
+whenever we think proper."  With these words Borrow announces the
+success of his enterprise.  "Perhaps you have thought," he continues,
+"that I have been tardy in accomplishing the business which brought
+me to Spain; but to be able to form a correct judgment you ought to
+be aware of all the difficulties which I have had to encounter, and
+which I shall not enumerate.  I shall content myself with observing
+that for a thousand pounds I would not undergo again all the
+mortifications and disappointments of the last two months." {181a}
+
+There were moments when Borrow forgot the idiom of Earl Street and
+reverted to his old, self-confident style, which had so alarmed some
+of the excellent members of the Committee.  He had achieved a great
+triumph, how great is best shown by the suggestion made by the prime
+minister that if determined to avail himself of the permission that
+had been obtained, he had better employ "the confidential printer of
+the Government, who would keep the matter secret; as in the present
+state of affairs he [the prime minister] would not answer for the
+consequences if it were noised abroad." {181b}  By giving the license
+to print the New Testament without notes, the Cabinet was assuming a
+very grave responsibility.  All this shows how great was the
+influence of the British Minister upon the Isturitz Cabinet, and how
+considerable that of Borrow upon the British Minister.
+
+Now that his object was gained, there was nothing further to keep
+Borrow in Spain, and he accordingly asked for instructions,
+suggesting that, as soon as the heats were over, Lieutenant Graydon
+might return to Madrid and take charge, "as nothing very difficult
+remains to be accomplished, and I am sure that Mr Villiers, at my
+entreaty, would extend to him the patronage with which he has
+honoured me." {181c}  In conclusion he announced himself as ready to
+do "whatever the Bible Society may deem expedient." {181d}
+
+Borrow now began to suffer from the reaction after his great
+exertions.  He became so languid as scarcely to be able to hold a
+pen.  He had no books, and conversation was impossible, for the heat
+had driven away all who could possibly escape, among them his
+acquaintances, and he frequently remembered with a sigh the happy
+days spent in St Petersburg.
+
+A few days later (25th July) he wrote proposing as a member of the
+Bible Society Dr Luis de Usoz y Rio, "a person of great
+respectability and great learning." {182a}  Dr Usoz, who was
+subsequently to be closely associated with Borrow in his labours in
+Spain, was a man of whom he was unable to "speak in too high terms of
+admiration; he is one of the most learned men in Spain, and is become
+in every point a Christian according to the standard of the New
+Testament." {182b}
+
+Dr Usoz also addressed a letter to the Society asking to be
+considered as a correspondent and entrusted with copies of the
+Scriptures, which he was convinced he could circulate in every
+province of Spain.  The advantage of having one of the editors of the
+principal newspaper of Spain on the side of the Society did not fail
+to appeal to Borrow.  Dr Usoz not only became a member of the Bible
+Society, but earned from Borrow a splendid tribute in the Preface to
+The Bible in Spain.
+
+Before advantage could be taken of the hardly earned permission to
+print the New Testament in Madrid, the Revolution of La Granja {182c}
+broke out, resulting in the proclamation of the Constitution of 1812,
+by which the press became free.  In Madrid chaos reigned as a result.
+Borrow himself has given a vivid account of how Quesada, by his
+magnificent courage, quelled for the time being the revolution, how
+the ministers fled, how eventually the heroic tyrant was recognised
+and killed, and, finally, how, at a celebrated coffee-house in
+Madrid, Borrow saw the victorious Nationals drink to the Constitution
+from a bowl of coffee, which had first been stirred with one of the
+mutilated hands of the hated Quesada. {183a}
+
+Now that no obstacle stood in the way of the printing of the Spanish
+New Testament, Borrow was requested to return to England that he
+might confer with the authorities at Earl Street.  "You may now
+consider yourself under marching orders to return home as soon as you
+have made all the requisite arrangements; . . . you have done, we are
+persuaded, a good and great work," {183b} Mr Brandram wrote.  It was
+thought by the Committee that the advantages to be derived from a
+conference with Borrow would be well worth the expense involved in
+his having to return again to Spain.
+
+To this request for his immediate presence in London Borrow replied:
+
+
+"I shall make the provisional engagement as desired [as regards the
+printing of the New Testament] and shall leave Madrid as soon as
+possible; but I must here inform you, that I shall find much
+difficulty in returning to England, as all the provinces are
+disturbed in consequence of the Constitution of 1812 having been
+proclaimed, and the roads are swarming with robbers and banditti.  It
+is my intention to join some muleteers, and attempt to reach Granada,
+from whence, if possible, I shall proceed to Malaga or Gibraltar, and
+thence to Lisbon, where I left the greatest part of my baggage.  Do
+not be surprised, therefore, if I am tardy in making my appearance;
+it is no easy thing at present to travel in Spain.  But all these
+troubles are for the benefit of the Cause, and must not be repined
+at." {183c}
+
+
+Leaving Madrid on 20th August, Borrow was at Granada on the 30th, as
+proved by the Visitors' Book, in which he signed himself
+
+
+"George Borrow Norvicensis."
+
+
+The real object of this visit appears to have been his desire to
+study more closely the Spanish gypsies.  From Granada he proceeded to
+Malaga.  Neither place can be said to be on the direct road to
+England; but the disturbed state of the country had to be taken into
+consideration, and it was a question not of the shortest road but the
+safest.
+
+On his return to London, early in October, Borrow wrote a report
+{184a} upon his labours, roughly sketching out his work since he left
+Badajos.  He repeated his view that the Papal See had lost its power
+over Spain, and that the present moment was a peculiarly appropriate
+one in which to spread the light of the Gospel over the Peninsula.
+Forgetting the thievish propensities of the race, he wrote glowingly
+of the Spaniards and their intellectual equipment, the clearness with
+which they expressed themselves, and the elegance of their diction.
+The mind of the Spaniard was a garden run to waste, and it was for
+the British and Foreign Bible Society to cultivate it and purge it of
+the rank and bitter weeds.
+
+He foresaw no difficulty whatever in disposing of 5000 copies of the
+New Testament in a short time in the capital and provincial towns, in
+particular Cadiz and Seville where the people were more enlightened.
+He was not so confident about the rural districts, where those who
+assured him that they were acquainted with the New Testament said
+that it contained hymns addressed to the Virgin which were written by
+the Pope.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII:  NOVEMBER 1836-MAY 1837
+
+
+
+Borrow remained in England for a month (3rd October/4th November),
+during which time he conferred with the Committee and Officials at
+Earl Street as to the future programme in Spain.  On 4th November,
+having sent to his mother 130 pounds of the 150 pounds he had drawn
+as salary, and promising to write to Mr Brandram from Cadiz, he
+sailed from London in the steamer Manchester, bound for Lisbon and
+Cadiz.
+
+In a letter to his mother, he describes his fellow passengers as
+invalids fleeing from the English winter.  "Some of them are three
+parts gone with consumption," he writes, "some are ruptured, some
+have broken backs; I am the only sound person in the ship, which is
+crowded to suffocation.  I am in a little hole of a berth where I can
+scarcely breathe, and every now and then wet through."
+
+The horrors of the voyage from Falmouth to Lisbon he has described
+with terrifying vividness; {185a} how the engines broke down and the
+vessel was being driven on to Cape Finisterre; how all hope had been
+abandoned, and the Captain had told the passengers of their impending
+fate; how the wind suddenly "VEERED RIGHT ABOUT, and pushed us from
+the horrible coast faster than it had previously driven us towards
+it." {185b}
+
+During the whole of that terrible night Borrow had remained on deck,
+all the other passengers having been battened down below.  He was
+almost drowned in the seas that broke over the vessel, and, on one
+occasion, was struck down by a water cask that had broken away from
+its lashings.  Even after he had escaped Cape Finisterre, the ordeal
+was not over; for the ship was in a sinking condition, and fire broke
+out on board.  Eventually the engines were repaired, the fire
+extinguished, and Lisbon was reached on the 13th, where Borrow landed
+with his water-soaked luggage, and found on examination that the
+greater part of his clothes had been ruined.  In spite of this
+experience, he determined to continue his voyage to Cadiz in the
+Manchester, probably for reasons of economy, indifferent to the fact
+that she was utterly unseaworthy, and that most of the other
+passengers had abandoned her.  During his enforced stay in Lisbon,
+whilst the ship was being patched up, Borrow saw Mr Wilby and made
+enquiry into the state of the Society's affairs in Portugal.  Many
+changes had taken place and the country was in a distracted state.
+
+After a week's delay at Lisbon the Manchester continued her voyage to
+Cadiz, where she arrived without further mishap on the 21st.  During
+this voyage a fellow passenger with Borrow was the Marques de Santa
+Coloma.  "According to the expression of the Marques, when they
+stepped on to the quay at Cadiz, Borrow looked round, saw some
+Gitanos lounging there, said something that the Marques could not
+understand, and immediately 'that man became une grappe de Gitanos.'
+They hung round his neck, clung to his knees, seized his hands,
+kissed his feet, so that the Marques hardly liked to join his comrade
+again after such close embraces by so dirty a company." {186a}
+
+Borrow now found himself in his allotted field--unhappy, miserable,
+distracted Spain.  Gomez, the Carlist leader, had been sweeping
+through Estremadura like a pestilence, and Borrow fully expected to
+find Seville occupied by his banditti; but Carlists possessed no
+terrors for him.  Unless he could do something to heal the spiritual
+wounds of the wretched country, he assured Mr Brandram, he would
+never again return to England.
+
+On 1st December Mr Brandram wrote to Borrow expressing deep sympathy
+with all he had been through, and adding:  "If you go forward . . .
+we will help you by prayer.  If you retreat we shall welcome you
+cordially."  He appears to have written before consulting with the
+Committee, who, on hearing of the actual state of affairs in Spain,
+became filled with misgiving and anxiety for the safety of their
+agent, who seemed to be destitute of fear.  Mr Brandram had been
+content for Borrow to go forward if he so decided, but, as he wrote
+later, "your prospective dangers, while they created an absorbing
+interest, were viewed in different lights by the Committee," who
+thought they had "no right to commit you to such perils.  My own
+feeling was that, while I could not urge you forward, there were
+peculiarities in your history and character that I would not keep you
+back if you were minded to go.  A few felt with me--most, however,
+thought that you should have been restrained." {187a}  It was decided
+therefore to forbid him to proceed on his hazardous adventure, and
+accordingly a letter was addressed to him care of the British Consul
+at Cadiz.  If Borrow received this he disregarded the instructions it
+contained.
+
+Cadiz proved to be in a state of great confusion.  It was reported
+that numerous bands of Carlists were in the neighbourhood, and the
+whole city was in a state of ferment in consequence.  In the coffee-
+houses the din of tongues was deafening; would-be orators, sometimes
+as many as six at one time, sprang up upon chairs and tables and
+ventilated their political views.  The paramount, nay, the only,
+interest was not in the words of Christ; but the probable doings of
+the Carlists.
+
+On the night of his arrival Borrow was taken ill with what, at the
+time, he thought to be cholera, and for some time in the little
+"cock-loft or garret" that had been allotted to him at the over-
+crowded French hotel, he was "in most acute pain, and terribly sick,"
+drinking oil mixed with brandy.  For two days he was so exhausted as
+to be able to do nothing.
+
+On the morning of the 24th he embarked in a small Spanish steamer
+bound for Seville, which was reached that same night.  The sun had
+dissipated the melancholy and stupor left by his illness, and by the
+time he arrived at Seville he was repeating Latin verses and
+fragments of old Spanish ballads to a brilliant moon.  The condition
+of affairs at Seville was as bad if not worse than at Cadiz.  There
+was scarcely any communication with the capital, the diligences no
+longer ran, and even the fearless arrieros (muleteers) declined to
+set out.  Famine, plunder and murder were let loose over the land.
+Bands of banditti robbed, tortured and slew in the name of Don
+Carlos.  They stripped the peasantry of all they possessed, and the
+poor wretches in turn became brigands and preyed upon those weaker
+than themselves.  Through all this Borrow had to penetrate in order
+to reach Madrid.  Had the road been familiar to him he would have
+performed the journey alone, dressed either as a beggar or as a
+gypsy.  It is obvious that he appreciated the hazardous nature of the
+journey he was undertaking, for he asked Mr Brandram, in the event of
+his death, to keep the news from old Mrs Borrow as long as possible
+and then to go down to Norwich and break it to her himself.
+
+At Seville Borrow encountered Baron Taylor, {188a} whom he states
+that he had first met at Bayonne (during the "veiled period"), and
+later in Russia, beside the Bosphorus, and finally in the South of
+Ireland.  Than Baron Taylor there was no one for whom Borrow
+entertained "a greater esteem and regard . . .  There is a mystery
+about him which, wherever he goes, serves not a little to increase
+the sensation naturally created by his appearance and manner." {189a}
+Borrow was much attracted to this mysterious personage, about whom
+nothing could be asserted "with downright positiveness."
+
+From Seville Borrow proceeded to Cordoba, accompanied by "an elderly
+person, a Genoese by birth," whose acquaintance he had made and whom
+he hoped later to employ in the distribution of the Testaments.
+Borrow had hired a couple of miserable horses.  The Genoese had not
+been in the saddle for some thirty years, and he was an old man and
+timid.  His horse soon became aware of this, and neither whip nor
+spur could persuade it to exert itself.  When approaching night
+rendered it necessary to make a special effort to hasten forward, the
+bridle of the discontented steed had to be fastened to that of its
+fellow, which was then urged forward "with spur and cudgel."  Both
+the Genoese and his mount protested against such drastic measures,
+the one by entreaties to be permitted to dismount, the other by
+attempting to fling itself down.  The only notice Borrow took of
+these protests was to spur and cudgel the more.
+
+On the night of the third day the party arrived at Cordoba, and was
+cordially welcomed by the Carlist innkeeper, who, although avowing
+himself strictly neutral, confessed how great had been his pleasure
+at welcoming the Carlists when they occupied the City a short time
+before.  It was at this inn that Borrow explained to the elderly
+Genoese, who had indiscreetly resented his host's disrespectful
+remarks about the young Queen Isabel, how he invariably managed to
+preserve good relations with all sorts of factions.  "My good man,"
+he said, "I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose
+table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep; at least I never say
+anything which can lead them to suspect the contrary; by pursuing
+which system I have more than once escaped a bloody pillow, and
+having the wine I drank spiced with sublimate." {190a}
+
+Borrow remained at Cordoba much longer than he had intended, because
+of the reports that reached him of the unsafe condition of the roads.
+He sent back the old Genoese with the horses, and spent the time in
+thoroughly examining the town and making acquaintances among its
+inhabitants.  At length, after a stay of ten or eleven days,
+despairing of any improvement in the state of the country, he
+continued his journey in the company of a contrabandista, temporarily
+retired from the smuggling trade, from whom he hired two horses for
+the sum of forty-two dollars.  Borrow allowed no compunction to
+assail him as to the means he employed when he was thoroughly
+convinced as to the worthiness of the end he had in view.  To further
+his projects he would cheerfully have travelled with the Pope
+himself.
+
+The journey to Madrid proved dismal in the extreme.  The
+contrabandista was sullen and gloomy, despite the fact that his
+horses had been insured against loss and the handsome fee he was to
+receive for his services.  The Despenaperros in the Sierra Morena
+through which Borrow had to pass, had, even in times of peace, a most
+evil reputation; but by great good luck for Borrow, the local
+banditti had during the previous day "committed a dreadful robbery
+and murder by which they sacked 40,000 reals." {190b}  They were in
+all probability too busily occupied in dividing their spoil to watch
+for other travellers.  Another factor that was much in Borrow's
+favour was a change in the weather.
+
+
+"Suddenly the Lord breathed forth a frozen blast," Borrow writes,
+"the severity of which was almost intolerable.  No human being but
+ourselves ventured forth.  We traversed snow-covered plains, and
+passed through villages and towns to all appearance deserted.  The
+robbers kept close to their caves and hovels, but the cold nearly
+killed us.  We reached Aranjuez late on Christmas day, and I got into
+the house of an Englishman, where I swallowed nearly a pint of
+brandy:  {191a} it affected me no more than warm water. {191b}
+
+
+Borrow arrived at Madrid on 26th December, having almost by a miracle
+avoided death or capture by the human wolves that infested the
+country.  He took up his quarters at 16 Calle de Santiago at the
+house of Maria Diaz, who was to prove so loyal a friend during many
+critical periods of his work in Spain.  His first care was to call
+upon the British Minister, and enquire if he considered it safe to
+proceed with the printing without special application to the new
+Government.  Mr Villiers' answer is interesting, as showing how
+thoroughly he had taken Borrow under his protection.
+
+
+"You obtained the permission of the Government of Isturitz," he
+replied, "which was a much less liberal one than the present; I am a
+witness to the promise made to you by the former Ministers, which I
+consider sufficient; you had best commence and complete the work as
+soon as possible without any fresh application, and should anyone
+attempt to interrupt you, you have only to come to me, whom you may
+command at any time." {191c}
+
+
+Having saved the Bible Society 9000 reals in its paper bill alone,
+{191d} Borrow proceeded to arrange for the printing.  He had already
+opened negotiations with Charles Wood, who was associated with
+Andreas Borrego, {192a} the most fashionable printer in Madrid, who
+not only had the best printing-presses in Spain, but had been
+specially recommended by Isturitz.  It had been tentatively arranged
+that an edition of 5000 copies of the New Testament should be printed
+from the version of Father Felipe Scio de San Miguel, confessor to
+Ferdinand VII., without notes or commentaries, and delivered within
+three months.
+
+Remembering the advice of Isturitz, Borrow determined to entrust the
+work to Borrego, including the binding.  He was the Government
+printer, and, furthermore, enjoyed the good opinion of Mr Villiers.
+Having persuaded Borrego to reduce his price to 10 reals a sheet, he
+placed the order.  It was agreed that the work should be completed in
+ten weeks from 20th January.
+
+Each sheet was to be passed by Borrow.  As a matter of fact he read
+every word three times; but in order to insure absolute accuracy, he
+engaged the services of Dr Usoz, "the first scholar in Spain," {192b}
+who was to be responsible for the final revision, leaving the
+question of the remuneration to the generosity of the Bible Society.
+The result of all this care was that, according to Borrow the edition
+exhibited scarcely one typographical error. {192c}
+
+The question of systematic distribution had next to be considered.
+After much musing and cogitation, Borrow came to the conclusion that
+the only satisfactory method was for him to "ride forth from Madrid
+into the wildest parts of Spain," where the word is most wanted and
+where it seems next to an impossibility to introduce it, and this he
+proposed to the Committee.
+
+
+"I will take with me 1200 copies," he wrote, {193a} "which I will
+engage to dispose of for little or much to the wild people of the
+wild regions which I intend to visit; as for the rest of the edition,
+it must be disposed of, if possible, in a different way--I may say
+the usual way; part must be entrusted to booksellers, part to
+colporteurs, and a depot must be established at Madrid.  Such work is
+every person's work, and to anyone may be confided the execution of
+it; it is a mere affair of trade.  What I wish to be employed in is
+what, I am well aware, no other individual will undertake to do:
+namely, to scatter the Word upon the mountains, amongst the valleys
+and the inmost recesses of the worst and most dangerous parts of
+Spain, where the people are more fierce, fanatic and, in a word,
+Carlist."
+
+
+In the same letter Borrow shows how thoroughly he understood his own
+character when he wrote:
+
+
+"I shall not feel at all surprised should it [the plan] be
+disapproved of all-together; but I wish it to be understood that in
+that event I could do nothing further than see the work through the
+press, as I am confident that whatever ardour and zeal I at present
+feel in the cause would desert me immediately, and that I should
+neither be able nor willing to execute anything which might be
+suggested.  I wish to engage in nothing which would not allow me to
+depend entirely on myself.  It would be heart-breaking to me to
+remain at Madrid expending the Society's money, with almost the
+certainty of being informed eventually by the booksellers and their
+correspondents that the work has no sale.  In a word, to make sure
+that some copies find their way among the people, I must be permitted
+to carry them to the people myself."
+
+
+He goes on to inform Mr Brandram that in anticipation of the
+acquiescence of the Committee in his schemes, he has purchased, for
+about 12 pounds, one of the smuggler's horses, which he has preferred
+to a mule, on account of the expense of the popular hybrid, and also
+because of its enormous appetite, to satisfy which two pecks of
+barley and a proportionate amount of straw are required each twenty-
+four hours, as the beast must be fed every four hours, day and night.
+Thus the members of the Committee learned something about the ways of
+the mule.
+
+The response to this suggestion was a resolution passed by the Sub-
+Committee for General Purposes, by which Borrow was permitted to
+enter into correspondence with the principal booksellers and other
+persons favourable to the dissemination of the Scriptures.  In a
+covering letter {194a}  Mr Brandram very pertinently enquired, "Can
+the people in these wilds read?"  Whilst not wishing to put a final
+negative to the proposal, the Secretary asked if there were no middle
+course.  Could Borrow not establish a depot at some principal place,
+and from it make excursions occupying two or three days each,
+"instead of devoting yourself wholly to the wild people."
+
+Borrow assured Mr Brandram that he had misunderstood.  The care of
+"the wild people" was only to be incidental on his visits to towns
+and villages to establish depots or agencies.  "On my way," he wrote,
+"I intended to visit the secret and secluded spots amongst the rugged
+hills and mountains, and to talk to the people, after my manner, of
+Christ." {194b}
+
+It was on 3rd April that Borrow had received the letter from Earl
+Street authorising him "to undertake the tour suggested . . . for the
+purpose of circulating the Spanish New Testament in some of the
+principal cities of Spain."  He was requested to write as frequently
+as possible, giving an account of his adventures.  At the same time
+Mr Brandram wrote:  "You will perceive by the Resolution that nearly
+all your requests are complied with.  You have authority to go forth
+with your horses, and may you have a prosperous journey . . .  Pray
+for wisdom to discern between presumptuousness and want of Faith.
+{195a}
+
+The printing of the 5000 copies of the New Testament in Spanish was
+completed early in April, but there was considerable delay over the
+binding.  The actual date of publication was 1st May.  The work had
+been well done, and was "allowed by people who have perused it, and
+with no friendly feeling, to be one of the most correct works that
+have ever issued from the press in Spain, and to be an exceedingly
+favourable specimen of typography and paper." {195b}
+
+In addition to the contrabandista's horse, Borrow had acquired "a
+black Andalusian stallion of great size and strength, and capable of
+performing a journey of a hundred leagues in a week's time." {195c}
+In spite of his unbroken state, Borrow decided to purchase the
+animal, relying upon "a cargo of bibles" to reduce him to obedience.
+It was with this black Andalusian that he created a sensation by
+riding about Madrid, "with a Russian skin for a saddle, and without
+stirrups.  Altogether making so conspicuous a figure that [the
+Marques de] Santa Coloma hesitated, and it needed all his courage to
+be seen riding with him.  At this period Borrow spent a good deal of
+money and lived very freely (i.e., luxuriously) in Spain.  From the
+point of view of the Marques, a Spanish Roman Catholic, Borrow was
+excessively bigoted, and fond of attacking Roman Catholics and
+Catholicism.  He evidently, however, liked him as a companion; but he
+says Borrow never, as far as he saw or could learn, spoke of religion
+to his Gypsy friends, and that he soon noticed his difference of
+attitude towards them.  He was often going to the British Embassy,
+and he thinks was considered a great bore there." {195d}
+
+The unanimous advice of Borrow's friends, Protestant and Roman
+Catholic, was "that for the present I should proceed with the utmost
+caution, but without concealing the object of my mission." {196a}  He
+was to avoid offending people's prejudices and endeavour everywhere
+to keep on good terms with the clergy, "at least one-third of whom
+are known to be anxious for the dissemination of the Word of God,
+though at the same time unwilling to separate themselves from the
+discipline and ceremonials of Rome." {196b}
+
+Thus equipped with sage counsel, Borrow was just about to start upon
+his journey into the North, when he found it necessary to dismiss his
+servant owing to misconduct.  This caused delay.  Through Mr O'Shea,
+the banker, he got to know Antonio Buchini, the Greek of
+Constantinople, who, of all the strange characters Borrow had met he
+considered "the most surprising." {196c}  Antonio's vices were
+sufficiently obvious to discourage anyone from attempting to discover
+his virtues.  He loved change, quarrelled with everybody, masters,
+mistresses, and fellow-servants.  Borrow engaged him; but looked to
+the future with misgiving.  Antonio unquestionably had his bad
+points; yet he was a treasure compared with the Spaniard whom he
+succeeded.  This man was much given to drink and was always engaged
+in some quarrel.  He drew his terrible knife, such as all Spaniards
+carry, upon all who offended him.  On one occasion Borrow saved from
+his wrath a poor maid-servant who had incurred his ire by burning a
+herring she was toasting for him.  Antonio's virtues comprised an
+unquestioned honesty and devotion, and on the whole he was a
+desirable servant in a country where such virtues were extremely
+rare.
+
+It was not until 15th May that Borrow, accompanied by Antonio, was
+able to get away from Madrid.  A few days previously he had
+contracted "a severe cold which terminated in a shrieking,
+disagreeable cough."  This, following on a fortnight's attack of
+influenza, proved difficult to shake off.  Finding himself scarcely
+able to stand, he at length appealed to a barber-surgeon, who drew 16
+oz. of blood, assuring his patient that on the following day he would
+be well enough to start.
+
+That same evening Mr Villiers sent round to Borrow's lodgings
+informing him that he had decided to help him by every means in his
+power.  He announced his intention of purchasing a large number of
+the Testaments, and despatching them to the various British Consuls
+in Spain, with instructions "to employ all the means which their
+official situation should afford them to circulate the books in
+question, and to assure their being noticed." {197a}  They were also
+to render every assistance in their power to Borrow "as a friend of
+Mr Villiers, and a person in the success of whose enterprise he
+himself took the warmest interest." {197b}  Mr Villiers' interest in
+Borrow's mission seems to have led him into a diplomatic
+indiscretion.  Borrow himself confesses that he could scarcely
+believe his ears.  Although assured of the British Minister's
+friendly attitude, he "could never expect that he would come forward
+in so noble, and to say the least of it, considering his high
+diplomatic situation, so bold and decided a manner." {197c}  This act
+of friendliness becomes a personal tribute to Borrow, when it is
+remembered that at first Mr Villiers had been by no means well
+disposed towards the Bible Society.
+
+Before leaving Madrid, Borrow had circularised all the principal
+booksellers, offering to supply the New Testament at fifteen reals a
+copy, the actual cost price; but he was not sanguine as to the
+result, for he found the Spaniard "short-sighted and . . . so utterly
+unacquainted with the rudiments of business." {198a}  Advertisements
+had been inserted in all the principal newspapers stating that the
+booksellers of Madrid were now in a position to supply the New
+Testament in Spanish, unencumbered by obscuring notes and comments.
+Borrow also provided for an advertisement to be inserted each week
+during his absence, which he anticipated would be about five months.
+After that he knew not what would happen--there was always China.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII:  MAY-OCTOBER 1837
+
+
+
+The prediction of the surgeon-barber was fulfilled; by the next
+morning the fever and cough had considerably abated, although the
+patient was still weak from loss of blood.  This, however, did not
+hinder him from mounting his black Andalusian, and starting upon his
+initial journey of distribution.  On arriving at Salamanca, his first
+objective, he immediately sought out the principal bookseller and
+placed with him copies of the New Testament.  He also inserted an
+advertisement in the local newspaper, stating that the volume was the
+only guide to salvation; at the same time he called attention to the
+great pecuniary sacrifices that the Bible Society was making in order
+to proclaim Christ crucified.  This advertisement he caused to be
+struck off in considerable numbers as bills and posted in various
+parts of the town, and he even went so far as to affix one to the
+porch of the church.  He also distributed them as he progressed
+through the villages. {199a}
+
+From Salamanca (10th June) Borrow journeyed to Valladolid, and from
+thence to Leon, {200a} (a hotbed of Carlism), where the people were
+ignorant and brutal and refused to the stranger a glass of water,
+unless he were prepared to pay for it.  At Leon he was seized by a
+fever that prostrated him for a week.  He also experienced marked
+antagonism from the clergy, who threatened every direful consequence
+to whosoever read or purchased "the accursed books" which he brought.
+A more serious evidence of their displeasure was shown by the action
+they commenced in the ecclesiastical court against the bookseller
+whom Borrow had arranged with to act as agent for his Testaments.
+The bookseller himself did not mend matters by fixing upon the doors
+of the cathedral itself one of the advertisements that he had
+received with the books.
+
+When sufficiently recovered to travel, Borrow proceeded to Astorga,
+which he reached with the utmost difficulty owing to bad roads and
+the fierce heat.
+
+
+"We were compelled to take up our abode," he writes, {200b} "in a
+wretched hovel full of pigs' vermin and misery, and from this place I
+write, for this morning I felt myself unable to proceed on my
+journey, being exhausted with illness, fatigue and want of food, for
+scarcely anything is to be obtained; but I return God thanks and
+glory for being permitted to undergo these crosses and troubles for
+His Word's sake.  I would not exchange my present situation,
+unenviable as some may think it, for a throne."
+
+
+Thus Borrow wrote when burning with fever, after having just been
+told to vacate his room at the posada, and having his luggage flung
+into the yard to make room for the occupants of the "waggon" from
+Madrid to Coruna.
+
+From Astorga he proceeded by way of Puerto de Manzanal, Bembibre,
+Cacabelos, Villafranca, Puerto de Fuencebadon and Nogales, "through
+the wildest mountains and wildernesses" to Lugo.
+
+Owing to the unsafety of the roads, it was customary for travellers
+to attach themselves to the Grand Post, which was always guarded by
+an escort.  At Nogales Borrow joined the mail courier; but as a rule
+he was too independent, too much in a hurry, and too indifferent to
+danger to wait for such protection against the perils of the robber-
+infested roads.  He has given the following graphic account "of the
+grand post from Madrid to Coruna, attended by a considerable escort,
+and an immense number of travellers . . . We were soon mounted and in
+the street, amidst a confused throng of men and quadrupeds.  The
+light of a couple of flambeaus, which were borne before the courier,
+shone on the arms of several soldiers, seemingly drawn up on either
+side of the road; the darkness, however, prevented me from
+distinguishing objects very clearly.  The courier himself was mounted
+on a little shaggy pony; before and behind him were two immense
+portmanteaus, or leather sacks, the ends of which nearly touched the
+ground.  For about a quarter of an hour there was much hubbub,
+shouting, and trampling, at the end of which period the order was
+given to proceed.  Scarcely had we left the village when the
+flambeaus were extinguished, and we were left in almost total
+darkness.  In this manner we proceeded for several hours, up hill and
+down dale, but generally at a very slow pace.  The soldiers who
+escorted us from time to time sang patriotic songs . . . At last the
+day began to break, and I found myself amidst a train of two or three
+hundred people, some on foot, but the greater part mounted, either on
+mules or the pony mares:  I could not distinguish a single horse
+except my own and Antonio's.  A few soldiers were thinly scattered
+along the road." {201a}
+
+After about a week's stay at Lugo, Borrow again attached himself to
+the Grand Post; but tiring of its slow and deliberate progress, he
+decided to push on alone, and came very near to falling a prey to the
+banditti.  He was suddenly confronted by two of the fraternity, who
+presented their carbines, "which they probably intended to discharge
+into my body, but they took fright at the noise of Antonio's horse,
+who was following a little way behind." {202a}
+
+The night was spent at Betanzos, where the black Andalusian was
+stricken with "a deep, hoarse cough."  Remembering a prophetic remark
+that had been made by a roadside acquaintance to the effect that "the
+man must be mad who brings a horse to Galicia, and doubly so he who
+brings an entero," Borrow, determined to have the animal bled, sent
+for a farrier, meanwhile rubbing down his steed with a quart of anis
+brandy.  The farrier demanded an ounce of gold for the operation,
+which decided Borrow to perform it himself.  With a large fleam that
+he possessed, he twice bled the Andalusian, to the astonishment of
+the discomfited farrier, and saved its valuable life, also an ounce
+of gold.  Next day he and Antonio walked to Coruna, leading their
+horses.
+
+At Coruna were five hundred copies of the New Testament that had been
+sent on from Madrid.  So far Borrow had himself disposed of sixty-
+five copies, irrespective of those sold at Lugo and other places by
+means of the advertisement.  These books were all sold at prices
+ranging from 10 to 12 reals each.  Borrow made a special point of
+this, "to give a direct lie to the assertion" that the Bible Society,
+having no vent for the Bibles and New Testaments it printed, was
+forced either to give them away or sell them by auction, when they
+were purchased as waste paper.
+
+The condition of the roads at that period was so bad, on account of
+robbers and Carlists, that it was forbidden to anyone to travel along
+the thoroughfare leading to Santiago unless in company with the mail
+courier and his escort of soldiers.  Unfortunately for Borrow his
+black Andalusian was not of a companionable disposition, and to bring
+him near other horses was to invite a fierce contest.  On the rare
+occasions that he did travel with the Grand Post, Borrow was
+frequently involved in difficulties on account of the entero's
+unsociable nature; but as he was deeply attached to the noble beast,
+he retained him and suffered dangers rather than give up the
+companion of many an adventure.
+
+Some idea may be obtained of the state of rural Spain in 1837, when
+the highways teemed with "patriots" bent upon robbing friend and foe
+alike and afterwards assassinating or mutilating their victims, from
+a story that Borrow tells of how a viper-catcher, who was engaged in
+pursuing his calling in the neighbourhood of Orense, fell into the
+hands of these miscreants, who robbed and stripped him.  They then
+pinioned his hands behind him and drew over his head the mouth of the
+bag containing the LIVING vipers, which they fastened round his neck
+and listened with satisfaction to the poor wretch's cries.  The
+reptiles stung their victim to madness, and after having run raving
+through several villages he eventually fell dead. {203a}
+
+Making Coruna his headquarters, Borrow proceeded to Santiago,
+"travelling with the courier or weekly post," and from thence to
+Padron, Pontevedra, and Vigo.  At Vigo he was apprehended as a spy,
+but immediately released.  It was whilst at Santiago that he repeated
+an experiment he had previously made at Valladolid.
+
+
+"I . . . sallied forth," he writes, {203b} "alone and on horseback,
+and bent my course to a distant village; on my arrival, which took
+place just after the siesta or afternoon's nap had concluded, I
+proceeded . . . to the market place, where I spread a horse-cloth on
+the ground, upon which I deposited my books.  I then commenced crying
+with a loud voice:  'Peasants, peasants, I bring you the Word of God
+at a cheap price.  I know you have but little money, but I bring it
+you at whatever you can command, at four or three reals, according to
+your means.'  I thus went on till a crowd gathered round me, who
+examined the books with attention, many of them reading aloud, but I
+had not long to wait; . . . my cargo was disposed of almost
+instantaneously, and I mounted my horse without a question being
+asked me, and returned to my temporary abode lighter than I came."
+
+
+Borrow did not repeat the experiment for fear of giving offence to
+the clergy.  The new means of distribution was to be used only as a
+last resource.
+
+Arriving at Padron on the return journey, Borrow found that he had
+only one book left.  He determined to send Antonio forward with the
+horses to await him at Coruna, whilst he made an excursion to Cape
+Finisterre.
+
+
+"It would be," he says, "difficult to assign any plausible reason for
+the ardent desire which I entertained to visit this place; but I
+remembered that last year I had escaped almost by a miracle from
+shipwreck and death on the rocky sides of this extreme point of the
+Old World, and I thought that to convey the Gospel to a place so wild
+and remote might perhaps be considered an acceptable pilgrimage in
+the eyes of my Maker." {204a}
+
+
+Hiring a guide and a pony, he reached the Cape, after surmounting
+tremendous difficulties, and on arrival he and his guide were
+arrested as Carlist spies. {204b}  In all probability he would have
+been shot, such was the certainty of the Alcalde that he was a spy,
+had not the professional hero of the place come forward and, after
+having cross-examined him as to his knowledge of "knife" and "fork,"
+the only two English words the Spaniard knew, pronounced him English,
+and eventually conveyed him to the Alcalde of Convucion, who released
+him.  On the man who had saved him Borrow privately bestowed a
+gratuity, and publicly the copy of the New Testament that had led to
+the expedition.  He then returned to Coruna, by his journey having
+accomplished "what has long been one of the ardent wishes of my
+heart.  I have carried the Gospel to the extreme point of the Old
+World." {205a}
+
+The black Andalusian was totally unfitted for the long mountainous
+journey into the Asturias that Borrow now planned to undertake, and
+he decided to dispose of him.  He was greatly attached to the
+creature, notwithstanding his vicious habits and the difficulties
+that arose out of them.  Now the entero would be engaged in a deadly
+struggle with some gloomy mule; again, by rushing among a crowd
+outside a posada, he would do infinite damage and earn for his master
+and himself an evil name.  Borrow thus announces to the Bible Society
+the sale of its property:  "This animal cost the Society about 2000
+reals at Madrid; I, however, sold him for 3000 at Coruna,
+notwithstanding that he has suffered much from the hard labour which
+he had been subjected to in our wanderings in Galicia, and likewise
+from bad provender." {205b}
+
+Borrow next set out upon an expedition to Orviedo in the Asturias,
+{205c} then in daily expectation of being attacked by the Carlists.
+It was at Orviedo that he received a striking tribute from a number
+of Spanish gentlemen.
+
+
+"A strange adventure has just occurred to me," he wrote. {205d}  "I
+am in the ancient town of Orviedo, in a very large, scantily
+furnished and remote room of an ancient posada, formerly a palace of
+the Counts of Santa Cruz, it is past ten at night and the rain is
+descending in torrents.  I ceased writing on hearing numerous
+footsteps ascending the creeking stairs which lead to my apartment--
+the door was flung open, and in walked nine men of tall stature,
+marshalled by a little hunchbacked personage.  They were all muffled
+in the long cloaks of Spain, but I instantly knew by their demeanour
+that they were caballeros, or gentlemen.  They placed themselves in a
+rank before the table where I was sitting; suddenly and
+simultaneously they all flung back their cloaks, and I perceived that
+every one bore a book in his hand, a book which I knew full well.
+After a pause, which I was unable to break, for I sat lost in
+astonishment and almost conceived myself to be visited by
+apparitions, the hunchback advancing somewhat before the rest, said,
+in soft silvery tones, 'Senor Cavalier, was it you who brought this
+book to the Asturias?'  I now supposed that they were the civil
+authorities of the place come to take me into custody, and, rising
+from my seat, I exclaimed:  'It certainly was I, and it is my glory
+to have done so; the book is the New Testament of God; I wish it was
+in my power to bring a million.'  'I heartily wish so too,' said the
+little personage with a sigh; 'be under no apprehension, Sir
+Cavalier, these gentlemen are my friends.  We have just purchased
+these books in the shop where you have placed them for sale, and have
+taken the liberty of calling upon you in order to return you our
+thanks for the treasure you have brought us.  I hope you can furnish
+us with the Old Testament also!'  I replied that I was sorry to
+inform him that at present it was entirely out of my power to comply
+with his wish, as I had no Old Testaments in my possession, but I did
+not despair of procuring some speedily from England. {206a}  He then
+asked me a great many questions concerning my Biblical travels in
+Spain and my success, and the views entertained by the Society in
+respect to Spain, adding that he hoped we should pay particular
+attention to the Asturias, which he assured me was the best ground in
+the Peninsula for our labour.  After about half an hour's
+conversation, he suddenly said in the English language, 'Good night,
+Sir,' wrapped his cloak around him and walked out as he had come.
+His companions, who had hitherto not uttered a word, all repeated,
+'Good night, Sir,' and adjusting their cloaks followed him."
+
+
+This anecdote greatly impressed the General Committee.  Mr Brandram
+wrote (15th November 1837):  "We were all deeply interested with your
+ten gentlemen of Orviedo.  I have introduced them at several
+meetings."
+
+Whilst at Orviedo, Borrow began to be very uneasy about the state of
+affairs at the capital.  "Madrid," he wrote, {207a} "is the depot of
+our books, and I am apprehensive that in the revolutions and
+disturbances which at present seem to threaten it, our whole stock
+may perish.  True it is that in order to reach Madrid I should have
+to pass through the midst of the Carlist hordes, who would perhaps
+slay or make me prisoner; but I am at present so much accustomed to
+perilous adventure, and have hitherto experienced so many fortunate
+escapes, that the dangers which infest the route would not deter me a
+moment from venturing.  But there is no certain intelligence, and
+Madrid may be in safety or on the brink of falling."
+
+Another factor that made him desirous of returning to the capital was
+that, ever since leaving Coruna, he had been afflicted with a
+dysentery and, later, with ophthalmia, which resulted from it, and he
+was anxious to obtain proper medical advice.  He determined, however,
+first to carry out his project of visiting Santander, which he
+reached by way of Villa Viciosa, Colunga, Riba de Sella, Llanes,
+Colombres, San Vicente, Santillana.  It was at Santander that he
+encountered the unfortunate Flinter, {208a} as brave with his sword
+as with his tongue.
+
+Instructions had been given in a letter to Borrego to forward to
+Santander two hundred copies of the New Testament; but, much to
+Borrow's disappointment, he found that they had not arrived.  He
+thought that either they had fallen into the hands of the Carlists,
+or his letter of instruction had miscarried:  as a matter of fact
+they did not leave Madrid until 30th October, the day before Borrow
+arrived at the capital.  Thus his journey was largely wasted.  It
+would be folly to remain at Santander, where, in spite of the
+strictest economy, his expenses amounted to two pounds a day, whilst
+a further supply of books was obtained.  Accordingly he determined to
+make for Madrid without further delay.
+
+Purchasing a small horse, and notwithstanding that he was so ill as
+scarcely to be able to support himself; indifferent to the fact that
+the country between Santander and Madrid was overrun with Carlists,
+whose affairs in Castile had not prospered; too dispirited to collect
+his thoughts sufficiently to write to Mr Brandram, he set out,
+accompanied by Antonio, "determined to trust, as usual, in the
+Almighty and to venture."  Physical ailments, however, did not in any
+way cause him to forget why he had come to Santander, and before
+leaving he made tentative arrangements with the booksellers of the
+town as to what they should do in the event of his being able to send
+them a supply of Testaments.
+
+That journey of a hundred leagues was a nightmare.  "Robberies,
+murders, and all kinds of atrocity were perpetrated before, behind,
+and on both sides" of them; but they passed through it all as if
+travelling along an English highway.  Even when met at the entrance
+of the Black Pass by a man, his face covered with blood, who besought
+him not to enter the pass, where he had just been robbed of all he
+possessed, Borrow, without making reply, proceeded on his way.  He
+was too ill to weigh the risks, and Antonio followed cheerfully
+wherever his master went.  Madrid was reached on 31st October. {209a}
+The next day Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram:  "People say we have been
+very lucky; Antonio says, 'It was so written'; but I say, Glory be to
+the Lord for His mercies vouchsafed."
+
+The expedition to the Northern Provinces had occupied five and a half
+months.  Every kind of fatigue had been experienced, dangers had been
+faced, even courted, and every incident of the road turned to further
+the end in view--the distribution of the Scriptures in Spain.  The
+countryside had proved itself ignorant and superstitious, and the
+towns eager, not for the Word of God but "for stimulant narratives,
+and amongst too many a lust for the deistical writings of the French,
+especially for those of Talleyrand, which have been translated into
+Spanish and published by the press of Barcelona, and for which I was
+frequently pestered." {209b}  Antonio had proved himself a unique
+body-servant and companion, and if with a previous employer he had
+valued his personal comfort so highly as to give notice because his
+mistress's pet quail disturbed his slumbers, he was nevertheless
+utterly indifferent to the hardships and discomforts that he endured
+when with Borrow, and always proved cheerful and willing.
+
+Borrow had "by private sale disposed of one hundred and sixteen
+Testaments to individuals entirely of the lower classes, namely,
+muleteers, carmen, contrabandistas, etc." {209c}  He had dared to
+undertake what perhaps only he was capable of carrying to a
+successful issue; for, left alone to make his own plans and conduct
+the campaign along his own lines, Borrow has probably never been
+equalled as a missionary, strange though the term may seem when
+applied to him.  His fear of God did not hinder him from making other
+men fear God's instrument, himself.  His fine capacity for affairs,
+together with what must have appeared to the clergy of the districts
+through which he passed his outrageous daring, conspired to his
+achieving what few other men would have thought, and probably none
+were capable of undertaking.  A missionary who rode a noble, black
+Andalusian stallion, who could use a fleam as well as a blacksmith's
+hammer, who could ride barebacked, and, above all, made men fear him
+as a physical rather than a spiritual force, was new in Spain, as
+indeed elsewhere.  The very novelty of Borrow's methods, coupled with
+the daring and unconventional independence of the man himself,
+ensured the success of his mission.  There was something of the
+Camel-Driver of Mecca about his missionary work.  He saw nothing
+anomalous in being possessed of a strong arm as well as a Christian
+spirit.  He would endeavour to win over the ungodly; but woe betide
+them if they should attempt to pit their strength against his.
+Borrow's own comment upon his journey in the Northern Provinces was,
+"Insignificant are the results of man's labours compared with the
+swelling ideas of his presumption; something, however, had been
+effected by the journey which I had just concluded." {210a}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV:  NOVEMBER 1837-APRIL 1838
+
+
+
+Great changes had taken place in Madrid during Borrow's absence.  The
+Carlists had actually appeared before its gates, although they had
+subsequently retired.  Liberalism had been routed and a Moderado
+Cabinet, under the leadership of Count Ofalia, ruled the city and
+such part of the country as was sufficiently complaisant as to permit
+itself to be ruled.  As the Moderados represented the Court faction,
+Borrow saw that he had little to expect from them.  He was
+unacquainted with any of the members of the Cabinet, and, what was
+far more serious for him, the relations between the new Government
+and Sir George Villiers {211a} were none too cordial, as the British
+Minister had been by no means favourable to the new ministry.
+
+Having written to Mr Brandram telling of his arrival in Madrid,
+"begging pardon for all errors of commission and omission," and
+confessing himself "a frail and foolish vessel," that had
+"accomplished but a slight portion of what I proposed in my vanity,"
+Borrow proceeded to disprove his own assertion.  He found the affairs
+of the Bible Society in a far from flourishing condition.  The
+Testaments had not sold to any considerable extent, for which "only
+circumstances and the public poverty" were the cause, as Dr Usoz
+explained.
+
+To awaken interest in his campaign, Borrow planned to print a
+thousand advertisements, which were to be posted in various parts of
+the city, and to employ colporteurs to vend the books in the streets.
+He despatched consignments of books to towns he had visited that
+required them, and in the enthusiasm of his eager and active mind
+foresaw that, "as the circle widens in the lake into which a
+stripling has cast a pebble, so will the circle of our usefulness
+continue widening, until it has embraced the whole vast region of
+Spain." {212a}
+
+It soon became evident that there was to be a very strong opposition.
+A furious attack upon the Bible Society was made in a letter
+addressed to the editors of El Espanol on 5th November, prefixed to a
+circular of the Spiritual Governor of Valencia, forbidding the
+purchase or reading of the London edition of Father Scio's Bible.
+The letter described the Bible Society as "an infernal society," and
+referred in passing to "its accursed fecundity."  It also strongly
+resented the omission of the Apocrypha from the Scio Bible.  Borrow
+promptly replied to this attack in a letter of great length, and
+entirely silenced his antagonist, whom he described to Mr Brandram
+(20th Nov.) as "an unprincipled benefice-hunting curate."  "You will
+doubtless deem it too warm and fiery," he writes, referring to his
+reply, "but tameness and gentleness are of little avail when
+surrounded by the vassal slaves of bloody Rome." {212a}  Borrow's
+response to the "benefice-hunting curate" not only silenced him, but
+was listened to by the General Committee of the Society "with much
+pleasure."
+
+The cause of the trouble in Valencia lay with the other agent of the
+Bible Society in Spain, Lieutenant James Newenham Graydon, R.N., who
+first took up the work of distributing the Scriptures at Gibraltar in
+1835.  Here he became associated with the Rev. W. H. Rule, of the
+Wesleyan Methodist Society.  "The Lieutenant, who seems to have
+combined the personal charm of the Irish gentleman with some of the
+perfervid incautiousness of the Keltic temperament, finding himself
+unemployed at Gibraltar, resolved to do what lay in his power for the
+spiritual enlightenment of Spain.  Without receiving a regular
+commission from any society, he took up single-handed the task which
+he had imposed upon himself." {213a}
+
+Borrow had first met Lieutenant Graydon at Madrid, in the summer of
+1836, where he saw him two or three times.  When Graydon left, on
+account of the heat, Borrow had removed to Graydon's lodgings as
+being more comfortable than his own.  The prohibition in Valencia was
+directly due to the indiscretion and incaution of Graydon.  The
+Vicar-General of the province gave as a reason for his action, an
+advertisement that had appeared in the Diario Comercial of Valencia,
+undertaking to supply Bibles gratis to those who could not afford to
+buy them.  For this advertisement Graydon was admonished by the
+General Committee, which refused to entertain his plea that, being
+unpaid, he was not, strictly speaking, an agent of the Bible Society.
+He was given to understand that as the Society was responsible for
+his acts he must be guided by its views and wishes.
+
+The next occasion on which Borrow came into conflict with this
+impulsive missionary free-lance was in March 1838, when he heard from
+the Rev. W. H. Rule that Graydon was on his way to Andalusia.  Borrow
+immediately wrote to Mr Brandram that he, acting on the advice of Sir
+George Villiers, had already planned an expedition into that
+province, and furthermore that he had despatched there a number of
+Testaments.  He explained to Mr Brandram that he was apprehensive "of
+the re-acting at Seville of the Valencian Drama, which I have such
+unfortunate cause to rue, as I am the victim on whom an aggravated
+party have wreaked their vengeance, and for the very cogent reason
+that I was within their reach." {213b}  On this occasion Graydon was
+instructed not to start upon his projected journey, although Mr
+Brandram gave the order much against his own inclination. {214a}
+
+One great difficulty that Borrow had to contend with was the apathy
+of the Madrid booksellers, who "gave themselves no manner of trouble
+to secure the sale, and even withheld [the] advertisements from the
+public." {214b}  This determined him to open a shop himself, and,
+accordingly, towards the end of November, he secured premises in the
+Calle del Principe, one of the main thoroughfares, for which he
+agreed to pay a rent of eight reals a day.  He furnished the premises
+handsomely, with glass cases and chandeliers, and caused to be
+painted in large yellow characters the sign "Despacho de la Sociedad
+Biblica y Estrangera" (Depot of the Biblical and Foreign Society).
+He engaged a Gallegan (Jose Calzado, whom he called Pepe) as
+salesman, and on 27th November formally opened his new premises.
+Customers soon presented themselves; but many were disappointed on
+finding that they could not obtain the Bible.  "I could have sold ten
+times the amount of what I did," Borrow writes.  "I MUST therefore be
+furnished with Bibles instanter; send me therefore the London
+edition, bad as it is, say 500 copies." {214c}
+
+To facilitate the passing of these books through the customs, Borrow
+suggested that they should be consigned to the British Consul at
+Cadiz, who was friendly to the Society and "would have sufficient
+influence to secure their admission into Spain.  But the most
+advisable way," he goes on to explain with great guile, "would be to
+pack them in two chests, placing at the top Bibles in English and
+other languages, for there is a demand, viz., 100 English, 100
+French, 50 German, 50 Hebrew, 50 Greek, 10 Modern Greek, 10 Persian,
+20 Arabic.  PRAY DO NOT FAIL." {215a}
+
+When Sir George Villiers first obtained from Isturitz permission for
+Borrow to print and sell the New Testament in Spanish without notes,
+he had cautioned him "to use the utmost circumspection, and in order
+to pursue his vocation with success, to avoid offending popular
+prejudices, which would not fail to be excited against a Protestant
+and a Foreigner engaged in the propagation of the Gospel." {215b}
+This warning the British Minister had repeated frequently since.  It
+was without consulting Sir George that Borrow opened his depot, and
+"imprudently painted upon the window that it was the Depot of the
+London (sic) Bible Society for the sale of Bibles.  I told him," Sir
+George writes "that such a measure would render the interference of
+the Authorities inevitable, and so it turned out." {215c}
+
+Borrow now lost the services of the faithful Antonio, who, on the
+last day of the year, informed him that he had become unsettled and
+dissatisfied with everything at his master's lodgings, including the
+house, the furniture, and the landlady herself.  Therefore he had
+hired himself out to a count for four dollars a month less than he
+was receiving from Borrow, because he was "fond of change, though it
+be for the worse.  Adieu, mon maitre," he said in parting; "may you
+be as well served as you deserve.  Should you chance, however, to
+have any pressing need de mes soins, send for me without hesitation,
+and I will at once give my new master warning."  A few days later
+Borrow engaged a Basque, named Francisco, who "to the strength of a
+giant joined the disposition of a lamb," {216a} and who had been
+strongly recommended to him.
+
+On his return from a hurried visit to Toledo, Borrow found his
+Despacho succeeding as well as could be expected.  To call attention
+to his premises he now took an extremely daring step.  He caused to
+be printed three thousand copies of an advertisement on paper yellow,
+blue, and crimson, "with which I almost covered the sides of the
+streets" he wrote, "and besides this inserted notices in all the
+journals and periodicals, employing also a man, after the London
+fashion, to parade the streets with a placard, to the astonishment of
+the populace." {216b}  The result of this move, Borrow declared, was
+that every man, woman and child in Madrid became aware of the
+existence of his Despacho, as well they might.  In spite of this
+commercial enterprise, the first month's trading showed a sale of
+only between seventy and eighty New Testaments, and ten Bibles,
+{216c} these having been secured from a Spanish bookseller who had
+brought them secretly from Gibraltar, but who was afraid to sell them
+himself.  Mr Brandram's comment upon the letter from Borrow telling
+of the posters was that its contents had "afforded us no little
+merriment.  The idea of your placards and placard-bearers in Madrid
+is indeed a novel one.  It cannot but be effectual in giving
+publicity.  I sincerely hope it may not be prejudicial." {216d}
+
+When in England, at the end of 1836, Borrow had been authorised by
+the Bible Society to find "a person competent to translate the
+Scriptures in Basque."  On 27th February 1837, he wrote telling Mr
+Brandram that he had become "acquainted with a gentleman well versed
+in that dialect, of which I myself have some knowledge."  Dr Oteiza,
+the domestic physician of the Marques de Salvatierra, was accordingly
+commissioned to proceed with the work, for which, when completed, he
+was paid the sum of "8 pounds and a few odd shillings."  Borrow
+reported to Mr Brandram (7th June 1837):
+
+
+"I have examined it with much attention, and find it a very faithful
+version.  The only objection which can be brought against it is that
+Spanish words are frequently used to express ideas for which there
+are equivalents in Basque; but this language, as spoken at present in
+Spain, is very corrupt, and a work written entirely in the Basque of
+Larramendi's Dictionary would be intelligible to very few.  I have
+read passages from it to men of Guipuscoa, who assured me that they
+had no difficulty in understanding it, and that it was written in the
+colloquial style of the province."
+
+
+Borrow had "obtained a slight acquaintance" with Basque when a youth,
+which he lost no opportunity of extending by mingling with Biscayans
+during his stay in the Peninsula.  He also considerably improved
+himself in the language by conversing with his Basque servant
+Francisco.  Borrow now decided to print the Gitano and Basque
+versions of St Luke, which he accordingly put in hand; but as the
+compositors were entirely ignorant of both languages, he had to
+exercise the greatest care in reading the proofs.
+
+During his stay in Spain he had found time to translate into the
+dialect of the Spanish gypsies the greater part of the New Testament.
+{217a}  His method had been somewhat original.  Believing that there
+is "no individual, however wicked and hardened, who is utterly
+GODLESS," {217b} he determined to apply his belief to the gypsies.
+To enlist their interest in the work, he determined to allow them to
+do the translating themselves.  At one period of his residence in
+Madrid he was regularly visited by two gypsy women, and these he
+decided to make his translators; for he found the women far more
+amenable than the men.  In spite of the fact that he had already
+translated into Gitano the New Testament, or the greater part of it,
+he would read out to the women from the Spanish version and let them
+translate it into Romany themselves, thus obtaining the correct gypsy
+idiom.  The women looked forward to these gatherings and also to "the
+one small glass of Malaga" with which their host regaled them.  They
+had got as far as the eighth chapter before the meetings ended.  What
+was the moral effect of St Luke upon the minds of two gypsies?
+Borrow confessed himself sceptical; first, because he was acquainted
+with the gypsy character; second, because it came to his knowledge
+that one of the women "committed a rather daring theft shortly
+afterwards, which compelled her to conceal herself for a fortnight."
+{218a}  Borrow comforted himself with the reflection that "it is
+quite possible, however, that she may remember the contents of those
+chapters on her death-bed." {218b}  The translation of the remaining
+chapters was supplied from Borrow's own version begun at Badajos in
+1836.
+
+It is not strange that Borrow should be regarded with suspicion by
+the Spaniards on account of his association with the Gitanos.
+Sometimes there would be as many as seventeen gypsies gathered
+together at his lodgings in the Calle de Santiago.
+
+
+"The people in the street in which I lived," he writes, {218c}
+"seeing such numbers of these strange females continually passing in
+and out, were struck with astonishment, and demanded the reason.  The
+answers which they obtained by no means satisfied them.  'Zeal for
+the conversion of souls--the souls too of Gitanas,--disparate! the
+fellow is a scoundrel.  Besides he is an Englishman, and is not
+baptised; what cares he for souls?  They visit him for other
+purposes.  He makes base ounces, which they carry away and circulate.
+Madrid is already stocked with false money.'  Others were of the
+opinion that we met for the purposes of sorcery and abomination.  The
+Spaniard has no conception that other springs of action exist than
+interest or villany."
+
+
+Borrow was in reality endeavouring to convey to his "little
+congregation," as he called them, some idea of abstract morality.  He
+was bold enough "to speak against their inveterate practices,
+thieving and lying, telling fortunes," etc., and at first experienced
+much opposition.  About the result, he seems to have cherished no
+illusions; still, he wrote a hymn in their dialect which he taught
+his guests to sing.
+
+For some time past it had been obvious to Borrow that he was becoming
+more than ever unpopular with certain interested factions in Madrid,
+who looked upon his missionary labours with angry disapproval.  The
+opening of his Despacho had caused a great sensation.  "The Priests
+and Bigots are teeming with malice and fury," he had written to Mr
+Brandram, {219a} "which hitherto they have thought proper to exhibit
+only in words, as they know that all I do here is favoured by Mr
+Villiers {219b} (sic) . . .  There is no attempt, however atrocious,
+which may not be expected from such people, and were it right and
+seemly for ME, the most insignificant of worms, to make such a
+comparison, I would say that, like Paul at Ephesus, I am fighting
+with wild beasts."  He was attacked in print and endeavours were made
+to incite the people against him as a sorcerer and companion of
+gypsies and witches.  When he decided upon the campaign of the
+posters it would appear, at first glance, that in the claims of the
+merchant Borrow had entirely forgotten the obligations of the
+diplomatist.  On the other hand, he may have foreseen that the
+priestly party would soon force the Government to action, and was
+desirous of selling all the books he could before this happened.  His
+own words seem to indicate that this was the case.
+
+
+"People who know me not," he wrote to Mr Brandram, "nor are
+acquainted with my situation, may be disposed to call me rash; but I
+am far from being so, as I never adopt a venturous course when any
+other is open to me; but I am not a person to be terrified by any
+danger when I see that braving it is the only way to achieve an
+object." {220a}
+
+
+Whatever may have been Borrow's motives, the crisis arrived on 12th
+January, when he received a peremptory order from the Civil Governor
+of Madrid (who had previously sent for and received two copies, to
+submit for examination to the Ecclesiastical Authorities) to sell no
+more of the New Testament in Spanish without notes.  At that period
+the average sale was about twenty copies a day.  "The priests have at
+length 'swooped upon me,'" Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram, three days
+later.  The order did not, however, take him unawares.
+
+Borrow saw that little assistance was to be expected from Sir George
+Villiers, who, for obvious reasons, was not popular with the Ofalia
+ministry, and, accepting the British Minister's advice, he promptly
+complied with the edict.  He recognised that for the time being his
+enemies were paramount.  He accuses the priests of employing the
+ruffian who, one night in a dark street, warned him to discontinue
+selling his "Jewish books," or he would "have a knife 'NAILED IN HIS
+HEART'" to which he replied by telling the fellow to go home, say his
+prayers and inform his employers that he, Borrow, pitied them.  It
+was a few days after this episode that Borrow received the formal
+notice of prohibition.
+
+Consoling himself with the fact that he was not ordered to close his
+Despacho, and refusing the advice that was tendered to him to erase
+from its windows the yellow-lettered sign, he determined to continue
+his campaign with the Bibles that were on their way to him, and the
+Gitano and Basque versions of St Luke as soon as they were ready.
+The prohibition referred only to the Spanish New Testament without
+notes, and in this Borrow took comfort.  He had every reason to feel
+gratified; for, since opening the Despacho, he had sold nearly three
+hundred copies of the New Testament.
+
+At Earl Street it was undoubtedly felt that Borrow had to some extent
+precipitated the present crisis.  On 8th February Mr Brandram wrote
+that, whilst there was no wish on the part of the Committee to
+censure him, they were not altogether surprised at what had occurred;
+for, when they first heard about them, "some DID think that your tri-
+coloured placards and placard-bearer were somewhat calculated to
+provoke what has occurred."  In reply Borrow confessed that the view
+of the "some" gave him "a pang, more especially as I knew from
+undoubted sources that nothing which I had done, said, or written,
+was the original cause of the arbitrary step which had been adopted
+in respect to me." {221a}
+
+The printing of the Gitano and Basque editions of St Luke (500 copies
+{221b} of each) was completed in March, and they were published
+respectively in March and April.  The Gitano version attracted much
+attention.  Some months later Borrow wrote:-
+
+
+"No work printed in Spain ever caused so great and so general a
+sensation, not so much amongst the Gypsies, that peculiar people for
+whom it was intended, as amongst the Spaniards themselves, who,
+though they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low
+and thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest
+in all that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their
+practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to
+cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos, as they are popularly
+called, probably attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the
+lascivious dances of the females.  The apparation, therefore, of the
+Gospel of St Luke at Madrid in the peculiar jargon of these people,
+was hailed as a strange novelty and almost as a wonder, and I believe
+was particularly instrumental in bruiting the name of the Bible
+Society far and wide through Spain, and in creating a feeling far
+from inimical towards it and its proceedings." {222a}
+
+
+The little volume appears to have sold freely among the gypsies.
+"Many of the men," Borrow says, {222b} "understood it, and prized it
+highly, induced of course more by the language than the doctrine; the
+women were particularly anxious to obtain copies, though unable to
+read; but each wished to have one in her pocket, especially when
+engaged in thieving expeditions, for they all looked upon it in the
+light of a charm."
+
+All endeavours to get the prohibition against the sale of the New
+Testament removed proved unavailing.  Borrow's great strength lay in
+the support he received from the British Minister, and, in all
+probability, this prevented his expulsion from Spain, which alone
+would have satisfied his enemies.  At the request of Sir George
+Villiers, he drew up an account of the Bible Society and an
+exposition of its views, telling Count Ofalia, among other things,
+that "the mightiest of earthly monarchs, the late Alexander of
+Russia, was so convinced of the single-mindedness and integrity of
+the British and Foreign Bible Society, that he promoted their efforts
+within his own dominions to the utmost of his ability."  He pointed
+to the condition of Spain, which was "overspread with the thickest
+gloom of heathenish ignorance, beneath which the fiends and demons of
+the abyss seem to be holding their ghastly revels."  He described it
+as "a country in which all sense of right and wrong is forgotten . .
+. where the name of Jesus is scarcely ever mentioned but in
+blasphemy, and His precepts [are] almost utterly unknown . . .
+[where] the few who are enlightened are too much occupied in the
+pursuit of lucre, ambition, or ungodly revenge to entertain a desire
+or thought of bettering the moral state of their countrymen."  This
+report, in which Borrow confesses that he "made no attempts to
+flatter and cajole," must have caused the British Minister some
+diplomatic embarrassment when he read it; but it seems to have been
+presented, although, as is scarcely surprising, it appears to have
+been ineffectual in causing to be removed the ban against which it
+was written as a protest.
+
+The Prime Minister was in a peculiarly unpleasant position.  On the
+one hand there was the British Minister using all his influence to
+get the prohibition rescinded; on the other hand were six bishops,
+including the primate, then resident in Madrid, and the greater part
+of the clergy.  Count Ofalia applied for a copy of the Gipsy St Luke,
+and, seeing in this an opening for a personal appeal, Borrow
+determined to present the volume, specially and handsomely bound, in
+person, probably the last thing that Count Ofalia expected or
+desired.  The interview produced nothing beyond the conviction in
+Borrow's mind that Spain was ruled by a man who possessed the soul of
+a mouse.  Borrow had been received "with great affability," thanked
+for his present, urged to be patient and peaceable, assured of the
+enmity of the clergy, and promised that an endeavour should be made
+to devise some plan that would be satisfactory to him.  The two then
+"parted in kindness," and as he walked away from the palace, Borrow
+wondered "by what strange chance this poor man had become Prime
+Minister of a country like Spain."
+
+In reporting progress to the Bible Society on 17th March Borrow,
+after assuring Mr Brandram that he had "brought every engine into
+play which it was in my power to command," asked for instructions.
+"Shall I wait a little time longer in Madrid," he enquired; "or shall
+I proceed at once on a journey to Andalusia and other places?  I am
+in strength, health and spirits, thanks be to the Lord! and am at all
+times ready to devote myself, body and mind, to His cause." {224a}
+The decision of the Committee was that he should remain at Madrid.
+
+During the time that Borrow had been preparing his Depot in Madrid,
+Lieutenant Graydon had been feverishly active in the South.  On 19th
+April Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram:-
+
+
+"Sir George Villiers has vowed to protect me and has stated so
+publicly . . . He has gone so far as to state to Ofalia and [Don
+Ramon de] Gamboa [the Civil Governor], that provided I be allowed to
+pursue my plans without interruption, he will be my bail (fiador) and
+answerable for everything I do, as he does me the honor to say that
+he knows me, and can confide in MY discretion."
+
+
+In the same letter he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no
+encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir
+George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS
+of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have
+been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at
+home." {224b}  They saw the astonishing success of Graydon in
+distributing the Scripture, and became infused with his enthusiasm,
+oblivious to the fact that the greater the enthusiasm the greater the
+possibilities of indiscretion.  On the other hand Graydon himself saw
+only the glory of the Gospel.  If he were indiscreet, it was because
+he was blinded by the success that attended his efforts, and he
+failed to see the clouds that were gathering. {225a}  Borrow saw the
+danger of Graydon's reckless evangelism, and although he himself had
+few good words for the pope and priestcraft, he recognised that a
+discreet veiling of his opinions was best calculated to further the
+ends he had in view.
+
+About this period Borrow became greatly incensed at the action of the
+Rev. W. H. Rule of Gibraltar in consigning to his care an ex-priest,
+Don Pascual Mann, who, it was alleged, had been persuaded to secede
+from Rome "by certain promises and hopes held out" to him.  He had
+accordingly left his benefice and gone to Gibraltar to receive
+instruction at the hands of Mr Rule.  On his return to Valencia his
+salary was naturally sequestrated, and he was reduced to want.  When
+he arrived at Madrid it was with a letter (12th April) from Mr Rule
+to Borrow, in which it was stated that Mann was sent that he might
+"endeavour to circulate the Holy Scriptures, Religious Tracts and
+books, and if possible prepare the minds of some with a view to the
+future establishment of a Mission in Madrid."
+
+Borrow had commiserated with the unfortunate Mann, even to the extent
+of sending him 500 reals out of his own pocket; but on hearing that
+he was on his way to Madrid to engage in missionary work, he
+immediately wrote a letter of protest to Mr Brandram.  He was angry
+at Mr Rule's conduct in saddling him with Mann, and that without any
+preliminary correspondence.  He had entertained Mr Rule when in
+Madrid, had conversed with him about the unfortunate ex-priest; but
+there had never been any mention of his being sent to Madrid.  Mr
+Rule, on the other hand, thought it had been arranged that Mann
+should be sent to Borrow.  The whole affair appears to have arisen
+out of a misunderstanding.  There was considerable danger to Borrow
+in Mann's presence in the capital; but it was not the thought of the
+danger that incensed him so much as what he conceived to be Mr Rule's
+unwarrantable conduct, and his own deeply-rooted objection to working
+with anyone else.  Mr Brandram repudiated the suggestion that
+assistance had been promised Mann from London (although he authorised
+Borrow to give him ten pounds in his, Brandram's, name), and gave as
+an excuse for what Borrow described as the desertion of the ex-priest
+by those who were responsible for his conversion, that "the man had
+returned of his own accord to Rome," Graydon vouching for the
+accuracy of the statement.
+
+On the other hand, Mann stated that he was persuaded to secede by
+promises made by Graydon and Rule, and induced to sign a document
+purporting to be a separation from the Roman Church.  He further
+stated that he was abandoned because he refused to preach publicly
+against the Chapter of Valencia, which in all probability would have
+resulted in his imprisonment.  Whatever the truth, there appears to
+have been some embarrassment among those responsible for bringing in
+the lost sheep as to what should be done with him.  "I hope that
+Mann's history will be a warning to many of our friends," Borrow
+wrote to Mr Rule and quoted the passage in his letter to Mr Brandram,
+{226a} "and tend to a certain extent to sober down the desire for
+doing what is called at home SMART THINGS, many of which terminate in
+a manner very different from the original expectations of the parties
+concerned."  Mr Brandram thought that Borrow was a little hard upon
+Graydon, and that he had not received "with the due grano salis the
+statements of the unfortunate M."  He intimated, nevertheless, that
+the Committee had no opening for Mann's services.
+
+That Borrow was justified in his anger is shown by the fact that, as
+he had foreseen, he reaped all the odium of Mann's conversion.  The
+Bishop of Cordoba in Council branded him as "a dangerous, pestilent
+person, who under the pretence of selling the Scriptures went about
+making converts, and moreover employed subordinates for the purpose
+of deluding weak and silly people into separation from the Mother
+Church." {227a}
+
+Although Borrow was angry about the Mann episode, he did not allow
+his personal feelings to prevent him from ministering to the needs of
+the poor ex-priest "as far as prudence will allow," when he fell ill.
+He even went the length of writing to Mr Rule, being wishful "not to
+offend him."  None the less he felt that he had not been well
+treated.  To Mr Brandram he wrote reminding him "that all the
+difficulty and danger connected with what has been accomplished in
+Spain have fallen to my share, I having been labouring on the flinty
+rock and sierra, and not in smiling meadows refreshed by sea
+breezes." {227b}
+
+On 14th July 1838 Borrow made the last reference to the ex-priest in
+a letter to Mr Brandram:  "The unfortunate M. is dying of a galloping
+consumption, brought on by distress of mind.  All the medicine in the
+world would not accomplish his cure." {227c}
+
+The watchful eye of the law was still on Borrow, and fearful lest his
+stock of Bibles, of which 500 had arrived from Barcelona, and the
+Gypsy and Basque editions of St Luke should he seized, he hired a
+room where he stored the bulk of the books.  He now advertised the
+two editions of St Luke, with the result that on 16th April a party
+of Alguazils entered the shop and took possession of twenty-five
+copies of the Romany Gospel of St Luke.
+
+On the publication of the Gypsy St Luke, a fresh campaign had been
+opened against Borrow, and accusations of sorcery were made and fears
+expressed as to the results of the publication of the book.
+Application was made by the priestly party to the Civil Governor,
+with the result that all the copies at the Despacho of the Basque and
+Gitano versions of St Luke had been seized.  Borrow states that the
+Alguazils "divided the copies of the gypsy volume among themselves,
+selling subsequently the greater number at a large price, the book
+being in the greatest demand." {228a}  Thus the very officials
+responsible for the seizure and suppression of the Bible Society's
+books in Spain became "unintentionally agents of an heretical
+society." {228b}
+
+Disappointed at the smallness of the spoil, the authorities strove by
+artifice to discover if Borrow still had copies of the books in his
+possession.  To this end they sent to the Despacho spies, who offered
+high prices for copies of the Gitano St Luke, in which their interest
+seemed specially to centre, to the exclusion of the Basque version.
+To these enquiries the same answer was returned, that at present no
+further books would be sold at the Despacho.
+
+As evidence of the high opinion formed of the Romany version of St
+Luke, the following story told by Borrow is amusing:-
+
+
+"Shortly before my departure a royal edict was published, authorising
+all public libraries to provide themselves with copies of the said
+works [the Basque and Gypsy St Lukes] on account of their
+philological merit; whereupon on application being made to the Office
+[of the Civil Governor, where the books were supposed to be stored],
+it was discovered that the copies of the Gospel in Basque were safe
+and forthcoming, whilst every one of the sequestered copies of the
+Gitano Gospel had been plundered by hands unknown [to the
+authorities].  The consequence was that I was myself applied to by
+the agents of the public libraries of Valencia and other places, who
+paid me the price of the copies which they received, assuring me at
+the same time that they were authorised to purchase them at whatever
+price which might be demanded." {229a}
+
+
+Borrow's enemies acknowledged that the Gitano St Luke was a
+philological curiosity; but that it was impossible to allow it to
+pass into circulation without notes.  How great a philological
+curiosity it actually was, is shown by the fact that the
+ecclesiastical authorities were unable to find anywhere a person, in
+whom they had confidence, capable of pronouncing upon it,
+consequently they could only condemn it on two counts of omission;
+firstly the notes, secondly the imprint of the printer from the
+title-page.
+
+The Basque version was by no means so popular; for one thing, "It can
+scarcely be said to have been published," Borrow wrote, "it having
+been prohibited, and copies of it seized on the second day of its
+appearance." {229b}  Several orders were received from San Sebastian
+and other towns where Basque predominates, which could not be
+supplied on account of the prohibition.
+
+The official remonstrance from Sir George Villiers to Count Ofalia in
+respect of the seizure of the Gypsy and Basque Gospels is of great
+interest as showing, not only the British Minister's attitude towards
+Borrow, but how, and with what wrath, Borrow "desisted from his
+meritorious task."  The communication runs:-
+
+MADRID, 24th April 1838.
+SIR,
+
+It is my duty to request the attention of Your Excellency to an act
+of injustice committed against a British subject by the Civil
+Authorities of Madrid.
+
+It appears that on the 16th inst., two officers of Police were sent
+by the Civil Governor to a Shop, No. 25 Calle del Principe occupied
+by Mr Borrow, where they seized and carried away 25 Copies of the
+Gospel of St Luke in the Gitano language, being the entire number
+exposed there for sale.
+
+Mr Borrow is an agent of the British Bible Society, who has for some
+time past been in Spain, and in the year 1836 obtained permission
+from the Government of Her Catholic Majesty to print, at the expense
+of the Society, Padre Scio's translation of the New Testament.  He
+subsequently sold the work at a moderate price and had no reason to
+believe that in so doing he infringed any law of Spain or exposed
+himself to the animadversion of the Authorities, otherwise, from my
+knowledge of Mr Borrow s character, I feel justified in assuring Your
+Excellency that he would at once, although with regret, have desisted
+from his meritorious task of propagating the Gospel.  Some months
+ago, however, the late Civil Governor of Madrid, after having sent
+for and examined a copy of the work, thought proper to direct that
+its further sale should be suspended, which order was instantly
+complied with.
+
+Mr Borrow is a man of great learning and research and master of many
+languages, and having translated the Gospel of St Luke into the
+Gitano, he presented a copy of it to Don Ramon Gamboa, the late Civil
+Governor, and announced his intention to advertise it for sale, to
+which no objection was made.
+
+Since that time neither Mr Borrow nor the persons employed by him
+received any communication from the present Civil Governor forbidding
+the sale of this work until it was seized in the manner I have above
+described to Your Excellency.
+
+I feel convinced that the mere statement of these facts without any
+commentary on my part will be sufficient to induce your Excellency to
+take steps for the indemnification of Mr Borrow, who is not only a
+very respectable British subject but the Agent of one of the most
+truly benevolent and philanthropic Societies in the world.
+
+I have, etc., etc., etc.
+GEORGE VILLIERS.
+
+His Excellency Count Ofalia.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV:  MAY 1-13, 1838
+
+
+
+On the morning of 30th April, whilst at breakfast, Borrow, according
+to his own account, received a visit from a man who announced that he
+was "A Police Agent."  He came from the Civil Governor, who was
+perfectly aware that he, Borrow, was continuing in secret to dispose
+of the "evil books" that he had been forbidden to sell.  The man
+began poking round among the books and papers that were lying about,
+with the result that Borrow led his visitor by the arm down the three
+flights of stairs into the street, "looking him steadfastly in the
+face the whole time," and subsequently sending down by his landlady
+the official's sombrero, which, in the unexpectedness of his
+departure, he had left behind him.
+
+The official report of Pedro Martin de Eugenio, the police agent in
+question, runs as follows
+
+
+MADRID, 30th April 1838.
+OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE POLICE AGENT OF THE LANGUAGE HELD BY MR
+BORROW.
+
+Public Security,--In virtue of an order from His Excellency the Civil
+Governor, {231a} I went to seize the Copies Entitled the Gospel of St
+Luke, in the Shop Princes Street No. 25, belonging to Mr George
+Borrow, but not finding him there; I went to his lodgings, which are
+in St James Street, No. 16, on the third floor and presenting the
+said order to Him He read it, and with an angry look threw it on the
+ground saying, that He had nothing to do with the Civil Governor,
+that He was authorised by His Ambassador to sell the Work in
+question, and that an English Stable Boy, is more than any Spanish
+Civil Governor, and that I had forcibly entered his house, to which I
+replied that I only went there to communicate the order to Him, as
+proprietor as he was of the said Shop, and to seize the Copies in it
+in virtue of that Order, and He answered I might do as I liked, that
+He should go to the House of His Ambassador, and that I should be
+responsible for the consequences; to which I replied that He had
+personally insulted the Civil Governor and all Spain, to which He
+answered in the same terms, holding the same language as above
+stated.
+
+All of which I communicate to you for the objects required.
+
+THE POLICE AGENT
+PEDRO MARTIN DE EUGENIO. {232a}
+
+
+Borrow felt that the fellow had been sent to entrap him into some
+utterance that should justify his arrest.  In any case a warrant was
+issued that same morning.  The news caused Borrow no alarm; for one
+thing he was indifferent to danger, for another he was desirous of
+studying the robber language of Spain, and had already, according to
+his own statement, {232b} made an unsuccessful effort to obtain
+admission to the city prison.
+
+The official account of the interview between Borrow and the "Police
+Agent" is given in the following letter from the Civil Governor to
+Sir George Villiers:-
+
+To the British Minister, -
+MADRID, 30th April 1838.
+SIR,
+
+The Vicar of the Diocese having, on the 16th and 26th Instant,
+officially represented to me, that neither the publication nor the
+sale of the Gospel of St Luke translated into the romain, or Gitano
+Dialect ought to be permitted, until such time as the translation had
+been examined and approved by the competent Ecclesiastical Authority,
+in conformity with the Canonical and Civil regulations existing on
+the matter, I gave an order to a dependent of this civil
+administration, to present himself in the house of Mr George Borrow,
+a British Subject, charged by the London Bible Society with the
+publication of this work, and to seize all the Copies of it.  In
+execution of this order my Warrant was yesterday morning {233a}
+presented to the said Mr George Borrow; who, so far from obeying it,
+broke out in insults most offensive to my authority, threw the order
+on the ground with angry gestures, and grossly abused the bearer of
+it, and said that he had nothing to do with the Civil Governor.  The
+detailed report in writing which has been made to me of this
+disageeeable occurrence could not but deeply affect me, being a
+question of a British Subject, to whom the Government of Her Catholic
+Majesty has always afforded the same protection as to its own.  As
+Executor of the Law it is my duty to cause its decrees to be
+inviolably observed; and you will well understand, that both the
+Canonical as the Civil Laws now existing, in this kingdom, relative
+to writings and works published upon Dogmas, Morals, and holy and
+religious matters, are the same without distinction for the Subjects
+of all Countries residing in Spain.  No one can be permitted to
+violate them with impunity, without detriment to the Laws themselves,
+to the Royal Authority and to the Evangelical Moral which is highly
+interested in preventing the propagation of doctrines which may be
+erroneous, and that the purity of the sublime maxims of our divine
+Faith should remain intact.
+
+In conformity with these undeniable principles, which are in the Laws
+of all civilised nations, you must acknowledge that the offensive
+conduct of Mr George Borrow, and his disobedience to a legitimate
+Authority sufficiently authorised the proceeding to his arrest . . .
+
+I have, etc., etc.
+DEIGO DE ENTRENA.
+
+
+The "Police Agent" seems to have boasted that within twenty-four
+hours Borrow would be in prison; Borrow, on the other hand,
+determined to prove the "Police Agent" wrong.  He therefore spent the
+rest of the day and the following night at a cafe. {234a}  In the
+evening he received a visit from Maria Diaz, {234b} his landlady and
+also his strong adherent and friend, whom he had informed of his
+whereabouts.  From her he learned that his lodgings had been searched
+and that the alguazils, who bore a warrant for his arrest, were much
+disappointed at not finding him.
+
+The next morning, 1st May, at the request of Sir George Villiers,
+Borrow called at the Embassy and narrated every circumstance of the
+affair, with the result that he was offered the hospitality of the
+Embassy, which he declined.  Whilst in conversation with Mr Sothern,
+Sir George Villiers' private secretary, Borrow's Basque servant
+Francisco rushed in with the news that the alguazils were again at
+his rooms searching among his papers, whereat Borrow at once left the
+Embassy, determined to return to his lodgings.  Immediately
+afterwards he was arrested, {234c} within sight of the doors of the
+Embassy, and conducted to the office of the Civil Governor.
+Francisco in the meantime, acting on his master's instructions,
+conveyed to him in Basque that the alguazils might not understand,
+proceeded immediately to the British Embassy and informed Sir George
+Villiers of what had just taken place, with such eloquence and
+feeling that Mr Sothern afterwards remarked to Borrow, "That Basque
+of yours is a noble fellow," and asked to be given the refusal of his
+services should Borrow ever decide to part with him.  With his
+dependents Borrow was always extremely popular, even in Spain, where,
+according to Mr Sothern, a man's servant seemed to be his worst
+enemy.
+
+Borrow submitted quietly to his arrest and was first taken to the
+office of the Civil Governor (Gefatura Politica), and subsequently to
+the Carcel de la Corte, by two Salvaguardias, "like a common
+malefactor."  Here he was assigned a chamber that was "large and
+lofty, but totally destitute of every species of furniture with the
+exception of a huge wooden pitcher, intended to hold my daily
+allowance of water." {235a}  For this special accommodation Borrow
+was to pay, otherwise he would have been herded with the common
+criminals, who existed in a state of foulness and misery.  Acting on
+the advice of the Alcayde, Borrow despatched a note to Maria Diaz,
+with the result that when Mr Sothern arrived, he found the prisoner
+not only surrounded by his friends and furniture, but enjoying a
+comfortable meal, whereat he laughed heartily.
+
+Borrow learned that, immediately on hearing what had taken place, Sir
+George Villiers had despatched Mr Sothern to interview Senor Entrena,
+the Civil Governor, who rudely referred him to his secretary, and
+refused to hold any communication with the British Legation save in
+writing.  Nothing further could be done that night, and on hearing
+that Borrow was determined to remain in durance, even if offered his
+liberty, now that he had been illegally placed there, Mr Sothern
+commended his resolution.  The Government had put itself grievously
+in the wrong, and Sir George, who had already sent a note to Count
+Ofalia demanding redress, seemed desirous of making it as difficult
+for them as possible, now that they had perpetrated this wanton
+outrage on a British subject.  He determined to make it a national
+affair.
+
+It is by no means certain that Borrow was anxious to leave the Carcel
+de la Corte, even with the apologies of Spain in his pocket.  The
+prison afforded him unique opportunities for the study of criminal
+vagabonds.  An entirely new phase of life presented itself to him,
+and, but for this arrest and his subsequent decision to involve the
+authorities in difficulties, The Bible in Spain would have lacked
+some of its most picturesque pages.  It would have been strange if he
+had not encountered some old friend or acquaintance in the prison of
+the Spanish capital.  At the Carcel de la Corte he found the
+notorious and immense Gitana, Aurora, who had fallen into the hands
+of the Busne for defrauding a rather foolish widow.
+
+"A great many people came to see me," Borrow wrote to his mother,
+"amongst others, General Quiroga, the Military Governor, who assured
+me that all he possessed was at my service.  The Gypsies likewise
+came, but were refused admittance."  His dinner was taken to him from
+an inn, and Sir George Villiers sent his butler each day to make
+enquiries.  There was, however, one very unpleasant feature of his
+prison life, the verminous condition of the whole building.  In spite
+of having fresh linen taken to him each day, he suffered very much
+from what the polished Spaniard prefers to call miseria.
+
+Sir George Villiers took active and immediate steps, not only to
+secure Borrow's release, but to obtain an unqualified apology.
+Referring to the letter he had received from the Civil Governor (30th
+April), he expressed himself as convinced that "a gentleman of
+Borrow's character and education was incapable of the conduct
+alleged," and had accordingly requested Mr Sothern to enquire into
+the matter and then to call upon the Civil Governor to explain in
+what manner he had been misinformed.  As the Civil Governor refused
+to receive Mr Sothern, Sir George adds that he need trouble him no
+further, as the affair had been placed before Her Catholic Majesty's
+Government; but during his five years of office at the Court of
+Madrid, he proceeded, "no circumstance has occurred likely to be more
+prejudicial to the relations between the two Countries than the
+insult and imprisonment to which a respectable Englishman has now
+been subjected upon the unsupported evidence of a Police Officer,"
+acting under the orders of the Civil Governor.
+
+On 3rd May Sir George Villiers wrote again to Count Ofalia, reminding
+him that he had not received the letter from him that he had
+expected.  In the course of a lengthy recapitulation of the
+occurrences of the past ten days, Sir George reminded Count Ofalia
+that, as a result of their interview on 30th April about the ill-
+usage of Borrow, the Count had written on 1st May to him a private
+letter stating that measures had been taken to release Borrow on
+parole, he to appear when necessary, and that if Sir George would
+abstain from making a written remonstrance, Count Ofalia would see
+that both he and Borrow received the ample satisfaction to which they
+were entitled.  Borrow had been taken by two Guards "like a
+Malefactor, to the Common Prison, where he would have been confined
+with Criminals of every description if he had not had money to pay
+for a Cell to Himself."  The British Minister complained that every
+step that he had taken for Borrow's protection was followed by fresh
+insult, and he further intimated that Borrow refused to leave the
+prison until his character had been publicly cleared.
+
+The Spanish Government now found itself in a quandary.  The British
+Minister was pressing for satisfaction, and he was too powerful and
+too important to the needs of Spain to be offended.  The prisoner
+himself refused to be liberated, because he had been illegally
+arrested, inasmuch as he, a foreigner, had been committed to prison
+without first being conducted before the Captain-General of Madrid,
+as the law provided.  Furthermore, Borrow advised the authorities
+that if they chose to eject him from the prison he would resist with
+all his bodily strength.  In this determination he was confirmed by
+the British Minister.
+
+A Cabinet Council was held, at which Senor Entrena was present.  The
+Premier explained the serious situation in which the ministry found
+itself, owing to the attitude assumed by the British Minister, and he
+remarked that the Civil Governor must respect the privileges of
+foreigners.  Senor Entrena suggested that he should be relieved of
+his duties; but the majority of the Cabinet seems to have been
+favourable to him.  The Affaire Borrow is said to have come up for
+debate even during a secret session of the Chamber.
+
+When Count Ofalia had called at the British Embassy (4th May) he was
+informed by Sir George Villiers that the affair had passed beyond the
+radius of a subordinate authority of the Government, and that he
+"considered that great want of respect had been shown to me, as Her
+Majesty's Minister, and that an unjustifiable outrage had been
+committed upon a British Subject," {238a} and that the least
+reparation that he was disposed to accept was a written declaration
+that an injustice had been done, and the dismissal of the Police
+Officer. {238b}
+
+The value of a British subject's freedom was brought home to the
+Spanish Government with astonishing swiftness and decision.  The
+Civil Governor wrote to Sir George Villiers (3rd May), apparently at
+the instance of the distraught premier, discoursing sagely upon the
+Civil and Canon Laws of Spain, and adding that the 25 copies of the
+Gitano St Luke were seized, "not as being confiscated, but as a
+deposit to be restored in due time."  He concluded by hoping that he
+had convinced the British Minister of his good faith.
+
+In his reply, Sir George considered that the Civil Governor had been
+led to view the matter in a light that would not "bear the test of
+impartial examination."  The result of this interchange of letters
+was twofold.  Sir George dropped the correspondence with "that
+Functionary [who] displays so complete a disregard for fact," {239a}
+and as Count Ofalia evaded the real question at issue, holding out
+"slender hopes of the matter ending in the reparation which I
+considered to be peremptorily called for," {239b} he advised Borrow
+to claim protection from the Captain-General, the only authority
+competent to exercise any jurisdiction over him.  The Captain-General
+Quiroga, jealous of his authority, entered warmly into the dispute
+and ordered the Civil Governor to hand over the case to him.  There
+was now a danger of the Affaire Borrow being made a party question,
+in which case it would have been extremely difficult to settle.
+
+The intervention of the Captain-General rendered all the more obvious
+the illegality of the Civil Governor's action, and increased the
+embarrassment of Count Ofalia, who called on Sir George to ask him to
+have Borrow's memorial to the Captain-General withdrawn.  He refused,
+and said the only way now to finish the affair was that "His
+Excellency should in an official Note declare to me that Mr Borrow
+left the prison, where he had been improperly placed, with unstained
+honour,--that the Police Agent, upon whose testimony he had been
+arrested, should be dismissed,--that all expenses imposed upon Mr
+Borrow by his detention should be repaid him by the Government,--that
+Mr Borrow's not having availed himself of the 'Fuero Militar' should
+not be converted into a precedent, or in any way be considered to
+prejudice that important right, and that Count Ofalia should add with
+reference to maintaining the friendly relations between Great Britain
+and Spain, that he hoped I would accept this satisfaction as
+sufficient." {240a}
+
+Borrow states that Sir George Villiers went to the length of
+informing Count Ofalia that unless full satisfaction were accorded
+Borrow, he would demand his passports and instruct the commanders of
+the British war vessels to desist from furnishing further assistance
+to Spain. {240b}  There is, however, no record of this in the
+official papers sent by Sir George to the Foreign Office.  What
+actually occurred was that, on 8th May, the British Minister,
+determined to brook no further delay, wrote a grave official
+remonstrance, in which he stated that, "if the desire had existed to
+bring it to a close," the case of Borrow could have been settled.
+"Having up to the present moment," he proceeds, "trusted that in Your
+Excellency's hands, this affair would be treated with all that
+consideration required by its nature and the consequences that may
+follow upon it . . . I have forborne from denouncing the whole extent
+of the illegality which has marked the proceedings of the case"
+(viz., the Civil Governor's having usurped the right of the Captain-
+General of the Province in causing Borrow's arrest).  In conclusion,
+Sir George states that he considers the
+
+
+"case of most pressing importance, for it may compromise the
+relations now existing between Great Britain and Spain.  It is one
+that requires a complete satisfaction, for the honor of England and
+the future position of Englishmen in the Country are concerned; and
+the satisfaction, in order to be complete, required to be promptly
+given."
+
+
+"This disagreeable business," Sir George writes in another of his
+despatches, "is rendered yet more so by the impossibility of
+defending with success all Mr Borrow's proceedings . . .  His
+imprudent zeal likewise in announcing publicly that the Bible Society
+had a depot of Bibles in Madrid, and that he was the Agent for their
+sale, irritated the Ecclesiastical Authorities, whose attention has
+of late been called to the proceedings of a Mr Graydon,--another
+agent of the Bible Society, who has created great excitement at
+Malaga (and I believe in other places) by publishing in the
+Newspapers that the Catholic Religion was not the religion of God,
+and that he had been sent from England to convert Spaniards to
+Protestantism.  I have upon more than one occasion cautioned Mr
+Graydon, but in vain, to be more prudent.  The Methodist Society of
+England is likewise endeavouring to establish a School at Cadiz, and
+by that means to make conversions.
+
+"Under all these circumstances it is not perhaps surprising that the
+Archbishop of Toledo and the Heads of the Church should be alarmed
+that an attempt at Protestant Propagandism is about to be made, or
+that the Government should wish to avert the evils of religious
+schism in addition to all those which already weigh upon the Country;
+and to these different causes it must, in some degree, be attributed
+that Mr Borrow has been an object of suspicion and treated with such
+extreme rigor.  Still, however, they do not justify the course
+pursued by the Civil Governor towards him, or by the Government
+towards myself, and I trust Your Lordship will consider that in the
+steps I have taken upon the matter, I have done no more than what the
+National honor, and the security of Englishmen in this Country,
+rendered obligatory upon me." {241a}
+
+
+Whilst Borrow was in the Carcel de la Corte, a grave complication had
+arisen in connection with the misguided Lieutenant Graydon.  Borrow
+gives a strikingly dramatic account {241b} of Count Ofalia's call at
+the British Embassy.  He is represented as arriving with a copy of
+one of Graydon's bills, which he threw down upon a table calling upon
+Sir George Villiers to read it and, as a gentleman and the
+representative of a great and enlightened nation, tell him if he
+could any longer defend Borrow and say that he had been ill or
+unfairly treated.  According to the Foreign Office documents, Count
+Ofalia WROTE to Sir George Villiers on 5th May, ENCLOSING a copy of
+an advertisement inserted by Lieutenant Graydon in the Boletin
+Oficial de Malaga, which, translated, runs as follows:-
+
+
+"The Individual in question most earnestly calls the greatest
+attention of each member of the great Spanish Family to this DIVINE
+Book, in order that THROUGH IT he may learn the chief cause, if not
+the SOLE ONE, of all his terrible afflictions and of his ONLY remedy,
+as it is so clearly manifested in the Holy Scripture . . .  A
+detestable system of superstition and fanaticism, ONLY GREEDY FOR
+MONEY, and not so either of the temporal or eternal felicity of man,
+has prevailed in Spain (as also in other Nations) during several
+Centuries, by the ABSOLUTE exclusion of the true knowledge of the
+Great God and last Judge of Mankind:  and thus it has been plunged
+into the most frightful calamities.  There was a time in which
+precisely the same was read in the then VERY LITTLE Kingdom of
+England, but at length Her Sons recognising their imperative DUTY
+towards God and their Neighbour, as also their unquestionable rights,
+and that since the world exists it has never been possible to gather
+grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, they destroyed the system
+and at the price of their blood chose the Bible.  Oh that the
+unprejudiced and enlightened inhabitants not only of Malaga and of so
+many other Cities, but of all Spain, would follow so good an
+example." {242a}
+
+
+The result of Graydon's advertisement was that "the people flocked in
+crowds to purchase it [the Bible], so much so that 200 copies, all
+that were in Mr Graydon's possession at the time, were sold in the
+course of the day.  The Bishop sent the Fiscal to stop the sale of
+the work, but before the necessary measures were taken they were all
+disposed of." {242b}  In consequence Graydon "was detained and under
+my [the Consul's] responsibility allowed to remain at large." {243a}
+A jury of nine all pronounced the article to contain "matter subject
+to legal process" {243b} but a second jury of twelve at the
+subsequent public trial "unanimously absolved" Graydon.
+
+Sir George Villiers acknowledged the letter from Count Ofalia (9th
+May) saying that he had written to Graydon warning him to be more
+cautious in future.  He stated that from personal knowledge he could
+vouch for the purity of Lieutenant Graydon's intentions; but he
+regretted that he should have announced his object in so imprudent a
+manner as to give offence to the ministers of the Catholic religion
+of Spain.  In a despatch to Lord Palmerston he states that he has not
+thought it in the interests of the Bible Society to defend this
+conduct of Graydon, "whose zeal appears so little tempered by
+discretion," {243c} as he had written to Count Ofalia.  "Had I done
+so," he proceeds, "and thereby tended to confirm some of the idle
+reports that are current, that England had a national object to serve
+in the propagation of Protestantism in Spain, it is not improbable
+that a legislative Enactment might have been introduced by some
+Member of the Cortes, which would be offensive to England, and render
+it yet more difficult than it is the task the Bible Society seems
+desirous to undertake in this Country." {243d}  Sir George concludes
+by saying that he gave to "these Agents the best advice and
+assistance in my power, but if by their acts they infringe the laws
+of the Country," it will be impossible to defend them.
+
+Sir George thought so seriously of the Affaire Borrow, as endangering
+the future liberty of Englishmen in Spain, that he went so far as to
+send a message to the Queen Regent, "by a means which I always have
+at my disposal," {244a} in which he told her that he thought the
+affair "might end in a manner most injurious to the continuance of
+friendly relations between the two Countries." {244b}  He received a
+gracious assurance that he should have satisfaction.  Later there
+reached him
+
+
+"a second message from the Queen Regent expressing Her Majesty's hope
+that Count Ofalia's Note [of 11th May] would be satisfactory to me,
+and stating that Her Ministers had so fully proved their incompetency
+by giving any just cause of complaint to the Minister of Her only
+real Friend and Ally, The Queen of England, that she should have
+dismissed them, were it not that the state of affairs in the Northern
+Provinces at this moment might be prejudiced by a change of
+Government, which Her Majesty said she knew no one more than myself
+would regret, but at the same time if I was not satisfied I had only
+to state what I required and it should be immediately complied with.
+My answer was confined to a grateful acknowledgement of Her Majesty's
+condescension and kindness.  Count Ofalia has informed me that as
+President of the Council He had enjoined all his Colleagues never to
+take any step directly or indirectly concerning an Englishman without
+a previous communication with Him as to its propriety, and I
+therefore venture to hope that the case of Mr Borrow will not be
+unattended with ultimate advantage to British subjects in Spain."
+{243c}
+
+
+The "Note" referred to by the Queen Regent in her message was Count
+Ofalia's acquiescence in Sir George Villiers' demands, with the
+exception of the dismissal of the Police Officer.  His communication
+runs:-
+
+
+"11th May 1838.
+
+"SIR,--The affair of Mr Borrow is already decided by the Judge of
+First Instance and his decision has been approved by the Superior or
+Territorial Court of the Province.  As I stated to you in my note of
+the fourth last, the foundation of the arrest of Mr Borrow, who was
+detained (and not committed), was an official communication from the
+Agent of Police, Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio, in which he averred
+that on intimating to Mr Borrow the written order of the Civil
+Governor relative to the seizure of a book which he had published and
+exposed for sale without complying with the forms prescribed by the
+Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws of Spain, he (Mr Borrow) had thrown on
+the floor the order of the Superior Authority of the Province and
+used offensive expressions with regard to the said Authority.
+
+"The judicial proceedings have had for their object the ascertainment
+of the fact.  Mr Borrow has denied the truth of the statement and the
+Agent of Police, who it appears entered the lodgings of Mr Borrow
+without being accompanied by any one, has been unable to confirm by
+evidence what he alleged in his official report, or to produce the
+testimony of any one in support of it.
+
+"This being the case the judge has declared and the Territorial Court
+approved the superceding of the cause, putting Mr Borrow immediately
+at complete liberty, with the express declaration that the arrest he
+has suffered in no wise affects his honor and good fame, and that the
+'celador of Public Security,' Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio, be
+admonished for the future to proceed in the discharge of his duty
+with proper respect and circumspection according to the condition and
+character of the persons whom he has to address.
+
+"In accordance with the judicial decision and anxious to give
+satisfaction to Mr Borrow, correcting at the same time the fault of
+the Agent of Police in having presented himself without being
+accompanied by any person in order to effect the seizure in the
+lodging of Mr Borrow, Her Majesty has thought proper to command that
+the aforesaid Don Pedro Martin de Eugenio be suspended from his
+office for the space of Four Months, an order which I shall
+communicate to the Minister of the Interior, and that Mr Borrow be
+indemnified for the expenses which may have been incurred by his
+lodging in the apartment of the Alcaide (chief gaoler or Governor)
+for the days of his detention, although even before the expiration of
+24 hours after his arrest he was permitted to return to his house
+under his word of honor during the judicial proceedings, as I stated
+to you in my note already cited.  I flatter myself that in this
+determination you as well as your Government will see a fresh proof
+of the desire which animates that of H.M. the Queen Regent to
+maintain and draw closer the relation of friendship and alliance
+existing between the two countries.  And with respect to the claim
+advanced by Mr Borrow, and of which you also make mention in Your
+Note of the 8th inst., I ought to declare to you that when the Judge
+of First Instance received official information of the said claim the
+business was already concluded in his tribunal, and consequently
+there was nothing to be done.  Without, for this reason, there being
+understood any innovation with respect to the matter of privilege
+(fuero) according as it is now established." {246a}
+
+
+Borrow was liberated with unsullied honour on 12th May, after twelve
+days' imprisonment.  He refused the compensation that Sir George
+Villiers had made a condition, and later wrote to the Bible Society
+asking that there might be deducted from the amount due to him the
+expenses of the twelve days.  He states also that he refused to
+acquiesce in the dismissal of the Agent of Police, by which he
+doubtless means his suspension, giving as a reason that there might
+be a wife and family likely to suffer.  In any case the man was only
+carrying out his instructions.  Borrow's reason for refusing the
+payment of his expenses was that he was unwilling to afford them, the
+Spanish Government, an opportunity of saying that after they had
+imprisoned an Englishman unjustly, and without cause, he condescended
+to receive money at their hands. {246b}
+
+The greatest loss to Borrow, consequent upon his imprisonment, no
+government could make good.  His faithful Basque, Francisco, had
+contracted typhus, or gaol fever, that was raging at the time, and
+died within a few days of his master's release.  "A more affectionate
+creature never breathed," Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram.  The poor
+fellow, who, "to the strength of a giant joined the disposition of a
+lamb . . . was beloved even in the patio of the prison, where he used
+to pitch the bar and wrestle with the murderers and felons, always
+coming off victor." {247a}  The next day Antonio presented himself at
+Borrow's lodging, and without invitation or comment assumed the
+duties he had relinquished in order that he might enjoy the
+excitements of change.  "Who should serve you now but myself?" he
+asked when questioned as to the meaning of his presence, "N'est pas
+que le sieur Francois est mort!" {247b}
+
+John Hasfeldt's comment on his friend's imprisonment was
+characteristic.  In September 1838 he wrote:-
+
+
+"The very last I heard of you is that you have had the great good
+fortune to be stopping in the carcel de corte at Madrid, which
+pleasing intelligence I found in the Preussiche Staats-Zeitung this
+last spring.  If you were fatter no doubt the monks would have got up
+an Auto de Fe on your behalf, and you might easily have become a
+nineteenth-century martyr.  Then your strange life would have been
+hawked about the streets of London for one penny, though you never
+obtained a fat living to eat and drink and take your ease after all
+the hardships you have endured."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI:  MAY-JULY 1838
+
+
+
+Borrow was now to enter upon that lengthy dispute with the Bible
+Society that almost brought about an open breach, and eventually
+proved the indirect cause that led to the severance of their
+relations.  Graydon's mistake lay in not contenting himself with
+printing and distributing the Scriptures, of which he succeeded in
+getting rid of an enormous quantity.  He had advertised his
+association with the Bible Society and proclaimed Borrow as a
+colleague, and the authorities at Madrid were not greatly to blame
+for being unable to distinguish between the two men.  Whereas Graydon
+and Rule, who was also extremely obnoxious to the Spanish Clergy,
+were safe at Gibraltar or generally within easy reach of it, Borrow
+was in the very midst of the enemy.  He was not unnaturally furiously
+angry at the situation that he conceived to have been brought about
+by these evangelists in the south.  He referred to Graydon as the
+Evil Genius of the Society's Cause in Spain.
+
+It may be felt that Borrow was a prejudiced witness, he had every
+reason for being so; but a despatch from Sir George Villiers to the
+Consul at Malaga shows clearly how the British Minister viewed
+Lieutenant Graydon's indiscretion:
+
+
+"You will communicate Count Ofalia's note to Mr Graydon," he writes,
+"and tell him from me that, feeling as I do a lively interest in the
+success of his mission, I cannot but regret that he should have
+published his opinions upon the Catholic religion and clergy in a
+form which should render inevitable the interference of
+ecclesiastical authority.  I have no doubt that Mr Graydon, in the
+pursuit of the meritorious task he has undertaken, is ready to endure
+persecution, but he should bear in mind that it will not lead him to
+success in this country, where prejudices are so inveterate, and at
+this moment, when party spirit disfigures even the best intentions.
+Unless Mr Graydon proceeds with the utmost circumspection it will be
+impossible for me, with the prospect of good result, to defend his
+conduct with the Government, for no foreigner has a right, however
+laudable may be his object, to seek the attainment of that object by
+infringing the laws of the country in which he resides." {249a}
+
+
+In writing to Mr Brandram, Borrow pointed out that although he had
+travelled extensively in Spain and had established many depots for
+the sale of the Scriptures, not one word of complaint had been
+transmitted to the Government.  He had been imprisoned; but he had
+the authority of Count Ofalia for saying that it was not on account
+of his own, but rather of the action of others.  Furthermore the
+Premier had advised him to endeavour to make friends among the
+clergy, and for the present at least make no further effort to
+promote the actual sale of the New Testament in Madrid.
+
+On the day following his release from prison (13th May) Borrow, after
+being sent for by the British Minister, wrote to Mr Brandram as
+follows:-
+
+
+"Sir George has commanded me . . . to write to the following effect:-
+Mr Graydon must leave Spain, or the Bible Society must publicly
+disavow that his proceedings receive their encouragement, unless they
+wish to see the Sacred book, which it is their object to distribute,
+brought into universal odium and contempt.  He has lately been to
+Malaga, and has there played precisely the same part which he acted
+last year at Valencia, with the addition that in printed writings he
+has insulted the Spanish Government in the most inexcusable manner.
+A formal complaint of his conduct has been sent up from Malaga, and a
+copy of one of his writings.  Sir George blushed when he saw it, and
+informed Count Ofalia that any steps which might be taken towards
+punishing the author would receive no impediment from him.  I shall
+not make any observation on this matter farther than stating that I
+have never had any other opinion of Mr Graydon than that he is
+insane--insane as the person who for the sake of warming his own
+hands would set a street on fire.  Sir George said to-day that he
+(Graydon) was the cause of my HARMLESS shop being closed at Madrid
+and also of my imprisonment.  The Society will of course communicate
+with Sir George on the subject, I wash my hands of it."
+
+
+On 23rd May Borrow wrote again to Mr Brandram:
+
+"In the name of the MOST HIGHEST take steps for preventing that
+miserable creature Graydon from ruining us all."  Borrow's use of the
+term "insane" with regard to Graydon was fully justified.  The Rev.
+W. H. Rule wrote to him on 14th May:
+
+
+"Our worthy brother Graydon is, I suppose, in Granada.  I overtook
+him in Cartagena, endured the process of osculation, saw him without
+rhime or reason wrangle with and publicly insult our Consul there.
+Had his company in the steamer to Almeria, much to my discomfort.
+Never was a man fuller of love and impudence, compounded in the most
+provoking manner.  In Malaga, just as we were to part, he broke out
+into a strain highly disagreeable, and I therefore thought it a
+convenient occasion to tell him that I should have no more to do with
+him.  I left him dancing and raving like an energumen."
+
+
+This letter Borrow indiscreetly sent to Mr Brandram, much to Mr
+Rule's regret, who wrote to Mr Brandram, saying that whilst he had
+nothing to retract, he would not have written for the eyes of the
+Bible Society's Committee what he had written to Borrow.  To Mr Rule
+Lieut. Graydon was "a good man, or at least a well-meaning [one], who
+has not the balance of judgment and temper necessary for the
+situation he occupies."  He was given to "the promulgation of
+Millenianism," and to calling the Bible "the true book of the
+Constitution."
+
+Mann had confirmed all the rumours current about Graydon.  In order
+to remove from his shoulders "the burden of obloquy," Borrow's first
+act on leaving prison was to publish in the Correo Nacional an
+advertisement disclaiming, in the name of the Bible Society, any
+writings which may have been circulated tending to lower the
+authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, in the eyes of the people.  He
+denied that it was the Society's intention or wish to make proselytes
+from the Roman Catholic form of worship, and that it was at all times
+prepared to extend the hand of brotherhood to the Spanish clergy.
+This notice was signed "George Borrow, Sole authorised Agent of the
+British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain."
+
+El Gazeta Oficial in commenting on the situation, saw in the anti-
+Catholic tracts circulated by Graydon "part of the monstrous plan,
+whose existence can no longer be called in question, concocted by the
+enemies of all public order, for the purpose of inaugurating on our
+unhappy soil a SOCIAL revolution, just as the political one is
+drawing to a close."  The Government was urged to allow no longer
+these attacks upon the religion of the country.  Rather illogically
+the article concludes by paying a tribute to the Bible Society,
+"considered not under the religious but the social aspect."  After
+praising its prudence for "accommodating itself to the civil and
+ecclesiastical laws of each country, and by adopting the editions
+there current," it concludes with the sophisticated argument that,
+"if the great object be the propagation of evangelic maxims, the
+notes are no obstacle, and by preserving them we fulfil our religious
+principle of not permitting to private reason the interpretation of
+the Sacred Word."
+
+The General Committee expressed themselves, somewhat enigmatically,
+it must be confessed, as in no way surprised at this article, being
+from past experience learned enough in the ways of Rome to anticipate
+her.
+
+
+"That advertisement," Borrow wrote six months later in his Report
+that was subsequently withdrawn, "gave infinite satisfaction to the
+liberal clergy.  I was complimented for it by the Primate of Spain,
+who said I had redeemed my credit and that of the Society, and it is
+with some feeling of pride that I state that it choked and prevented
+the publication of a series of terrible essays against the Bible
+Society, which were intended for the Official Gazette, and which were
+written by the Licentiate Albert Lister, the editor of that journal,
+the friend of Blanco White, and the most talented man in Spain.
+These essays still exist in the editorial drawer, and were
+communicated to me by the head manager of the royal printing office,
+my respected friend and countryman Mr Charles Wood, whose evidence in
+this matter and in many others I can command at pleasure.  In lieu of
+which essays came out a mild and conciliatory article by the same
+writer, which, taking into consideration the country in which it was
+written, and its peculiar circumstances, was an encouragement to the
+Bible Society to proceed, although with secrecy and caution; yet this
+article, sadly misunderstood in England, gave rise to communications
+from home highly mortifying to myself and ruinous to the Bible
+cause."
+
+
+Borrow had written from prison to Mr Brandram {252a} telling him that
+it had "pleased God to confer upon me the highest of mortal honors,
+the privilege of bearing chains for His sake."  After describing how
+it had always been his practice, before taking any step, to consult
+with Sir George Villiers and receive his approval, and that the
+present situation had not been brought about by any rashness on his,
+Borrow's, part, he proceeds to convey the following curious piece of
+information that must have caused some surprise at Earl Street
+
+
+"I will now state a fact, which speaks volumes as to the state of
+affairs at Madrid.  My arch-enemy, the Archbishop of Toledo, the
+primate of Spain, wishes to give me the kiss of brotherly Peace.  He
+has caused a message to be conveyed to me in my dungeon, assuring me
+that he has had no share in causing my imprisonment, which he says
+was the work of the Civil Governor, who was incited to the step by
+the Jesuits.  He adds that he is determined to seek out my
+persecutors amongst the clergy, and to have them punished, and that
+when I leave prison he shall be happy to co-operate with me in the
+dissemination of the Gospel!!  I cannot write much now, for I am not
+well, having been bled and blistered.  I must, however, devote a few
+lines to another subject, but not one of rejoicing or Christian
+exultation.  Mann arrived just after my arrest, and visited me in
+prison, and there favoured me with a scene of despair, abject
+despair, which nearly turned my brain.  I despised the creature, God
+forgive me, but I pitied him; for he was without money and expected
+every moment to be seized like myself and incarcerated, and he is by
+no means anxious to be invested with the honors of martyrdom."
+
+
+That the Primate of Spain should have sent to Borrow such a message
+is surprising; but what is still more so is that six days later
+Borrow wrote telling Mr Brandram that he had asked a bishop to
+arrange an interview between him and the Archbishop of Toledo, and
+Sir George Villiers, who was present, begged the same privilege.
+{253a}  On 23rd May Borrow wrote again to Mr Brandram:  "I have just
+had an interview with the Archbishop.  It was satisfactory to a
+degree I had not dared to hope for."  In his next letter (25th May)
+he writes:
+
+
+"I have had, as you are aware, an interview with the Archbishop of
+Toledo.  I have not time to state particulars, but he said amongst
+other things, 'Be prudent, the Government are disposed to arrange
+matters amicably, and I am disposed to co-operate with them.'  At
+parting he shook me most kindly by the hand saying that he liked me.
+Sir George intends to visit him in a few days.  He is an old,
+venerable-looking man, between seventy and eighty.  When I saw him he
+was dressed with the utmost simplicity, with the exception of a most
+splendid amethyst ring, the lustre of which was truly dazzling."
+
+
+There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this archiepiscopal
+condescension, if the interview were not indeed sought by Borrow,
+that it was a political move to pacify the wounded feelings of an
+outraged Englishman at a time when the goodwill of England was as
+necessary to the kingdom of Spain as the sun itself
+
+The upshot of the Malaga Incident was that "the Spanish Government
+resolved to put an end to Bible transactions in Spain, and forthwith
+gave orders for the seizure of all the Bibles and Testaments in the
+country, wherever they might be deposited or exposed for sale.  They
+notified Sir George Villiers of the decision, expressly stating that
+the resolution was taken in consequence of the 'Ocurrido en Malaga.'"
+{254a}  The letter in which Sir George Villiers was informed of the
+Government's decision runs as follows:-
+
+
+MADRID, 19th May 1838.
+SIR,
+
+I have the honor to inform You that in consequence of what has taken
+place at Malaga and other places, respecting the publication and sale
+of the Bible translated by Padre Scio, which are not complete (since
+they do not contain all the Books which the Catholic Church
+recognises as Canonical) nor even being complete could they be
+printed unless furnished with the Notes of the said Padre Scio,
+according to the existing regulations; Her Majesty has thought proper
+to prevent this publication and sale, but without insulting or
+molesting those British Subjects who for some time past have been
+introducing them into the Kingdom and selling them at the lowest
+prices, thinking they were conferring a benefit when in reality they
+were doing an injury.
+
+I have also to state to You that in order to carry this Royal
+determination into effect, orders have been issued to prohibit its
+being printed in Spain, in the vulgar tongue, unless it should be the
+entire Bible as recognised by the Catholic Church with corresponding
+Notes, preventing its admittance at the Frontiers, as is the case
+with books printed in Spanish abroad; that the Bibles exposed for
+public sale be seized and given to their owners in a packet marked
+and sealed, upon the condition of its being sent out of the country
+through the Custom Houses on the Frontier or at the Ports.
+
+I avail myself, etc., etc.
+
+THE COUNT OF OFALIA. {255a}
+
+
+Borrow and Graydon were advised of this inhibition, and both ordered
+their establishments for the sale of books to be closed, thus showing
+that they were "Gentlemen who are animated with due respect for the
+Laws of Spain." {255b}  At Valladolid, Santiago, Orviedo, Pontevedra,
+Seville, Salamanca, and Malaga the decree was at once enforced.  On
+learning that the books at his depots had all been seized, Borrow
+became apprehensive for the safety of his Madrid stock of New
+Testaments, some three thousand in number.  He accordingly had them
+removed, under cover of darkness, to the houses of his friends.
+
+Borrow was not the man to accept defeat, and he wrote to Mr Brandram
+with great cheerfulness:
+
+
+"This, however, gives me little uneasiness, for, with the blessing of
+God, I shall be able to repair all, always provided I am allowed to
+follow my own plans, and to avail myself of the advantages which have
+lately been opened--especially to cultivate the kind feeling lately
+manifested towards me by the principal Spanish clergy. {255c}
+
+
+Later he wrote:
+
+
+"Another bitter cup has been filled for my swallowing.  The Bible
+Society and myself have been accused of blasphemy, sedition, etc.  A
+collection of tracts has been seized in Murcia, in which the Catholic
+religion and its dogmas are handled with the most abusive severity;
+{256a} these books have been sworn to as having been left BY THE
+COMMITTEE OF THE BIBLE SOCIETY WHILST IN THAT TOWN, and Count Ofalia
+has been called upon to sign an order for my arrest and banishment
+from Spain.  Sir George, however, advises me to remain quiet and not
+to be alarmed, as he will answer for my innocence." {256b}
+
+
+Borrow strove to galvanise the General Committee into action.  The
+Spanish newspapers were inflamed against the Society as a sectarian,
+not a Christian institution.  "Zeal is a precious thing," he told Mr
+Brandram, when accompanied with one grain of common sense."  The
+theme of his letters was the removal of Graydon.  "Do not be cast
+down," he writes; "all will go well if the stumbling block [Graydon]
+be removed."
+
+Borrow's state of mind may well be imagined, and if by his impulsive
+letters he unwittingly harmed his own cause at Earl Street, he did so
+as a man whose liberty, perhaps his life even, was being jeopardised,
+although not deliberately, by another whom the reforming spirit
+seemed likely to carry to any excess.  It must be admitted that for
+the time being Borrow had forgotten the idiom of Earl Street.
+
+The president (a bishop) of the body of ecclesiastics that was
+engaged in examining the Society's Spanish Bible, communicated with
+Borrow, through Mr Charles Wood, the suggestion that "the Committee
+of the Bible Society should in the present exigency draw up an
+exposition of their views respecting Spain, stating what they are
+prepared to do and what they are not prepared to do; above all,
+whether in seeking to circulate the Gospel in this Country they
+harbour any projects hostile to the Government or the established
+religion; moreover, whether the late distribution of tracts was done
+by their connivance or authority, and whether they are disposed to
+sanction in future the publication in Spain of such a class of
+writings." {257a}
+
+Borrow was of the opinion that this should be done, although he would
+not take upon himself to advise the Committee upon such a point, he
+merely remarked that "the Prelate in question is a most learned and
+respectable man, and one of the warmest of our friends." {257b}  The
+Society very naturally declined to commit itself to any such
+undertaking.  It would not have been quite logical or conceivable
+that a Protestant body should give a guarantee that it harboured no
+projects hostile to Rome.
+
+Undeterred by the official edict against the circulation in Spain of
+the Scriptures, Borrow wrote to Mr Brandram (14th June):
+
+
+"I should wish to make another Biblical tour this summer, until the
+storm be blown over.  Should I undertake such an expedition, I should
+avoid the towns and devote myself entirely to the peasantry.  I have
+sometimes thought of visiting the villages of the Alpujarra Mountains
+in Andalusia, where the people live quite secluded from the world;
+what do you think of my project?"
+
+
+All this time Borrow had heard nothing from Earl Street as to the
+effect being produced there by his letters.  On 15th or 16th June he
+received a long letter from Mr Brandram enclosing the Resolutions of
+the General Committee with regard to the crisis.  They proved
+conclusively that the officials failed entirely to appreciate the
+state of affairs in Spain, and the critical situation of their paid
+and accredited agent, George Borrow.  Their pride had probably been
+wounded by Borrow's impetuous requests, that might easily have
+appeared to them in the light of commands.  It may have struck some
+that the Spanish affairs of the Society were being administered from
+Madrid, and that they themselves were being told, not what it was
+expedient to do, but what they MUST do.  Another factor in the
+situation was the Committee's friendliness for their impulsive,
+unsalaried servant Lieut. Graydon, who was certainly a picturesque,
+almost melodramatic figure.  In any case the letter from Mr Brandram
+that accompanied the Resolutions was couched in a strain of fair play
+to Graydon that became a thinly disguised partizanship.  At the
+meeting of the Committee held on 28th May the following Resolutions
+had been adopted:-
+
+
+First.--"That Mr Borrow be requested to inform Sir George Villiers
+that this Committee have written to Mr Graydon through their
+Secretary, desiring him to leave Spain on account of his personal
+safety."
+
+Second.--"That Mr Borrow be informed that in the absence of specific
+documents, this Committee cannot offer any opinion on the proceedings
+of Mr Graydon, and that therefore he be desired to obtain, either in
+original or copy, the objectionable papers alleged to have been
+issued by Mr Graydon and to transmit them hither."
+
+Third.--"That Mr Borrow be requested not to repeat the Advertisement
+contained in the Correo Nacional of the 17th inst., and that he be
+cautioned how he commits the Society by advertisements of a similar
+character.  And further, that he be desired to state to Sir George
+Villiers that the advertisement in question was inserted by him on
+the spur of the moment, and without any opportunity of obtaining
+instructions from this Committee."
+
+
+In justice to the Committee, it must be said that they did not
+appreciate the delicacy of the situation, being only Christians and
+not diplomatists.  Perhaps they were unaware that the WHOLE OF SPAIN
+WAS UNDER MARTIAL LAW, or if they were, the true significance of the
+fact failed to strike them.  Mr Brandram's letter accompanying these
+Resolutions is little more than an amplification of the Committee's
+decision:
+
+
+"I have, I assure you," he writes, "endeavoured to place myself in
+your situation and enter into your feelings strongly excited by the
+irreparable mischief which you suppose Mr G. to have done to our
+cause so dear to you.  Under the influence of these feelings you have
+written with, what appears to us, unmitigated severity of his
+conduct.  But now, let me entreat you to enter into our feelings a
+little, and to consider what we owe to Mr Graydon.  If we have at
+times thought him imprudent, we have seen enough in him to make us
+both admire and love him.  He has ever approved himself as an
+upright, faithful, conscientious, indefatigable agent; one who has
+shrunk from no trials and no dangers; one who has gone through in our
+service many and extraordinary hardships.  What have we against him
+at present?  He has issued certain documents of a very offensive
+character, as is alleged.  We have not seen them, neither does it
+appear that you have, but that you speak from the recollections of Mr
+Sothern." {259a}
+
+
+The letter goes on to say that if it can be shown that Lieut. Graydon
+is acting in the same manner as he did in Valencia, for which he was
+admonished,
+
+
+"he will assuredly be recalled on this ground.  You wonder perhaps
+that we for a moment doubt the fact of his reiterated imprudence; but
+audi alteram partem must be our rule--and besides, on reviewing the
+Valencia proceedings, we draw a wide distinction.  Had he been as
+free, as you suppose him to be, of the trammels of office in our
+service, many would say and think that he was prefectly at liberty to
+act and speak as he did of the Authorities, if he chose to take the
+consequences.  Really in such a country it is no marvel if his Spirit
+has been stirred within him!  Will you allow me to remind you of the
+strong things in your own letter to the Valencia ecclesiastic, the
+well pointed and oft repeated Vae!"
+
+
+Mr Brandram points out that strong language is frequently the sword
+of the Reformer, and that there are times when it has the highest
+sanction; but
+
+
+"the judgment of all [the members of the Committee] will be that an
+Agent of the Bible Society is a Reformer, not by his preaching or
+denouncing, but by the distribution of the Bible.  If Mr G's. conduct
+is no worse than it was in Valencia," the letter continues, rather
+inconsistently, in the light of the assurance in the early part that
+recall would be the punishment for another such lapse into
+indiscretion, "you must not expect anything beyond a qualified
+disavowal of it, and that simply as unbecoming an Agent of such a
+Society as ours.
+
+"After what I have written, you will hardly feel surprised that our
+Committee could not quite approve of your Advertisement.  We have
+ever regarded Mr Graydon as much our Agent as yourself.  In three of
+our printed reports in succession we make no difference in speaking
+of you both.  We are anxious to do nothing to weaken your hands at so
+important a crisis, and we conceive that the terms we have employed
+in our Resolution are the mildest we could have used.  Do not insert
+the Advertisement a second time.  Let it pass; let it be forgotten.
+If necessary we shall give the public intimation that Mr G. was, but
+is not our agent any longer.  Remember, we entreat you, the very
+delicate position that such a manifesto places us in, as well as the
+effect which it may have on Mr Graydon's personal safety.  We give
+you full credit for believing it was your duty, under the peculiar
+circumstances of the case, to take so decided and bold a step, and
+that you thought yourself fully justified by the distinction of
+salaried and unsalaried Agent, in speaking of yourself as the alone
+accredited Agent of the Society.  Possibly when you reflect a little
+upon the matter you may view it in another light.  There are besides
+some sentiments in the Advertisement which we cannot perhaps fully
+accord with . . .  If to our poor friend there has befallen the
+saddest of all calamities to which you allude, should we not speak of
+him with all tenderness.  If he be insane I believe much of it is to
+be attributed to that entire devotion with which he has devoted
+himself to our work.
+
+
+No complaint can be urged against the Committee for refusing to
+condemn one of their agents unheard, and without documentary
+evidence; but it was strange that they should pass resolutions that
+contained no word of sympathy with Borrow for his sufferings in a
+typhus-infested prison.  It is even more strange that the covering
+letter should refer to Graydon's sufferings and hardships and the
+danger to his person, without apparently realising that Borrow HAD
+ACTUALLY suffered what the Committee feared that Graydon MIGHT
+suffer.  There is no doubt that Borrow's impulsive letters had
+greatly offended everybody at Earl Street, where Lieut. Graydon
+appears to have been extremely popular; and the few words of sympathy
+with Borrow that might have saved much acrimonious correspondence
+were neither resolved nor written.
+
+The other side of the picture is shown in a vigorous passage from
+Borrow's Report, which was afterwards withdrawn:
+
+
+"A helpless widow [the mother of Don Pascual Mann] was insulted, her
+liberty of conscience invaded, and her only son incited to rebellion
+against her.  A lunatic [Lieut. Graydon] was employed as the
+repartidor, or distributor, of the Blessed Bible, who, having his
+head crammed with what he understood not, ran through the streets of
+Valencia crying aloud that Christ was nigh at hand and would appear
+in a short time, whilst advertisements to much the same effect were
+busily circulated, in which the name, the noble name, of the Bible
+Society was prostituted; whilst the Bible, exposed for sale in the
+apartment of a public house, served for little more than a decoy to
+the idle and curious, who were there treated with incoherent railings
+against the Church of Rome and Babylon in a dialect which it was well
+for the deliverer that only a few of the audience understood.  But I
+fly from these details, and will now repeat the consequences of the
+above proceedings to myself; for I, I, and only I, as every
+respectable person in Madrid can vouch, have paid the penalty for
+them all, though as innocent as the babe who has not yet seen the
+light."
+
+
+If the General Committee at a period of anxiety and annoyance failed
+to pay tribute to Borrow's many qualities, the official historian of
+the Society makes good the omission when he describes him as "A
+strange, impulsive, more or less inflammable creature as he must have
+occasionally seemed to the Secretaries and Editorial Superintendent,
+he had proved himself a man of exceptional ability, energy, tact,
+prudence--above all, a man whose heart was in his work." {262a}
+
+Borrow's acknowledgment of the Resolutions was dated 16th June.  It
+ran:-
+
+
+"I have received your communication of the 30th ult. containing the
+resolutions of the Committee, to which I shall of course attend.
+
+"Of your letter in general, permit me to state that I reverence the
+spirit in which it is written, and am perfectly disposed to admit the
+correctness of the views which it exhibits; but it appears to me that
+in one or two instances I have been misunderstood in the letters
+which I have addressed [to you] on the subject of Graydon.
+
+"I bear this unfortunate gentleman no ill will, God forbid, and it
+will give me pain if he were reprimanded publicly or privately;
+moreover, I can see no utility likely to accrue from such a
+proceeding.  All that I have stated hitherto is the damage which he
+has done in Spain to the cause and myself, by the--what shall I call
+it?--imprudence of his conduct; and the idea which I have endeavoured
+to inculcate is the absolute necessity of his leaving Spain
+instantly.
+
+"Take now in good part what I am about to say, and O! do not
+misunderstand me!  I owe a great deal to the Bible Society, and the
+Bible Society owes nothing to me.  I am well aware and am always
+disposed to admit that it can find thousands more zealous, more
+active, and in every respect more adapted to transact its affairs and
+watch over its interests; yet, with this consciousness of my own
+inutility, I must be permitted to state that, linked to a man like
+Graydon, I can no longer consent to be, and that if the Society
+expect such a thing, I must take the liberty of retiring, perhaps to
+the wilds of Tartary or the Zingani camps of Siberia.
+
+"My name at present is become public property, no very enviable
+distinction in these unhappy times, and neither wished nor sought by
+myself.  I have of late been subjected to circumstances which have
+rendered me obnoxious to the hatred of those who never forgive, the
+Bloody Church of Rome, which I have [no] doubt will sooner or later
+find means to accomplish my ruin; for no one is better aware than
+myself of its fearful resources, whether in England or Spain, in
+Italy or in any other part.  I should not be now in this situation
+had I been permitted to act alone.  How much more would have been
+accomplished, it does not become me to guess.
+
+"I had as many or more difficulties to surmount in Russia than I
+originally had here, yet all that the Society expected or desired was
+effected, without stir or noise, and that in the teeth of an imperial
+Ukase which forbade the work which I was employed to superintend.
+
+"Concerning my late affair, I must here state that I was sent to
+prison on a charge which was subsequently acknowledged not only to be
+false but ridiculous; I was accused of uttering words disrespectful
+towards the Gefe Politico of Madrid; my accuser was an officer of the
+police, who entered my apartment one morning before I was dressed,
+and commenced searching my papers and flinging my books into
+disorder.  Happily, however, the people of the house, who were
+listening at the door, heard all that passed, and declared on oath
+that so far from mentioning the Gefe Politico, I merely told the
+officer that he, the officer, was an insolent fellow, and that I
+would cause him to be punished.  He subsequently confessed that he
+was an instrument of the Vicar General, and that he merely came to my
+apartment in order to obtain a pretence for making a complaint.  He
+has been dismissed from his situation and the Queen [Regent] has
+expressed her sorrow at my imprisonment.  If there be any doubt
+entertained on the matter, pray let Sir George Villiers be written
+to!
+
+"I should be happy to hear what success attends our efforts in China.
+I hope a prudent conduct has been adopted; for think not that a
+strange and loud language will find favour in the eyes of the
+Chinese; and above all, I hope that we have not got into war with the
+Augustines and their followers, who, if properly managed, may be of
+incalculable service in propagating the Scriptures . . . P.S.--The
+Documents, or some of them, shall be sent as soon as possible."
+
+
+Nine days later (25th June) Borrow wrote:
+
+
+"I now await your orders.  I wish to know whether I am at liberty to
+pursue the course which may seem to me best under existing
+circumstances, and which at present appears to be to mount my horses,
+which are neighing in the stable, and once more betake myself to the
+plains and mountains of dusty Spain, and to dispose of my Testaments
+to the muleteers and peasants.  By doing so I shall employ myself
+usefully, and at the same time avoid giving offence.  Better days
+will soon arrive, which will enable me to return to Madrid and reopen
+my shop, till then, however, I should wish to pursue my labours in
+comparative obscurity."
+
+
+Replying to Borrow's letter of 16th June, Mr Brandram wrote (29th
+June):  "I trust we shall not easily forget your services in St
+Petersburg, but suffer me to remind you that when you came to the
+point of distribution your success ended." {265a}  This altogether
+unworthy remark was neither creditable to the writer nor to the
+distinguished Society on whose behalf he wrote.  Borrow had done all
+that a man was capable of to distribute the books.  His reply was
+dignified and effective.
+
+
+"It was unkind and unjust to taunt me with having been unsuccessful
+in distributing the Scriptures.  Allow me to state that no other
+person under the same circumstances would have distributed the tenth
+part; yet had I been utterly unsuccessful, it would have been wrong
+to check me with being so, after all I have undergone, and with how
+little of that are you acquainted." {265b}
+
+
+In response, Mr Brandram wrote (28th July):
+
+
+"You have considered that I have taunted you with want of success in
+St Petersburg.  I thought that the way in which I introduced that
+subject would have prevented any such unpleasant and fanciful
+impression."
+
+
+That was all!  It became evident to all at Earl Street that a
+conference between Borrow, the Officials and the General Committee
+was imperative if the air were to be cleared of the rancour that
+seemed to increase with each interchange of letters. {265c}  Unless
+something were done, a breach seemed inevitable, a thing the Society
+did not appear to desire.  When Borrow first became aware that he was
+wanted at Earl Street for the purpose of a personal conference, he in
+all probability conceived it to be tantamount to a recall, and he was
+averse from leaving the field to the enemy.
+
+
+"In the name of the Highest," he wrote, {266a} "I entreat you all to
+banish such a preposterous idea; a journey home (provided you intend
+that I should return to Spain) could lead to no result but expense
+and the loss of precious time.  I have nothing to explain to you
+which you are not already perfectly well acquainted with by my late
+letters.  I was fully aware at the time I was writing them that I
+should afford you little satisfaction, for the plain unvarnished
+truth is seldom agreeable; but I now repeat, and these are perhaps
+among the last words which I shall ever be permitted to pen, that I
+cannot approve, and I am sure no Christian can, of the system which
+has lately been pursued in the large sea-port cities of Spain, and
+which the Bible Society has been supposed to sanction,
+notwithstanding the most unreflecting person could easily foresee
+that such a line of conduct could produce nothing in the end but
+obloquy and misfortune."
+
+
+Borrow saw that his departure from Spain would be construed by his
+enemies as flight, and that their joy would be great in consequence.
+
+The Spanish authorities were determined if possible to rid the
+country of missionaries.  The Gazeta Oficial of Madrid drew attention
+to the fact that in Valencia there had been distributed thousands of
+pamphlets "against the religion we profess."  Sir George Villiers
+enquired into the matter and found that there was no evidence that
+the pamphlets had been written, printed, or published in England; and
+when writing to Count Ofalia on the subject he informed him that the
+Bible Society distributed, not tracts or controversial writings, but
+the Scriptures.
+
+The next move on the part of the authorities was to produce sworn
+testimony from three people (all living in the same house, by the
+way) that they had purchased copies of "the New Testament and other
+Biblical translations at the Despacho on 5th May."  Borrow was in
+prison at the time, and his assistant denied the sale.  Documents
+were also produced proving that the imprint on the title-page of the
+Scio New Testament was false, as at the time it was printed no such
+printer as Andreas Borrego (who by the way was the Government printer
+and at one time a candidate for cabinet rank) lived in Madrid.  In
+drawing the British Minister's attention to these matters, Count
+Ofalia wrote (31st May):
+
+
+"It would be opportune if you would be pleased to advise Mr Borrow
+that, convinced of the inutility of his efforts for propagating here
+the translation in the vulgar tongue of Sacred Writings without the
+forms required by law, he would do much better in making use of his
+talents in some other class of scientifical or literary Works during
+his residence in Spain, giving up Biblical Enterprises, which may be
+useful in other countries, but which in this Kingdom are prejudicial
+for very obvious reasons."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII:  JULY-NOVEMBER 1838
+
+
+
+Borrow's spirit chafed under this spell of enforced idleness.  His
+horses were neighing in the stable and "Senor Antonio was neighing in
+the house," as Maria Diaz expressed it; and for himself, Borrow
+required something more actively stimulating than pen and ink
+encounters with Mr Brandram.  He therefore determined to defy the
+prohibition and make an excursion into the rural districts of New
+Castile, offering his Testaments for sale as he went, and sending on
+supplies ahead.  His first objective was Villa Seca, a village
+situated on the banks of the Tagus about nine leagues from Madrid.
+
+He was aware of the danger he ran in thus disregarding the official
+decree.
+
+
+"I will not conceal from you," he writes to Mr Brandram on 14th July,
+"that I am playing a daring game, and it is very possible that when I
+least expect it I may be seized, tied to the tail of a mule, and
+dragged either to the prison of Toledo or Madrid.  Yet such a
+prospect does not discourage me in the least, but rather urges me on
+to persevere; for I assure you, and in this assertion there lurks not
+the slightest desire to magnify myself and produce an effect, that I
+am eager to lay down my life in this cause, and whether a Carlist's
+bullet or a gaol-fever bring my career to an end, I am perfectly
+indifferent."
+
+
+He was not averse from martyrdom; but he objected to being
+precipitated into it by another man's folly.  In his interview with
+Count Ofalia, he had been solemnly warned that if a second time he
+came within the clutches of the authorities he might not escape so
+easily, and had replied that it was "a pleasant thing to be
+persecuted for the Gospel's sake."
+
+In his decision to make Villa Seca his temporary headquarters, Borrow
+had been influenced by the fact that it was the home of Maria Diaz,
+his friend and landlady.  Her husband was there working on the land,
+Maria herself living in Madrid that her children might be properly
+educated.  Borrow left Madrid on 10th July, and on his arrival at
+Villa Seca he was cordially welcomed by Juan Lopez, the husband of
+Maria Diaz, who continued to use her maiden name, in accordance with
+Spanish custom.  Lopez subsequently proved of the greatest possible
+assistance in the work of distribution, shaming both Borrow and
+Antonio by his energy and powers of endurance.
+
+The inhabitants of Villa Seca and the surrounding villages of Bargas,
+Coveja, Villa Luenga, Mocejon, Yuncler eagerly bought up "the book of
+life," and each day the three men rode forth in heat so great that
+"the very arrieros frequently fall dead from their mules, smitten by
+a sun-stroke." {269a}
+
+It was in Villa Seca that Borrow found "all that gravity of
+deportment and chivalry of disposition which Cervantes is said to
+have sneered away" {269b} and there were to be heard "those grandiose
+expressions which, when met with in the romances of chivalry, are
+scoffed at as ridiculous exaggerations." {269c}  Borrow so charmed
+the people of the district with the elaborate formality of his
+manner, that he became convinced that any attempt to arrest or do him
+harm would have met with a violent resistance, even to the length of
+the drawing of knives in his defence.
+
+In less than a week some two hundred Testaments had been disposed of,
+and a fresh supply had to be obtained from Madrid.  Borrow's methods
+had now changed.  He had, of necessity, to make as little stir as
+possible in order to avoid an unenviable notoriety.  He carefully
+eschewed advertisements and handbills, and limited himself almost
+entirely to the simple statement that he brought to the people "the
+words and life of the Saviour and His Saints at a price adapted to
+their humble means." {270a}
+
+It is interesting to note in connection with this period of Borrow's
+activities in Spain, that in 1908 one of the sons of Maria Diaz and
+Juan Lopez was sought out at Villa Seca by a representative of the
+Bible Society, and interrogated as to whether he remembered Borrow.
+Eduardo Lopez (then seventy-four years of age) stated that he was a
+child of eight {270b} when Borrow lived at the house of his mother;
+yet he remembers that "El ingles" was tall and robust, with fair hair
+turning grey.  Eduardo and his young brother regarded Borrow with
+both fear and respect; for, their father being absent, he used to
+punish them for misdemeanours by setting them on the table and making
+them remain perfectly quiet for a considerable time.  The old man
+remembered that Borrow had two horses whom he called "la Jaca" and
+"el Mondragon," and that he used to take to the house of Maria Diaz
+"his trunk full of books which were beautifully bound."  He
+remembered Borrow's Greek servant, "Antonio Guchino" (the Antonio
+Buchini of The Bible in Spain), who spoke very bad Spanish.
+
+The most interesting of Eduardo Lopez' recollections of Borrow was
+that he "often recited a chant which nobody understood," and of which
+the old man could remember only the following fragment
+
+
+"Sed un la in la en la la
+Sino Mokhamente de resu la."
+
+
+It has been suggested, {271a} and with every show of probability,
+that "this is the Moslem kalimah or creed which he had heard sung
+from the minarets":
+
+
+"La illaha illa allah
+Wa Muhammad rasoul allah."
+
+
+Borrow recognised that he must not stay very long in any one place,
+and accordingly it was his intention, as soon as he had supplied the
+immediate wants of the Sagra (the plain) of Toledo, "to cross the
+country to Aranjuez, and endeavour to supply with the Word the
+villages on the frontier of La Mancha." {271b}  As he was on the
+point of setting out, however, he received two letters from Mr
+Brandram, which decided him to return immediately to Madrid instead
+of pursuing his intended route.
+
+Borrow was informed that if, after consulting with Sir George
+Villiers, it was thought desirable that he should leave Madrid, he
+was given a free hand to do so.  Furthermore, the President of the
+Bible Society (Lord Bexley), with whom Mr Brandram had consulted, was
+of the opinion that Borrow should return home to confer with the
+Committee.  It was clear from the correspondence that nothing short
+of an interview could remove the very obvious feeling of irritation
+that existed between Borrow and the Society.  In his reply (23rd
+July), Borrow showed a dignity and calmness of demeanour that had
+been lacking from his previous letters; and it most likely produced a
+far more favourable effect at Earl Street than the impassioned
+protests of the past two months:-
+
+
+"My answer will be very brief;" he wrote, "as I am afraid of giving
+way to my feelings; I hope, however, that it will be to the purpose.
+
+"It is broadly hinted in yours of the 7th that I have made false
+statements in asserting that the Government, in consequence of what
+has lately taken place, had come to the resolution of seizing the
+Bible depots in various parts of this country.  [Borrow had written
+to Mr Brandram on 25th June, "The Society are already aware of the
+results of the visit of our friend to Malaga; all their Bibles and
+Testaments having been seized throughout Spain, with the exception of
+my stock in Madrid."]
+
+"In reply I beg leave to inform you that by the first courier you
+will receive from the British Legation at Madrid the official notice
+from Count Ofalia to Sir George Villiers of the seizures already
+made, and the motives which induced the Government to have recourse
+to such a measure.
+
+"The following seizures have already been made, though some have not
+as yet been officially announced:- The Society's books at Orviedo,
+Pontevedra, Salamanca, Santiago, Seville, and Valladolid.
+
+"It appears from your letters that the depots in the South of Spain
+have escaped.  I am glad of it, although it be at my own expense.  I
+see the hand of the Lord throughout the late transactions.  He is
+chastening me; it is His pleasure that the guilty escape and the
+innocent be punished.  The Government gave orders to seize the Bible
+depots throughout the country on account of the late scenes at Malaga
+and Valencia--I have never been there, yet only MY depots are meddled
+with, as it appears!  The Lord's will be done, blessed be the name of
+the Lord!
+
+"I will write again to-morrow, I shall have then arranged my
+thoughts, and determined on the conduct which it becomes a Christian
+to pursue under these circumstances.  Permit me, in conclusion, to
+ask you:
+
+"Have you not to a certain extent been partial in this matter?  Have
+you not, in the apprehension of being compelled to blame the conduct
+of one who has caused me unutterable anxiety, misery and persecution,
+and who has been the bane of the Bible cause in Spain, refused to
+receive the information which it was in YOUR power to command?  I
+called on the Committee and yourself from the first to apply to Sir
+George Villiers; no one is so well versed as to what has lately been
+going as himself; but no.  It was God's will that I, who have risked
+all and lost ALMOST all in the cause, be taunted, suspected, and the
+sweat of agony and tears which I have poured out be estimated at the
+value of the water of the ditch or the moisture which exudes from
+rotten dung; but I murmur not, and hope I shall at all times be
+willing to bow to the dispensations of the Almighty.
+
+"Sir George Villiers has returned to England for a short period; you
+have therefore the opportunity of consulting him.  I WILL NOT leave
+Spain until the whole affair has been thoroughly sifted.  I shall
+then perhaps appear and bid you an eternal farewell. {273a}  Four
+hundred Testaments have been disposed of in the Sagra of Toledo.
+
+"P.S.--I am just returned from the Embassy, where I have had a long
+interview with that admirable person Lord Wm. Hervey [Charge
+d'Affaires during Sir George Villiers' absence].  He has requested me
+to write him a letter on the point in question, which with the
+official documents he intends to send to the Secretary of State in
+order to be laid before the Bible Society.  He has put into my hands
+the last communication from Ofalia {273b} it relates to the seizure
+of MY depots at Malaga, Pontevedra, etc.  I have not opened it, but
+send it for your approval."
+
+
+It is pleasant to record that the Sub-Committee expressed itself as
+unable to see in Mr Brandram's letter what Borrow saw.  There was no
+intention to convey the impression that he had made false statements,
+and regret was expressed that he had thought it necessary to apply to
+the Embassy for confirmation of what he had written.  All this Mr
+Brandram conveyed in a letter dated 6th August.  He continues:  "I am
+now in full possession of all that Mr Graydon has done, and find it
+utterly impossible to account for that very strong feeling that you
+have imbibed against him."
+
+On 20th July Mr Brandram had written that, after consulting with two
+or three members of the Committee, they all confirmed a wish already
+expressed that their Agent should not continue to expose himself to
+such dangers.  If, however, he still saw the way open before him,
+
+
+"as so pleasantly represented in your letter . . . you need not think
+of returning . . . Do allow me to suggest to you," he continues, "to
+drop allusion to Mr Graydon in your letters.  His conduct is not
+regarded here as you regard it.  I could fancy, but perhaps it is all
+fancy, that you have him in your eye when you tell us that you have
+eschewed handbills and advertisements.  Time has been when you have
+used them plentifully . . .  Sir George Villiers is in England--but I
+do not know that we shall seek an interview with him--We are afraid
+of being hampered with the trammels of office."
+
+
+The Committee, however, did not endorse Mr Brandram's view as to
+Borrow continuing in Spain, and further, they did "not see it right,"
+the secretary wrote (6th August), "after the confidential
+communication in which you have been in with the Government, that you
+should be acting now in such open defiance of it, and putting
+yourself in such extreme jeopardy."  Later Borrow made reference to
+the remark about the handbills.
+
+
+"It would have been as well," he wrote, "if my respected and revered
+friend, the writer, had made himself acquainted with the character of
+my advertisements before he made that observation.  There is no harm
+in an advertisement, if truth, decency and the fear of God are
+observed, and I believe my own will be scarcely found deficient in
+any of these three requisites.  It is not the use of a serviceable
+instrument, but its abuse that merits reproof, and I cannot conceive
+that advertising was abused by me when I informed the people of
+Madrid that the New Testament was to be purchased at a cheap price in
+the Calle del Principe." {275a}
+
+
+Elsewhere he referred to these same advertisements as "mild yet
+expressive."
+
+In spite of the strained state of his relations with the Bible
+Society, Borrow had no intention of remaining in Madrid brooding over
+his wrongs.  Encouraged by the success that had attended his efforts
+in the Sagra of Toledo, and indifferent to the fact that his renewed
+activity was known at Toledo, where it was causing some alarm, he
+determined to proceed to Aranjuez, and, on his arrival there, to be
+guided by events as to his future movements.  Accordingly about 28th
+July he set out attended by Antonio and Lopez, who had accompanied
+him from Villa Seca to Madrid, proceeding in the direction of La
+Mancha, and selling at every village through which they passed from
+twenty to forty Testaments.  At Aranjuez they remained three days,
+visiting every house in the town and disposing of about eighty books.
+It was no unusual thing to see groups of the poorer people gathered
+round one of their number who was reading aloud from a recently
+purchased Testament.
+
+Feeling that his enemies were preparing to strike, Borrow determined
+to push on to the frontier town of Ocana, beyond which the clergy had
+only a nominal jurisdiction on account of its being in the hands of
+the Carlists.  Lopez was sent on with between two and three hundred
+Testaments, and Borrow, accompanied by Antonio, followed later by a
+shorter route through the hills.  As they approached the town, a man,
+a Jew, stepped out from the porch of an empty house and barred their
+way, telling them that Lopez had been arrested at Ocana that morning
+as he was selling Testaments in the streets, and that the authorities
+were now waiting for Borrow himself.
+
+Seeing that no good could be done by plunging into the midst of his
+enemies, who had their instructions from the corregidor of Toledo,
+Borrow decided to return to Aranjuez.  This he did, on the way
+narrowly escaping assassination at the hands of three robbers.  The
+next morning he was rejoined by Lopez, who had been released.  He had
+sold 27 Testaments, and 200 had been confiscated and forwarded to
+Toledo.  The whole party then returned to Madrid.
+
+The unfortunate affair at Ocana by no means discouraged Borrow.  It
+was his intention "with God's leave" to "fight it out to the last."
+He saw that his only chance of distributing his store of Testaments
+lay in visiting the smaller villages before the order to confiscate
+his books arrived from Toledo.  His enemies were numerous and
+watchful; but Borrow was as cunning as a gypsy and as far-seeing as a
+Jew.  Thinking that his notoriety had not yet crossed the Guadarrama
+mountains and penetrated into Old Castile, he decided to anticipate
+it.  Lopez was sent ahead with a donkey bearing a cargo of
+Testaments, his instructions being to meet Borrow and Antonio at La
+Granja.  Failing to find Lopez at the appointed place, Borrow pushed
+on to Segovia, where he received news that some men were selling
+books at Abades, to which place he proceeded with three more donkeys
+laden with books that had been consigned to a friend at Segovia.  At
+Abades Lopez was discovered busily occupied in selling Testaments.
+
+Hearing that an order was about to be sent from Segovia to Abades for
+the confiscation of his Testaments, Borrow immediately left the town,
+donkeys, Testaments and all, and for safety's sake passed the night
+in the fields.  The next day they proceeded to the village of
+Labajos.  A few days after their arrival the Carlist leader
+Balmaceda, at the head of his robber cavalry, streamed down from the
+pine woods of Soria into the southern part of Old Castile, Borrow
+"was present at all the horrors which ensued--the sack of Arrevalo,
+and the forcible entry into Marrin Munoz and San Cyprian.  Amidst
+these terrible scenes we continued our labours undaunted." {277a}  He
+witnessed what "was not the war of men or even cannibals . . . it
+seemed a contest of fiends from the infernal pit."  Antonio became
+seized with uncontrollable fear and ran away to Madrid.  Lopez soon
+afterwards disappeared, and, left alone, Borrow suffered great
+anxiety as to the fate of the brave fellow.  Hearing that he was in
+prison at Vilallos, about three leagues distant, and in spite of the
+fact that Balmaceda's cavalry division was in the neighbourhood,
+Borrow mounted his horse and set off next day (22nd Aug.) alone.  He
+found on his arrival at Vilallos, that Lopez had been removed from
+the prison to a private house.  Disregarding an order from the
+corregidor of Avila that only the books should be confiscated and
+that the vendor should be set at liberty, the Alcalde, at the
+instigation of the priest, refused to liberate Lopez.  It had been
+hinted to the unfortunate man that on the arrival of the Carlists he
+was to be denounced as a liberal, which would mean death.  "Taking
+these circumstances into consideration," Borrow wrote, {277b} "I
+deemed it my duty as a Christian and a gentleman to rescue my
+unfortunate servant from such lawless hands, and in consequence,
+defying opposition, I bore him off, though perfectly unarmed, through
+a crowd of at least one hundred peasants.  On leaving the place I
+shouted 'Viva Isabella Segunda.'"
+
+In this affair Borrow had, not only the approval of Lord William
+Hervey, but of Count Ofalia also.  In all probability the Bible
+Society has never had, and never will have again, an agent such as
+Borrow, who on occasion could throw aside the cloak of humility and
+grasp a two-edged sword with which to discomfit his enemies, and who
+solemnly chanted the creed of Islam whilst engaged as a Christian
+missionary.  There was something magnificent in his Christianity; it
+savoured of the Crusades in its pre-Reformation virility.  Martyrdom
+he would accept if absolutely necessary; but he preferred that if
+martyrs there must be they should be selected from the ranks of the
+enemy, whilst he, George Borrow, represented the strong arm of the
+Lord.
+
+After the Vilallos affair, Borrow returned to Madrid, crossing the
+Guadarramas alone and with two horses.  "I nearly perished there," he
+wrote to Mr Brandram (1st Sept.), "having lost my way in the darkness
+and tumbled down a precipice."  The perilous journey north had
+resulted in the sale of 900 Testaments, all within the space of three
+weeks and amidst scenes of battle and bloodshed.
+
+On his return to Madrid, Borrow found awaiting him the Resolution of
+the General Committee (6th Aug.), recalling him "without further
+delay."
+
+
+"I will set out for England as soon as possible," he wrote in reply;
+{278a} "but I must be allowed time.  I am almost dead with fatigue,
+suffering and anxiety; and it is necessary that I should place the
+Society's property in safe and sure custody."
+
+
+On 1st September he wrote to Mr Brandram that he should "probably be
+in England within three weeks."  Shortly after this he was attacked
+with fever, and confined to his bed for ten days, during which he was
+frequently delirious.  When the fever departed, he was left very weak
+and subject to a profound melancholy.
+
+
+"I bore up against my illness as long as I could," he wrote, {279a}
+"but it became too powerful for me.  By good fortune I obtained a
+decent physician, a Dr Hacayo, who had studied medicine in England,
+and aided by him and the strength of my constitution I got the better
+of my attack, which, however, was a dreadfully severe one.  I hope my
+next letter will be from Bordeaux.  I cannot write more at present,
+for I am very feeble."
+
+
+The actual date that Borrow left Madrid is not known.  He himself
+gave it as 31st August, {279b} which is obviously inaccurate, as on
+19th September he wrote to Mr Brandram:  "I am now better, and hope
+in a few days to be able to proceed to Saragossa, which is the only
+road open."  He travelled leisurely by way of the Pyrenees, through
+France to Paris, where he spent a fortnight.  Of Paris he was very
+fond; "for, leaving all prejudices aside, it is a magnificent city,
+well supplied with sumptuous buildings and public squares, unequalled
+by any town in Europe." {279c}  Having bought a few rare books he
+proceeded to Boulogne, "and thence by steamboat to London," {279d}
+where in all probability he arrived towards the end of October.
+
+He had "long talks on Spanish affairs" with his friends at Earl
+Street, where personal interviews seem to have brought about a much
+better feeling.  The General Committee requested Borrow to put into
+writing his views as to the best means to be adopted for the future
+distribution of the Scriptures in Spain.  He accordingly wrote a
+statement, {280a} a fine, vigorous piece of narrative, putting his
+case so clearly and convincingly as to leave little to be said for
+the unfortunate Graydon.  He expressed himself as "eager to be
+carefully and categorically questioned."  This Report appears
+subsequently to have been withdrawn, probably on the advice of
+Borrow's friends, who saw that its uncompromising bluntness of
+expression would make it unacceptable to the General Committee.  It
+was certainly presented to and considered by the Sub-Committee.
+Another document was drawn up entitled, "Report of Mr Geo. Borrow on
+Past and Future Operations in Spain."  This reached Earl Street on
+28th November.  In it Borrow states that as the inhabitants of the
+cities had not shown themselves well-disposed towards the Scriptures,
+it would be better to labour in future among the peasantry.  It was
+his firm conviction, he wrote,
+
+
+"that every village in Spain will purchase New Testaments, from
+twenty to sixty, according to its circumstances.  During the last two
+months of his sojourn in Spain he visited about forty villages, and
+in only two instances was his sale less than thirty copies in each .
+. . If it be objected to the plan which he has presumed to suggest
+that it is impossible to convey to the rural districts of Spain the
+book of life without much difficulty and danger, he begs leave to
+observe that it does not become a real Christian to be daunted by
+either when it pleases his Maker to select him as an instrument; and
+that, moreover, if it be not written that a man is to perish by wild
+beasts or reptiles he is safe in the den even of the Cockatrice as in
+the most retired chamber of the King's Palace; and that if, on the
+contrary, he be doomed to perish by them, his destiny will overtake
+him notwithstanding all the precautions which he, like a blind worm,
+may essay for his security."
+
+
+In conclusion Borrow calls attention, without suggesting intimate
+alliance and co-operation, to the society of the liberal-minded
+Spanish ecclesiastics, which has been formed for the purpose of
+printing and circulating the Scriptures in Spanish WITHOUT COMMENTARY
+OR NOTES.  This had reference to a movement that was on foot in
+Madrid, supported by the Primate and the Bishops of Vigo and Joen, to
+challenge the Government in regard to its attempt to prevent the free
+circulation of the Scriptures.  It was held that nowhere among the
+laws of Spain is it forbidden to circulate the Scriptures either with
+or without annotations.  The only prohibition being in the various
+Papal Bulls.  Charles Wood was chosen as "the ostensible manager of
+the concern"; but had it not been for the trouble in the South,
+Borrow would have been the person selected.
+
+It would have been in every way deplorable had Borrow severed his
+connection with the Bible Society as a result of the Graydon episode.
+Borrow had been impulsive and indignant in his letters to Earl
+Street, Mr Brandram, on the other hand, had been "a little partial,"
+and on one or two occasions must have written hastily in response to
+Borrow's letters.  There is no object in administering blame or
+directing reproaches when the principals in a quarrel have made up
+their differences; but there can be no question that the failure of
+the Officials and Committee of the Bible Society to appreciate the
+situation in Spain retarded their work in that country very
+considerably.  This fact is now generally recognised.  Mr Canton has
+admirably summed up the situation when he says:
+
+
+"Borrow had his faults, but insincerity and lack of zeal in the cause
+he had espoused were not among them.  Both Sir George Villiers and
+his successor [during Sir George's visit to England], Lord William
+Hervey, were satisfied with the propriety of his conduct.  Count
+Ofalia himself recognised his good faith--'cuia buena fe me es
+conocida.'  To see his plans thwarted, his work arrested, the objects
+of the Society jeopardised, and his own person endangered by the
+indiscretion of others, formed, if not a justification, at least a
+sufficient excuse for the expression of strong feeling.  On the other
+hand, it was difficult for those at home to ascertain the actual
+facts of the case, to understand the nicety of the situation, and to
+arrive at an impartial judgment.  Mr Brandram, who in any case would
+have been displeased with Borrow's unrestrained speech, appears to
+have suspected that his statements were not free from exaggeration,
+and that his discretion was not wholly beyond reproach.  Happily the
+tension caused by this painful episode was relieved by Lieut.
+Graydon's withdrawal to France in June." {282a}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII:  DECEMBER 1838-MAY 1839
+
+
+
+On 14th December 1838 it was resolved by the General Committee of the
+Bible Society that Borrow should proceed once more to Spain to
+dispose of such copies of the Scriptures as remained on hand at
+Madrid and other depots established by him in various parts of the
+country.  He left London on the 21st, and sailed from Falmouth two
+days later, reaching Cadiz on the 31st, after a stormy passage, and
+on 2nd January he arrived at Seville, "rather indisposed with an old
+complaint," probably "the Horrors."
+
+In such stirring times to be absent from the country, even for so
+short a period as two months, meant that on his return the traveller
+found a new Spain.  Borrow learned that the Duke of Frias had
+succeeded Count Ofalia in September.  The Duke had advised the
+British Ambassador in November that the Spanish authorities were
+possessed of a quantity of Borrow's Bibles (?New Testaments) that had
+been seized and taken to Toledo, and that if arrangements were not
+made for them to be taken out of Spain they would be destroyed.  Sir
+George Villiers had replied that Mr Borrow, who was then out of the
+country, had been advised of the Duke's notification, and as soon as
+word was received from him, the Duke should be communicated with.
+Then the Duke of Frias in turn passed out of office and was succeeded
+by another, and so, politically, change followed change.
+
+The Government, however, had no intention of putting itself in the
+wrong a second time.  Great Britain's friendship was of far too great
+importance to the country to be jeopardised for the mere
+gratification of imprisoning George Borrow.  An order had been sent
+out to all the authorities that an embargo was to be placed upon the
+books themselves; but those distributing them were not to be arrested
+or in any way harmed.
+
+At Seville he found evidences of the activity of the Government in
+the news that of the hundred New Testaments that he had left with his
+correspondent there, seventy-six had been seized during the previous
+summer.  Hearing that the books were in the hands of the
+Ecclesiastical Governor, Borrow astonished that "fierce, persecuting
+Papist by calling to make enquiries concerning them."  The old man
+treated his visitor to a stream of impassioned invective against the
+Bible Society and its agent, expressing his surprise that he had ever
+been permitted to leave the prison in Madrid.  Seeing that nothing
+was to be gained, although he had an absolute right to the books,
+provided he sent them out of the country, Borrow decided not to press
+the matter.
+
+On the night of 12th Jan. 1839, he left Seville with the Mail Courier
+and his escort bound for Madrid, where he arrived on the 16th without
+accident or incident, although the next Courier traversing the route
+was stopped by banditti.  It was during this journey, whilst resting
+for four hours at Manzanares, a large village in La Mancha, that he
+encountered the blind girl who had been taught Latin by a Jesuit
+priest, and whom he named "the Manchegan Prophetess." {284a}  In
+telling Mr Brandram of the incident, Borrow tactlessly remarked,
+"what wonderful people are the Jesuits; when shall we hear of an
+English rector instructing a beggar girl in the language of Cicero?"
+Mr Brandram clearly showed that he liked neither the remark, which he
+took as personal, nor the use of the term "prophetess."
+
+On reaching Madrid a singular incident befell Borrow.  On entering
+the arch of the posada called La Reyna, he found himself encircled by
+a pair of arms, and, on turning round, found that they belonged to
+the delinquent Antonio, who stood before his late master "haggard and
+ill-dressed, and his eyes seemed starting from their sockets."  The
+poor fellow, who was entirely destitute, had, on the previous night,
+dreamed that he saw Borrow arrive on a black horse, and, in
+consequence, had spent the whole day in loitering about outside the
+posada.  Borrow was very glad to engage him again, in spite of his
+recent cowardice and desertion.  Borrow once more took up his abode
+with the estimable Maria Diaz, and one of his first cares was to call
+on Lord Clarendon (Sir George Villiers had succeeded his uncle as
+fourth earl), by whom he was kindly received.
+
+A week later, there arrived from Lopez at Villa Seca his "largest and
+most useful horse," the famous Sidi Habismilk (My Lord the Sustainer
+of the Kingdom), "an Arabian of high caste . . . the best, I believe,
+that ever issued from the desert," {285a} Lopez wrote, regretting
+that he was unable to accompany "The Sustainer of the Kingdom" in
+person, being occupied with agricultural pursuits, but he sent a
+relative named Victoriano to assist in the work of distributing the
+Gospel.
+
+Borrow's plan was to make Madrid his headquarters, with Antonio in
+charge of the supplies, and visit all the villages and hamlets in the
+vicinity that had not yet been supplied with Testaments.  He then
+proposed to turn eastward to a distance of about thirty leagues.
+
+
+"I have been very passionate in prayer," he writes, {285b} "during
+the last two or three days; and I entertain some hope that the Lord
+has condescended to answer me, as I appear to see my way with
+considerable clearness.  It may, of course, prove a delusion, and the
+prospects which seem to present themselves may be mere palaces of
+clouds, which a breath of wind is sufficient to tumble into ruin;
+therefore bearing this possibility in mind it behoves me to beg that
+I may be always enabled to bow meekly to the dispensations of the
+Almighty, whether they be of favour or severity."
+
+
+Mr Brandram's comment on this portion of Borrow's letter is rather
+suggestive of deliberate fault-finding.
+
+
+"May your 'passionate' prayers be answered," he writes. {286a}  "You
+see I remark your unusual word--very significant it is, but one
+rather fitted for the select circle where 'passion' is understood in
+its own full sense--and not in the restricted meaning attached to it
+ordinarily.  Perhaps you will not often meet with a better set of men
+than those who assembled in Earl Street, but they may not always be
+open to the force of language, and so unwonted a phrase may raise odd
+feelings in their minds.  Do not be in a passion, will you, for the
+freedom of my remarks.  You will perhaps suppose remarks were made in
+Committee.  This does not happen to be the case, though I fully
+anticipated it.  Mr Browne, Mr Jowett and myself had first privately
+devoured your letter, and we made our remarks.  We could relish such
+a phrase."
+
+
+Sometimes there was a suggestion of spite in Mr Brandram's letters.
+He was obviously unfriendly towards Borrow during the latter portion
+of his agency.  It was clear that the period of Borrow's further
+association with the Bible Society was to be limited.  If he replied
+at all to this rather unfair criticism, he must have done so
+privately to Mr Brandram, as there is no record of his having
+referred to it in any subsequent letters among the Society's
+archives.
+
+All unconscious that he had so early offended, Borrow set out upon
+his first journey to distribute Testaments among the villages around
+Madrid.  Dressed in the manner of the peasants, on his head a
+montera, a species of leathern helmet, with jacket and trousers of
+the same material, and mounted on Sidi Habismilk, he looked so unlike
+the conventional missionary that the housewife may be excused who
+mistook him for a pedlar selling soap.
+
+In some villages where the people were without money, they received
+Testaments in return for refreshing the missionaries.  "Is this
+right?" Borrow enquires of Mr Brandram.  The village priests
+frequently proved of considerable assistance; for when they
+pronounced the books good, as they sometimes did, the sale became
+extremely brisk.  After an absence of eight days, Borrow returned to
+Madrid.  Shortly afterwards, when on the eve of starting out upon
+another expedition to Guadalajara and the villages of Alcarria, he
+received a letter from Victoriano saying that he was in prison at
+Fuente la Higuera, a village about eight leagues distant.  Acting
+with his customary energy and decision, Borrow obtained from an
+influential friend letters to the Civil Governor and principal
+authorities of Guadalajara.  He then despatched Antonio to the
+rescue, with the result that Victoriano was released, with the
+assurance that those responsible for his detention should be severely
+punished.
+
+Whilst Victoriano was in prison, Borrow and Antonio had been very
+successful in selling Testaments and Bibles in Madrid, disposing of
+upwards of a hundred copies, but entirely to the poor, who "receive
+the Scriptures with gladness," although the hearts of the rich were
+hard.  The work in and about Madrid continued until the middle of
+March, when Borrow decided to make an excursion as far as Talavera.
+The first halt was made at the village of Naval Carnero.  Soon after
+his arrival orders came from Madrid warning the alcaldes of every
+village in New Castile to be on the look out for the tall, white-
+haired heretic, of whom an exact description was given, who to-day
+was in one place and to-morrow twenty leagues distant.  No violence
+was to be offered either to him or to his assistants; but he and they
+were to be baulked in their purpose by every legitimate means.
+
+Foiled in the rural districts, Borrow instantly determined to change
+his plan of campaign.  He saw that he was less likely to attract
+notice in the densely-populated capital than in the provinces.  He
+therefore galloped back to Madrid, leaving Victoriano to follow more
+leisurely.  He rejoiced at the alarm of the clergy.  "Glory to God!"
+he exclaims, "they are becoming thoroughly alarmed, and with much
+reason." {288a}  The "reason" lay in the great demand for Testaments
+and Bibles.  A new binding-order had to be given for the balance of
+the 500 Bibles that had arrived in sheets, or such as had been left
+of them by the rats, who had done considerable damage in the Madrid
+storehouse.
+
+It was at this juncture that Borrow's extensive acquaintance with the
+lower orders proved useful.  Selecting eight of the most intelligent
+from among them, including five women, he supplied them with
+Testaments and instructions to vend the books in all the parishes of
+Madrid, with the result that in the course of about a fortnight 600
+copies were disposed of in the streets and alleys.  A house to house
+canvass was instituted with remarkable results, for manservant and
+maidservant bought eagerly of the books.  Antonio excelled himself
+and made some amends for his flight from Labajos, when, like a
+torrent, the Carlist cavalry descended upon it.  Dark Madrid was
+becoming illuminated with a flood of Scriptural light.  In two of its
+churches the New Testament was expounded every Sunday evening.
+Bibles were particularly in demand, a hundred being sold in about
+three weeks.  The demand exceeded the supply.  "The Marques de Santa
+Coloma," Borrow wrote, "has a large family, but every individual of
+it, old or young, is now in possession of a Bible and likewise of a
+Testament." {288b}
+
+Borrow appears to have enlisted the aid of other distributors than
+the eight colporteurs.  One of his most zealous agents was an
+ecclesiastic, who always carried with him beneath his gown a copy of
+the Bible, which he offered to the first person he encountered whom
+he thought likely to become a purchaser.  Yet another assistant was
+found in a rich old gentleman of Navarre, who sent copies to his own
+province.
+
+One night after having retired to bed, Borrow received a visit from a
+curious, hobgoblin-like person, who gave him grave, official warning
+that unless he present himself before the corregidor on the morrow at
+eleven A.M., he must be prepared to take the consequences.  The hour
+chosen for this intimation was midnight.  On the next day at the
+appointed time Borrow presented himself before the corregidor, who
+announced that he wished to ask a question.  The question related to
+a box of Testaments that Borrow had sent to Naval Carnero, which had
+been seized and subsequently claimed on Borrow's behalf by Antonio.
+In Spain they have the dramatic instinct.  If it strike the majestic
+mind of a corregidor at midnight that he would like to see a citizen
+or a stranger on the morrow about some trifling affair, time or place
+are not permitted to interfere with the conveyance of the intimation
+to the citizen or stranger to present himself before the gravely
+austere official, who will carry out the interrogation with a
+solemnity becoming a capital charge.
+
+By the middle of April barely a thousand Testaments remained; these
+Borrow determined to distribute in Seville.  Sending Antonio, the
+Testaments and two horses with the convoy, Borrow decided to risk
+travelling with the Mail Courier.  For one thing, he disliked the
+slowness of a convoy, and for another the insults and irritations
+that travellers had to put up with from the escort, both officers and
+men.  His original plan had been to proceed by Estremadura; but a
+band of Carlist robbers had recently made its appearance, murdering
+or holding at ransom every person who fell into its clutches.  Borrow
+wrote:-
+
+
+"I therefore deem it wise to avoid, if possible, the alternative of
+being shot or having to pay one thousand pounds for being set at
+liberty . . . It is moreover wicked to tempt Providence
+systematically.  I have already thrust myself into more danger than
+was, perhaps, strictly necessary, and as I have been permitted
+hitherto to escape, it is better to be content with what it has
+pleased the Lord to do for me up to the present moment, than to run
+the risk of offending Him by a blind confidence in His forbearance,
+which may be over-taxed.  As it is, however, at all times best to be
+frank, I am willing to confess that I am what the world calls
+exceedingly superstitious; perhaps the real cause of my change of
+resolution was a dream, in which I imagined myself on a desolate road
+in the hands of several robbers, who were hacking me with their long,
+ugly knives." {290a}
+
+
+In the same letter, which was so to incur Mr Brandram's disapproval,
+Borrow tells of the excellent results of his latest plan for
+disposing of Bibles and Testaments, three hundred and fifty of the
+former having been sold since he reached Spain.  He goes on to
+explain and expound the difficulties that have been met and overcome,
+and hopes that his friends at Earl Street will be patient, as it may
+not be in his power to send "for a long time any flattering accounts
+of operations commenced there."  In conclusion, he assures Mr
+Brandram that from the Church of Rome he has learned one thing, "EVER
+TO EXPECT EVIL, AND EVER TO HOPE FOR GOOD."
+
+Nothing could have been more unfortunate than the effect produced
+upon Mr Brandram's mind by this letter.
+
+
+"I scarcely know what to say," he writes.  "You are in a very
+peculiar country; you are doubtless a man of very peculiar
+temperament, and we must not apply common rules in judging either of
+yourself or your affairs.  What, e.g., shall we say to your
+confession of a certain superstitiousness?  It is very frank of you
+to tell us what you need not have told; but it sounded very odd when
+read aloud in a large Committee.  Strangers that know you not would
+carry away strange ideas . . . In bespeaking our patience, there is
+an implied contrast between your own mode of proceeding and that
+adopted by others--a contrast this a little to the disadvantage of
+others, and savouring a little of the praise of a personage called
+number one . . . Perhaps my vanity is offended, and I feel as if I
+were not esteemed a person of sufficient discernment to know enough
+of the real state of Spain . . .
+
+"Bear with me now in my criticisms on your second letter [that of 2nd
+May].  You narrate your perilous journey to Seville, and say at the
+beginning of the description:  'My usual wonderful good fortune
+accompanying us.'  This is a mode of speaking to which we are not
+well accustomed; it savours, some of our friends would say, a little
+of the profane.  Those who know you will not impute this to you.  But
+you must remember that our Committee Room is public to a great
+extent, and I cannot omit expressions as I go reading on.  Pious
+sentiments may be thrust into letters ad nauseam, and it is not for
+that I plead; but is there not a via media?  "We are odd people, it
+may be, in England; we are not fond of prophets or 'prophetesses' [a
+reference to her of La Mancha about whom Borrow had previously been
+rebuked].  I have not turned back to your former description of the
+lady whom you have a second time introduced to our notice.  Perhaps
+my wounded pride had not been made whole after the infliction you
+before gave it by contrasting the teacher of the prophetess with
+English rectors."
+
+
+Borrow replied to this letter from Seville on 28th June, and there
+are indications that before doing so he took time to deliberate upon
+it.
+
+
+"Think not, I pray you," he wrote, "that any observation of yours
+respecting style, or any peculiarities of expression which I am in
+the habit of exhibiting in my correspondence, can possibly awaken in
+me any feeling but that of gratitude, knowing so well as I do the
+person who offers them, and the motives by which he is influenced.  I
+have reflected on those passages which you were pleased to point out
+as objectionable, and have nothing to reply further than that I have
+erred, that I am sorry, and will endeavour to mend, and that,
+moreover, I have already prayed for assistance to do so.  Allow me,
+however, to offer a word, not in excuse but in explanation of the
+expression 'wonderful good fortune' which appeared in a former letter
+of mine.  It is clearly objectionable, and, as you very properly
+observe, savours of pagan times.  But I am sorry to say that I am
+much in the habit of repeating other people's sayings without
+weighing their propriety.  The saying was not mine; but I heard it in
+conversation and thoughtlessly repeated it.  A few miles from Seville
+I was telling the Courier of the many perilous journeys which I had
+accomplished in Spain in safety, and for which I thank the Lord.  His
+reply was, 'La mucha suerte de Usted tambien nos ha acompanado en
+este viage." {292a}
+
+
+Thus ended another unfortunate misunderstanding between secretary and
+agent.
+
+Borrow had taken considerable risk in making the journey to Seville
+with the Courier.  The whole of La Mancha was overrun with the
+Carlist-banditti, who, "whenever it pleases them, stop the Courier,
+burn the vehicle and letters, murder the paltry escort which attends,
+and carry away any chance passenger to the mountains, where an
+enormous ransom is demanded, which if not paid brings on the dilemma
+of four shots through the head, as the Spaniards say."  The Courier's
+previous journey over the same route had ended in the murder of the
+escort and the burning of the coach, the Courier himself escaping
+through the good offices of one of the bandits, who had formerly been
+his postilion.  Borrow was shown the blood-soaked turf and the skull
+of one of the soldiers.  At Manzanares, Borrow invited to breakfast
+with him the Prophetess who was so unpopular at Earl Street.
+Continuing the journey, he reached Seville without mishap, and a few
+days later Antonio arrived with the horses.  It was found that the
+two cases of Testaments that had been forwarded from Madrid had been
+stopped at the Seville Customs House, and Borrow had recourse to
+subterfuge in order to get them and save his journey from being in
+vain.
+
+
+"For a few dollars," he tells Mr Brandram (2nd May), "I procured a
+fiador or person who engaged THAT THE CHESTS should be carried down
+the river and embarked at San Lucar for a foreign land.  Yesterday I
+hired a boat and sent them down, but on the way I landed in a secure
+place all the Testaments which I intend for this part of the
+country."
+
+
+The fiador had kept to the letter of his undertaking, and the chests
+were duly delivered at San Lucar; but a considerable portion of their
+contents, some two hundred Testaments, had been abstracted, and these
+had to be smuggled into Seville under the cloaks of master and
+servant.  The officials appear to have treated Borrow with the
+greatest possible courtesy and consideration, and they told him that
+his "intentions were known and honored."
+
+
+Borrow had great hopes of achieving something for the Gospel's sake
+in Seville; but the operation would be a delicate one.  To Mr
+Brandram he wrote:-
+
+
+"Consider my situation here.  I am in a city by nature very
+Levitical, as it contains within it the most magnificent and
+splendidly endowed cathedral of any in Spain.  I am surrounded by
+priests and friars, who know and hate me, and who, if I commit the
+slightest act of indiscretion, will halloo their myrmidons against
+me.  The press is closed to me, the libraries are barred against me,
+I have no one to assist me but my hired servant, no pious English
+families to comfort or encourage me, the British subjects here being
+ranker papists and a hundred times more bigoted than the Spanish
+themselves, the Consul, a RENEGADE QUAKER.  Yet notwithstanding, with
+God's assistance, I will do much, though silently, burrowing like the
+mole in darkness beneath the ground.  Those who have triumphed in
+Madrid, and in the two Castiles, where the difficulties were seven
+times greater, are not to be dismayed by priestly frowns at Seville."
+{293a}
+
+
+On arriving at Seville Borrow had put up at the Posada de la Reyna,
+in the Calle Gimios, and here on 4th May (he had arrived about 24th
+April) he encountered Lieut.-Colonel Elers Napier.  Borrow liked
+nothing so well as appearing in the role of a mysterious stranger.
+He loved mystery as much as a dramatic moment.  His admiration of
+Baron Taylor was largely based upon the innumerable conjectures as to
+who it was that surrounded his puzzling personality with such an air
+of mystery.  That May morning Colonel Napier, who was also staying at
+the Posada de la Reyna, was wandering about the galleries overlooking
+the patio.  He writes:-
+
+
+"whilst occupied in moralising over the dripping water spouts, I
+observed a tall, gentlemanly-looking man dressed in a semarra
+[zamarra, a sheepskin jacket with the wool outside] leaning over the
+balustrades and apparently engaged in a similar manner with myself .
+. .  From the stranger's complexion, which was fair, but with
+brilliant black eyes, I concluded he was not a Spaniard; in short,
+there was something so remarkable in his appearance that it was
+difficult to say to what nation he might belong.  He was tall, with a
+commanding appearance; yet, though apparently in the flower of
+manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged with the winter of either age
+or sorrow as to be nearly snow white." {294a}
+
+
+Colonel Napier was thoroughly mystified.  The stranger answered his
+French in "the purest Parisian Accent"; yet he proved capable of
+speaking fluent English, of giving orders to his Greek servant in
+Romaic, of conversing "in good Castillian with 'mine host'," and of
+exchanging salutations in German with another resident at the fonda.
+Later the Colonel had the gratification of startling the Unknown by
+replying to some remark of his in Hindi; but only momentarily, for he
+showed himself "delighted on finding I was an Indian, and entered
+freely, and with depth and acuteness, on the affairs of the East,
+most of which part of the world he had visited." {294b}
+
+No one could give any information about "the mysterious Unknown," who
+or what he was, or why he was travelling.  It was known that the
+police entertained suspicions that he was a Russian spy, and kept him
+under strict observation.  Whatever else he was, Colonel Napier found
+him "a very agreeable companion." {295a}
+
+On the following morning (a Sunday) Colonel Napier and his Unknown
+set out on horseback on an excursion to the ruins of Italica.  As
+they sat on a ruined wall of the Convent of San Isidoro,
+contemplating the scene of ruin and desolation around, "the 'Unknown'
+began to feel the vein of poetry creeping through his inward soul,
+and gave vent to it by reciting with great emphasis and effect" some
+lines that the scene called up to his mind.
+
+
+"I had been too much taken up with the scene," Colonel Napier
+continues, "the verses, and the strange being who was repeating them
+with so much feeling, to notice the approach of a slight female
+figure, beautiful in the extreme, but whose tattered garments, raven
+hair, swarthy complexion and flashing eyes proclaimed to be of the
+wandering tribe of Gitanos.  From an intuitive sense of politeness,
+she stood with crossed arms and a slight smile on her dark and
+handsome countenance until my companion had ceased, and then
+addressed us in the usual whining tone of supplication--
+'Caballeritos, una limosnita!  Dios se la pagara a ustedes!'--
+'Gentlemen, a little charity; God will repay it to you!'  The gypsy
+girl was so pretty and her voice so sweet, that I involuntarily put
+my hand in my pocket.
+
+"'Stop!' said the Unknown.  'Do you remember what I told you about
+the Eastern origin of these people?  You shall see I am correct.'--
+'Come here, my pretty child,' said he in Moultanee, 'and tell me
+where are the rest of your tribe.'
+
+"The girl looked astounded, replied in the same tongue, but in broken
+language; when, taking him by the arm, she said in Spanish, 'Come,
+cabellero--come to one who will be able to answer you'; and she led
+the way down amongst the ruins, towards one of the dens formerly
+occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings
+scarcely less savage.  The sombre walls of the gloomy abode were
+illumined by a fire the smoke from which escaped through a deep
+fissure in the mossy roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a
+blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, of
+two men, and a decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in some
+culinary preparations.
+
+"On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of the party, and
+a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of the 'faja' [a sash in
+which the Spaniard carries a formidable clasp-knife] caused in me, at
+least, anything but a comfortable sensation; but their hostile
+intentions, if ever entertained, were immediately removed by a wave
+of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my companion towards
+the sibyl, whispered something in her ear.  The old crone appeared
+incredulous.  The 'Unknown' uttered one word; but that word had the
+effect of magic; she prostrated herself at his feet, and in an
+instant, from an object of suspicion he became one of worship to the
+whole family, to whom, on taking leave, he made a handsome present,
+and departed with their united blessings, to the astonishment of
+myself and what looked very like terror in our Spanish guide.
+
+"I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and as soon as we
+mounted our horses, exclaimed--'Where, in the name of goodness, did
+you pick up your acquaintance with the language of those
+extraordinary people?'
+
+"'Some years ago, in Moultan,' he replied.
+
+"'And by what means do you possess such apparent influence over
+them?'  But the 'Unknown' had already said more than he perhaps
+wished on the subject.  He drily replied that he had more than once
+owed his life to gypsies, and had reason to know them well; but this
+was said in a tone which precluded all further queries on my part.
+The subject was never again broached, and we returned in silence to
+the fonda . . .  This is a most extraordinary character, and the more
+I see of him the more am I puzzled.  He appears acquainted with
+everybody and everything, but apparently unknown to every one
+himself.  Though his figure bespeaks youth--and by his own account
+his age does not exceed thirty [he would be thirty-six in the
+following July]--yet the snows of eighty winters could not have
+whitened his locks more completely than they are.  But in his dark
+and searching eye there is an almost supernatural penetration and
+lustre, which, were I inclined to superstition, might induce me to
+set down its possessor as a second Melmoth." {297a}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX:  MAY-DECEMBER 1839
+
+
+
+Borrow confesses that he was at a loss to know how to commence
+operations in Seville.  He was entirely friendless, even the British
+Consul being unapproachable on account of his religious beliefs.
+However, he soon gathered round him some of those curious characters
+who seemed always to gravitate towards him, no matter where he might
+be, or with what occupied.  Surely the Scriptures never had such a
+curious assortment of missionaries as Borrow employed?  At Seville
+there was the gigantic Greek, Dionysius of Cephalonia; the "aged
+professor of music, who, with much stiffness and ceremoniousness,
+united much that was excellent and admirable"; {298a} the Greek
+bricklayer, Johannes Chysostom, a native of Morea, who might at any
+time become "the Masaniello of Seville."  With these assistants
+Borrow set to work to throw the light of the Gospel into the dark
+corners of the city.
+
+Soon after arriving at Seville, he decided to adopt a new plan of
+living.
+
+
+"On account of the extreme dearness of every article at the posada,"
+he wrote to Mr Brandram on 12th June, "where, moreover, I had a
+suspicion that I was being watched [this may have reference to the
+police suspicion that he was a Russian spy], I removed with my
+servant and horses to an empty house in a solitary part of the town .
+. .  Here I live in the greatest privacy, admitting no person but two
+or three in whom I had the greatest confidence, who entertain the
+same views as myself, and who assist me in the circulation of the
+Gospel."
+
+
+The house stood in a solitary situation, occupying one side of the
+Plazuela de la Pila Seca (the Little Square of the Empty Trough).  It
+was a two-storied building and much too large for Borrow's
+requirements.  Having bought the necessary articles of furniture, he
+retired behind the shutters of his Andalusian mansion with Antonio
+and the two horses.  He lived in the utmost seclusion, spending a
+large portion of his time in study or in dreamy meditation.  "The
+people here complain sadly of the heat," he writes to Mr Brandram
+(28th June 1839), "but as for myself, I luxuriate in it, like the
+butterflies which hover about the macetas, or flowerpots, in the
+court."  In the cool of the evening he would mount Sidi Habismilk and
+ride along the Dehesa until the topmost towers of the city were out
+of sight, then, turning the noble Arab, he would let him return at
+his best speed, which was that of the whirlwind.
+
+Throughout his work in Spain Borrow had been seriously handicapped by
+being unable to satisfy the demand for Bibles that met him everywhere
+he went.  In a letter (June) from Maria Diaz, who was acting as his
+agent in Madrid, {299a} the same story is told.
+
+
+"The binder has brought me eight Bibles," she writes, "which he has
+contrived to make up out of THE SHEETS GNAWN BY THE RATS, and which
+would have been necessary even had they amounted to eight thousand (y
+era necesario se puvieran vuelto 8000), because the people are
+innumerable who come to seek more.  Don Santiago has been here with
+some friends, who insisted upon having a part of them.  The Aragonese
+Gentleman has likewise been, he who came before your departure, and
+bespoke twenty-four; he now wants twenty-five.  I begged them to take
+Testaments, but they would not." {300a}
+
+
+The Greek bricklayer proved a most useful agent.  His great influence
+with his poor acquaintances resulted in the sale of many Testaments.
+More could have been done had it not been necessary to proceed with
+extreme caution, lest the authorities should take action and seize
+the small stock of books that remained.
+
+When he took and furnished the large house in the little square,
+there had been in Borrow's mind another reason than a desire for
+solitude and freedom from prying eyes.  Throughout his labours in
+Spain he had kept up a correspondence with Mrs Clarke of Oulton, who,
+on 15th March, had written informing him of her intention to take up
+her abode for a short time at Seville.
+
+For some time previously Mrs Clarke had been having trouble about her
+estate.  Her mother (September 1835) and father (February 1836) were
+both dead, and her brother Breame had inherited the estate and she
+the mortgage together with the Cottage on Oulton Broad.  Breame
+Skepper died (May 1837), leaving a wife and six children.  In his
+will he had appointed Trustees, who demanded the sale of the Estate
+and division of the money, which was opposed by Mrs Clarke as
+executrix and mortgagee.  Later it was agreed between the parties
+that the Estate should be sold for 11,000 pounds to a Mr Joseph Cator
+Webb, and an agreement to that effect was signed.  Anticipating that
+the Estate would increase in value, and apparently regretting their
+bargain, the Trustees delayed carrying out their undertaking, and Mr
+Webb filed a bill in Chancery to force them to do so.  Mrs Clarke's
+legal advisers thought it better that she should disappear for a
+time.  Hence her letter to Borrow, in replying to which (29th March),
+he expresses pleasure at the news of his friend's determination "to
+settle in Seville for a short time--which, I assure you, I consider
+to be the most agreeable retreat you can select . . . for THERE the
+growls of your enemies will scarcely reach you."  He goes on to tell
+her that he laughed outright at the advice of her counsellor not to
+take a house and furnish it.
+
+
+"Houses in Spain are let by the day:  and in a palace here you will
+find less furniture than in your cottage at Oulton.  Were you to
+furnish a Spanish house in the style of cold, wintry England, you
+would be unable to breathe.  A few chairs, tables, and mattresses are
+all that is required, with of course a good stock of bed-linen . . .
+
+"Bring with you, therefore, your clothes, plenty of bed-linen, etc.,
+half-a-dozen blankets, two dozen knives and forks, a mirror or two,
+twelve silver table spoons, and a large one for soup, tea things and
+urn (for the Spaniards never drink tea), a few books, but not many,--
+and you will have occasion for nothing more, or, if you have, you can
+purchase it here as cheap as in England."
+
+
+Borrow's ideas of domestic comfort were those of the old campaigner.
+For all that, he showed himself very thorough in the directions he
+gave as to how and where Mrs Clarke should book her passage and
+obtain "a passport for yourself and Hen."  (Henrietta her daughter,
+now nearly twenty years of age), and the warning he gave that no
+attempt should be made to go ashore at Lisbon, "a very dangerous
+place."
+
+On 7th June Mrs Clarke and her daughter Henrietta sailed from London
+on board the steam-packet Royal Tar bound for Cadiz, where they
+arrived on the 16th, and, on the day following, entered into
+possession of their temporary home where Borrow was already
+installed, safe for the time from Mr Webb's Chancery bill.  It was no
+doubt to Mrs and Miss Clarke that Borrow referred when he wrote to Mr
+Brandram {301a} saying that "two or three ladies of my acquaintance
+occasionally dispose of some [Testaments] amongst their friends, but
+they say that they experience some difficulty, the cry for Bibles
+being great."
+
+Borrow continued to reside at 7 Plazuela de la Pila Seca, and Mrs
+Clarke and Henrietta soon learned something of the vicissitudes and
+excitements of a missionary's life.  On Sunday, 8th July, as Borrow
+"happened to be reading the Liturgy," he received a visit from
+"various alguacils, headed by the Alcade del Barrio, or headborough,
+who made a small seizure of Testaments and Gypsy Gospels which
+happened to be lying about." {302a}  This circumstance convinced
+Borrow of the good effect of his labours in and around Seville.
+
+The time had now arrived, however, when the whole of the smuggled
+Testaments had been disposed of, and there was no object in remaining
+longer in Seville, or in Spain for that matter.  There were books at
+San Lucar that might without official opposition be shipped out of
+the country, and Borrow therefore determined to see what could be
+done towards distributing them among the Spanish residents on the
+Coast of Barbary.  This done, he hoped to return to Spain and dispose
+of the 900 odd Testaments lying at Madrid.  On 18th July he wrote to
+Mr Brandram:-
+
+
+"I should wish to be permitted on my return from my present
+expedition to circulate some in La Mancha.  The state of that
+province is truly horrible; it appears peopled partly with spectres
+and partly with demons.  There is famine, and such famine; there is
+assassination and such unnatural assassination [another of Borrow's
+phrases that must have struck the Committee as odd].  There you see
+soldiers and robbers, ghastly lepers and horrible and uncouth maimed
+and blind, exhibiting their terrible nakedness in the sun.  I was
+prevented last year in carrying the Gospel amongst them.  May I be
+more successful this."
+
+
+Antonio had been dismissed, his master being "compelled to send [him]
+back to Madrid . . . on account of his many irregularities," and in
+consequence it was alone, on the night of 31st July, that Borrow set
+out upon his expedition.  From Seville he took the steamer to
+Bonanza, from whence he drove to San Lucar, where he picked up a
+chest of New Testaments and a small box of St Luke's Gospel in
+Gitano, with a pass for them to Cadiz.  It proved expensive, this
+claiming of his own property, for at every step there was some fee to
+be paid or gratuity to be given.  The last payment was made to the
+Spanish Consul at Gibraltar, who claimed and received a dollar for
+certifying the arrival of books he had not seen.
+
+Borrow was instinctively a missionary, even a great missionary.  At
+the Customs House of San Lucar some questions were asked about the
+books contained in the cases, and he seized the occasion to hold an
+informal missionary meeting, with the officials clustered round him
+listening to his discourse.  One of the cases had to be opened for
+inspection, and the upshot of it was that, to the very officials
+whose duty it was to see that the books were not distributed in
+Spain, Borrow sold a number of copies, not only of the Spanish
+Testament, but of the Gypsy St Luke.  Such was the power of his
+personality and the force of his eloquence.
+
+From San Lucar Borrow returned to Bonanza and again took the boat,
+which landed him at Cadiz, where he was hospitably entertained by Mr
+Brackenbury, the British Consul, who gave him a letter of
+introduction to Mr Drummond Hay, the Consul-General at Tangier.  On
+4th August he proceeded to Gibraltar.  It was not until the 8th,
+however, that he was able to cross to Tangier, where he was kindly
+received by Mr Hay, who found for him a very comfortable lodging.
+
+Taking the Consul's advice, Borrow proceeded with extreme caution.
+For the first fortnight of his stay he made no effort to distribute
+his Testaments, contenting himself with studying the town and its
+inhabitants, occasionally speaking to the Christians in the place
+(principally Spanish and Genoese sailors and their families) about
+religious matters, but always with the greatest caution lest the two
+or three friars, who resided at what was known as the Spanish
+Convent, should become alarmed.  Again Borrow obtained the services
+of a curious assistant, a Jewish lad named Hayim Ben Attar, who
+carried the Testaments to the people's houses and offered them for
+sale, and this with considerable success.  On 4th September Borrow
+wrote to Mr Brandram:-
+
+
+"The blessed book is now in the hands of most of the Christians of
+Tangier, from the lowest to the highest, from the fisherman to the
+consul.  One dozen and a half were carried to Tetuan on speculation,
+a town about six leagues from hence; they will be offered to the
+Christians who reside there.  Other two dozen are on their way to
+distant Mogadore.  One individual, a tavern keeper, has purchased
+Testaments to the number of thirty, which he says he has no doubt he
+can dispose of to the foreign sailors who stop occasionally at his
+house.  You will be surprised to hear that several amongst the Jews
+have purchased copies of the New Testament with the intention, as
+they state, of improving themselves in Spanish, but I believe from
+curiosity."
+
+
+During his stay in Tangier, Borrow had some trouble with the British
+Vice-Consul, who seems to have made himself extremely offensive with
+his persistent offers of service.  His face was "purple and blue" and
+in whose blood-shot eyes there was an expression "much like that of a
+departed tunny fish or salmon," and he became so great an annoyance
+that Borrow made a complaint to Mr Drummond Hay.  This is one of the
+few instances of Borrow's experiencing difficulty with any British
+official, for, as a rule, he was extremely popular.  In this
+particular instance, however, the Vice-Consul was so obviously
+seeking to make profit out of his official position, that there was
+no other means open to Borrow than to make a formal complaint.
+
+In the case of Mr Drummond Hay, he obtained the friendship of a "true
+British gentleman."  At first the Consul had been reserved and
+distant, and apparently by no means inclined to render Borrow any
+service in the furtherance of his mission; but a few days sufficed to
+bring him under the influence of Borrow's personal magnetism, and he
+ended by assuring him that he would be happy to receive the Society's
+commands, and would render all possible assistance, officially or
+otherwise, to the distribution of the Scriptures "in Fez or Morocco."
+
+Borrow was thoroughly satisfied with the result of his five weeks'
+stay in Tangier.  He reached Cadiz on his way to Seville on 21st
+Sept., after undergoing a four days' quarantine at Tarifa, when he
+wrote to Mr Brandram (29th Sept.):
+
+
+"I am very glad that I went to Tangier, for many reasons.  In the
+first place, I was permitted to circulate many copies of God's Word
+both among the Jews and the Christians, by the latter of whom it was
+particularly wanted, their ignorance of the most vital points of
+religion being truly horrible.  In the second place, I acquired a
+vast stock of information concerning Africa and the state of its
+interior.  One of my principal Associates was a black slave whose
+country was only three days' journey from Timbuctoo, which place he
+had frequently visited.  The Soos men also told me many of the
+secrets of the land of wonders from which they come, and the Rabbis
+from Fez and Morocco were no less communicative."
+
+
+Borrow had started upon his expedition to the Barbary Coast without
+any definite instructions from Earl Street.  On 29th July the Sub-
+Committee had resolved that as his mission to Spain was "nearly
+attained by the disposal of the larger part of the Spanish Scriptures
+which he went out to distribute," the General Committee be
+recommended to request him to take measures for selling or placing in
+safe custody all copies remaining on hand and returning to England
+"without loss of time."  This was adopted on 5th Aug.; but before it
+received the formal sanction of the General Committee Mr Browne had
+written (29th July) to Borrow acquainting him with the feeling of the
+Sub-Committee, thinking that he ought to have early intimation of
+what was taking place.  This letter Borrow found awaiting him at
+Cadiz on his return from Tangier.  He replied immediately (21st
+Sept.):
+
+
+"Had I been aware of that resolution before my departure for Tangier
+I certainly should not have gone; my expedition, however, was the
+result of much reflection.  I wished to carry the Gospel to the
+Christians of the Barbary shore, who were much in want of it; and I
+had one hundred and thirty Testaments at San Lucar, which I could
+only make available by exportation.  The success which it has pleased
+the Lord to yield me in my humble efforts at distribution in Barbary
+will, I believe, prove the best criterion as to the fitness of the
+enterprise.
+
+"I stated in my last communication to Mr Brandram the plan which I
+conceived to be the best for circulating that portion of the edition
+of the New Testament which remains unsold at Madrid, and I scarcely
+needed a stimulant in the execution of my duty.  At present, however,
+I know not what to do; I am sorrowful, disappointed and unstrung.
+
+I wish to return to England as soon as possible; but I have books and
+papers at Madrid which are of much importance to me and which I
+cannot abandon, this perhaps alone prevents me embarking in the next
+packet.  I have, moreover, brought with me from Tangier the Jewish
+youth [Hayim Ben Attar], who so powerfully assisted me in that place
+in the work of distribution.  I had hoped to have made him of service
+in Spain, he is virtuous and clever . . .
+
+"I am almost tempted to ask whether some strange, some unaccountable
+delusion does not exist:  what should induce me to stay in Spain, as
+you appear to suppose I intend?  I may, however, have misunderstood
+you.  I wish to receive a fresh communication as soon as possible,
+either from yourself or Mr Brandram; in the meantime I shall go to
+Seville, to which place and to the usual number pray direct."
+
+
+It would appear that the Bible Society had become aware of Borrow's
+menage at Seville, and concluded that he meant to take up his abode
+in Spain more or less permanently.
+
+Borrow's next plan was to order a chest of Testaments to be sent to
+La Mancha, where he had friends, then to mount his horse and proceed
+there in person.  With the assistance of his Jewish body-servant he
+hoped to circulate many copies before the authorities became aware of
+his presence.  Later he would proceed to Madrid, put his affairs in
+order, and make for France by way of Saragossa (where he hoped to
+accomplish some good), and then--home.
+
+In September a circular signed by Lord Palmerston was received by all
+the British Consuls in Spain, strictly forbidding them "to afford the
+slightest countenance to religious agents. {307a}  What was the cause
+of this last blow?" {307b}  Borrow rather unfortunately enquired of
+Mr Brandram.  The Consul at Cadiz, Mr Brackenbury, explained it,
+according to Borrow, as due to "an ill-advised application made to
+his Lordship to interfere with the Spanish Government on behalf of a
+certain individual {307c} [Lieut. Graydon] whose line of conduct
+needs no comment." {307d}  After pointing out that once the same
+consuls had received from a British Ambassador instructions to
+further, in their official capacity, the work of the Bible Society,
+he concludes with the following remark, as ill-advised as it is
+droll:  "When dead flies fall into the ointment of the apothecary
+they cause it to send forth an unpleasant savour." {308a}
+
+It must have been obvious to both Borrow and Mr Brandram that matters
+were rapidly approaching a crisis.  Mr Brandram seems to have been
+almost openly hostile, and draws Borrow's attention to the fact that
+after all his distributions have been small.  Borrow replies by
+saying that the fault did not rest with him.  Had he been able to
+offer Bibles instead of Testaments for sale, the circulation would
+have been ten times greater.  He expresses it as his belief that had
+he received 20,000 Bibles he could have sold them all in Madrid
+during the Spring of 1839.
+
+
+"When the Bible Society has no further occasion for my poor labours,"
+he wrote {309b} somewhat pathetically, "I hope it will do me justice
+to the world.  I have been its faithful and zealous servant.  I shall
+on a future occasion take the liberty of addressing you as a friend
+respecting my prospects.  I have the materials of a curious book of
+travels in Spain; I have enough metrical translations from all
+languages, especially the Celtic and Sclavonic, to fill a dozen
+volumes; and I have formed a vocabulary of the Spanish Gypsy tongue,
+and also a collection of the songs and poetry of the Gitanos, with
+introductory essays.  Perhaps some of these literary labours might be
+turned to account.  I wish to obtain honourably and respectably the
+means of visiting China or particular parts of Africa."
+
+
+It is clear from this that Borrow saw how unlikely it was that his
+association with the Bible Society would be prolonged beyond the
+present commission.  For one thing Spain was, to all intents and
+purposes, closed to the unannotated Scriptures.  Something might be
+done in the matter of surreptitious distribution; but that had its
+clearly defined limitations, as the authorities were very much alive
+to the danger of the light that Borrow sought to cast over the gloom
+of ignorance and superstition.
+
+At Earl Street it was clearly recognised that Borrow's work in Spain
+was concluded.  On 1st November the Sub-Committee resolved that it
+could "not recommend to the General Committee to engage the further
+services of Mr Borrow until he shall have returned to this country
+from his Mission in Spain."  Again, on 10th January following, it
+recommends the General Committee to recall him "without further
+delay."
+
+Although he had been officially recalled, nothing was further from
+Borrow's intentions than to retire meekly from the field.  He
+intended to retreat with drums sounding and colours flying, fighting
+something more than a rearguard action.  This man's energy and
+resource were terrible--to the authorities!  Seville he felt was
+still a fruitful ground, and sending to Madrid for further supplies
+of Testaments, he commenced operations.  "Everything was accomplished
+with the utmost secrecy, and the blessed books obtained considerable
+circulation." {309a}  Agents were sent into the country and he went
+also himself, "in my accustomed manner," until all the copies that
+had arrived from the capital were put into circulation.  He then
+rested for a while, being in need of quiet, as he was indisposed.
+
+By this action Borrow was incurring no little risk.  The Canons of
+the Cathedral watched him closely.  Their hatred amounted "almost to
+a frenzy," and Borrow states that scarcely a day passed without some
+accusation of other being made to the Civil Governor, all of which
+were false.  People whom he had never seen were persuaded to perjure
+themselves by swearing that he had sold or given them books.  The
+same system was carried on whilst he was in Africa, because the
+authorities refused to believe that he was out of Spain.
+
+There now occurred another regrettable incident, and Borrow once more
+suffered for the indiscretion of those whom he neither knew nor
+controlled.  To Mr Brandram he wrote:
+
+
+"Some English people now came to Seville and distributed tracts in a
+very unguarded manner, knowing nothing of the country or the
+inhabitants.  They were even so unwise as TO GIVE TRACTS INSTEAD OF
+MONEY ON VISITING PUBLIC BUILDINGS, ETC. [!].  These persons came to
+me and requested my cooperation and advice, and likewise
+introductions to people spiritually disposed amongst the Spaniards,
+to all which requests I returned a decided negative.  But I foresaw
+all.  In a day or two I was summoned before the Civil Governor, or,
+as he was once called, the Corregidor, of Seville, who, I must say,
+treated me with the utmost politeness and indeed respect; but at the
+same time he informed me that he had (to use his own expression)
+terrible orders from Madrid concerning me if I should be discovered
+in the act of distributing the Scriptures or any writings of a
+religious tendency; he then taxed me with having circulated both
+lately, especially tracts; whereupon I told him that I had never
+distributed a tract since I had been in Spain nor had any intention
+of doing so.  We had much conversation and parted in kindness."
+{310a}
+
+
+For a few days nothing happened; then, determined to set out on an
+expedition to La Mancha (the delay had been due to the insecure state
+of the roads), Borrow sent his passport (24th Nov.) for signature to
+the Alcalde del Barrio.
+
+
+"This fellow," Borrow informs Mr Brandram, "is the greatest ruffian
+in Seville, and I have on various occasions been insulted by him; he
+pretends to be a liberal, but he is of no principle at all, and as I
+reside within his district he has been employed by the Canons of the
+Cathedral to vex and harrass me on every possible occasion."
+
+
+In the following letter, addressed to the British Charge d'Affaires
+(the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham), Borrow gives a full account of what
+transpired between him and the Alcalde of Seville:-
+
+
+SIR,
+
+I beg leave to lay before you the following statement of certain
+facts which lately occurred at Seville, from which you will perceive
+that the person of a British Subject has been atrociously outraged,
+the rights and privileges of a foreigner in Spain violated, and the
+sanctuary of a private house invaded without the slightest reason or
+shadow of authority by a person in the employ of the Spanish
+Government.
+
+For some months past I have been a resident at Seville in a house
+situated in a square called the "Plazuela de la Pila Seca."  In this
+house I possess apartments, the remainder being occupied by an
+English Lady and her daughter, the former of whom is the widow of an
+officer of the highest respectability who died in the naval service
+of Great Britain.  On the twenty-fourth of last November, I sent a
+servant, a Native of Spain, to the Office of the "Ayuntamiento" of
+Seville for the purpose of demanding my passport, it being my
+intention to set out the next day for Cordoba.  The "Ayuntamiento"
+returned for answer that it was necessary that the ticket of
+residence (Billete de residencia) which I had received on sending in
+the Passport should be signed by the Alcalde of the district in which
+I resided, to which intimation I instantly attended.  I will here
+take the liberty of observing that on several occasions during my
+residence at Seville, I have experienced gross insults from this
+Alcalde, and that more than once when I have had occasion to leave
+the Town, he has refused to sign the necessary document for the
+recovery of the passport; he now again refused to do so, and used
+coarse language to the Messenger; whereupon I sent the latter back
+with money to pay any fees, lawful or unlawful, which might be
+demanded, as I wished to avoid noise and the necessity of applying to
+the Consul, Mr Williams; but the fellow became only more outrageous.
+I then went myself to demand an explanation, and was saluted with no
+inconsiderable quantity of abuse.  I told him that if he proceeded in
+this manner I would make a complaint to the Authorities through the
+British Consul.  He then said if I did not instantly depart he would
+drag me off to prison and cause me to be knocked down if I made the
+slightest resistance.  I dared him repeatedly to do both, and said
+that he was a disgrace to the Government which employed him, and to
+human nature.  He called me a vile foreigner.  We were now in the
+street and a mob had collected, whereupon I cried:  "Viva Inglaterra
+y viva la Constitucion."  The populace remained quiet,
+notwithstanding the exhortations of the Alcalde that they would knock
+down "the foreigner," for he himself quailed before me as I looked
+him in the face, defying him.  At length he exclaimed, with the usual
+obscene Spanish oath, "I will make you lower your head" (Yo te hare
+abajar la cabeza), and ran to a neighbouring guard-house and
+requested the assistance of the Nationals in conducting me to prison.
+I followed him and delivered myself up at the first summons, and
+walked to the prison without uttering a word; not so the Alcalde, who
+continued his abuse until we arrived at the gate, repeatedly
+threatening to have me knocked down if I moved to the right or left.
+
+I was asked my name by the Authorities of the prison, which I refused
+to give unless in the presence of the Consul of my Nation, and indeed
+to answer any questions.  I was then ordered to the Patio, or
+Courtyard, where are kept the lowest thieves and assassins of
+Seville, who, having no money, cannot pay for better accommodation,
+and by whom I should have been stripped naked in a moment as a matter
+of course, as they are all in a state of raging hunger and utter
+destitution.  I asked for a private cell, which I was told I might
+have if I could pay for it.  I stated my willingness to pay anything
+which might be demanded, and was conducted to an upper ward
+consisting of several cells and a corridor; here I found six or seven
+Prisoners, who received me very civilly, and instantly procured me
+paper and ink for the purpose of writing to the Consul.  In less than
+an hour Mr Williams arrived and I told him my story, whereupon he
+instantly departed in order to demand redress of the Authorities.
+The next morning the Alcalde, without any authority from the
+Political [Civil] Governor of Seville, and unaccompanied by the
+English Consul, as the law requires in such cases, and solely
+attended by a common Escribano, went to the house in which I was
+accustomed to reside and demanded admission.  The door was opened by
+my Moorish Servant, Hayim Ben-Attar, whom he commanded instantly to
+show the way to my apartments.  On the Servant's demanding by what
+authority he came, he said, "Cease chattering" (Deje cuentos), "I
+shall give no account to you; show me the way; if not, I will take
+you to prison as I did your master:  I come to search for prohibited
+books."  The Moor, who being in a strange land was somewhat
+intimidated, complied and led him to the rooms occupied by me, when
+the Alcalde flung about my books and papers, finding nothing which
+could in the slightest degree justify his search, the few books being
+all either in Hebrew or Arabic character (they consisted of the
+Mitchna and some commentaries on the Coran); he at last took up a
+large knife which lay on a chair and which I myself purchased some
+months previous at Santa Cruz in La Mancha as a curiosity--the place
+being famous for those knives--and expressed his determination to
+take it away as a prohibited article.  The Escribano, however,
+cautioned him against doing so, and he flung it down.  He now became
+very vociferous and attempted to force his way into some apartments
+occupied by the Ladies, my friends; but soon desisted and at last
+went away, after using some threatening words to my Moorish Servant.
+Late at night of the second day of my imprisonment, I was set at
+liberty by virtue of an order of the Captain General, given on
+application of the British Consul, after having been for thirty hours
+imprisoned amongst the worst felons of Andalusia, though to do them
+justice I must say that I experienced from them nothing but kindness
+and hospitality.
+
+The above, Sir, is the correct statement of the affair which has now
+brought me to Madrid.  What could have induced the Alcalde in
+question to practise such atrocious behaviour towards me I am at a
+loss to conjecture, unless he were instigated by certain enemies
+which I possess in Seville.  However this may be, I now call upon
+you, as the Representative of the Government of which I am a Subject,
+to demand of the Minister of the Spanish Crown full and ample
+satisfaction for the various outrages detailed above.  In conclusion,
+I must be permitted to add that I will submit to no compromise, but
+will never cease to claim justice until the culprit has received
+condign punishment.
+
+I am, etc., etc., etc.
+GEORGE BORROW.
+MADRID (no date).
+
+Recorded 6th December [1839]." {313a}
+
+
+Thus it happened that on 19th December Mr Brandram received the
+following letter:-
+
+
+PRISON OF SEVILLE, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+I write these lines, as you see, from the common prison of Seville,
+to which I was led yesterday, or rather dragged, neither for murder
+nor robbery nor debt, but simply for having endeavoured to obtain a
+passport for Cordoba, to which place I was going with my Jewish
+servant Hayim Ben-Attar.
+
+
+When questioned by the Vice-Consul as to his authority for searching
+Borrow's house, the Alcalde produced a paper purporting to be the
+deposition of an old woman to whom Borrow was alleged to have sold a
+Testament some ten days previously.  The document Borrow pronounced a
+forgery and the statement untrue.
+
+Borrow's fellow-prisoners treated him with unbounded kindness and
+hospitality, and he was forced to confess that he had "never found
+himself amongst more quiet and well-behaved men."  Nothing shows more
+clearly the power of Borrow's personality over rogues and vagabonds
+than the two periods spent in Spanish prisons--at Madrid and at
+Seville.  Mr Brandram must have shuddered when he read Borrow's
+letter telling him by what manner of men he was surrounded.
+
+
+"What is their history?" he writes apropos of his fellow-prisoners.
+"The handsome black-haired man, who is now looking over my shoulder,
+is the celebrated thief, Pelacio, the most expert housebreaker and
+dexterous swindler in Spain--in a word, the modern Guzman
+D'alfarache.  The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal is
+Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred
+murders.  A fashionably dressed man, short and slight in person, is
+walking about the room:  he wears immense whiskers and mustachios; he
+is one of that most singular race the Jews of Spain; he is imprisoned
+for counterfeiting money.  He is an atheist; but, like a true Jew,
+the name which he most hates is that of Christ.  Yet he is so quiet
+and civil, and they are all so quiet and civil, and it is that which
+most horrifies me, for quietness and civility in them seems so
+unnatural." {315a}
+
+
+Such were the men who fraternised with an agent of a religious
+society and showed him not only civility but hospitality and
+kindness.  It is open to question if they would have shown the same
+to any other unfortunate missionary.  In all probability they
+recognised a fellow-vagabond, who was at much at issue with the
+social conventions of communities as they were with the laws of
+property.
+
+On this occasion the period of Borrow's imprisonment was brief.  He
+was released late at night on 25th Nov., within thirty hours of his
+arrest, and he immediately set to work to think out a plan by which
+he could once more discomfit the Spanish authorities for this
+indignity to a British subject.  He would proceed to Madrid without
+delay and put his case before the British Minister, at the same time
+he would "make preparations for leaving Spain as soon as possible."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX:  DECEMBER 1839-MAY 1840
+
+
+
+It was probably about this time (1839) that
+
+
+"The Marques de Santa Coloma met Borrow again at Seville.  He had
+great difficulty in finding him out; though he was aware of the
+street in which he resided, no one knew him by name.  At last, by
+dint of inquiry and description, some one exclaimed, 'Oh! you mean el
+Brujo' (the wizard), and he was directed to the house.  He was
+admitted with great caution, and conducted through a lot of passages
+and stairs, till at last he was ushered into a handsomely furnished
+apartment in the 'mirador,' where Borrow was living WITH HIS WIFE AND
+DAUGHTER. . .  It is evident . . . that, to his Spanish friends at
+least, he thus called Mrs Clarke and her daughter Henrietta his wife
+and daughter:  and the Marques de Santa Coloma evidently believed
+that the young lady was Borrow's OWN daughter, and not his step-
+daughter merely (!).  At the time the roads from Seville to Madrid
+were very unsafe.  Santa Coloma wished Borrow to join his party, who
+were going well armed.  Borrow said he would be safe with his
+Gypsies.  Both arrived without accident in Madrid; the Marques's
+party first.  Borrow, on his arrival, told Santa Coloma that his
+Gypsy chief had led him by by-paths and mountains; that they had not
+slept in a village, nor seen a town the whole way." {316a}
+
+
+It must be confessed that Mr Webster was none too reliable a witness,
+and it seems highly improbable that Borrow would wish to pass Mrs
+Clarke off as his wife before their marriage.  The fact of their
+occupying the same house may have seemed to their Spanish friends
+compromising, as it unquestionably was; but had he spoken of Mrs
+Clarke as his wife, it would have left her not a vestige of
+reputation.
+
+On arriving at Madrid Borrow found that Lord Clarendon's successor,
+Mr Arthur Aston, had not yet arrived, he therefore presented his
+complaint to the Charge d'Affaires, the Hon. G. S. S. Jerningham, who
+had succeeded Mr Sothern as private secretary.  Mr Sothern had not
+yet left Madrid to take up his new post as First Secretary at Lisbon,
+and therefore presented Borrow to Mr Jerningham, by whom he was
+received with great kindness.  He assured Mr Jerningham that for some
+time past he had given up distributing the Scriptures in Spain, and
+he merely claimed the privileges of a British subject and the
+protection of his Government.  The First Secretary took up the case
+immediately, forwarding Borrow's letter to Don Perez de Castro with a
+request for "proper steps to be taken, should Mr Borrow's complaint .
+. . be considered by His Excellency as properly founded."  Borrow
+himself was doubtful as to whether he would obtain justice, "for I
+have against me," he wrote to Mr Brandram (24th December), "the
+Canons of Seville; and all the arts of villany which they are so
+accustomed to practise will of course be used against me for the
+purpose of screening the ruffian who is their instrument. . . .  I
+have been, my dear Sir, fighting with wild beasts."
+
+
+The rather quaint reply to Borrow's charges was not forthcoming until
+he had left Spain and was living at Oulton.  It runs:  {317a}
+
+
+MADRID, 11th May 1840.
+
+Under date of 20th December last, Mr Perez de Castro informed Mr
+Jerningham that in order to answer satisfactorily his note of 8th
+December re complaint made by Borrow, he required a faithful report
+to be made.  These have been stated by the Municipality of Seville to
+the Civil Governor of that City, and are as follows:-
+
+"When Borrow meant to undertake his journey to Cadiz towards the end
+of last year, he applied to the section of public security for his
+Passport, for which purpose he ought to deliver his paper of
+residence which was given to him when he arrived at Seville.  That
+paper he had not presented in its proper time to the Alcalde of his
+district, on which account this person had not been acquainted as he
+ought with his residence in the district, and as his Passport could
+not be issued in consequence of this document not being in order,
+Borrow addressed, through the medium of a Servant, to the house of
+the said district Alcalde that the defect might be remedied.  That
+functionary refused to do so, founded on the reasons already stated;
+and for the purpose of overcoming his resistance he was offered a
+gratification, the Servant with that intent presenting half a dollar.
+The Alcalde, justly indignant, left his house to make the necessary
+complaint respecting their indecorous action when he met Borrow, who,
+surprised at the refusal of the Alcalde, expressed to him his
+astonishment, addressing insulting expressions not only against his
+person but against the authorities of Spain, who, he said, he was
+sure were to be bought at a very small price--crying on after this,
+Long live the Constitution, Death to the Religion, and Long live
+England.  These and other insults gave rise to the Alcalde proceeding
+to his arrest and the assistance of the armed force of Veterans, and
+not of the National Militia, as Borrow supposed, making a detailed
+report to the Constitutional Alcalde, who forwarded it original to
+the Captain General of the Province as Judge Protector of Foreigners,
+leaving him under detention at his disposition.  He did the same with
+another report transmitted by the said functionary, in which
+reference to a Lady who lived at the Gate of Xerez; he denounced
+Borrow as a seducer of youth in matters of Religion by facilitating
+to them the perusal of prohibited books, of which a copy, that was in
+the hands of the Ecclesiastical Governor, was likewise transmitted to
+the Captain General.  These antecedents were sufficient to have
+authorised a summary to have been formed against Borrow, but the
+repeated supplications of the British Vice-Consul, Mr Williams, who
+among other things stated that Borrow laboured under fits of madness,
+had the effect of causing the above Constitutional Alcalde to forgive
+him the fault committed and recommend to the Captain General that the
+matter should be dropped, which was acceded to, and he was put at
+liberty.  The above facts, official proofs of which exist in the
+Captain General's Office, clearly disprove the statement of Borrow,
+who ungrateful for the generous hospitality which he has received,
+and for the consideration displayed towards him on account of his
+infirmity, and out of deference to the request of the British Vice-
+Consul, makes an unfounded complaint against the very authorities who
+have used attentions towards him which he is certainly not deserving;
+it being worthy of remark, in order to prove the bad faith of his
+procedure, that in his own expose, although he disfigures facts at
+pleasure, using a language little decorous, he confesses part of his
+faults, such as the offering of money TO PAY, as he says, 'THE LEGAL
+OR EXTRA-LEGAL DUES THAT MIGHT BE EXACTED, and his having twice
+challenged the Alcalde.'
+
+"I should consider myself wanting towards your enlightened sense of
+justice if, after the reasons given, I stopped to prove the just and
+prudent conduct of Seville authorities.
+
+"Hope he will therefore be completely satisfied, especially after the
+want of exactitude on Borrow's part.
+
+From
+EVARISTO PEREZ DE CASTRO."
+To Mr Aston. {319a}
+
+
+And so the matter ended.  The Spanish authorities knew that they no
+longer had a Sir George Villiers to deal with, and had recourse to
+that trump card of weak and vacillating diplomatists--delay.
+Whatever Borrow's offence, the method of his arrest and imprisonment
+was in itself unlawful.
+
+It was Borrow's intention on his return to England to endeavour to
+obtain an interview with some members of the House of Lords, in order
+to acquaint them with the manner in which Protestants were persecuted
+in Spain.  They were debarred from the exercise of their religion
+from being married by Protestant rites, and the common privileges of
+burial were denied them.  He was anxious for Protestant England, lest
+it should fall a victim to Popery.  This fear of Rome was a very real
+one to Borrow.  He marvelled at people's blindness to the danger that
+was threatening them, and he even went so far as to entreat his
+friends at Earl Street "to drop all petty dissensions and to comport
+themselves like brothers" against their common enemy the Pope.
+
+Unfortunately Borrow had shown to a number of friends one of his
+letters to Mr Brandram dealing with the Seville imprisonment, and had
+even allowed several copies of it to be taken "in order that an
+incorrect account of the affair might not get abroad."  The result
+was an article in a London newspaper containing remarks to the
+disparagement of other workers for the Gospel in Spain.  Borrow
+disavowed all knowledge of these observations.
+
+
+"I am not ashamed of the Methodists of Cadiz," he assures Mr
+Brandram, "their conduct in many respects does them honor, nor do I
+accuse any one of fanaticism amongst our dear and worthy friends; but
+I cannot answer for the tittle-tattle of Madrid.  Far be it from me
+to reflect upon any one, I am but too well aware of my own
+multitudinous imperfections and follies."
+
+
+There is nothing more mysterious in Borrow's life than his years of
+friendship with Mrs Clarke.  He was never a woman's man, but Mary
+Clarke seems to have awakened in him a very sincere regard.  The
+menage at Seville was a curious one, and both Borrow and Mrs Clarke
+should have seen that it was calculated to make people talk.  There
+may have been a tacit understanding between them.  Everything
+connected with their relations and courtship is very mysterious.  Dr
+Knapp is scarcely just to Borrow or gracious to the woman he married,
+when he implies that it was merely a business arrangement on both
+sides.  Mrs Clarke's affairs required a man's hand to administer
+them, and Borrow was prepared to give the man's hand in exchange for
+an income.  The engagement could scarcely have taken place in the
+middle of November 1839, as Dr Knapp states, for on the day of his
+arrest at Seville (24th Nov.) Borrow wrote:-
+
+
+MY DEAR MRS CLARKE,--Do not be alarmed, but I am at present in the
+prison, to which place the Alcalde del Barrio conducted me when I
+asked him to sign the Passport.  If Phelipe is not already gone to
+the Consul, let Henrietta go now and show him this letter.  When I
+asked the fellow his motives for not signing the Passport, he said if
+I did not go away he would carry me to prison.  I dared him to do so,
+as I had done nothing; whereupon he led me here.--Yours truly,
+
+GEORGE BORROW.
+
+
+This is obviously not the letter of a man recently engaged to the
+woman who is to become his wife.  On the other hand, Borrow may have
+been writing merely for the Consul's eye.
+
+On hearing the news of the engagement old Mrs Borrow wrote:-
+
+
+"I am not surprised, my dear Mrs Clarke, at what you tell me, though
+I knew nothing of it.  It put me in mind of the Revd. Flethers; you
+know they took time to consider.  So far all is well.  I shall now
+resign him to your care, and may you love and cherish him as much as
+I have done.  I hope and trust that each will try to make the other
+happy.  You will always have my prayers and best wishes.  Give my
+kind love to dear George and tell him he is never out of my thoughts.
+I have much to say, but I cannot write.  I shall be glad to see you
+all safe and well.  Give my love to Henrietta; tell her _I_ can sing
+'Gaily the Troubadour'; I only want the 'guitar.' {332a} God bless
+you all."
+
+
+There is no doubt that a very strong friendship had existed between
+Mrs Clarke and Borrow during the whole time that he had been
+associated with the Bible Society.  She it was who had been
+indirectly responsible for his introduction to Earl Street.  It is
+idle to speculate what it was that led Mrs Clarke to select Seville
+as the place to which to fly from her enemies.  There is, however, a
+marked significance in old Mrs Borrow's words, "I am not surprised,
+my dear Mrs Clarke, at what you tell me."  Whatever his mother may
+have seen, there appears to have been no thought of marriage in
+Borrow's mind when, on 29th September 1839, he wrote to Mr Brandram
+telling him of his wish to visit "China or particular parts of
+Africa."
+
+Borrow paid many tributes to his wife, not only in his letters, but
+in print, every one of which she seems thoroughly to have merited.
+"Of my wife," he writes, {322a}  "I will merely say that she is a
+perfect paragon of wives--can make puddings and sweets and treacle
+posset, and is the best woman of business in East Anglia."  On
+another occasion he praises her for more general qualities, when he
+compares her to the good wife of the Triad, the perfect woman endowed
+with all the feminine virtues.  His wife and "old Hen." (Henrietta)
+were his "two loved ones," and he subsequently shows in a score of
+ways how much they had become part of his life.
+
+After his return to Seville, early in January, Borrow proceeded to
+get his "papers into some order."  There seems no doubt that this
+meant preparing The Zincali for publication.  In the excitement and
+enthusiasm of authorship, and the pleasant company of Mrs and Miss
+Clarke, he seems to have been divinely unconscious that he was under
+orders to proceed home.  Week after week passed without news of their
+Agent in Spain reaching Earl Street, and the Officials and Committee
+of the Bible Society became troubled to account for his non-
+appearance.  The last letter from him had been received on 13th
+January.  Early in March Mr Jackson wrote to Mr Brackenbury asking
+for news of him.  A letter to Mr Williams at Seville was enclosed,
+which Mr Brackenbury had discretionary powers to withhold if he were
+able to supply the information himself.  Two letters that Borrow had
+addressed to the Society it appears had gone astray, and as "one
+steamer . . . arrived after another and yet no news from Mr Borrow,"
+some apprehension began to manifest itself lest misfortune had
+befallen him.  On the other hand, Borrow had heard nothing from the
+Society for five months, the long silence making him "very, very
+unhappy."
+
+In reply to Mr Brandram's letter Borrow wrote:-
+
+
+"I did not return to England immediately after my departure from
+Madrid for several reasons.  First, there was my affair with the
+Alcalde still pending; second, I wished to get my papers into some
+order; third, I wished to effect a little more in the cause, though
+not in the way of distribution, as I have no books:  moreover the
+house in which I resided was paid for and I was unwilling altogether
+to lose the money; I likewise dreaded an English winter, for I have
+lately been subjected to attacks, whether of gout or rheumatism I
+know not, which I believe were brought on by sitting, standing and
+sleeping in damp places during my wanderings in Spain.  The Alcalde
+has lately been turned out of his situation, but I believe more on
+account of his being a Carlist than for his behaviour to me; that,
+however, is of little consequence, as I have long forgotten the
+affair." {323a}
+
+
+There was no longer any reason for delay; the English winter was
+over, he had one book nearly ready for publication and two others in
+a state of forwardness.
+
+
+"I embark on the third of next month [April]," he continued, "and you
+will probably see me by the 16th.  I wish very much to spend the
+remaining years of my life in the northern parts of China, as I think
+I have a call for those regions, and shall endeavour by every
+honourable means to effect my purpose." {323b}
+
+
+These words would seem to imply that his marriage with Mrs Clarke was
+by no means decided upon at the date he wrote, although during the
+previous month he had been in correspondence with Mr Brackenbury
+regarding Protestants in Spain being debarred from marrying.  It is
+inconceivable that Mrs Clarke and her daughter contemplated living in
+the North of China; and equally unlikely that Mrs Clarke would marry
+a potential "absentee landlord," or one who frankly confessed "I hope
+yet to die in the cause of my Redeemer."
+
+Sidi Habismilk had at first presented a grave problem; but Mr
+Brackenbury, who secured the passages on the steamer, arranged also
+for the Arab to be slung aboard the Steam-Packet.  On 3rd April the
+whole party, including Hayim Ben Attar and Sidi Habismilk, boarded
+the Royal Adelaide bound for London.
+
+Borrow never forgave Spain for its treatment of him, although some of
+the happiest years of his life had been spent there.  "The Spaniards
+are a stupid, ungrateful set of ruffians," he afterwards wrote, "and
+are utterly incapable of appreciating generosity or forbearance."  He
+piled up invective upon the unfortunate country.  It was "the chosen
+land of the two fiends--assassination and murder," where avarice and
+envy were the prevailing passions.  It was the "country of error";
+yet at the same time "the land of extraordinary characters."  As he
+saw its shores sinking beneath the horizon, he was mercifully denied
+the knowledge that never again was he to be so happily occupied as
+during the five years he had spent upon its soil distributing the
+Scriptures, and using a British Minister as a two-edged sword.
+
+The party arrived in London on 16th April and put up at the Spread
+Eagle in Gracechurch Street.  On 23rd April, at St Peter's Church in
+Cornhill, the wedding took place.  There were present as witnesses
+only Henrietta Clarke and John Pilgrim, the Norwich solicitor.  In
+the Register the names appear as:-
+
+
+"George Henry Borrow--of full age--bachelor--gentleman--of the City
+of Norwich--son of Thomas Borrow--Captain in the Army.
+
+"Mary Clarke--of full age--widow--of Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch
+Street--daughter of Edmund Skepper--Esquire."
+
+
+On 2nd May an announcement of the marriage appeared in The Norfolk
+Chronicle.  A few days later the party left for Oulton Cottage, and
+Borrow became a landed proprietor on a small scale in his much-loved
+East Anglia.
+
+On 21st April Mr Brandram had written to Borrow the following
+letter:-
+
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your later communications have been referred to our
+Sub-Committee for General Purposes.  After what you said yesterday in
+the Committee, I am hardly aware that anything can arise out of them.
+The door seems shut.  The Sub-Committee meet on Friday.  Will you
+wish to make any communications to them as to any ulterior views that
+may have occurred to yourself?  I do not myself at present see any
+sphere open to which your services in connection with our Society can
+be transferred. . . . With best wishes--Believe me--Yours truly,
+
+A. BRANDRAM.
+
+
+On 24th April, the day after Borrow's wedding, the Sub-Committee duly
+met and
+
+
+"Resolved that, upon mature consideration, it does not appear to this
+Sub-Committee that there is, at present, any opening for employing Mr
+Borrow beneficially as an Agent of the Society . . . and that it be
+recommended to the General Committee that the salary of Mr Borrow be
+paid up to the 10th June next."
+
+
+The Bible Society's valediction, which appeared in the Thirty-Sixth
+Annual Report, read:-
+
+
+"G. Borrow, Esq., one of the gentlemen referred to in former Reports
+as having so zealously exerted themselves on behalf of Spain, has
+just returned home, hopeless of further attempts at present to
+distribute the Scriptures in that country.  Mr B. has succeeded, by
+almost incredible pains, and at no small cost and hazard, in selling
+during his last visit a few hundred copies of the Bible, and most
+that remained of the edition of the New Testament printed in Madrid."
+
+
+Thus ended George Borrow's activities on behalf of the British and
+Foreign Bible Society, and incidentally the seven happiest and most
+active years of his life.  On the whole the association had been
+honourable to all concerned.  There had been moments of irritation
+and mistakes on both sides.  It would be foolish to accuse the
+Society of deliberately planting obstacles in the path of its own
+agent; but the unfortunate championing of Lieutenant Graydon was the
+result of a very grave error of judgment.  Borrow had no personal
+friends among the Committee, to whom the impetuous zeal of Graydon
+was more picturesque than the grave and deliberate caution of Borrow.
+The Officials and Committee alike saw in Graydon the ideal Reformer,
+rushing precipitately towards martyrdom, exposing Anti-Christ as he
+ran.  Had Borrow been content to allow others to plead his cause, the
+history of his relations with the Bible Society would, in all
+probability, have been different.  He felt himself a grievously
+injured man, who had suffered from what he considered to be the
+insane antics of another, and he was determined that Earl Street
+should know it.  On the other hand, Mr Brandram does not appear to
+have understood Borrow.  He made no attempt to humour him, to praise
+him for what he had done and the way in which he had done it.  Praise
+was meat and drink to Borrow; it compensated him for what he had
+endured and encouraged him to further effort.  He hungered for it,
+and when it did not come he grew discouraged and thought that those
+who employed him were not conscious of what he was suffering.  Hence
+the long accounts of what he had undergone for the Gospel's sake.
+
+During his six years in Spain he had distributed nearly 5000 copies
+of the New Testament and 500 Bibles, also some hundreds of the Basque
+and Gypsy Gospel of St Luke.  These figures seem insignificant beside
+those of Lieut. Graydon, who, on one occasion, sold as many as 1082
+volumes in fourteen days, and in two years printed 13,000 Testaments
+and 3000 Bibles, distributing the larger part of them.  During the
+year 1837 he circulated altogether between five and six thousand
+books.  But there was no comparison between the work of the two men.
+Graydon had kept to the towns and cities on the south coast; Borrow's
+methods were different.  He circulated his books largely among
+villages and hamlets, where the population was sparse and the
+opportunities of distribution small.  He had gone out into the
+highways, risking his life at every turn, penetrating into bandit-
+infested provinces in the throes of civil war, suffering incredible
+hardships and fatigues and, never sparing himself.  Both men were
+earnest and eager; but the Bible Society favoured the wrong man--at
+least for its purposes.  But for Lieut. Graydon, Borrow would in all
+probability have gone to China, and what a book he would have
+written, at least what letters, about the sealed East!
+
+Borrow, however, had nothing to complain of.  He had found occupation
+when he badly needed it, which indirectly was to bring him fame.  He
+had been well paid for his services (during the seven years of his
+employment he drew some 2300 pounds in salary and expenses), his 200
+pounds a year and expenses (in Spain) comparing very favourably with
+Mr Brandram's 300 pounds a year.
+
+He was loyal to the Bible Society, both in word and thought.  He
+honourably kept to himself the story of the Graydon dispute.  He
+spoke of the Society with enthusiasm, exclaiming, "Oh! the blood
+glows in his veins! oh! the marrow awakes in his old bones when he
+thinks of what he accomplished in Spain in the cause of religion and
+civilisation with the colours of that society in his hat." {328a}  In
+spite of the misunderstandings and the rebukes he could write
+fourteen years later that he "bade it adieu with feelings of love and
+admiration." {328b}  He "had done with Spain for ever, after doing
+for her all that lay in the power of a lone man, who had never in
+this world anything to depend upon, but God and his own slight
+strength." {328c}  In the preface to The Bible in Spain he pays a
+handsome tribute to both Rule and Graydon, thus showing that although
+he was a good hater, he could be magnanimous.
+
+It has been stated that, during a portion of his association with the
+Bible Society, Borrow acted as a foreign correspondent for The
+Morning Herald.  Dr Knapp has very satisfactorily disproved the
+statement, which the Rev. Wentworth Webster received from the Marques
+de Santa Coloma.  Either the Marques or Mr Webster is responsible for
+the statement that Borrow was wrecked, instead of nearly wrecked, off
+Cape Finisterre.  As the Marques was a passenger on the boat, the
+mistake must be ascribed to Mr Webster.  The further statement that
+Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona by Quesada is scarcely more
+credible than that about the wreck.  His imprisonment could not very
+well have taken place, as stated, in 1837-9, because General Quesada
+was killed in 1836.  Mention is made of this foreign correspondent
+rumour only because it has been printed and reprinted.  It may be
+that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona during the "Veiled Period";
+there is certainly one imprisonment (according to his own statement)
+unaccounted for.  It is curious how the fact first became impressed
+upon the Marques' mind, unless he had heard it from Borrow.  It is
+quite likely that he confused the date.
+
+It would be interesting to identify the two men whom Borrow describes
+in Lavengro as being at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl
+Street, when he sought to exchange for a Bible the old Apple-woman's
+copy of Moll Flanders.  "One was dressed in brown," he writes, "and
+the other was dressed in black; both were tall men--he who was
+dressed in brown was thin, and had a particularly ill-natured
+countenance; the man dressed in black was bulky, his features were
+noble, but they were those of a lion." {329a}  Again, in The Romany
+Rye, he makes the man in black say with reference to the Bible
+Society:- "There is one fellow amongst them for whom we entertain a
+particular aversion:  a big, burly parson, with the face of a lion,
+the voice of a buffalo, and a fist like a sledge-hammer." {329b}  Who
+these two worthies were it is impossible to say with any degree of
+certainty.  Caroline Fox describes Andrew Brandram no further than
+that he "appeared before us once more with his shaggy eyebrows."
+{329c}  Mr Brandram was not thin and his countenance was not ill-
+natured.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI:  MAY 1840-MARCH 1841
+
+
+
+Early in May, Borrow, his wife and step-daughter left London to take
+up their residence at Oulton, in Suffolk.  After years of wandering
+and vagabondage he was to settle down as a landed proprietor.  His
+income, or rather his wife's, amounted to 450 pounds per annum, and
+he must have saved a considerable sum out of the 2300 pounds he had
+drawn from the Bible Society, as his mother appears to have regarded
+the amounts he had sent to her as held in trust.  He was therefore
+able to instal himself, Sidi Habismilk and the Jew of Fez upon his
+wife's small estate, with every prospect of enjoying a period of
+comfort and rest after his many years of wandering and adventure.
+
+Oulton Cottage was ideally situated on the margin of the Broad.  It
+was a one-storied building, with a dormer-attic above, hanging "over
+a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and girt with dark firs,
+through which the wind sighs sadly. {330a}  A regular Patmos, an
+ultima Thule; placed in an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the-
+way portion of England." {330b}  A few yards from the water's edge
+stood the famous octagonal Summer-house that Borrow made his study.
+Here he kept his books, a veritable "polyglot gentleman's" library,
+consisting of such literary "tools" as a Lav-engro might be expected
+to possess.  There were also books of travel and adventure, some
+chairs, a lounge and a table; whilst behind the door hung the sword
+and regimental coat of the sleeping warrior to whom his younger son
+had been an affliction of the spirit, because his mind pursued paths
+that appeared so strangely perilous.
+
+Here in this Summer-house Borrow wrote his books.  Here when
+"sickness was in the land, and the face of nature was overcast--heavy
+rain-clouds swam in the heavens--the blast howled amid the pines
+which nearly surround the lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake
+which lies before it, so quiet in general and tranquil, were
+fearfully agitated," Borrow shouted, "'Bring lights hither, O Hayim
+Ben Attar, son of the miracle!'  And the Jew of Fez brought in the
+lights," {331a} and his master commenced writing a book that was to
+make him famous.  When tired of writing, he would sometimes sing
+"strange words in a stentorian voice, while passers-by on the lake
+would stop to listen with astonishment and curiosity to the singular
+sounds." {331b}
+
+Life at Oulton Cottage was delightfully simple.  Borrow was a good
+host.  "I am rather hospitable than otherwise," {331c} he wrote, and
+thoroughly disliked anything in the nature of meanness.  There was
+always a bottle of wine of a rare vintage for the honoured guest.
+Sometimes the host himself would hasten away to the little Summer-
+house by the side of the Broad to muse, his eyes fixed upon the
+military coat and sword, or to scribble upon scraps of paper that,
+later, were to be transcribed by Mrs Borrow.  Borrow would spend his
+evenings with his wife and Henrietta, generally in reading until
+bedtime.
+
+In the Norwich days Borrow had formed an acquaintance with another
+articled-clerk named Harvey (probably one of his colleagues at Tuck's
+Court).  They had kindred tastes, in particular a love of the open
+air and vigorous exercise.  After settling at Oulton, the Borrows and
+the Harveys (then living at Bury St Edmunds) became very intimate,
+and frequently visited each other.  Elizabeth Harvey, the daughter of
+Borrow's contemporary, has given an extremely interesting account of
+the home life of the Borrows.  She has described how sometimes Borrow
+would sing one of his Romany songs, "shake his fist at me and look
+quite wild.  Then he would ask:  'Aren't you afraid of me?'  'No, not
+at all,' I would say.  Then he would look just as gentle and kind,
+and say, 'God bless you, I would not hurt a hair of your head.'"
+{332a}
+
+Miss Harvey has also given us many glimpses into Borrow's character.
+"He was very fond of ghost stories," she writes, "and believed in the
+supernatural." {332b}  He enjoyed music of a lively description, one
+of his favourite compositions being the well-known "Redowa" polka,
+which he would frequently ask to have played to him again.
+
+As an eater Borrow was very moderate, he "took very little breakfast
+but ate a very great quantity of dinner, and then had only a draught
+of cold water before going to bed . . .  He was very temperate and
+would eat what was set before him, often not thinking of what he was
+doing, and he never refused what was offered him." {332c}  On one
+occasion when he was dining with the Harveys, young Harvey, seeing
+Borrow engrossed in telling of his travels, handed him dish after
+dish in rapid succession, from all of which he helped himself,
+entirely unconscious of what he was doing.  Finally his plate was
+full to overflowing, perceiving which he became very angry, and it
+was some time before he could be appeased.  A practical joke made no
+appeal to him. {332d}
+
+Elizabeth Harvey also tells how, when a cousin of hers was staying at
+Cromer, the landlady went to her one day and said, "O, Miss, there's
+such a curious gentleman been.  I don't know what to think of him, I
+asked him what he would like for dinner, and he said, 'Give me a
+piece of flesh.'"  "What sort of gentleman was it?" enquired the
+cousin, and on hearing the description recognised George Borrow, and
+explained that the strange visitor merely wanted a rump-steak, a
+favourite dish with him.
+
+As he did not shoot or hunt, he obtained exercise either by riding or
+walking.  At times "he suffered from sleeplessness, when he would get
+up and walk to Norwich (25 miles) and return the next night
+recovered" {333a} yet Borrow has said that "he always had the health
+of an elephant."
+
+He was proud of the Church and took great pleasure in showing to his
+friends the brasses it contained, including one bearing an effigy of
+Sir John Fastolf, whom he considered to be the original of Falstaff.
+He was also "very fond of his trees.  He quite fretted if by some
+mischance he lost one." {333b}
+
+His methods with the country people round Oulton were calculated to
+earn for him a reputation for queerness.  "Curiosity is the leading
+feature of my character" {333c} he confessed, and the East Anglian
+looks upon curiosity in others with marked suspicion.  It was
+impossible for Borrow to walk far without getting into conversation
+with someone or other.  He delighted in getting people to tell their
+histories and experiences; "when they used some word peculiar to
+Norfolk (or Suffolk) country men, he would say 'Why, that's a Danish
+word.'  By and bye the man would use another peculiar expression,
+'Why, that's Saxon'; a little further on another, 'Why, that's
+French.'  And he would add, 'Why, what a wonderful man you are to
+speak so many languages.'  One man got very angry, but Mr Borrow was
+quite unconscious that he had given any offence." {334a}
+
+He took pleasure in puzzling people about languages.  Elizabeth
+Harvey tells {334b} how he once put a book before her telling her to
+read it, and on her saying she could not, he replied, "You ought;
+it's your own language."  The volume was written in Saxon.  Yet for
+all this he hated to hear foreign words introduced into conversation.
+When he heard such adulterations of the English language he would
+exclaim jocosely, "What's that, trying to come over me with strange
+languages?" {334c}
+
+Borrow's first thoughts on settling down were of literature.  He had
+material for several books, as he had informed Mr Brandram.  Putting
+aside, at least for the present, the translations of the ballads and
+songs, he devoted himself to preparing for the press a book upon the
+Spanish Gypsies.  During the five years spent in Spain he had
+gathered together much material.  He had made notes in queer places
+under strange and curious conditions, "in moments snatched from more
+important pursuits--chiefly in ventas and posadas" {334d}--whilst
+engaged in distributing the Gospel.  It was a book of facts that he
+meant to write, not theories, and if he sometimes fostered error, it
+was because at the moment it was his conception of truth.  Very
+little remained to do to the manuscript.  Mrs. Borrow had performed
+her share of the work in making a fair copy for the printer.
+Borrow's subsequent remark that the manuscript "was written by a
+country amanuensis and probably contains many ridiculous errata," was
+scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to have comprehended so well
+the first principle of wifely duty to an illustrious and, it must be
+admitted, autocratic genius--viz., self-extinction.
+
+"No man could endure a clever wife," Borrow once confided to the
+unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he had married one
+nevertheless.  No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of
+inspiration could have lived in intimate association with so
+capricious and masterful a man as George Borrow.  John Hasfeldt, in
+sending his congratulations, had seemed to suggest that Borrow was
+one of those abstruse works of nature that require close and constant
+study.  "When your wife thoroughly knows you," he wrote, "she will
+smooth the wrinkles on your brow and you will be so cheerful and
+happy that your grey hair will turn black again."
+
+"In November 1840 a tall athletic gentleman in black called upon Mr
+Murray, offering a manuscript for perusal and publication." {335a}
+Fifteen years before, the same "tall athletic gentleman" had called a
+dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of Northern and
+Welsh ballads, but "never could see Glorious John."  Borrow had
+determined to make another attempt to see John Murray, and this time
+he was successful.  He submitted the manuscript of The Zincali, which
+Murray sent to Richard Ford {335b} that he might pronounce upon it
+and its possibilities.  "I have made acquaintance," Ford wrote to H.
+U. Addington, 14th Jan. 1841, "with an extraordinary fellow, George
+Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies.  He is about to
+publish his failure, and a curious book it will be.  It was submitted
+to my perusal by the hesitating Murray." {335c}  On Ford's advice the
+book was accepted for publication, it being arranged that author and
+publisher should share the profits equally between them.
+
+On 17th April 1841 there appeared in two volumes The Zincali; {336a}
+or, An Account of the Gypsies in Spain.  With an original Collection
+of their Songs and Poetry, and a copious Dictionary of their
+Language.  By George Borrow, late Agent of the British and Foreign
+Bible Society in Spain.  It was dedicated to the Earl of Clarendon,
+G.C.B. (Sir George Villiers), in "remembrance of the many obligations
+under which your Lordship has placed me, by your energetic and
+effectual interference in time of need."  The first edition of 750
+copies sufficed to meet the demand of two years.  Ford, however,
+wrote to Murray:  "The book has created a great sensation far and
+wide.  I was sure it would, and I hope you think that when I read the
+MS. my opinion and advice were sound." {336b}
+
+The Zincali had been begun at Badajos with the Romany songs or rhymes
+copied down as recited by his gypsy friends.  To these he had
+subsequently added, being assisted by a French courier, Juan Antonio
+Bailly, who translated the songs into Spanish.  These translations
+were originally intended to be published in a separate work, as was
+the Vocabulary, which forms part of The Zincali.  Had Borrow sought
+to make two separate works of the "Songs" and "Vocabulary," there is
+very considerable doubt if they would have fared any better than the
+everlasting Ab Gwilym; but either with inspiration, or acting on some
+one's wise counsel, he determined to subordinate them to an account
+of the Spanish Gypsies.
+
+As a piece of bookmaking The Zincali is by no means notable.  Borrow
+himself refers to it (page 354) as "this strange wandering book of
+mine."  In construction it savours rather of the method by which it
+was originally inspired; but for all that it is fascinating reading,
+saturated with the atmosphere of vagabondage and the gypsy
+encampment.  It was not necessarily a book for the scholar and the
+philologist, many of whom scorned it on account of its rather obvious
+carelessnesses and inaccuracies.  Borrow was not a writer of academic
+books.  He lacked the instinct for research which alone insures
+accuracy.
+
+It was particularly appropriate that Borrow's first book should be
+about the Gypsies, who had always exercised so strange an attraction
+for him that he could not remember the time "when the very name of
+Gypsy did not awaken within me feelings hard to be described." {337a}
+His was not merely an interest in their strange language, their
+traditions, their folk-lore; it was something nearer and closer to
+the people themselves.  They excited his curiosity, he envied their
+mode of life, admired their clannishness, delighted in their
+primitive customs.  Their persistence in warring against the gentile
+appealed strongly to his instinctive hatred of "gentility nonsense";
+and perhaps more than anything else, he envied them the stars and the
+sun and the wind on the heath.
+
+"Romany matters have always had a peculiar interest for me," {337b}
+he affirms over and over again in different words, and he never lost
+an opportunity of joining a party of gypsies round their camp-fire.
+His knowledge of the Romany people was not acquired from books.
+Apparently he had read very few of the many works dealing with the
+mysterious race he had singled out for his particular attention.
+With characteristic assurance he makes the sweeping assertion that
+"all the books which have been published concerning them [the
+Gypsies] have been written by those who have introduced themselves
+into their society for a few hours, and from what they have seen or
+heard consider themselves competent to give the world an idea of the
+manners and customs of the mysterious Romany." {338a}
+
+His attitude towards the race is curious.  He recognised the Gypsies
+as liars, rogues, cheats, vagabonds, in short as the incarnation of
+all the vices; yet their fascination for him in no way diminished.
+He could mix with them, as with other vagabonds, and not become
+harmed by their broad views upon personal property, or their hundred
+and one tricks and dishonesties.  He was a changed man when in their
+company, losing all that constraint that marked his intercourse with
+people of his own class.
+
+He had laboured hard to bring the light of the Gospel into their
+lives.  He made them translate for him the Scriptures into their
+tongue; but it was the novelty of the situation, aided by the glass
+of Malaga wine he gave them, not the beauty of the Gospel of St Luke,
+that aroused their interest and enthusiasm.  To this, Borrow's own
+eyes were open.  "They listened with admiration," he says; "but,
+alas! not of the truths, the eternal truths, I was telling them, but
+to find that their broken jargon could be written and read." {338b}
+
+On one occasion, having refused to one of his congregation the loan
+of two barias (ounces of gold), he proceeded to read to the whole
+assembly instead the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed in Romany.
+Happening to glance up, he found not a gypsy in the room, but
+squinted, "the Gypsy fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted
+worst of all.  Such are Gypsies." {338c}
+
+It was indeed the novelty that appealed to them.  They greeted with a
+shout of exultation the reading aloud a translation that they
+themselves had dictated; but they remained unmoved by the Christian
+teaching it contained.  For all these discouragements Borrow
+persisted, and perhaps none of his efforts in Spain produced less
+result than this "attempt to enlighten the minds of the Gitanos on
+the subject of religion." {339a}
+
+If the Gypsies were all that is evil, judged by conventional
+standards, they at least loyally stood by each other in the face of a
+common foe.  Borrow knew Ambrose Petulengro to be a liar, a thief, in
+fact most things that it is desirable a man should not be; yet he was
+equally sure that under no circumstances would he forsake a friend to
+whom he stood pledged.  There seems to be little doubt that Borrow's
+fame with the Gypsies spread throughout England and the Continent.
+"Everybody as ever see'd the white-headed Romany Rye never forgot
+him."
+
+Borrow was by no means the first Romany Rye.  From Andrew Boorde
+(15th-16th Century) down the centuries they are to be found, even to
+our day, in the persons of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton and Mr John
+Sampson; but Borrow was the first to bring the cult of Gypsyism into
+popularity.  Before he wrote, the general view of Gypsies was that
+they were uncomfortable people who robbed the clothes-lines and hen-
+roosts, told fortunes and incidentally intimidated the housewife if
+unprotected by man or dog.  Borrow changed all this.  The suspicion
+remained, so strongly in fact that he himself was looked at askance
+for consorting with such vagabonds; but with the suspicion was more
+than a spice of interest, and the Gypsies became epitomised and
+immortalised in the person of Jasper Petulengro.  Borrow's Gypsyism
+was as unscientific as his "philology."  Their language, their origin
+he commented on without first acquainting himself with the literature
+that had gathered round their name.  Francis Hindes Groome, "that
+perfect scholar-gypsy and gypsy-scholar," wrote:-
+
+
+"The meagreness of his knowledge of the Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out
+in his Word Book of the Romany (1874); there must have been over a
+dozen Englishmen who have known it far better than he.  For his
+Spanish-Gypsy vocabulary in The Zincali he certainly drew largely
+either on Richard Bright's Travels through Lower Hungary or on
+Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been.  His
+knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary,
+of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically
+nil.  And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on
+the Gypsies.  In Lavengro and, to a less degree, in its sequel, The
+Romany Rye, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is
+totally wanting in the works--mainly philological--of Pott, Liebich,
+Paspati, Miklosich, and their confreres." {340a}
+
+
+Groome was by no means partial to Borrow, as a matter of fact he
+openly taxed him {340b} with drawing upon Bright's Travels in Hungary
+(Edinburgh 1819) for the Spanish-Romany Vocabulary, and was strong in
+his denunciation of him as a poseur.
+
+Borrow scorned book-learning.  Writing to John Murray, Junr. (21st
+Jan. 1843), about The Bible in Spain, he says, "I was conscious that
+there was vitality in the book and knew that it must sell.  I read
+nothing and drew entirely from my own well.  I have long been tired
+of books; I have had enough of them," {340c} he wrote later, and
+this, taken in conjunction with another sentence, viz., "My
+favourite, I might say my only study, is man," explains not only
+Borrow's Gypsyism, but also his casual philology.  Languages he
+mostly learned that he might know men.  In youth he read--he had to
+do something during the long office hours, and he read Danish and
+Welsh literature; but he did not trouble himself much with the
+literary wealth of other countries, beyond dipping into it.  He had a
+brain of his own, and preferred to form theories from the knowledge
+he had acquired first hand, a most excellent thing for a man of the
+nature of George Borrow, but scarcely calculated to advance learning.
+He hated anything academic.
+
+
+"I cannot help thinking," he wrote, "that it was fortunate for
+myself, who am, to a certain extent, a philologist, that with me the
+pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of horses .
+. .  I might, otherwise, have become a mere philologist; one of those
+beings who toil night and day in culling useless words for some opus
+magnum which Murray will never publish and nobody ever read--beings
+without enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a generous steed,
+cannot detect a good point in Pegasus himself." {341a}
+
+
+This quotation clearly explains Borrow's attitude towards philology.
+As he told the emigre priest, he hoped to become something more than
+a philologist.
+
+There was nothing in the sale of The Zincali to encourage Borrow to
+proceed with the other books he had partially prepared.  Nearly seven
+weeks after publication, scarcely three hundred copies had been sold.
+In the spring of the following year (18th March) John Murray wrote:
+"The sale of the book has not amounted to much since the first
+publication; but in recompense for this the Yankees have printed two
+editions, one for twenty pence COMPLETE."  As Borrow did not benefit
+from the sale of American editions, the news was not quite so
+comforting as it would have been had it referred to the English
+issue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII:  APRIL 1841-MARCH 1844
+
+
+
+During his wanderings in Portugal and Spain Borrow had carried out
+his intention of keeping a journal, from which on several occasions
+he sent transcriptions to Earl Street instead of recapitulating in
+his letters the adventures that befell him.  Many of his letters went
+astray, which is not strange considering the state of the country.
+The letters and reports that Borrow wrote to the Bible Society, which
+still exist, may be roughly divided as follows
+
+From his introduction until the end
+   of the Russian expedition              17.50
+Used for The Bible in Spain               30.00
+Others written during the Spanish
+   and Portuguese periods and not used
+   for The Bible in Spain                 52.50
+                                         100.00
+
+Thirty per cent, of the whole number of the letters was all that
+Borrow used for The Bible in Spain.  In addition he had his Journal,
+and from these two sources he obtained all the material he required
+for the book that was to electrify the religious reading-public and
+make famous its writer.
+
+Between Borrow and Ford a warm friendship had sprung up, and many
+letters passed between them.  Ford, who was busily engaged upon his
+Hand-Book, sought Borrow's advice upon a number of points, in
+particular about Gypsy matters.  There was something of the same
+atmosphere in his letters as in those of John Hasfeldt:  a frank,
+affectionate interest in Borrow and what affected him that it was
+impossible to resent.  "How I wish you had given us more about
+yourself," he wrote to Borrow apropos of The Zincali, "instead of the
+extracts from those blunder-headed old Spaniards, who knew nothing
+about Gypsies!  I shall give you . . . a hint to publish your whole
+adventures for the last twenty years."  But Hayim Ben-Attar, son of
+the miracle, had already brought lights, and The Bible in Spain had
+been begun.
+
+Ford's counsel was invariably sound and sane.  He advised El Gitano,
+as he sometimes called Borrow, "to avoid Spanish historians and
+POETRY like Prussic acid; to stick to himself, his biography and
+queer adventures," {343a} to all of which Borrow promised obedience.
+Ford wrote to Borrow (Feb. 1841) suggesting that The Bible in Spain
+should be what it actually was.  "I am delighted to hear," he wrote,
+"that you meditate giving us your travels in Spain.  The more odd
+personal adventures the better, and still more so if DRAMATIC; that
+is, giving the exact conversations."
+
+In June 1841 Borrow received from Earl Street the originals of his
+letters to the Bible Society, and when he was eventually called upon
+to return them he retained a number, either through carelessness or
+by design.  It was evidently understood that there should be no
+reference to any contentious matters.  Borrow set to work with the
+aid of his "Country Amanuensis" to transcribe such portions of the
+correspondence as he required.  The work proceeded slowly.
+
+"I still scribble occasionally for want of something better to do,"
+he informs John Murray, Junr. (23rd Aug. 1841), and continues:  " . .
+. A queer book will be this same Bible in Spain, containing all my
+queer adventures in that queer country whilst engaged in distributing
+the Gospel, but neither learning, nor disquisitions, fine writing, or
+poetry.  A book with such a title and of this description can
+scarcely fail of success."
+
+
+Through a dreary summer and autumn he wrote on complaining that there
+was "scarcely a gleam of sunshine."  Remote from the world "with not
+the least idea of what is going on save in my immediate
+neighbourhood," he wrote merely to kill time.  Such an existence was,
+to the last degree, uncongenial to a man who for years had been
+accustomed to sunshine and a life full of incident and adventure.
+
+He grew restless and ill-content.  He had been as free as the wind,
+with occupation for brain and body.  He was now, like Achilles,
+brooding in his tent, and over his mind there fell a shadow of
+unrest.  As early as July 1841 he had thought of settling in Berlin
+and devoting himself to study.  Hasfeldt suggested Denmark, the land
+of the Sagas.  Later in the same year Africa had presented itself to
+Borrow as a possible retreat, but Ford advised him against it as "the
+land from which few travellers return," and told him that he had much
+better go to Seville.  Still later Constantinople was considered and
+then the coast of Barbary.  Into his letters there crept a note of
+querulous complaint.  John Hasfeldt besought him to remember how much
+he had travelled and he would find that he had wandered enough, and
+then he would accustom himself to rest.
+
+The manuscript of The Bible in Spain was completed early in January
+(1842) and despatched to John Murray, who sent it to Richard Ford.
+From the "reader's report" it is to be gathered that in addition to
+the manuscript Borrow sent also the letters that he had borrowed from
+the Bible Society.  Ford refers to the story of the man stung to
+death by vipers {344a} "in the letter of the 16th August 1837," and
+advises that "Mr Borrow should introduce it into his narrative."  He
+further recommends him "to go carefully over the whole of his
+Letters, as it is very probable that other points of interest which
+they contain may have been omitted in the narrative.  Some of the
+most interesting letters relate to journies not given in the MS."
+
+The work when it reached Ford was apparently in a very rough state.
+In addition to many mistakes in spelling and grammar, a number of
+words were left blank.  In a vast number of instances short sentences
+were run together.  Mrs Borrow does not appear to have been a very
+successful amanuensis at this period.  Perhaps the most interesting
+indication of how much the manuscript, as first submitted, differed
+from the published work is shown by one of Ford's criticisms:-
+
+
+"In the narrative there are at present two breaks--one from about
+March 1836 to June 1837 [Chapters XIII.-XX.],--and the other from
+November 1837 to July 1839 [Chapters XXXVI.-XLIX.]
+
+
+This represents a third of the book as finally printed.  Ford
+objected to the sudden ending; but Borrow made no alteration in this
+respect.  There were a number of other suggestions of lesser
+importance in this admirable piece of technical criticism.  Ford
+disliked Borrow's striving to create an air of mystery as "taking an
+unwarrantable liberty with the reader"; he suggested a map and a
+short biographical sketch of the author, and especially the nature of
+his connection with the Bible Society.  Finally he gives it as his
+opinion that it is neither necessary nor advisable to insert any of
+his letters to the Bible Society, either in the body of the book or
+as an Appendix.
+
+
+"The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of the book," Ford wrote;
+"but in several of them the tone of the speakers, of those especially
+who are in humble life, is too correct and elevated, and therefore
+out of character.  This takes away from their effect.  I think it
+would be very advisable that Mr Borrow should go over them with
+reference to this point, simplifying a few of the turns of expression
+and introducing a few contractions--don'ts, can'ts, etc.  This would
+improve them greatly."
+
+
+This criticism applies to all Borrow's books, in particular to the
+passages dealing with the Gypsies, who, in spite of their love of
+high-sounding words, which they frequently misuse, do not speak with
+the academic precision of Borrow's works any more than do peers or
+princes or even pedagogues.  Borrow met Ford's criticism with the
+assurance that "the lower classes in Spain are generally elevated in
+their style and scarcely ever descend to vulgarity."
+
+Borrow's first impulse appears to have been to disregard the
+suggestion that the two breaks should be filled in.  On 13th Jan. he
+wrote to John Murray, Junr.:
+
+
+"I have received the MS. and likewise your kind letter . . . Pray
+thank the Gentleman who perused the MS. in my name for his
+suggestions, which I will attend to.  [By this it is clear that
+Borrow was not told that Ford was 'the Gentleman.']  I find that the
+MS. was full of trifling mistakes, the fault of my amanuensis; but I
+am going through it, and within three days shall have made all the
+necessary corrections."
+
+
+No man, of however sanguine a temperament, could seriously
+contemplate the mere transcription of some eighty thousand words, in
+addition to the correction of twice that amount of manuscript, within
+three days.  Nine days later Borrow wrote again to John Murray, Junr.
+"We are losing time; I have corrected seven hundred CONSECUTIVE pages
+of MS., and the remaining two hundred will be ready in a fortnight."
+That he had taken so long was due to the fact that the greater part
+of the preceding week had been occupied with other and more exciting
+matters than correcting manuscript.
+
+
+"During the last week," he continues, "I have been chiefly engaged in
+horse-breaking.  A most magnificent animal has found his way to this
+neighbourhood--a half-bred Arabian--he is at present in the hands of
+a low horse-dealer; he can be bought for eight pounds, but no person
+will have him; it is said that he kills everybody who mounts him.  I
+have been CHARMING him, and have so far succeeded that at present he
+does not fling me more than once in five minutes.  What a
+contemptible trade is the Author's compared to that of the jockey."
+
+
+It was not until towards the end of February that the corrected
+manuscript of the first volume of The Bible in Spain reached
+Albemarle Street.  Later and better counsels had apparently
+prevailed, and Borrow had become reconciled to filling up the breaks.
+
+Borrow had other occupations than preparing his manuscript for the
+printer's hands.  He was ill and overwrought, and small things became
+magnified out of all proportion to their actual importance.  There
+had been a dispute between Borrow's dog and that of the rector of
+Oulton, the Rev. E. P. Denniss, and as the place was small, the dogs
+met frequently and renewed their feud.  Finally the masters of the
+animals became involved, and an interchange of frigid notes ensued.
+It appears that Borrow threatened to appeal to the Law and to the
+Bishop of the Diocese, and further seems to have suggested that in
+the interests of peace, the rector might do away with his own dog.
+The tone of the correspondence may be gathered from the following
+notes:- {347a}
+
+
+"Mr Denniss begs to acknowledge Mr Borrow's note, and is sorry to
+hear that his dog and Mr Borrow's have again fallen out.  Mr Denniss
+learns from his servant that Mr D's dog was no more in fault than Mr
+B's, which latter is of a very quarrelsome and savage disposition, as
+Mr Denniss can himself testify, as well as many other people.  Mr
+Denniss regrets that these two animals cannot agree when they meet,
+but he must decline acceding to Mr Borrow's somewhat arbitrary
+demand, conceiving he has as much right to retain a favourite, and in
+reality very harmless, animal, as Mr Borrow has to keep a dog which
+has once bitten Mr Denniss himself, and oftentimes attacked him and
+his family.  Mr Borrow is at perfect liberty to take any measure he
+may deem advisable, either before the magistrates or the Bishop of
+the Diocese, as Mr Denniss is quite prepared to meet them."
+
+"OULTON RECTORY, 22nd April 1842."
+
+
+Borrow's reply (in the rough draft found among his papers after his
+death) ran:
+
+
+"Mr Borrow has received Mr Denniss' answer to his note.  With respect
+to Mr Denniss' recrimination on the quarrelsome disposition of his
+harmless house-dog, Mr Borrow declines to say anything further.  No
+one knows better than Mr Denniss the value of his own assertions . .
+. Circumstances over which Mr Borrow has at present no control will
+occasionally bring him and his family under the same roof with Mr
+Denniss; that roof, however, is the roof of the House of God, and the
+prayers of the Church of England are wholesome from whatever mouth
+they may proceed."
+
+
+Borrow's most partisan admirer could not excuse the outrage to all
+decency contained in the last paragraph of his note, if indeed it
+were ever sent, in any other way than to plead the writer's ill-
+health.
+
+It had been arranged that The Bible in Spain should make its
+appearance in May.  In July Borrow wrote showing some impatience and
+urging greater expedition.
+
+
+"What are your intentions with respect to the Bible in Spain?" he
+enquires of John Murray.  "I am a frank man, and frankness never
+offends me.  Has anybody put you out of conceit with the book? . . .
+Tell me frankly and I will drink your health in Romany.  Or would the
+appearance of the Bible on the first of October interfere with the
+avatar, first or second, of some very wonderful lion or Divinity, to
+whom George Borrow, who is NEITHER, must of course give place?  Be
+frank with me, my dear Sir, and I will drink your health in Romany
+and Madeira."
+
+
+He goes on to offer to release John Murray from his "share in the
+agreement" and complete the book himself remitting to the printer
+"the necessary money for the purchase of paper."
+
+To Ford, who had acted as a sort of godfather to The Bible in Spain,
+it was "a rum, very rum, mixture of gypsyism, Judaism, and missionary
+adventure," as he informed John Murray.  He read it "with great
+delight," and its publisher may "depend upon it that the book will
+sell, which, after all, is the rub."  He liked the sincerity, the
+style, the effect of incident piling on incident.  It reminded him of
+Gil Blas with a touch of Bunyan.  Borrow is "such a TRUMP . . . as
+full of meat as an egg, and a fresh-laid one."  All this he tells
+John Murray, and concludes with the assurance, "Borrow will lay you
+golden eggs, and hatch them after the ways of Egypt; put salt on his
+tail and secure him in your coop, and beware how any poacher coaxes
+him with 'raisins' or reasons out of the Albemarle preserve." {349a}
+
+Ford was never tired of applying new adjectives to Borrow and his
+work.  He was "an extraordinary fellow," "this wild missionary," "a
+queer chap."  Borrow, on the other hand, cherished a sincere regard
+for the man who had shown such enthusiasm for his work.  To John
+Murray, Junr., he wrote (4th April 1843):  "Pray remember me to Ford,
+who is no humbug and is one of the few beings that I care something
+about."
+
+Throughout his correspondence with Borrow, Richard Ford showed a
+judgment and an appreciation of what the public would be likely to
+welcome that stamped him as a publishers' "reader" by instinct.  Such
+advice as he gave to Borrow in the following letter set up a standard
+of what a book, such as Borrow had it in his power to write, actually
+should be.  It unquestionably influenced Borrow:-
+
+
+10th June 1842.
+
+"My advice again and again is to avoid all fine writing, all
+descriptions of mere scenery and trivial events.  What the world
+wants are racy, real, genuine scenes, and the more out of the way the
+better.  Poetry is utterly to be avoided.  If Apollo were to come
+down from Heaven, John Murray would not take his best manuscript as a
+gift.  Stick to yourself, to what you have seen, and the people you
+have mixed with.  The more you give us of odd Jewish people the
+better . . .  Avoid WORDS, stick to DEEDS.  Never think of how you
+express yourself; for good matter MUST tell, and no fine writing will
+make bad matter good.  Don't be afraid that what YOU may not think
+good will not be thought so by others.  It often happens just the
+reverse . . . New facts seen in new and strange countries will please
+everybody; but old scenery, even Cintra, will not.  We know all about
+that, and want something that we do not know . . . The grand thing is
+to be bold and to avoid the common track of the silver paper, silver
+fork, blue-stocking.  Give us adventure, wild adventure, journals,
+thirty language book, sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, rambles, and the
+INTERIOR of Spanish prisons--the way you get in, the way you get out.
+No author has yet given us a Spanish prison.  Enter into the
+iniquities, the fees, the slang, etc.  It will be a little a la
+Thurtell, but you see the people like to have it so.  Avoid rant and
+cant.  Dialogues always tell; they are dramatic and give an air of
+reality."
+
+
+The Bible in Spain was published 10th December, and one of the first
+copies that reached him was inscribed by the author to "Ann Borrow.
+With her son's best love, 13th Decr. 1842."
+
+From the critics there was praise and scarcely anything but praise.
+It was received as a work bearing the unmistakable stamp of genius.
+Lockhart himself reviewed it in The Quarterly Review, confessing the
+shame he felt at not having reviewed The Zincali.  "Very good--very
+clever--very neatly done.  Only one fault to find--too laudatory,"
+was Borrow's comment upon this notice.
+
+And through the clamour and din of it all, old Mrs Borrow wrote to
+her daughter-in-law telling her of the call of an old friend, whom
+she had not seen for twenty-eight years, and who had come to talk
+with her of the fame of her son, "the most remarkable man that
+Dereham ever produced.  Capt. Girling is a man of few words, but when
+he DO speak it is to some purpose."  Ford wrote also (he was always
+writing impulsive, boyish letters) telling how Borrow's name would
+"fill the trump of fame," and that "Murray is in high bone" about the
+book.  Hasfeldt wrote, too, saying that he saw his "friend 'tall
+George,' wandering over the mountains until I ached in every joint
+with the vividness of his descriptions."
+
+In all this chorus of praise there was the complaint of the Dublin
+Review that "Borrow was a missionary sent out by a gang of
+conspirators against Christianity."  Borrow's comment upon this
+notice was that "It is easier to call names and misquote passages in
+a dirty Review than to write The Bible in Spain."
+
+A second edition of The Bible in Spain was issued in January, to
+which the author contributed a preface, "very funny, but wild," he
+assured John Murray, Junr., and he promised "yet another preface for
+the third edition, should one be called for."  The third edition
+appeared in March, the fourth in June, and the fifth in July.  When
+the Fourth Edition was nearing completion Borrow wrote to Murray:
+"Would it be as well to write a preface to this FOURTH edition with a
+tirade or two against the Pope, and allusions to the Great North
+Road?"  To which Murray replied, "With due submission to you as
+author, I would suggest that you should not abuse the Pope in the new
+preface."
+
+In the flush of his success Borrow could afford to laugh at the few
+cavilling critics.
+
+
+"Let them call me a nonentity if they will," he wrote to John Murray,
+Junr. (13th March).  "I believe that some of those, who say I am a
+phantom, would alter their tone provided they were to ask me to a
+good dinner; bottles emptied and fowls devoured are not exactly the
+feats of a phantom.  No!  I partake more of the nature of a Brownie
+or Robin Goodfellow, goblins, 'tis true, but full of merriment and
+fun, and fond of good eating and drinking."
+
+
+America echoed back the praise and bought the book in thousands.
+Publishers issued editions in Philadelphia and New York; but Borrow
+did not participate in the profits, as there was then no copyright
+protection for English books in the United States of America.  The
+Athenaeum reported (27th May 1843) that 30,000 copies had been sold
+in America.  "I really never heard of anything so infamous," wrote
+Borrow to his wife.  The only thing that America gave him was praise
+and (in common with other countries) a place in its biographical
+dictionaries and encyclopaedias.  The Bible in Spain was translated
+into French and German and subsequently (abridged) into Russian.
+
+What appeared to please Borrow most was Sir Robert Peel's reference
+to him in the House of Commons, although he regretted the scanty
+report of the speech given in the newspapers.  Replying to Dr
+Bowring's (at that time Borrow's friend) motion "for copies of the
+correspondence of the British Government with the Porte on the
+subject of the Bishop of Jerusalem," Sir Robert remarked:  "If Mr
+Borrow had been deterred by trifling obstacles, the circulation of
+the Bible in Spain would never have been advanced to the extent which
+it had happily attained.  If he had not persevered he would not have
+been the agent of so much enlightment." {352a}
+
+There were many things that contributed to the instantaneous success
+of The Bible in Spain.  Apart from the vivid picture that it gave of
+the indomitable courage and iron determination of a man commanding
+success, its literary qualities, and enthralling interest, its
+greatest commercial asset lay in its appeal to the Religious Public.
+Never, perhaps, had they been invited to read such a book, because
+never had the Bible been distributed by so amazing a missionary as
+George Borrow.  Gil Blas with a touch of Bunyan, as Ford delightfully
+phrased it, and not too much Bunyan.  Thieves, murderers, gypsies,
+bandits, prisons, wars--all knit together by the missionary work of a
+man who was persona grata with every lawless ruffian he encountered,
+and yet a sower of the seed.  The Religious Public did not pause to
+ponder over the strangeness of the situation.  They had fallen among
+thieves, and with breathless eagerness were prepared to enjoy to the
+full the novel experience.
+
+Here was a religious book full of the most exquisite material thrills
+without a suggestion of a spiritual moral.  Criminals were
+encountered, their deeds rehearsed and the customary sermon upon the
+evils arising from wickedness absent.  It was a stimulating drink to
+unaccustomed palates.  The Bible in Spain sold in its thousands.
+
+The accuracy of the book has never been questioned; if it had,
+Borrow's letters to the Bible Society would immediately settle any
+doubt that might arise.  If there be one incident in the work that
+appears invented, it is the story of Benedict Moll, the treasure-
+hunter; yet even that is authentic.  In the following letter, dated
+22nd June 1839, Rey Romero, the bookseller of Santiago, refers to the
+unfortunate Benedict Moll:-
+
+
+"The German of the Treasure," he writes, "came here last year bearing
+letters from the Government for the purpose of discovering it.  But,
+a few days after his arrival, they threw him into prison; from thence
+he wrote me, making himself known as the one you introduced to me;
+wherefore my son went to see him in prison.  He told my son that you
+also had been arrested, but I could not credit it.  A short time
+after, they took him off to Coruna; then they brought him back here
+again, and I do not know what has become of him since." {353a}
+
+
+Borrow now became the lion of the hour.  He was feted and feasted in
+London, and everybody wanted to meet the wonderful white-haired
+author of The Bible in Spain.  One day he is breakfasting with the
+Prussian Ambassador, "with princes and members of Parliament, I was
+the star of the morning," he writes to his wife.  "I thought to
+myself 'what a difference!'"  Later he was present at a grand soiree,
+"and the people came in throngs to be introduced to me.  To-night,"
+he continues, "I am going to the Bishop of Norwich, to-morrow to
+another place, and so on." {354a}
+
+Borrow had been much touched by the news of the death of Allan
+Cunningham (1785-1842).
+
+
+"Only think, poor Allan Cunningham dead!" he wrote to John Murray,
+Junr. (25th Nov. 1842).  "A young man--only fifty-eight--strong and
+tall as a giant; might have lived to a hundred and one, but he
+bothered himself about the affairs of this world far too much.  That
+statue shop was his bane; took to book making likewise, in a word too
+fond of Mammon--awful death--no preparation--came literally upon him
+like a thief in the dark.  Am thinking of writing a short life of
+him; old friend--twenty years' standing, knew a good deal about him;
+Traditional Tales his best work . . .
+
+"Pray send Dr Bowring a copy of Bible.  Lives No. 1, Queen Square,
+Westminster, another old friend.  Send one to Ford--capital fellow.
+Respects to Mr M.  God bless you.  Feel quite melancholy, Ever
+yours."
+
+
+In these Jinglelike periods Borrow pays tribute to the man who
+praised his Romantic Ballads and contributed a prefatory poem.  He
+returned to the subject ten days later in another letter to John
+Murray, Junr.  "I can't get poor Allan out of my head," he wrote.
+"When I come up I intend to go and see his wife.  What a woman!"
+
+Fame did not dispel from Borrow's mind the old restlessness, the
+desire for action.  He was still unwell, worried at the sight of
+"Popery . . . springing up in every direction . . . THERE'S NO PEACE
+IN THIS WORLD." {355a}  A cold contracted by his wife distressed him
+to the point of complaining that "there is little but trouble in this
+world; I am nearly tired of it." {355b}  Exercise failed to benefit
+him.  He was suffering from languor and nervousness.  And through it
+all that Spartan woman who had committed the gravest of matrimonial
+errors, that of marrying a genius, soothed and comforted the sick
+lion, tired even of victory.
+
+Small things troubled him and honours awakened in him no enthusiasm.
+The Times in reviewing The Bible in Spain had inferred that he was
+not a member of the Church of England, {355c} and the statement "must
+be contradicted."  The Royal Institution was prepared to confer an
+honour upon him, and he could not make up his mind whether or not to
+accept it.
+
+
+"What would the Institute expect me to write?" he enquires of John
+Murray, Junr., 25th Feb. 1843.  "(I have exhausted Spain and the
+Gypsies.)  Would an essay on the Welsh language and literature suit,
+with an account of the Celtic tongues?  Or would something about the
+ancient North and its literature be more acceptable? . . . Had it
+been the Royal Academy, I should have consented at once, and do
+hereby empower you to accept in my name any offer which may be made
+from that quarter.  I should very much like to become an Academician,
+the thing would just suit me, more especially as 'they do not want
+CLEVER men, but SAFE men.'  Now I am safe enough, ask the Bible
+Society, whose secrets I have kept so much to their satisfaction,
+that they have just accepted at my hands an English Gypsy Gospel
+gratis." {356a}
+
+He declined an invitation to join the Ethnological Society.
+
+
+"Who are they?" he enquires in the same letter.  "At present I am in
+great demand.  A Bishop has just requested me to visit him.  The
+worst of these Bishops is that they are all skinflints, saving for
+their families; their cuisine is bad and their Port-wine execrable,
+and as for their cigars--. . . "
+
+
+Borrow strove to quiet his spirit by touring about Norfolk, "putting
+up at dead of night in country towns and small villages."  He
+returned to Oulton at the end of a fortnight, having tired himself
+and knocked up his horse.  Even the news that a new edition of The
+Bible in Spain was required could not awaken in him any enthusiasm.
+He was glad the book had sold, as he knew it would, and he would like
+a rough estimate of the profits.  A few days later he writes to John
+Murray, Junr., with reference to a new edition of The Zincali, saying
+that he finds "that there is far more connection between the first
+and second volumes than he had imagined," and begging that the
+reprint may be the same as the first.  "It would take nearly a month
+to refashion the book," he continues, "and I believe a month's mental
+labour at the present time would do me up."  The weather in
+particular affected, him.  For years he had been accustomed to sun-
+warmed Spain, and the gloom and greyness of England depressed him.
+
+
+"Strange weather this," he had written to John Murray (31st Dec.
+1842)--"very unwholesome I believe both for man and beast.  Several
+people dead and great mortality amongst the cattle.  Am intolerably
+well myself, but get but little rest--disagreeable dreams--digestion
+not quite so good as I could wish--been on the water system--won't
+do--have left it off, and am now taking lessons in singing."
+
+
+Many men have earned the reputation of madness for less eccentric
+actions than taking lessons in singing as a cure for indigestion,
+after the failure of the water cure.
+
+Although he was receiving complimentary letters from all quarters and
+from people he had never even heard of, he seemed acutely unhappy.
+
+
+"I did wrong," he writes to his wife from London (29th May 1843),
+"not to bring you when I came, for without you I cannot get on at
+all.  Left to myself, a gloom comes upon me which I cannot describe.
+I will endeavour to be home on Thursday, as I wish so much to be with
+you, without whom there is no joy for me nor rest.  You tell me to
+ask for SITUATIONS, etc.  I am not at all suited for them.  My place
+seems to be in our own dear cottage, where, with your help, I hope to
+prepare for a better world . . . I dare say I shall be home on
+Thursday, perhaps earlier, if I am unwell; for the poor bird when in
+trouble has no one to fly to but his mate."  And a few days later:
+"I wish I had not left home.  Take care of yourself.  Kiss poor Hen."
+
+
+During his stay in London, Borrow sat to Henry Wyndham Phillips,
+R.A., for his portrait. {357a}  On 21st June John Murray wrote:  "I
+have seen your portrait.  Phillips is going to saw off a bit of the
+panel, which will give you your proper and characteristic height.
+Next year you will doubtless cut a great figure in the Exhibition.
+It is the best thing young Phillips has done."  The painting was
+exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 as "George Borrow, Esq.,
+author of The Bible in Spain," and is now in the possession of Mr
+John Murray.
+
+There is a story told in connection with the painting of this
+portrait.  Borrow was a bad sitter, and visibly chafed at remaining
+indoors doing nothing.  To overcome this restlessness the painter had
+recourse to a clever stratagem.  He enquired of his sitter if Persian
+were really a fine language, as he had heard; Borrow assured him that
+it was, and at Phillips' request, started declaiming at the top of
+his voice, his eyes flashing with enthusiasm.  When he ceased, the
+wily painter mentioned other tongues, Turkish, Armenian, etc., in
+each instance with the same result, and the painting of the portrait
+became an easy matter.
+
+On 23rd June John Murray (the Second) died, at the age of sixty-five,
+and was succeeded by his son.  "Poor old Murray!" Ford wrote to
+Borrow, "We shall never see his like again.  He . . . was a fine
+fellow in every respect."  In another letter he refers to him as
+"that Prince of Bibliophiles, poor, dear, old Murray."  Borrow's own
+relations with John Murray had always been most cordial.  On one
+occasion, when writing to his son, he says:  "I shall be most happy
+to see you and still more your father, whose jokes do one good.  I
+wish all the world were as gay as he."  Then without a break, he goes
+on to deplore the fact that "a gentleman drowned himself last week on
+my property.  I wish he had gone somewhere else."  Such was George
+Borrow.
+
+For some time past Borrow's thoughts had been directed towards
+obtaining a Government post abroad.  The sentence, "You tell me to
+ask for situations, etc.," in a letter to his wife had reference to
+this ambition.  He had previously (21st June 1841) written to Lord
+Clarendon suggesting for himself a consulship; but the reply had not
+been encouraging.  It was "quite hopeless to expect a consulship from
+Lord Palmerston, the applicants were too many and the appointments
+too few."
+
+Borrow recognised the stagnation of his present life.
+
+
+"I wish the Government would give me some command in Ireland which
+would call forth my energies," he wrote to John Murray (25th Oct.
+1843).  "If there be an outbreak there I shall apply to them at once,
+for my heart is with them in the present matter:  I hope they will be
+firm, and they have nothing to fear; I am sure that the English
+nation will back them, for the insolence and ingratitude of the
+Irish, and the cowardice of their humbug chief, have caused universal
+disgust."  Later he wrote, also to John Murray, with reference to
+that "trumpery fellow O'Connell . . . I wish I were acquainted with
+Sir Robert Peel.  I could give him many a useful hint with respect to
+Ireland and the Irish.  I know both tolerably well.  Whenever there's
+a row I intend to go over with Sidi Habismilk and put myself at the
+head of a body of volunteers."
+
+
+He had previously written "the old Duke [Wellington] will at last
+give salt eel to that cowardly, bawling vagabond O'Connell."  Borrow
+detested O'Connell as a "Dublin bully . . . a humbug, without courage
+or one particle of manly feeling."  Again (17th June) he had written:
+"Horrible news from Ireland.  I wish sincerely the blackguards would
+break out at once; they will never be quiet until they have got a
+sound licking, and the sooner the better."
+
+The finer side of Borrow's character was shown in his eagerness to
+obtain employment.  There is a touch of pathos in the sight of this
+knight, armed and ready to fight anything for anybody, wasting his
+strength and his talents in feuds with his neighbours.
+
+In the profits on the old and the preparation of new editions of The
+Bible in Spain, Borrow took a keen interest.  The money he was making
+enabled him to assist his wife in disembarrassing her estate.  "I
+begin to take considerable pleasure in making money," he wrote to his
+publisher, "which I hope is a good sign; for what is life unless we
+take pleasure in something?"  Again he enquires, "Why does not the
+public call for another edition of them [The Gypsies of Spain].  You
+see what an unconscionable rascal I am becoming."  During his
+lifetime Borrow received from the firm of Murray, 3437 pounds, 19s.,
+most of which was on account of The Bible in Spain and, consequently,
+was paid to him during the first years of his association with
+Albemarle Street.
+
+Caroline Fox gives an interesting picture of Borrow at this period as
+he appeared to her:-
+
+
+"25th Oct. 1843.
+
+"Catherine Gurney gave us a note to George Borrow, so on him we
+called,--a tall, ungainly, uncouth man, with great physical strength,
+a quick penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable tone
+and pronunciation.  He was sitting on one side of the fire, and his
+old mother on the other.  His spirits always sink in wet weather, and
+to-day was very rainy, but he was courteous and not displeased to be
+a little lionised, for his delicacy is not of the most susceptible.
+He talked about Spain and the Spaniards; the lowest classes of whom,
+he says, are the only ones worth investigating, the upper and middle
+class being (with exceptions, of course) mean, selfish, and proud
+beyond description.  They care little for Roman Catholicism, and bear
+faint allegiance to the Pope.  They generally lead profligate lives,
+until they lose all energy and then become slavishly superstitious.
+He said a curious thing of the Esquimaux, namely, that their language
+is a most complex and highly artificial one, calculated to express
+the most delicate metaphysical subtleties, yet they have no
+literature, nor are there any traces of their ever having had one--a
+most curious anomaly; hence he simply argues that you can ill judge
+of a people by their language." {360a}
+
+
+One of the strangest things about Borrow's personality was that it
+almost invariably struck women unfavourably.  That he himself was not
+indifferent to women is shown by the impression made upon him by the
+black eyes of one of the Misses Mills of Saxham Hall, where he was
+taken to dinner by Dr Hake, who states that "long afterwards, his
+inquiries after the black eyes were unfailing." {360b}  He was also
+very kind and considerate to women.  "He was very polite and
+gentlemanly in ladies' society, and we all liked him," wrote one
+woman friend {360c} who frequently accompanied him on his walks.  She
+has described him as walking along "singing to himself or quite
+silent, quite forgetting me until he came to a high hill, when he
+would turn round, seize my hand, and drag me up.  Then he would sit
+down and enjoy the prospect." {360d}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII:  MARCH 1844-1848
+
+
+
+In March 1844 Borrow, unable longer to control the Wanderlust within
+him, gave up the struggle, and determined to make a journey to the
+East.  He was in London on the 20th, as Lady Eastlake (then Miss
+Elizabeth Rigby) testifies in her Journal.  "Borrow came in the
+evening," she writes:  "now a fine man, but a most disagreeable one;
+a kind of character that would be most dangerous in rebellious times-
+-one that would suffer or persecute to the utmost.  His face is
+expressive of wrong-headed determination." {361a}
+
+He left London towards the end of April for Paris, from which he
+wrote to John Murray, 1st May
+
+
+"Vidocq wishes very much to have a copy of my Gypsies of Spain, and
+likewise one of the Romany Gospels.  On the other side you will find
+an order on the Bible Society for the latter, and perhaps you will be
+so kind as to let one of your people go to Earl Street to procure it.
+You would oblige me by forwarding it to your agent in Paris, the
+address is Monsr. Vidocq, Galerie Vivienne, No. 13 . . . V. is a
+strange fellow, and amongst other things dabbles in literature.  He
+is meditating a work upon Les Bohemiens, about whom I see he knows
+nothing at all.  I have no doubt that the Zincali, were it to fall
+into his hands, would be preciously gutted, and the best part of the
+contents pirated.  By the way, could you not persuade some of the
+French publishers to cause it to be translated, in which event there
+would be no fear.  Such a work would be sure to sell.  I wish Vidocq
+to have a copy of the book, but I confess I have my suspicions; he is
+so extraordinarily civil."
+
+
+From Paris he proceeded to Vienna, and thence into Hungary and
+Transylvania, where he remained for some months.  He is known to have
+been "in the steppe of Debreczin," {362a} to Koloszvar, through Nagy-
+Szeben, or Hermannstadt, on his journey through Roumania to
+Bucharest.  He visited Wallachia "for the express purpose of
+discoursing with the Gypsies, many of whom I found wandering about."
+{362b}
+
+So little is known of Borrow's Eastern Journey that the following
+account, given by an American, has a peculiar interest:-
+
+
+"My companions, as we rode along, related some marvellous stories of
+a certain English traveller who had been here [near Grosswardein] and
+of his influence over the Gypsies.  One of them said that he was
+walking out with him one day, when they met a poor gypsy woman.  The
+Englishman addressed her in Hungarian, and she answered in the usual
+disdainful way.  He changed his language, however, and spoke a word
+or two in an unknown tongue.  The woman's face lighted up in an
+instant, and she replied in the most passionate, eager way, and after
+some conversation dragged him away almost with her.  After this the
+English gentleman visited a number of their most private gatherings
+and was received everywhere as one of them.  He did more good among
+them, all said, than all the laws over them, or the benevolent
+efforts for them, of the last half century.  They described his
+appearance--his tall, lank, muscular form, and mentioned that he had
+been much in Spain, and I saw that it must be that most ubiquitous of
+travellers, Mr Borrow." {362c}
+
+This was the fame most congenial to Borrow's strange nature.
+Dinners, receptions, and the like caused him to despise those who
+found pleasure in such "crazy admiration for what they called
+gentility."  It was his foible, as much as "gentility nonsense" was
+theirs, to find pleasure in the role of the mysterious stranger, who
+by a word could change a disdainful gypsy into a fawning, awe-
+stricken slave.  Fame to satisfy George Borrow must carry with it
+something of the greatness of Olympus.
+
+A glimpse of Borrow during his Eastern tour is obtained from Mrs
+Borrow's letters to John Murray.  After telling him that she
+possesses a privilege which many wives do not (viz.), permission to
+open her Husband's letters during his absence, she proceeds:-
+
+
+"The accounts from him are, I am thankful to say, very satisfactory.
+It is extraordinary with what marks of kindness even Catholics of
+distinction treat him when they know who he is, but it is clearly his
+gift of tongues which causes him to meet with so many adventures,
+several of which he has recorded of a most singular nature." {363a}
+
+
+At Vienna Borrow had arranged to wait until he should receive a
+letter from his wife, "being very anxious to know of his family," as
+Mrs Borrow informed John Murray (24th July).
+
+
+"Thus far," she continues, "thanks be to God, he has prospered in his
+journey.  Many and wonderful are the adventures he has met with,
+which I hope at no distant period may be related to his friends.
+Doctor Bowring was very kind in sending me flattering tidings of my
+Husband."
+
+
+Borrow was at Constantinople on 17th Sept. when he drew on his letter
+of credit.  Leland tells an anecdote about Borrow at Constantinople;
+but it must be remembered that it was written when he regarded Borrow
+with anything but friendly feelings:-
+
+
+"Sir Patrick Colquhoun told me that once when he was at
+Constantinople, Mr Borrow came there, and gave it out that he was a
+marvellous Oriental scholar.  But there was great scepticism on this
+subject at the Legation, and one day at the table d'hote, where the
+great writer and divers young diplomatists dined, two who were seated
+on either side of Borrow began to talk Arabic, speaking to him, the
+result being that he was obliged to confess that he not only did not
+understand what they were saying, but did not even know what the
+language was.  Then he was tried in Modern Greek, with the same
+result." {364a}
+
+
+The story is obviously untrue.  Had Borrow been ignorant of Arabic he
+would not have risked writing to Dr Bowring (11th Sept. 1831; see
+ante, page 85) expressing his enthusiasm for that language.  Arabic
+had, apparently, formed one of the subjects of his preliminary
+examination at Earl Street.  With regard to Modern Greek he confessed
+in a letter to Mr Brandram (12th June 1839), "though I speak it very
+ill, I can make myself understood."
+
+Having obtained a Turkish passport, and after being presented to
+Abdul Medjid, the Sultan, Borrow proceeded to Salonika and, crossing
+Thessaly to Albania, visited Janina and Prevesa.  He passed over to
+Corfu, and saw Venice and Rome, returning to England by way of
+Marseilles, Paris and Havre.  He arrived in London on 16th November,
+after nearly seven months' absence, to find his "home particularly
+dear to me . . . after my long wanderings."
+
+It is curious that he should have left no record of this expedition;
+but if he made notes he evidently destroyed them, as, with the
+exception of a few letters, nothing was found among his papers
+relating to the Eastern tour.  There is evidence that he was occupied
+with his pen during this journey, in the existence at the British
+Museum of his Vocabulary of the Gypsy Language as spoken in Hungary
+and Transylvania, compiled during an intercourse of some months with
+the Gypsies in those parts in the year 1844, by George Borrow.  In
+all probability he prepared his Bohemian Grammar at the same time.
+{365a}
+
+From the time that he became acquainted with Borrow, Richard Ford had
+constituted himself the genius of La Mezquita (the Mosque), as he
+states the little octagonal Summer-house was called.  He was for ever
+urging in impulsive, polyglot letters that the curtain to be lifted.
+"Publish your WHOLE adventures for the last twenty years," he had
+written. {365b}  Ford saw that a man of Borrow's nature must have had
+astonishing adventures, and with HIS pen would be able to tell them
+in an astonishing manner.
+
+As early as the summer of 1841 Borrow appears to have contemplated
+writing his Autobiography.  On the eve of the appearance of The Bible
+in Spain (17th Dec.) he wrote to John Murray:  "I hope our book will
+be successful; if so, I shall put another on the stocks.  Capital
+subject:  early life; studies and adventures; some account of my
+father, William Taylor, Whiter, Big Ben, etc. etc."
+
+The first draft of notes for Lavengro, an Autobiography, as the book
+was originally advertised in the announcement, is extremely
+interesting.  It runs:-
+
+
+"Reasons for studying languages:  French, Italian, D'Eterville.
+Southern tongues.  Dante.
+Walks.  The Quaker's Home, Mousehold.  Petulengro.
+The Gypsies.
+The Office.  Welsh.  Lhuyd.
+German.  Levy.  Billy Taylor.
+Danish.  Kaempe Viser.  Billy Taylor.  Dinner.
+Bowring.
+Hebrew.  The Jew.
+Philosophy.  Radicalism.  Ranters.
+Thurtell.  Boxers.  Petulengres." {365c}
+
+
+Lavengro was planned in 1842 and the greater part written before the
+end of the following year, although the work was not actually
+completed until 1846.  There are numerous references in Borrow's
+letters of this period to the book on which he was then engaged, and
+he invariably refers to it as his Life.  On 21st January 1843 he
+writes to John Murray, Junr.:  "I meditate shortly a return to
+Barbary in quest of the Witch Hamlet, and my adventures in the land
+of wonders will serve capitally to fill the thin volume of My Life, a
+Drama, By G. B."  Again and again Borrow refers to My Life.  Hasfeldt
+and Ford also wrote of it as the "wonderful life" and "the
+Biography."
+
+In his letters to John Murray, Borrow not only refers to the book as
+his Life, but from time to time gives crumbs of information
+concerning its progress.  The Secretary of the Bible Society has just
+lent him his letters from Russia, "which will be of great assistance
+in the Life, as I shall work them up as I did those relating to
+Spain.  The first volume," he continues, "will be devoted to England
+entirely, and my pursuits and adventures in early life."  He
+recognises that he must be careful of the reputation that he has
+earned.  His new book is to be original, as would be seen when it at
+last appears; but he confesses that occasionally he feels
+"tremendously lazy."  On another occasion (27th March 1843) he writes
+to John Murray, Junr.:  "I hope by the end of next year that I shall
+have part of my life ready for the press in 3 vols."  Six months
+later (2nd Oct. 1843) he writes to John Murray:-
+
+
+"I wish I had another Bible ready; but slow and sure is my maxim.
+The book which I am at present about will consist, if I live to
+finish it of a series of Rembrandt pictures interspersed here and
+there with a Claude.  I shall tell the world of my parentage, my
+early thoughts and habits; how I became a sap-engro, or viper-
+catcher; my wanderings with the regiment in England, Scotland and
+Ireland . . . Then a great deal about Norwich, Billy Taylor,
+Thurtell, etc.; how I took to study and became a lav-engro.  What do
+you think of this as a bill of fare for the FIRST Vol.?  The second
+will consist of my adventures in London as an author in the year '23
+(sic), adventures on the Big North Road in '24 (sic), Constantinople,
+etc.  The third--but I shall tell you no more of my secrets."
+
+
+In a letter to John Murray (25th Oct. 8843), the title is referred to
+as Lavengro:  A Biography.  It is to be "full of grave fun and solemn
+laughter like the Bible."  On 6th December he again writes:-
+
+
+"I do not wish for my next book to be advertised yet; I have a
+particular reason.  The Americans are up to everything which affords
+a prospect of gain, and I should not wonder that, provided I were to
+announce my title, and the book did not appear forthwith, they would
+write one for me and send forth their trash into the world under my
+name.  For my own part I am in no hurry," he proceeds.  "I am writing
+to please myself, and am quite sure that if I can contrive to please
+myself, I shall please the public also.  Had I written a book less
+popular than the Bible, I should be less cautious; but I know how
+much is expected from me, and also know what a roar of exultation
+would be raised by my enemies (and I have plenty) were I to produce
+anything that was not first rate."
+
+
+Time after time he insists upon his determination to publish nothing
+that is not "as good as the last."  "I shall go on with my Life," he
+writes, to Ford (9th Feb. 1844), "but slowly and lazily.  What I
+write, however, is GOOD.  I feel it is good, strange and wild as it
+is." {367a}
+
+From 24th-27th Jan. 1844 that "most astonishing fellow" Richard Ford
+visited Borrow at Oulton, urging again in person, most likely, the
+lifting of the veil that obscured those seven mysterious years.  Ford
+has himself described this visit to Borrow in a letter written from
+Oulton Hall.
+
+
+"I am here on a visit to El Gitano;" he writes, "two 'rum' coves, in
+a queer country . . . we defy the elements, and chat over las cosas
+de Espana, and he tells me portions of his life, more strange even
+than his book.  We scamper by day over the country in a sort of gig,
+which reminds me of Mr Weare on his trip with Mr THURTELL [Borrow's
+old preceptor]; 'Sidi Habismilk' is in the stable and a Zamarra
+[sheepskin coat] now before me, writing as I am in a sort of summer-
+house called La Mezquita, in which El Gitano concocts his
+lucubrations, and PAINTS his pictures, for his object is to colour up
+and poetise his adventures."
+
+
+By this last sentence Ford showed how thoroughly he understood
+Borrow's literary methods.  A fortnight later Borrow writes to Ford:-
+
+
+"You can't think how I miss you and our chats by the fireside.  The
+wine, now I am alone, has lost its flavour, and the cigars make me
+ill.  I am frequently in my valley of the shadows, and had I not my
+summer jaunt [the Eastern Tour] to look forward to, I am afraid it
+would be all up with your friend and Batushka."
+
+
+The Eastern Tour considerably interfered with the writing of
+Lavengro.  There was a seven months' break; but Borrow settled down
+to work on it again, still determined to take his time and produce a
+book that should be better than The Bible in Spain.
+
+Ford's Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home appeared
+in 1845, a work that had cost its author upwards of sixteen years of
+labour.  In a letter to Borrow he characterised it as "a RUM book and
+has queer stuff in it, although much expurgated for the sake of
+Spain."  Ford was very anxious that Borrow should keep the promise
+that he had given two years previously to review the Hand-Book when
+it appeared.  "You will do it MAGNIFICENTLY.  'Thou art the man,'"
+Ford had written with the greatest enthusiasm.  On 2nd June an
+article of thirty-seven folio pages was despatched by Borrow to John
+Murray for The Quarterly Review, with the following from Mrs Borrow:-
+
+
+"With regard to the article, it must not be received as a specimen of
+what Mr Borrow would have produced had he been well, but he
+considered his promise to Mr Ford sacred--and it is only to be wished
+that it had been written under more favourable circumstances."
+Borrow was ill at the time, having been "very unwell for the last
+month," as Mrs Borrow explains, "and particularly so lately.
+Shivering fits have been succeeded by burning fever, till his
+strength was much reduced; and he at present remains in a low, and
+weak state, and what is worse, we are by no means sure that the
+disease is subdued."
+
+
+Ford saw in Borrow "a crack reviewer."  " . . . You have," he assured
+him in 1843, "only to write a LONG LETTER, having read the book
+carefully and thought over the subject."  Ford also wrote to Borrow
+(26th Oct. 1843):  "I have written several letters to Murray
+recommending them to BAG you forthwith, unless they are demented."
+There was no doubt in his, Ford's, mind as to the acceptance of
+Borrow's article.
+
+
+"If insanity does not rule the Q. R. camp, they will embrace the
+offer with open arms in their present Erebus state of dullness," he
+tells Borrow, then, with a burst of confidence continues, "But,
+barring politics, I confidentially tell you that the Ed[inburgh] Rev.
+does business in a more liberal and more business-like manner than
+the Q[uarterly] Rev.  I am always dunning this into Murray's head.
+More flies are caught with honey than vinegar.  Soft sawder,
+especially if plenty of GOLD goes into the composition, cements a
+party and keeps earnest pens together.  I grieve, for my heart is
+entirely with the Q. R., its views and objects."
+
+
+The article turned out to be, not a review of the Hand-Book, but a
+bitter attack on Spain and her rulers.  The second part was to some
+extent germane to the subject, but it appears to have been more
+concerned with Borrow's view of Spain and things Spanish than with
+Ford's book.  Lockhart saw that it would not do.  In a letter to John
+Murray he explains very clearly and very justly the objections to
+using the article as it stood.
+
+
+"I am very sorry," he writes (13th June), "after Borrow has so kindly
+exerted himself during illness, that I must return his paper.  I read
+the MS. with much pleasure; but clever and brilliant as he is sure
+always to be, it was very evident that he had not done such an
+article as Ford's merits required; and I therefore intended to adopt
+Mr Borrow's lively diatribe, but interweave with his matter and add
+to it, such observations and extracts as might, I thought, complete
+the paper in a REVIEW SENSE.
+
+"But it appears that Mr B. won't allow anybody to tamper with his
+paper; therefore here it is.  It will be highly ornamental as it
+stands to any Magazine, and I have no doubt either Blackwood or
+Fraser or Colburn will be [only] too happy to insert it next month,
+if applied to now.
+
+"Mr Borrow would not have liked that, when his Bible in Spain came
+out, we should have printed a brilliant essay by Ford on some point
+of Spanish interest, but including hardly anything calculated to make
+the public feel that a new author of high consequence had made his
+appearance among us--one bearing the name, not of Richard Ford, but
+of George Borrow."
+
+
+Lockhart was right and Borrow was wrong.  There is no room for
+equivocation.  Borrow should have sunk his pride in favour of his
+friendship for Ford, who had, even if occasionally a little tedious
+in his epistolary enthusiasm, always been a loyal friend; but Borrow
+was ill and excuses must be made for him.  Lockhart wrote also to
+Ford describing Borrow's paper as "just another capital chapter of
+his Bible in Spain," which he had read with delight, but there was
+"hardly a word of REVIEW, and no extract giving the least notion of
+the peculiar merits and style especially, of the Hand-Book."  "He is
+unwell," continued Lockhart, "I should be very sorry to bother him
+more at present; and, moreover, from the little he has said of your
+STYLE, I am forced to infer that a REVIEW of your book by him would
+never be what I could feel authorised to publish in the Q. R."  The
+letter concludes with a word of condolence that the Hand-Book will
+have to be committed to other hands.
+
+Ford realised the difficulty of the situation in which he was placed,
+and strove to wriggle out of it by telling Borrow that his wife had
+said all along that
+
+
+"'Borrow can't write anything dull enough for your set; I wonder how
+I ever married one of them,'--I hope and trust you will not cancel
+the paper, for we can't afford to lose a scrap of your queer sparkle
+and 'thousand bright daughters circumvolving.'  I have recommended
+its insertion in Blackwood, Fraser, or some of those clever
+Magazines, who will be overjoyed to get such a hand as yours, and I
+will bet any man 5 pounds that your paper will be the most popular of
+all they print."
+
+
+It is evident that Ford was genuinely distressed, and in his anxiety
+to be loyal to his friend rather overdid it.  His letter has an air
+of patronage that the writer certainly never intended.  The
+outstanding feature is its absolute selflessness.  Ford never seems
+to think of himself, or that Borrow might have made a concession to
+their friendship.  Happy Ford!  The unfortunate episode estranged
+Borrow from Ford.  Letters between them became less and less frequent
+and finally ceased altogether, although Borrow did not forget to send
+to his old friend a copy of Lavengro when it appeared.
+
+Worries seemed to rain down upon Borrow's head about this time.
+Samuel Morton Peto (afterwards Sir Samuel) had decided to enrich
+Lowestoft by improving the harbour and building a railway to Reedham,
+about half-way between Yarmouth and Norwich.  He was authorised by
+Parliament and duly constructed his line, which not even Borrow's
+anger could prevent from passing through the Oulton Estate, between
+the Hall and the Cottage.  Borrow could not fight an Act of
+Parliament, which forced him to cross a railway bridge on his way to
+church; but he never forgave the man who had contrived it, or his
+millions.  His first thought had been to fly before the invader.  All
+quiet would be gone from the place.  "Sell and be off," advised Ford;
+"I hope you will make the railway pay dear for its whistle," quietly
+observed John Murray.  At first Borrow was inclined to take Ford's
+advice and settle abroad; but subsequently relinquished the idea.
+
+He was not, however, the man quietly to sit down before what he
+conceived to be an unjustifiable outrage to his right to be quiet.
+He never forgave railways, although forced sometimes to make use of
+them.  Samuel Morton Peto became to him the embodiment of evil, and
+as "Mr Flamson flaming in his coach with a million" he is
+immortalised in The Romany Rye.
+
+It is said that Sir Samuel boasted that he had made more than the
+price he had paid for Borrow's land out of the gravel he had taken
+from off it.  On one occasion, after he had bought Somerleyton Hall,
+happening to meet Borrow, he remarked that he never called upon him,
+and Borrow remembering the boast replied, "I call on you!  Do you
+think I don't read my Shakespeare?  Do you think I don't know all
+about those highwaymen Bardolph and Peto?" {372a}
+
+The neighbourhood of Oulton appears to have been infested with
+thieves, and poachers found admirable "cover" in the surrounding
+plantations, or small woods.  On several occasions Borrow himself had
+been attacked at night on the highway between Lowestoft and Oulton.
+Once he had even been shot at and nearly overpowered.  John Murray
+(the Second) on hearing of one of these assaults had written (1841)
+artfully enquiring, "Were your wood thieves Gypsies, and have the
+Cales got notice of your publication [The Zincali]?"
+
+Borrow had written to John Murray, Junr. (10th May 1842):-
+
+
+"I have been dreadfully unwell since I last heard from you--a regular
+nervous attack.  At present I have a bad cough, caught by getting up
+at night in pursuit of poachers and thieves.  A horrible
+neighbourhood this--not a magistrate dares do his duty."  On 18th
+September 1843 he again wrote to John Murray:  "One of the
+Magistrates in this district is just dead.  Present my compliments to
+Mr Gladstone and tell him that the The Bible in Spain would have no
+objection to become 'a great unpaid!'"
+
+
+Gladstone is said greatly to have admired The Bible in Spain, even to
+the extent of writing to John Murray counselling him to have amended
+a passage that he considered ill-advised.  Gladstone's letter was
+sent on to Borrow, and he acknowledges its receipt (6th November
+1843) in the following terms:-
+
+
+"Many thanks for the perusal of Mr Gladstone's letter.  I esteem it a
+high honour that so distinguished a man should take sufficient
+interest in a work of mine as to suggest any thing in emendation.  I
+can have no possible objection to modify the passage alluded to.  It
+contains some strong language, particularly the sentence about the
+scarlet Lady, which it would be perhaps as well to omit."
+
+
+The offending passage was that in which Borrow says, when describing
+the interior of the Mosque at Tangier:  "I looked around for the
+abominable thing, and found it not; no scarlet strumpet with a crown
+of false gold sat nursing an ugly changeling in a niche."  In later
+editions the words "no scarlet strumpet," etc., were changed to "the
+besetting sin of the pseudo-Christian Church did not stare me in the
+face in every corner."
+
+The amendment was little likely to please a Churchman of Gladstone's
+calibre, or procure for the writer the magistracy he coveted, even if
+it had been made less grudgingly.  "We must not make any further
+alterations here," Borrow wrote to Murray a few days later,
+"otherwise the whole soliloquy, which is full of vigor and poetry,
+and moreover of TRUTH, would be entirely spoiled.  As it is, I cannot
+help feeling that [it] is considerably damaged."  There seems very
+little doubt that this passage was referred to in the letter that
+John Murray encloses in his of 10th July 18431 with this reference:
+"(The writer of the enclosed note is a worthy canon of St Paul's, and
+has evidently seen only the 1st edition)."  Borrow replied:-
+
+
+"Pray present my best respects to the Canon of St Paul's and tell him
+from me that he is a burro, which meaneth Jackass, and that I wish he
+would mind his own business, which he might easily do by attending a
+little more to the accommodation of the public in his ugly
+Cathedral."
+
+
+Borrow appears to have set his mind on becoming a magistrate.  He had
+written to Lockhart (November 1843) enquiring how he had best proceed
+to obtain such an appointment.  Lockhart was not able to give him any
+very definite information, his knowledge of such things, as he
+confessed, "being Scotch."  For the time being the matter was allowed
+to drop, to be revived in 1847 by a direct application from Borrow to
+Lord Clarendon to support his application with the Lord Chancellor.
+His claims were based upon (1) his being a large landed-proprietor in
+the district (Mrs Borrow had become the owner of the Oulton Hall
+Estate during the previous year); (2) the fact that the neighbourhood
+was over-run with thieves and undesirable characters; (3) that there
+was no magistrate residing in the district.  Lord Clarendon promised
+his good offices, but suggested that as all such appointments were
+made through the Lord-Lieutenant of the County, the Earl of
+Stradbroke had better be acquainted with what was taking place.  This
+was done through the Hon. Wm. Rufus Rous, Lord Stradbroke's brother,
+whose interest was obtained by some of Borrow's friends.
+
+After a delay of two months, Lord Stradbroke wrote to Lord Clarendon
+that he was quite satisfied with "the number and efficiency of the
+Magistrates" and also with the way in which the Petty Sessions were
+attended.  He could hear of no complaint, and when the time came to
+increase the number of J.P.'s, he would be pleased to add Borrow's
+name to the list, provided he were advised to do so by "those
+gentlemen residing in the neighbourhood, who, living on terms of
+intimacy with them [the Magistrates], will be able to maintain that
+union of good feeling which . . . exists in all our benches of Petty
+Sessions."
+
+Borrow would have made a good magistrate, provided the offender were
+not a gypsy.  He would have caused the wrong-doer more fear the
+instrument of the law rather than the law itself, and some of his
+sentences might possibly have been as summary as those of Judge
+Lynch.
+
+
+"It was a fine thing," writes a contemporary, "to see the great man
+tackle a tramp.  Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down
+on the enemy with a quivering nostril.  If the nomad happened to be a
+gypsy he was courteously addressed.  But were he a mere native
+tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow's coat was off in a
+moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better
+man flung forth.  I have never seen such challenges accepted, for
+Borrow was robust and towering." {375a}
+
+
+It is not strange that Borrow's application failed; for he never
+refused leave to the gypsies to camp upon his land, and would
+sometimes join them beside their campfires.  Once he took a guest
+with him after dinner to where the gypsies were encamped.  They
+received Borrow with every mark of respect.  Presently he "began to
+intone to them a song, written by him in Romany, which recounted all
+their tricks and evil deeds.  The gypsies soon became excited; then
+they began to kick their property about, such as barrels and tin
+cans; then the men began to fight and the women to part them; an
+uproar of shouts and recriminations set in, and the quarrel became so
+serious that it was thought prudent to quit the scene." {376a}  "In
+nothing can the character of a people be read with greater certainty
+and exactness than in its songs," {376b} Borrow had written. {376c}
+
+These disappointments tended to embitter Borrow, who saw in them only
+a conspiracy against him.  There is little doubt that Lord
+Stradbroke's enquiries had revealed some curious gossip concerning
+the Master of Oulton Hall, possibly the dispute with his rector over
+the inability of their respective dogs to live in harmony; perhaps
+even the would-be magistrate's predilection for the society of
+gypsies, and his profound admiration for "the Fancy" had reached the
+Lord-Lieutenant's ears.
+
+The unfortunate and somewhat mysterious dispute with Dr Bowring was
+another anxiety that Borrow had to face.  He had once remarked, "It's
+very odd, Bowring, that you and I have never had a quarrel." {376d}
+In the summer of 1842 he and Bowring seem to have been on excellent
+terms.  Borrow wrote asking for the return of the papers and
+manuscripts that had remained in Bowring's hands since 1829, when the
+Songs of Scandinavia was projected, as Borrow hoped to bring out
+during the ensuing year a volume entitled Songs of Denmark.  The
+cordiality of the letter may best be judged by the fact that in it he
+announces his intention of having a copy of the forthcoming Bible in
+Spain sent "to my oldest, I may say my ONLY friend."
+
+In 1847 Bowring wrote to Borrow enquiring as to the Russian route
+through Kiakhta, and asking if he could put him in the way of
+obtaining the information for the use of a Parliamentary Committee
+then enquiring into England's commercial relations with China.
+Borrow's reply is apparently no longer in existence; but it drew from
+Bowring another letter raising a question as to whether "'two hundred
+merchants are allowed to visit Pekin every three years.'  Are you
+certain this is in practice now?  Have you ever been to Kiakhta?"  It
+would appear from Bowring's "if summoned, your expenses must be paid
+by the public," that Borrow had suggested giving evidence before the
+Committee, hence Bowring's question as to whether Borrow could speak
+from personal knowledge of Kiakhta.
+
+Borrow's claim against Bowring is that after promising to use all his
+influence to get him appointed Consul at Canton, he obtained the post
+for himself, passing off as his own the Manchu-Tartar New Testament
+that Borrow had edited in St Petersburg.  There is absolutely no
+other evidence than that contained in Borrow's Appendix to The Romany
+Rye.  There is very little doubt that Bowring was a man who had no
+hesitation in seizing everything that presented itself and turning
+it, as far as possible, to his own uses.  In this he was doing what
+most successful men have done and will continue to do.  He had been
+kind to Borrow, and had helped him as far as lay in his power.  He no
+doubt obtained all the information he could from Borrow, as he would
+have done from anyone else; but he never withheld his help.  It has
+been suggested that he really did mention Borrow as a candidate for
+the Consulship and later, when in financial straits and finding that
+Borrow had no chance of obtaining it, accepted Lord Palmerston's
+offer of the post for himself.  It is, however, idle to speculate
+what actually happened.  What resulted was that Bowring as the "Old
+Radical" took premier place in the Appendix-inferno that closed The
+Romany Rye. {378a}
+
+Fate seemed to conspire to cause Borrow chagrin.  Early in 1847 it
+came to his knowledge that there were in existence some valuable
+Codices in certain churches and convents in the Levant.  In
+particular there was said to be an original of the Greek New
+Testament, supposed to date from the fourth century, which had been
+presented to the convent on Mount Sinai by the Emperor Justinian.
+Borrow received information of the existence of the treasure, and
+also a hint that with a little address, some of these priceless
+manuscripts might be secured to the British Nation.  It was even
+suggested that application might be made to the Government by the
+Trustees of the British Museum. {378b}  Borrow's reply to this was an
+intimation that if requested to do so he would willingly undertake
+the mission.  Nothing, however, came of the project, and the
+remainder of the manuscript of the Greek Testament (part of it had
+been acquired in 1843 by Tischendorf) was presented by the monks to
+Alexander II. and it is now in the Imperial Library at St Petersburg.
+
+The information as to the existence of the manuscripts, it is
+alleged, was given to the Museum Trustees by the Hon. Robert Curzon,
+who had travelled much in Egypt and the Holy Land.  It was certainly
+no fault of his that the mission was not sent out, and Borrow's
+subsequent antagonism to him and his family is difficult to
+understand and impossible to explain.
+
+Borrow had achieved literary success:  before the year 1847 The
+Zincali was in its Fourth Edition (nearly 10,000 copies having been
+printed) and The Bible in Spain had reached its Eighth Edition
+(nearly 20,000 copies having been printed).  He was an unqualified
+success; yet he had been far happier when distributing Testaments in
+Spain.  The greyness and inaction of domestic life, even when
+relieved by occasional excursions with Sidi Habismilk and the Son of
+the Miracle, were irksome to his temperament, ever eager for
+occupation and change of scene.  He was like a war-horse champing his
+bit during times of peace.
+
+
+"Why did you send me down six copies [of The Zincali]?" he bursts out
+in a letter to John Murray (29th Jan. 1846).  "Whom should I send
+them to?  Do you think I have six friends in the world?  Two I have
+presented to my wife and daughter (in law).  I shall return three to
+you by the first opportunity."
+
+
+In 1847, through the Harveys, he became acquainted with Dr Thomas
+Gordon Hake, who was in practice at Brighton 1832-37 and at Bury St
+Edmunds 1839-53, and who was also a poet.  The two families visited
+each other, and Dr Hake has left behind him some interesting stories
+about, and valuable impressions of, Borrow.  Dr Hake shows clearly
+that he did not allow his friendship to influence his judgment when
+in his Memoirs he described Borrow as
+
+
+"one of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily frame
+is yet stronger--a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a
+literary career, in an age of intellectual predominance.  His temper
+was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his
+vanity in being negative, was one of the most positive kind.  He was
+reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that made
+trifles significant." {379a}
+
+
+This rather laboured series of paradoxes quite fails to give a
+convincing impression of the man.  A much better idea of Borrow is to
+be found in a letter (1847) by a fellow-guest at a breakfast given by
+the Prussian Ambassador.  He writes that there was present
+
+
+"the amusing author of The Bible in Spain, a man who is remarkable
+for his extraordinary powers as a linguist, and for the originality
+of his character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he
+narrates, and the ease and facility with which he tells them.  He
+kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his
+remarks, as well as the positiveness of his assertions, often rather
+startling, and like his books partaking of the marvellous." {380a}
+
+
+Abandoning paradox, Dr Hake is more successful in his description of
+Borrow's person.
+
+
+"His figure was tall," he tells us, "and his bearing very noble; he
+had a finely moulded head, and thick white hair--white from his
+youth; his brown eyes were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of
+the 'semitic' type, which gave his face the cast of the young Memnon.
+His mouth had a generous curve; and his features, for beauty and true
+power, were such as can have no parallel in our portrait gallery."
+
+
+When not occupied in writing, Borrow would walk about the estate with
+his animals, between whom and their master a perfect understanding
+existed.  Sidi Habismilk would come to a whistle and would follow him
+about, and his two dogs and cat would do the same.  When he went for
+a walk the dogs and cat would set out with him; but the cat would
+turn back after accompanying him for about a quarter of a mile.
+{381a}
+
+The two young undergraduates who drove in a gig from Cambridge to
+Oulton to pay their respects to Borrow (circa 1846) described him as
+employed
+
+
+"in training some young horses to follow him about like dogs and come
+at the call of his whistle.  As my two friends {381b} were talking
+with him, Borrow sounded his whistle in a paddock near the house,
+which, if I remember rightly, was surrounded by a low wall.
+Immediately two beautiful horses came bounding over the fence and
+trotted up to their master.  One put his nose into Borrow's
+outstretched hand and the other kept snuffing at his pockets in
+expectation of the usual bribe for confidence and good behaviour."
+
+
+Borrow's love of animals was almost feminine.  The screams of a hare
+pursued by greyhounds would spoil his appetite for dinner, and he
+confessed himself as "silly enough to feel disgust and horror at the
+squeals of a rat in the fangs of a terrier." {381c}  When a favourite
+cat was so ill that it crawled away to die in solitude, Borrow went
+in search of it and, discovering the poor creature in the garden-
+hedge, carried it back into the house, laid it in a comfortable place
+and watched over it until it died.  His care of the much persecuted
+"Church of England cat" at Llangollen {381d} is another instance of
+his tender-heartedness with regard to animals.
+
+Borrow had ample evidence that he was still a celebrity.  "He was
+much courted . . . by his neighbours and by visitors to the sea-
+side," Dr Hake relates; but unfortunately he allowed himself to
+become a prey to moods at rather inappropriate moments.  As a lion,
+Borrow accompanied Dr Hake to some in the great houses of the
+neighbourhood.  On one occasion they went to dine at Hardwick Hall,
+the residence of Sir Thomas and Lady Cullum.  The last-named
+subsequently became a firm friend of Borrow's during many years.
+
+
+"The party consisted of Lord Bristol; Lady Augusta Seymour, his
+daughter; Lord and Lady Arthur Hervey; Sir Fitzroy Kelly; Mr
+Thackeray, and ourselves.  At that date, Thackeray had made money by
+lectures on The Satirists, and was in good swing; but he never could
+realise the independent feelings of those who happen to be born to
+fortune--a thing which a man of genius should be able to do with
+ease.  He told Lady Cullum, which she repeated to me, that no one
+could conceive how it mortified him to be making a provision for his
+daughters by delivering lectures; and I thought she rather
+sympathised with him in this degradation.  He approached Borrow, who,
+however, received him very dryly.  As a last attempt to get up a
+conversation with him, he said, 'Have you read my Snob Papers in
+Punch?'"
+
+"'In Punch?' asked Borrow.  'It is a periodical I never look at!'
+
+"It was a very fine dinner.  The plates at dessert were of gold; they
+once belonged to the Emperor of the French, and were marked with his
+"N" and his Eagle.
+
+"Thackeray, as if under the impression that the party was invited to
+look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure, and absorb
+attention during the dessert, by telling stories and more than half
+acting them; the aristocratic party listening, but appearing little
+amused.  Borrow knew better how to behave in good company, and kept
+quiet; though, doubtless he felt his mane." {382a}
+
+
+There were other moments when Borrow caused acute embarrassment by
+his rudeness.  Once his hostess, a simple unpretending woman desirous
+only of pleasing her distinguished guest, said, "Oh, Mr Borrow, I
+have read your books with so much pleasure!"  "Pray, what books do
+you mean, madam?  Do you mean my account books?" was the ungracious
+retort.  He then rose from the table, fretting and fuming and walked
+up and down the dining-room among the servants "during the whole of
+the dinner, and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passage, till
+the carriage could be ordered for our return home." {383a}  The
+reason for this unpardonable behaviour appears to have been ill-
+judged loyalty to a friend.  His host was a well-known Suffolk banker
+who, having advanced a large sum of money to a friend of Borrow's,
+the heir to a considerable estate, who was in temporary difficulties,
+then "struck the docket" in order to secure payment.  Borrow confided
+to another friend that he yearned "to cane the banker."  His loyalty
+to his friend excuses his wrath; it was his judgment that was at
+fault.  He should undoubtedly have caned the banker, in preference to
+going to his house as a guest and revenging his friend upon the
+gentle and amiable woman who could not be held responsible for her
+husband's business transgressions.
+
+Unfortunate remarks seemed to have a habit of bursting from Borrow's
+lips.  When Dr Bowring introduced to him his son, Mr F. J. Bowring,
+and with pardonable pride added that he had just become a Fellow of
+Trinity, Borrow remarked, "Ah!  Fellows of Trinity always marry their
+bed-makers."  Agnes Strickland was another victim.  Being desirous of
+meeting him and, in spite of Borrow's unwillingness, achieving her
+object, she expressed in rapturous terms her admiration of his works,
+and concluded by asking permission to send him a copy of The Queens
+of England, to which he ungraciously replied, "For God's sake, don't,
+madam; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them."
+"What a damned fool that woman is!" he remarked to W. B. Donne, who
+was standing by. {383b}
+
+There is a world of meaning in a paragraph from one of John Murray's
+(the Second) letters (21st June 1843) to Borrow in which he enquires,
+"Did you receive a note from Mme. Simpkinson which I forwarded ten
+days ago?  I have not seen her since your abrupt departure from her
+house."
+
+It is rather regrettable that the one side of Borrow's character has
+to be so emphasised.  He could be just and gracious, even to the
+point of sternly rebuking one who represented his own religious
+convictions and supporting a dissenter.  After a Bible Society's
+meeting at Mutford Bridge (the nearest village to Oulton Hall), the
+speakers repaired to the Hall to supper.  One of the guests, an
+independent minister, became involved in a heated argument with a
+Church of England clergyman, who reproached him for holding
+Calvinistic views.  The nonconformist replied that the clergy of the
+Established Church were equally liable to attack on the same ground,
+because the Articles of their Church were Calvinistic, and to these
+they had all sworn assent.  The reply was that the words were not
+necessarily to be taken in their literal sense.  At this Borrow
+interposed, attacking the clergyman in a most vigorous fashion for
+his sophistry, and finally reducing him to silence.  The Independent
+minister afterwards confessed that he had never heard "one man give
+another such a dressing down as on that occasion." {384a}
+
+Borrow was capable of very deep feeling, which is nowhere better
+shown than in his retort to Richard Latham whom he met at Dr Hake's
+table.  Well warmed by the generous wine, Latham stated that he
+should never do anything so low as dine with his publisher.  "You do
+not dine with John Murray, I presume?" he added.  "Indeed I do,"
+Borrow responded with deep emotion.  "He is a most kind friend.  When
+I have had sickness in the house he has been unfailing in his
+goodness towards me.  There is no man I more value." {384b}
+
+Borrow was a frequent visitor to the Hakes at Bury St Edmunds.  W. B.
+Donne gives a glimpse to him in a letter to Bernard Barton (12th
+Sept. 1848).
+
+
+"We have had a great man here--and I have been walking with him and
+aiding him to eat salmon and mutton and drink port--George Borrow--
+and what is more we fell in with some gypsies and I heard his speech
+of Egypt, which sounded wondrously like a medley of broken Spanish
+and dog Latin.  Borrow's face lighted by the red turf fire of the
+tent was worth looking at.  He is ashy-white now--but twenty years
+ago, when his hair was like a raven's wing, he must have been hard to
+discriminate from a born Bohemian.  Borrow is best on the tramp:  if
+you can walk 4.5 miles per hour, as I can with ease and do by choice,
+and can walk 15 of them at a stretch--which I can compass also--then
+he will talk Iliads of adventures even better than his printed ones.
+He cannot abide those Amateur Pedestrians who saunter, and in his
+chair he is given to groan and be contradictory.  But on Newmarket-
+heath, in Rougham Woods he is at home, and specially when he meets
+with a thorough vagabond like your present correspondent." {385a}
+
+
+The present Mr John Murray recollects Borrow very clearly as
+
+
+"tall, broad, muscular, with very heavy shoulders" and of course the
+white hair.  "He was," continues Mr Murray, "a figure which no one
+who has seen it is likely to forget.  I never remember to have seen
+him dressed in anything but black broad cloth, and white cotton socks
+were generally distinctly visible above his low shoes.  I think that
+with Borrow the desire to attract attention to himself, to inspire a
+feeling of awe and mystery, must have been a ruling passion."
+
+
+Borrow was frequently the guest of his publisher at Albemarle Street,
+in times well within the memory of Mr Murray, who relates how on one
+occasion
+
+
+"Borrow was at a dinner-party in company with Whewell {385b} [who by
+the way it has been said was the original of the Flaming Tinman,
+although there is very little to support the statement except the
+fact that Dr Whewell was a proper man with his hands] both of them
+powerful men, and both of them, if report be true, having more than a
+superficial knowledge of the art of self-defence.  A controversy
+began, and waxed so warm that Mrs Whewell, believing a personal
+encounter to be imminent, fainted, and had to be carried out of the
+room.  Once when Borrow was dining with my father he disappeared into
+a small back room after dinner, and could not be found.  At last he
+was discovered by a lady member of the family, stretched on a sofa
+and groaning.  On being spoken to and asked to join the other guests,
+he suddenly said:  Go away! go away!  I am not fit company for
+respectable people.  There was no apparent cause for this strange
+conduct, unless it were due to one of those unaccountable fits to
+which men of genius (and this description will be allowed him by
+many) are often subject.
+
+"On another occasion, when dining with my father at Wimbledon, he was
+regaled with a 'haggis,' a dish which was new to him, and of which he
+partook to an extent which would have astonished many a hardy
+Scotsman.  One summers day, several years later, he again came to
+dinner, and having come on foot, entered the house by a garden door,
+his first words--without any previous greetings--were:  'Is there a
+haggis to-day?'" {386a}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV:  LAVENGRO--1843-1851
+
+
+
+During all these years Lavengro had been making progress towards
+completion, irregular and spasmodic it would appear; but still each
+year brought it nearer to the printer.  "I cannot get out of my old
+habits," Borrow wrote to Dawson Turner (15th January 1844), "I find I
+am writing the work . . . in precisely the same manner as The Bible
+in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account books, backs of
+letters, etc.  In slovenliness of manuscript I almost rival Mahomet,
+who, it is said, wrote his Coran on mutton spade bones."  "His
+[Borrow's] biography will be passing strange if he tells the WHOLE
+truth," Ford writes to a friend (27th February 1843).  "He is now
+writing it by my advice.  I go on . . . scribbling away, though with
+a palpitating heart," Borrow informs John Murray (5th February 1844),
+"and have already plenty of scenes and dialogues connected with my
+life, quite equal to anything in The Bible in Spain.  The great
+difficulty, however, is to blend them all into a symmetrical whole."
+On 17th September 1846 he writes again to his publisher:
+
+
+"I have of late been very lazy, and am become more addicted to sleep
+than usual, am seriously afraid of apoplexy.  To rouse myself, I rode
+a little time ago to Newmarket.  I felt all the better for it for a
+few days.  I have at present a first rate trotting horse who affords
+me plenty of exercise.  On my return from Newmarket, I rode him
+nineteen miles before breakfast."
+
+
+Another cause of delay was the "shadows" that were constantly
+descending upon him.  His determination to give only the best of
+which he was capable, is almost tragic in the light of later events.
+To his wife, he wrote from London (February 1847):  "Saw M[urray] who
+is in a hurry for me to begin [the printing].  I will not be hurried
+though for anyone."
+
+In the Quarterly Review, July 1848, under the heading of Mr Murray's
+List of New Works in Preparation, there appeared the first
+announcement of Lavengro, an Autobiography, by George Borrow, Author
+of The Bible in Spain, etc., 4 vols. post 8vo.  This was repeated in
+October.  During the next two months the book was advertised as Life;
+A Drama, in The Athenaeum and The Quarterly Review, and the first
+title-page (1849) was so printed.  On 7th October John Murray wrote
+asking Borrow to send the manuscript to the printer.  This was
+accordingly done, and about two-thirds of it composed.  Then Borrow
+appears to have fallen ill.  On 5th January 1849 John Murray wrote to
+Mrs Borrow:
+
+
+"I trust Mr Borrow is now restored to health and tranquillity of
+mind, and that he will soon be able to resume his pen.  I desire this
+on his own account and for the sake of poor Woodfall [the printer],
+who is of course inconvenienced by having his press arrested after
+the commencement of the printing."
+
+
+Writing on 27th November 1849, John Murray refers to the work having
+been "first sent to press--now nearly eighteen months."  This is
+clearly a mistake, as on 7th October 1848, thirteen and a half months
+previously, he asks Borrow to send the manuscript to the printer that
+he may begin the composition.  John Murray was getting anxious and
+urges Borrow to complete the work, which a year ago had been offered
+to the booksellers at the annual trade-dinner.
+
+"I know that you are fastidious, and that you desire to produce a
+work of distinguished excellence.  I see the result of this labour in
+the sheets as they come from the press, and I think when it does
+appear it will make a sensation," wrote the tactful publisher.
+"Think not, my dear friend," replied Borrow, "that I am idle.  I am
+finishing up the concluding part.  I should be sorry to hurry the
+work towards the last.  I dare say it will be ready by the middle of
+February."  The correspondence grew more and more tense.  Mrs Borrow
+wrote to the printer urging him to send to her husband, who has been
+overworked to the point of complaint, "one of your kind encouraging
+notes."  Later Borrow went to Yarmouth, where sea-bathing produced a
+good effect upon his health; but still the manuscript was not sent to
+the despairing printer.  "I do not, God knows! wish you to overtask
+yourself," wrote the unhappy Woodfall; "but after what you last said,
+I thought I might fully calculate on your taking up, without further
+delay, the fragmentary portions of your 1st and 2nd volumes and let
+us get them out of hand."
+
+Letters continued to pass to and fro, but the balance of manuscript
+was not forthcoming until November 1850, when Mrs Borrow herself took
+it to London.  Another trade-dinner was at hand, and John Murray had
+written to Mrs Borrow, "If I cannot show the book then--I must throw
+it up."  To Mrs Borrow this meant tragedy.  The poor woman was
+distracted, and from time to time she begs for encouraging letters.
+In response to one of these appeals, John Murray wrote with rare
+insight into Borrow's character, and knowledge of what is most likely
+to please him:  "There are passages in your book equal to De Foe."
+
+The preface when eventually submitted to John Murray disturbed him
+somewhat.  "It is quaint," he writes to Mrs Borrow, "but so is
+everything that Mr Borrow writes."  He goes on to suggest that the
+latter portion looks too much as if it had been got up in the
+interests of "Papal aggression," and he calls attention to the oft-
+repeated "Damnation cry".  There appears to have been some
+modification, a few "Damnation Cries" omitted, the last sheet passed
+for press, and on 7th February 1851 Lavengro was published in an
+edition of three thousand copies, which lasted for twenty-one years.
+
+The appearance of Lavengro was indeed sensational:  but not quite in
+the way its publisher had anticipated.  Almost without exception the
+verdict was unfavourable.  The book was attacked vigorously.  The
+keynote of the critics was disappointment.  Some reviews were purely
+critical, others personal and abusive, but nearly all were
+disapproving.  "Great is our disappointment" said the Athenaeum.  "We
+are disappointed," echoed Blackwood.  Among the few friendly notices
+was that of Dr Hake, in which he prophesied that "Lavengro's roots
+will strike deep into the soil of English letters."  Even Ford wrote
+(8th March):
+
+
+"I frankly own that I am somewhat disappointed with the very LITTLE
+you have told us about YOURSELF.  I was in hopes to have a full,
+true, and particular account of your marvellously varied and
+interesting biography.  I do hope that some day you will give it to
+us."
+
+
+In this chorus of dispraise Borrow saw a conspiracy.  "If ever a book
+experienced infamous and undeserved treatment," he wrote, {390a} "it
+was that book.  I was attacked in every form that envy and malice
+could suggest."  In The Romany Rye he has done full justice to the
+subject, exhibiting the critics with blood and foam streaming from
+their jaws.  In the original draft of the Advertisement to the same
+work he expresses himself as "proud of a book which has had the
+honour of being rancorously abused and execrated by every unmanly
+scoundrel, every sycophantic lacquey, and EVERY POLITICAL AND
+RELIGIOUS RENEGADE in Britain."  A few years previously, Borrow had
+written to John Murray, "I have always myself.  If you wish to please
+the public leave the matter [the revision of The Zincali] to me."
+{391a}  From this it is evident that Borrow was unprepared for
+anything but commendation from critics and readers.
+
+Dr Bowring had some time previously requested the editor of The
+Edinburgh Review to allow him to review Lavengro; but no notice ever
+appeared.  In all probability he realised the impossibility of
+writing about a book in which he and his family appeared in such an
+unpleasant light.  It is unlikely that he asked for the book in order
+to prevent a review appearing in The Edinburgh, as has been
+suggested.
+
+In the Preface, Lavengro is described as a dream; yet there can be
+not a vestage of doubt that Borrow's original intention had been to
+acknowledge it as an autobiography.  This work is a kind of biography
+in the Robinson Crusoe style, he had written in 1844.  This he
+contradicted in the Appendix to The Romany Rye; yet in his manuscript
+autobiography {391b} (13th Oct. 1862) he says:  "In 1851 he published
+Lavengro, a work in which he gives an account of his early life."
+Why had Borrow changed his mind?
+
+When Lavengro was begun, as a result of Ford's persistent appeals,
+Borrow was on the crest of the wave of success.  He saw himself the
+literary hero of the hour.  The Bible in Spain was selling in its
+thousands.  The press had proclaimed it a masterpiece.  He had seen
+himself a great man.  The writer of a great book, however, does not
+occupy a position so kinglike in its loneliness as does gentleman a
+gypsy, round whom flock the gitanos to kiss his hand and garments as
+if he were a god or a hero.  The literary and social worlds that The
+Bible in Spain opened to Borrow were not to be awed by his mystery,
+or, disciplined into abject hero-worship by one of those steady
+penetrating gazes, which cowed jockeys and alguacils.  They claimed
+intellectual kinship and equality, the very things that Borrow had no
+intention of conceding them.  He would have tolerated their
+"gentility nonsense" if they would have acknowledged his paramountcy.
+He found that to be a social or a literary lion was to be a tame
+lion, and he was too big for that.  His conception of genius was that
+it had its moods, and mediocrity must suffer them.
+
+Borrow would rush precipitately from the house where he was a guest;
+he would be unpardonably rude to some inoffensive and well-meaning
+woman who thought to please him by admiring his books; he would
+magnify a fight between their respective dogs into a deadly feud
+between himself and the rector of his parish:  thus he made enemies
+by the dozen and, incidentally, earned for himself an extremely
+unenviable reputation.  A hero with a lovable nature is twice a hero,
+because he is possessed of those qualities that commend themselves to
+the greater number.  Wellington could never be a serious rival in a
+nation's heart to dear, weak, sensitive, noble Nelson, who lived for
+praise and frankly owned to it.
+
+Borrow's lovable qualities were never permitted to show themselves in
+public, they were kept for the dingle, the fireside, or the inn-
+parlour.  That he had a sweeter side to his nature there can be no
+doubt, and those who saw it were his wife, his step-daughter, and his
+friends, in particular those who, like Mr Watts-Dunton and Mr A.
+Egmont Hake, have striven for years to emphasise the more attractive
+part of his strange nature.
+
+Borrow's attitude towards literature in itself was not calculated to
+gain friends for him.  He was uncompromisingly and caustically severe
+upon some of the literary idols of his day, men who have survived
+that terrible handicap, contemporary recognition and appreciation.
+
+He was not a deep reader, hardly a reader at all in the accepted
+meaning of the word.  He frankly confessed that books were to him of
+secondary importance to man as a subject for study.  In his
+criticisms of literature, he was apt to confuse the man with his
+works.  His hatred of Scott is notorious; it was not the artist he so
+cordially disliked, but the politician; he admitted that Scott "wrote
+splendid novels about the Stuarts." {393a}  He hailed him as "greater
+than Homer;" {393b} but the House of Stuart he held in utter
+detestation, and when writing or speaking of Scott he forgot to make
+a rather necessary distinction.  He wrote:
+
+
+"He admires his talents both as a prose writer and a poet; as a poet
+especially. {393c} . . .  As a prose writer he admires him less, it
+is true, but his admiration for him in that capacity is very high,
+and he only laments that he prostituted his talents to the cause of
+the Stuarts and gentility . . . in conclusion, he will say, in order
+to show the opinion which he entertains of the power of Scott as a
+writer, that he did for the spectre of the wretched Pretender what
+all the kings of Europe could not do for his body--placed it on the
+throne of these realms." {393d}
+
+
+In later years Borrow paid a graceful tribute to Scott's memory.
+When at Kelso, in spite of the rain and mist, he "trudged away to
+Dryburgh to pay my respects to the tomb of Walter Scott, a man with
+whose principles I have no sympathy, but for whose genius I have
+always entertained the most intense admiration." {393e}  It was just
+the same with Byron, "for whose writings I really entertained
+considerable admiration, though I had no particular esteem for the
+man himself." {393f}
+
+With Wordsworth it was different, and it was his cordial dislike of
+his poetry that prompted Borrow to introduce into The Romany Rye that
+ineffectual episode of the man who was sent to sleep by reading him.
+Tennyson he dismissed as a writer of "duncie books."
+
+For Dickens he had an enthusiastic admiration as "a second Fielding,
+a young writer who . . . has evinced such talent, such humour,
+variety and profound knowledge of character, that he charms his
+readers, at least those who have the capacity to comprehend him."
+{394a}  He was delighted with The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist.
+
+His reading was anything but thorough, in fact he occasionally showed
+a remarkable ignorance of contemporary writers.  Mr A. Egmont Hake
+tells how:
+
+
+"His conversation would sometimes turn on modern literature, with
+which his acquaintance was very slight.  He seemed to avoid reading
+the products of modern thought lest his own strong opinions should
+undergo dilution.  We were once talking of Keats whose fame had been
+constantly increasing, but of whose poetry Borrow's knowledge was of
+a shadowy kind, when suddenly he put a stop to the conversation by
+ludicrously asking, in his strong voice, 'Have they not been trying
+to resuscitate him?'" {394b}
+
+
+By the time that Lavengro appeared, Borrow was estranged from his
+generation.  The years that intervened between the success of The
+Bible in Spain and the publication of Lavengro had been spent by him
+in war; he had come to hate his contemporaries with a wholesome,
+vigorous hatred.  He would give them his book; but they should have
+it as a stray cur has a bone--thrown at them.  Above all, they should
+not for a moment be allowed to think that it contained an intimate
+account of the life of the supreme hater who had written it.  When
+there had been sympathy between them, Borrow was prepared to allow
+his public to peer into the sacred recesses of his early life.  Now
+that there was none, he denied that Lavengro was more than "a dream",
+forgetting that he had so often written of it as an autobiography,
+had even seen it advertised as such, and insisted that it was
+fiction.
+
+When Lavengro was published Borrow was an unhappy and disappointed
+man.  He had found what many other travellers have found when they
+come home, that in the wilds he had left his taste and toleration for
+conventional life and ideas.  The life in the Peninsula had been
+thoroughly congenial to a man of Borrow's temperament:  hardships,
+dangers, imprisonments,--they were his common food.  He who had
+defied the whole power of Spain, found himself powerless to prevent
+his Rector from keeping a dog, or a railway line from being cut
+through his own estate and his peace of mind disturbed by the rumble
+of trains and the shriek of locomotive-whistles.  He had beaten the
+Flaming Tinman and Count Ofalia, but Samuel Morton Peto had
+vanquished and put him to flight by virtue of an Act of Parliament,
+in all probability without being conscious of having achieved a
+signal victory.  Borrow's life had been built up upon a wrong
+hypothesis:  he strove to adapt, not himself to the Universe; but the
+Universe to himself.
+
+It is easy to see that a man with this attitude of mind would regard
+as sheer vindictiveness the adverse criticism of a book that he had
+written with such care, and so earnest an endeavour to maintain if
+not improve upon the standard created in a former work.  It never for
+a moment struck him that the men who had once hailed him "great",
+should now admonish him as a result of the honest exercise of their
+critical faculties.  No; there was conspiracy against him, and he
+tortured himself into a pitiable state of wrath and melancholy.  A
+later generation has been less harsh in its judgment.  The
+controversial parts of Lavengro have become less controversial and
+the magnificent parts have become more magnificent, and it has taken
+its place as a star of the second magnitude.
+
+The question of what is actual autobiography and what is so coloured
+as to become practically fiction, must always be a matter of opinion.
+The early portion seems convincing, even the first meeting with the
+gypsies in the lane at Norman Cross.  It has been asked by an eminent
+gypsy scholar how Borrow knew the meaning of the word "sap", or why
+he addressed the gypsy woman as "my mother".  When the Gypsy refers
+to the "Sap there", the child replies, "what, the snake"?  The
+employment of the other phrase is obviously an inadvertent use of
+knowledge he gained later.
+
+In writing to Mrs George Borrow (24th March 1851) to tell her that W.
+B. Donne had been unable to obtain Lavengro for The Edinburgh Review
+as it had been bespoken a year previously by Dr Bowring, Dr Hake adds
+that Donne had written "putting the editor in possession of his view
+of Lavengro, as regards verisimilitude, vouching for the
+Daguerreotype-like fidelity of the picture in the first volume, etc.,
+etc., in order to prevent him from being TAKEN IN BY a spiteful
+article."  This passage is very significant as being written by one
+of Borrow's most intimate friends, with the sure knowledge that its
+contents would reach him.  It leaves no room for doubt that, although
+Borrow denied publicly the autobiographical nature of Lavengro, in
+his own circle it was freely admitted and referred to as a life.
+
+"What is an autobiography?" Borrow once asked Mr Theodore Watts-
+Dunton (who had called his attention to several bold coincidences in
+Lavengro).  "Is it the mere record of the incidents of a man's life?
+or is it a picture of the man himself--his character, his soul?"
+{396a}  Mr Watts-Dunton confirms Borrow's letters when he says "That
+he [Borrow] sat down to write his own life in Lavengro I know.  He
+had no idea then of departing from the strict line of fact."
+
+At times Borrow seemed to find his pictures flat, and heightened the
+colour in places, as a painter might heighten the tone of a drapery,
+a roof or some other object, not because the individual spot required
+it, but rather because the general effect he was aiming at rendered
+it necessary.  He did this just as an actor rouges his face, darkens
+his eyebrows and round his eyes, that he may appear to his audience a
+living man and not an animated corpse.
+
+Borrow was drawing himself, striving to be as faithful to the
+original as Boswell to Johnson.  Incidents! what were they? the straw
+with which the bricks of personality are made.  A comparison of
+Lavengro with Borrow's letters to the Bible Society is instructive;
+it is the same Borrow that appears in both, with the sole difference
+that in the Letters he is less mysterious, less in the limelight than
+in Lavengro.
+
+Mr Watts-Dunton, with inspiration, has asked whether or not Lavengro
+and The Romany Rye form a spiritual autobiography; and if they do,
+whether that autobiography does or does not surpass every other for
+absolute truth of spiritual representation.  Borrow certainly did
+colour his narrative in places.  Who could write the story of his
+early life with absolute accuracy? without dwelling on and
+elaborating certain episodes, perhaps even adjusting them somewhat?
+That would not necessarily prove them untrue.
+
+There are, unquestionably, inconsistencies in Lavengro and The Romany
+Rye -they are admitted, they have been pointed out.  There are many
+inaccuracies, it must be confessed; but because a man makes a mistake
+in the date of his birth or even the year, it does not prove that he
+was not born at all.  Borrow was for ever making the most inaccurate
+statements about his age.
+
+In the main Lavengro would appear to be autobiographical up to the
+period of Borrow's coming to London.  After this he begins to indulge
+somewhat in the dramatic.  The meeting with the pickpocket as a
+thimble-rigger at Greenwich might pass muster were it not for the
+rencontre with the apple-woman's son near Salisbury.  The Dingle
+episode may be accepted, for Mr John Sampson has verified even the
+famous thunder-storm by means of the local press.  Isopel Berners is
+not so easy to settle; yet the picture of her is so convincing, and
+Borrow was unable to do more than colour his narrative, that she too
+must have existed.
+
+The failure of Lavengro is easily accounted for.  Borrow wrote of
+vagabonds and vagabondage; it did not mitigate his offence in the
+eyes of the critics or the public that he wrote well about them.  His
+crime lay in his subject.  To Borrow, a man must be ready and able to
+knock another man down if necessity arise.  When nearing sixty he
+lamented his childless state and said very mournfully:  "I shall soon
+not be able to knock a man down, and I have no son to do it for me."
+{398a}  He glorified the bruisers of England, in the face of
+horrified public opinion.  England had become ashamed of its bruisers
+long before Lavengro was written, and this flaunting in its face of
+creatures that it considered too low to be mentioned, gave mortal
+offence.  That in Lavengro was the best descriptions of a fight in
+the language, only made the matter worse.  Borrow's was an age of
+gentility and refinement, and he outraged it, first by glorifying
+vagabondage, secondly by decrying and sneering at gentility.
+
+
+"Qui n' a pas l'esprit de son age,
+De son age a tout le malheur."
+
+
+And Borrow proved Voltaire's words.
+
+It is not difficult to understand that an age in which prize-fighting
+is anathema should not tolerate a book glorifying the ring; but it is
+strange that Borrow's simple paganism and nature-worship should not
+have aroused sympathetic recognition.  Poetry is ageless, and such
+passages as the description of the sunrise over Stonehenge should
+have found some, at least, to welcome them, even when found in
+juxtaposition with bruisers and gypsies.
+
+Borrow loved to mystify, but in Lavengro he had overreached himself.
+"Are you really in existence?" wrote one correspondent who was
+unknown to Borrow, "for I also have occasionally doubted whether
+things exist, as you describe your own feelings in former days."
+
+John Murray wrote (8th Nov. 1851):-
+
+
+"I was reminded of you the other day by an enquiry after Lavengro and
+its author, made by the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker.  Knowing
+how fastidious and severe a critic he is, I was particularly glad to
+find him expressing a favourable opinion of it; and thinking well of
+it his curiosity was piqued about you.  Like all the rest of the
+world, he is mystified by it.  He knew not whether to regard it as
+truth or fiction.  How can you remedy this defect?  I call it a
+defect, because it really impedes your popularity.  People say of a
+chapter or of a character:  'This is very wonderful, IF TRUE; but if
+fiction it is pointless.'--Will your new volumes explain this and
+dissolve the mystery?  If so, pray make haste and get on with them.
+I hope you have employed the summer in giving them the finishing
+touches."
+
+
+"There are," says a distinguished critic, {399a} "passages in
+Lavengro which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of England--
+unsurpassed, I mean, for mere perfection of style--for blending of
+strength and graphic power with limpidity and music of flow."
+Borrow's own generation would have laughed at such a value being put
+upon anything in Lavengro.
+
+Another thing against the books success was its style.  It lacked
+what has been described as the poetic ecstacy or sentimental verdure
+of the age.  Trope, imagery, mawkishness, were all absent, for Borrow
+had gone back to his masters, at whose head stood the glorious Defoe.
+Borrow's style was as individual as the man himself.  By a curious
+contradiction, the tendency is to overlook literary lapses in the
+very man towards whom so little latitude was allowed in other
+directions.  Many Borrovians have groaned in anguish over his misuse
+of that wretched word "Individual."  A distinguished man of letters
+{400a} has written:- "I would as lief read a chapter of The Bible in
+Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give the
+preference to Senor Giorgio."  Another critic, and a severe one, has
+written:-
+
+
+"It is not as philologist, or traveller, or wild missionary, or folk-
+lorist, or antiquary, that Borrow lives and will live.  It is as the
+master of splendid, strong, simple English, the prose Morland of a
+vanished road-side life, the realist who, Defoe-like, could make
+fiction seem truer than fact.  To have written the finest fight in
+the whole world's literature, the fight with the Flaming Tinman, is
+surely something of an achievement." {400b}
+
+
+It is Borrow's personality that looms out from his pages.  His
+mastery over the imagination of his reader, his subtle instinct of
+how to throw his own magnetism over everything he relates, although
+he may be standing aside as regards the actual events with which he
+is dealing, is worthy of Defoe himself.  It is this magnetism that
+carries his readers safely over the difficult places, where, but for
+the author's grip upon them, they would give up in despair; it is
+this magnetism that prompts them to pass by only with a slight
+shudder, such references as the feathered tribe, fast in the arms of
+Morpheus, and, above all, those terrible puns that crop up from time
+to time.  There is always the strong, masterful man behind the words
+who, like a great general, can turn a reverse to his own advantage.
+
+In his style perhaps, after all, lay the secret of Borrow's
+unsuccess.  He was writing for another generation; speaking in a
+voice too strong to be heard other than as a strange noise by those
+near to him.  It may be urged that The Bible in Spain disproves these
+conclusions; but The Bible in Spain was a peculiar book.  It was a
+chronicle of Christian enterprise served up with sauce picaresque.
+It pleased and astonished everyone, especially those who had grown a
+little weary of godly missioners.  It had the advantage of being
+spontaneous, having been largely written on the spot, whereas
+Lavengro and The Romany Rye were worked on and laboured at for years.
+Above all, it had the inestimable virtue of being known to be True.
+To the imaginative intellectual, Truth or Fiction are matters of
+small importance, he judges by Art; but to the general public of
+limited intellectual capacity, Truth is appreciated out of all
+proportion to its artistic importance.  If Borrow had published The
+Bible in Spain after the failure of Lavengro, it would in all
+probability have been as successful as it was appearing before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV:  SEPTEMBER 1849-FEBRUARY 1854
+
+
+
+One of the finest traits in Borrow's character was his devotion to
+his mother.  He was always thoughtful for her comfort, even when
+fighting that almost hopeless battle in Russia, and later in the
+midst of bandits and bloody patriots in Spain.  She was now, in 1849,
+an old woman, too feeble to live alone, and it was decided to
+transfer her to Oulton.  An addition to the Hall was constructed for
+her accommodation, and she was to be given an attendant-companion in
+the person of the daughter of a local farmer.
+
+For thirty-three years she had lived in the little house in Willow
+Lane; yet it was not she, but Borrow, who felt the parting from old
+associations.  "I wish," she writes to her daughter-in-law on 16th
+September 1849, "my dear George would not have such fancies about the
+old house; it is a mercy it has not fallen on my head before this."
+The old lady was anxious to get away.  It would not be safe, she
+thought, for her to be shut up alone, as the old woman who had looked
+after her could, for some reason or other, do so no longer.  She
+urges her daughter-in-law to represent this to Borrow.
+
+
+"There is a low, noisy set close to me," she continues.  "I shall not
+die one day sooner, or live one day longer.  If I stop here and die
+on a sudden, half the things might be lost or stolen, therefore it
+seems as if the Lord would provide me a SAFER HOME.  I have made up
+my mind to the change and only pray that I may be able to get through
+the trouble."
+
+
+It would appear that the move, which took place at the end of
+September, was brought about by the old lady's appeals and
+insistence, and that Borrow himself was not anxious for it.  He felt
+a sentimental attachment to the old place, which for so many years
+had been a home to him.
+
+In 1853 Borrow removed to Great Yarmouth.  During the summer of that
+year, Dr Hake had peremptorily ordered Mrs George Borrow not to spend
+the ensuing winter and spring at Oulton, and the move was made in
+August.  The change was found to be beneficial to Mrs Borrow and
+agreeable to all, and for the next seven years (Aug. 1853-June 1860)
+Borrow's headquarters were to be at Great Yarmouth, where he and his
+family occupied various lodgings.
+
+Shortly before leaving Oulton, Borrow had received the following
+interesting letter from FitzGerald:-
+
+
+BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, 22nd July 1853.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--I take the liberty of sending you a book [Six Dramas
+from Calderon], of which the title-page and advertisement will
+sufficiently explain the import.  I am afraid that I shall in general
+be set down at once as an impudent fellow in making so free with a
+Great Man; but, as usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like
+yourself, who both do fine things in your own language and are deep
+read in those of others.  I mean, that whether you like or not what I
+send you, you will do so from knowledge and in the candour which
+knowledge brings.
+
+I had even a mind to ask you to look at these plays before they were
+printed, relying on our common friend Donne for a mediator; but I
+know how wearisome all MS. inspection is; and, after all, the whole
+affair was not worth giving you such a trouble.  You must pardon all
+this, and believe me,--Yours very faithfully,
+
+EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+
+Soon after his arrival by the sea, Borrow performed an act of bravery
+of which The Bury Post (17th Sept. 1852) gave the following account,
+most likely written by Dr Hake:-
+
+
+"INTREPIDITY.--Yarmouth jetty presented an extra-ordinary and
+thrilling spectacle on Thursday, the 8th inst., about one o'clock.
+The sea raged frantically, and a ship's boat, endeavouring to land
+for water, was upset, and the men were engulfed in a wave some thirty
+feet high, and struggling with it in vain.  The moment was an awful
+one, when George Borrow, the well-known author of Lavengro, and The
+Bible in Spain, dashed into the surf and saved one life, and through
+his instrumentality the others were saved.  We ourselves have known
+this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring as was this deed we
+have known him more than once to risk his life for others.  We are
+happy to add that he has sustained no material injury."
+
+
+Borrow was a splendid swimmer. {404a}  In the course of one of his
+country walks with Robert Cooke (John Murray's partner), with whom he
+was on very friendly terms, "he suggested a bathe in the river along
+which they were walking.  Mr Cooke told me that Borrow, having
+stripped, took a header into the water and disappeared.  More than a
+minute had elapsed, and as there were no signs of his whereabouts, Mr
+Cooke was becoming alarmed, lest he had struck his head or been
+entangled in the weeds, when Borrow suddenly reappeared a
+considerable distance off, under the opposite bank of the stream, and
+called out 'What do you think of that?'" {404b}
+
+
+Elizabeth Harvey, in telling the same story, says that on coming up
+he exclaimed:  "There, if that had been written in one of my books,
+they would have said it was a lie, wouldn't they?"
+
+The paragraph about Borrow's courage was printed in various
+newspapers throughout the country, amongst others in the Plymouth
+Mail under the heading of "Gallant Conduct of Mr G. Borrow," and was
+read by Borrow's Cornish kinsmen, who for years had heard nothing of
+Thomas Borrow.  Apparently quite convinced that George was his son,
+they deputed Robert Taylor, a farmer of Penquite Farm (who had
+married Anne Borrow, granddaughter of Henry Borrow), to write to
+Borrow and invite him to visit Trethinnick.  The letter was dated
+10th October and directed to "George Borrow, Yarmouth."  Borrow
+replied as follows:-
+
+
+YARMOUTH, 14th Octr., 1853.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter
+of the 10th inst. in which you inform me of the kind desire of my
+Cornish relatives to see me at Trethinnock (sic).  Please to inform
+them that I shall be proud and happy to avail myself of their
+kindness and to make the acquaintance of "one and all" {405a} of
+them.  My engagements will prevent my visiting them at present, but I
+will appear amongst them on the first opportunity.  I am delighted to
+learn that there are still some living at Trethinnock who remember my
+honoured father, who had as true a Cornish heart as ever beat.
+
+I am at present at Yarmouth, to which place I have brought my wife
+for the benefit of her health; but my residence is Oulton Hall,
+Lowestoft, Suffolk.  With kind greetings to my Cornish kindred, in
+which my wife and my mother join,--I remain, my dear Sir, ever
+sincerely yours, -
+
+GEORGE BORROW.
+
+
+Borrow was not free to visit his kinsfolk until the following
+Christmas.  First advising Robert Taylor of his intention, and
+receiving his approval and instructions for the journey, Borrow set
+out from Great Yarmouth on 23rd December.  He spent the night at
+Plymouth.  Next morning on finding the Liskeard coach full, he
+decided to walk.  Leaving his carpet-bag to be sent on by the mail,
+and throwing over his arm the cloak that had seen many years of
+service, he set out upon his eighteen-mile tramp.  He arrived at
+Liskeard in the afternoon, and was met by his cousin Henry Borrow and
+Robert Taylor, as well as by several local celebrities.
+
+After tea Borrow, accompanied by Robert Taylor, rode to Penquite,
+four miles away.  "Ride by night to Penquite, Borrow records in his
+Journal.  House of stone and slate on side of a hill.  Mrs Taylor.
+Hospitable reception.  Christmas Eve.  Log on fire."  He found alive
+of his own generation, Henry, William, Thomas, Elizabeth (who lived
+to be 94 years of age) and Nicholas, the children of Henry Borrow,
+Captain Borrow's eldest brother.  Also Anne, daughter of Henry, who
+married Robert Taylor, and their daughter, likewise named Anne, and
+William Henry, son of Nicholas.
+
+In the Cornish Note Books there appears under the date of 3rd January
+the following entry:  "Rain and snow.  Rode with Mr Taylor to dine at
+Trethinnick.  House dilapidated.  A family party.  Hospitable
+people."  On first entering his father's old home tears had sprung to
+Borrow's eyes, and he was much affected.  There was present at the
+dinner the vicar of St Cleer, the Rev. J. R. P. Berkeley, a pleasant
+Irish clergyman who, years later, was able to give to Dr Knapp an
+account of what took place.  He noticed the "vast difference in
+appearance and manners between the simple yet shrewd Cornish farmers
+and the betravelled gentleman their kinsman;" yet for all this there
+were shades of resemblance--in a look, some turn of thought or tone
+of voice.  George Borrow was not at his best that evening, Mr
+Berkeley relates of the dinner at Trethinnick:
+
+
+"his feelings were too much excited.  He was thinking of the time
+when his father's footsteps and his father's voice re-echoed in the
+room in which we were sitting.  His eyes wandered from point to
+point, and at times, if I was not mistaken, a tear could be seen
+trembling in them.  At length he could no longer control his
+feelings.  He left the hall suddenly, and in a few moments, but for
+God's providential care, the career of George Borrow would have been
+ended.  There was within a few feet of the house a low wall with a
+drop of some feet into a paved yard.  He walked rapidly out, and, it
+being nearly dark, he stepped one side of the gate and fell over the
+wall.  He did not mention the accident, although he bruised himself a
+good deal, and it was some days before I heard of it.  His words to
+me that evening, when bidding me good-bye, were:  'Well, we have
+shared the old-fashioned hospitality of old-fashioned people in an
+old-fashioned house.'" {407a}
+
+
+Borrow created something of a sensation in the neighbourhood.  As a
+celebrity his autograph was much sought after; but he would gratify
+nobody.  His hosts experienced many little surprises from their
+guest's strange ways.  He would plunge into a moorland pool to fetch
+a bird that had fallen to his gun, or, round the family fireside, he
+would shout his ballads of the North, at one time alarming his
+audience by seizing a carving-knife and brandishing it about in the
+air to emphasize the passionate nature of his song.  When a card-
+party proved too dull he slipped off and found his way into some
+slums, picking up all the disreputable characters he could find,
+working off his knowledge of cant on them, and getting out of them
+what he could. {407b}
+
+On one occasion when dining at the house of a local celebrity he was
+suddenly missed from table during dessert.
+
+
+"A search revealed him in a remote room surrounded by the children of
+the house, whom he was amusing by his stories and catechising in the
+subject of their studies and pursuits.  He excused his absence by
+saying that he had been fascinated by the intelligence of the
+children, and had forgotten about the dinner." {407c}
+
+His hatred of gentility led him into some actions that can only be
+characterised as childish.  Even in Cornwall he was on the lookout
+for his fetish.  On one occasion when dining with the ex-Mayor of
+Liskeard, he pulled out of his pocket and used instead of a
+handkerchief, a dirty old grease-stained rag with which he was wont
+to clean his gun. {408a}  This was done as a protest against
+something or other that seemed to him to suggest mock refinement.
+
+When at Wolsdon as the guest of the Pollards there arrived a lady and
+gentleman of the name of Hambly, according to the Note Books.  In
+spite of this brief reference, Borrow immediately recognised a hated
+name.  Never was one of the name good, he informed Mr Berkeley.  He
+may even have been informed that they were descendants of the
+Headborough whom his father had knocked down.  He showed his
+detestation for the name by being as rude as he could to those who
+bore it.
+
+Borrow was as incapable of dissimulating his dislikes as he was of
+controlling his moods.  Even during his short stay at Penquite he was
+on one occasion, at least, plunged into a deep melancholy, sitting
+before a huge fire entirely oblivious to the presence of others in
+the room.  Mrs Berkeley, who, with the vicar himself, was a caller,
+thinking to produce some good effect upon the gloomy man, sat down at
+the piano and played some old Irish and Scottish airs.  After a time
+Borrow began to listen, then he raised his head, and finally "he
+suddenly sprang to his feet, clapped his hands several times, danced
+about the room, and struck up some joyous melody.  From that moment
+he was a different man."  He told them "tales and side-splitting
+anecdotes," he joined the party at supper, and when the vicar and his
+wife rose to take their leave he pressed Mrs Berkeley's hands, and
+told her that her music had been as David's harp to his soul.
+
+To the young man he met during this visit who informed him that he
+had left the Army as it was no place for a gentleman, Borrow replied
+that it was no place for a man who was not a gentleman, and that he
+was quite right in leaving it.  To speak against the Army to Borrow
+was to speak against his honoured father.
+
+How Borrow struck his Cornish kinsfolk is shown in a letter written
+by his hostess to a friend.  "I must tell you," she writes, "a bit
+about our distinguished visitor."  She gives one of the most valuable
+portraits of Borrow that exists.  He was to her:
+
+
+"A fine tall man of about six feet three, well-proportioned and not
+stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid
+face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and
+eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped hands--
+altogether a person you would notice in a crowd.  His character is
+not so easy to portray.  The more I see of him the less I know of
+him.  He is very enthusiastic and eccentric, very proud and
+unyielding.  He says very little of himself, and one cannot ask him
+if inclined to . . . He is a marvel in himself.  There is no one here
+to draw him out.  He has an astonishing memory as to dates when great
+events have taken place, no matter in what part of the world.  He
+seems to know everything." {409a}
+
+
+Borrow was gratified at the welcome he received, and was much pleased
+with the neighbourhood and its people.  "My relations are most
+excellent people," he wrote to his wife, "but I could not understand
+more than half they said."  He was puzzled to know why the head of a
+family, which was reputed to be worth seventy thousand pounds, should
+live in a house which could not boast of a single grate--"nothing but
+open chimneys."
+
+He remained at Penquite for upwards of a fortnight, at one time
+galloping over snowy hills and dales with Anne Taylor, Junr., "as
+gallant a girl as ever rode," at another, alert as ever for fragments
+of folk-lore or philology, jotting down the story of a pisky-child
+from the dictation of his cousin Elizabeth.
+
+On 9th January Borrow left Penquite on a tour to Truro, Penzance,
+Mousehole, and Land's End, armed with the inevitable umbrella,
+grasped in the centre by the right hand, green, manifold and bulging,
+that so puzzled Mr Watts-Dunton and caused him on one occasion to ask
+Dr Hake, "Is he a genuine Child of the Open Air?"  It was one of the
+first things to which Borrow's pedestrian friends had to accustom
+themselves.  With this "damning thing . . . gigantic and green,"
+Borrow set out upon his excursion, now examining some Celtic barrow,
+now enquiring his way or the name of a landmark, occasionally singing
+in that tremendous voice of his, "Look out, look out, Swayne Vonved!"
+
+At Mousehole he called upon a relative, H. D. Burney (who was, it
+would seem, in charge of the Coast Guard Station), to whom he had a
+letter of introduction from Robert Taylor.  Mr Burney entertained him
+with stories, showed him places and things of interest in the
+neighbourhood, and accompanied him on his visit to St Michael's
+Mount.  Borrow returned to Penquite on the 25th with a considerable
+store of Cornish legends and Cornish words, and the knowledge that
+you can only see Cornwall or know anything about it by walking
+through it.
+
+The next excursion was to the North Coast, Pentire Point, Tintagel,
+King Arthur's Castle, etc.  On the 1st of February he left Penquite,
+and slept the night at Trethinnick.  The next morning he set out on
+horseback accompanied by Nicholas Borrow.
+
+To the vicar of St Cleer and his family, Borrow was a very welcome
+visitor.  Mr Berkeley's eldest son, a boy of ten years of age, on
+being introduced to the distinguished caller, gazed at him for some
+moments and then without a word left the room and, going straight to
+his mother in another apartment cried, "Well, mother, that IS a man."
+Borrow was delighted when he heard of the child's enthusiasm.  Mr
+Berkeley give a picture of his distinguished visitor far more
+prepossessing than many that exist.  He was particularly struck, as
+was everybody, by the beauty of Borrow's hands, and their owner's
+vanity over them as the legacy of his Huguenot ancestors.  Mr
+Berkeley found Borrow's countenance pleasing, betokening calm
+firmness, self-confidence and a mind under control, though capable of
+passion.  He could on occasion prove a delightful talker, and he gave
+to the vicar's family a new maxim to implant upon their Christianity,
+the old prize-fighters receipt for a quiet life:  "Learn to box, and
+keep a civil tongue in your head."  He would often drop in at the
+vicarage in the evening, when he would
+
+
+"sit in the centre of a group before the fire with his hands on his
+knees--his favourite position--pouring forth tales of the scenes he
+had witnessed in his wanderings. . . . Then he would suddenly spring
+from his seat and walk to and fro the room in silence; anon he would
+clap his hands and sing a Gypsy song, or perchance would chant forth
+a translation of some Viking poem; after which he would sit down
+again and chat about his father, whose memory he revered as he did
+his mother's; {411a} and finally he would recount some tale of
+suffering or sorrow with deep pathos--his voice being capable of
+expressing triumphant joy or the profoundest sadness."
+
+
+It was Borrow's intention to write a book about his visit to
+Cornwall, and he even announced it at the end of The Romany Rye.  He
+was delighted with the Duchy, and evidently gave his relatives to
+understand that it was his intention to use the contents of his Note
+Books as the nucleus of a book.  "He will undoubtedly write a
+description of his visit," Mrs Taylor wrote to her friend.  "I walked
+through the whole of Cornwall and saw everything," Borrow wrote to
+his wife after his return to London.  "I kept a Journal of every day
+I was there, and it fills TWO pocket books."
+
+Borrow left Cornwall the second week in February and was in London on
+the 10th, where he was to break his journey home in order to obtain
+some data at the British Museum for the Appendix of The Romany Rye.
+On 13th February he writes to his wife:-
+
+
+"For three days I have been working hard at the Museum, I am at
+present at Mr Webster's, but not in the three guinea lodgings.  I am
+in rooms above, for which I pay thirty shillings a week.  I live as
+economically as I can; but when I am in London I am obliged to be at
+certain expense.  I must be civil to certain friends who invite me
+out and show me every kindness.  Please send me a five pound note by
+return of post."
+
+
+His wife appears to have been anxious for his return home, and on the
+17th he writes to her:-
+
+
+"It is hardly worth while making me more melancholy than I am.  Come
+home, come home! is the cry.  And what are my prospects when I get
+home? though it is true that they are not much brighter here.  I have
+nothing to look forward to.  Honourable employments are being given
+to this and that trumpery fellow; while I, who am an honourable man,
+must be excluded from everything."
+
+
+Of literature he expressed himself as tired, there was little or
+nothing to be got out of it, save by writing humbug, which he refused
+to do.  "My spirits are very low," he continues, "and your letters
+make them worse.  I shall probably return by the end of next week;
+but I shall want more money.  I am sorry to spend money for it is our
+only friend, and God knows I use as little as possible, but I can't
+travel without it." {412b}  A few days later there is another letter
+with farther reference to money, and protests that he is spending as
+little as possible.  "Perhaps you had better send another note," he
+writes, "and I will bring it home unchanged, if I do not want any
+part of it.  I have lived very economically as far as I am concerned
+personally; I have bought nothing, and have been working hard at the
+Museum." {413a}
+
+These constant references to money seem to suggest either some
+difference between Borrow and his wife, or that he felt he was
+spending too much upon himself and was anticipating her thoughts by
+assuring her of how economically he was living.  He had an
+unquestioned right to spend, for he had added considerable sums to
+the exchequer from the profits of his first two books.
+
+Borrow returned to Yarmouth on 25th February.  The Romany Rye was now
+rapidly nearing completion; but there was no encouragement to publish
+a new book.  He worked at The Romany Rye, not because he saw profit
+in it, not because he was anxious to give another book to an uneager
+public; but because of the sting in its tail, because of the
+thunderbolt Appendix in which he paid off old scores against the
+critics and his personal enemies.  The Romany Rye was to him a work
+of hate; it was a bomb disguised as a book, which he intended to
+throw into the camp of his foes.  He was tired of literature, by
+which he meant that he was tired of producing his best for a public
+that neither wanted nor understood it.  He forgot that the works of a
+great writer are sometimes printed in his own that they may be read
+in another generation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI:  MARCH 1854-MAY 1856
+
+
+
+During the months that followed Borrow's return to Great Yarmouth,
+the question of the coming summer holiday was discussed.  From the
+first Borrow himself had been for Wales.  He was eager to pursue his
+Celtic researches further north.  "I should not wonder if he went
+into Wales before he returns," Mrs Robert Taylor had written to her
+friend during Borrow's stay in Cornwall.  His wife and Henrietta had
+"a hankering after what is fashionable," and suggested Harrogate or
+Leamington.  To which Borrow replied that there was nothing he "so
+much hated as fashionable life."  He, however, gave way, the two
+women followed suit, as he had intended they should, and Wales was
+decided upon.  For Borrow the literature of Wales had always
+exercised a great attraction.  Her bards were as no other bards.  Ab
+Gwilym was to him the superior of Chaucer, and Huw Morris "the
+greatest songster of the seventeenth century."  It was, he confessed,
+a desire to put to practical use his knowledge of the Welsh tongue,
+"such as it was," that first gave him the idea of going to Wales.
+
+The party left Great Yarmouth on 27th July 1854, spending one night
+at Peterborough and three at Chester.  They reached Llangollen, which
+was to be their head-quarters, on 1st August.  On 9th August Mrs
+George Borrow wrote to the old lady at Oulton, "We all much enjoy
+this wonderful and beautiful country.  We are in a lovely quiet spot.
+Dear George goes out exploring the mountains, and when he finds
+remarkable views takes us of an evening to see them."
+
+Borrow wanted to see Wales and get to know the people, and, above
+all, to speak with them in their own language, and on 27th August he
+started upon a walking tour to Bangor, where he was to meet his wife
+and Henrietta, who were to proceed thither by rail.  It was during
+this excursion that he encountered the delightful Papist-Orange
+fiddler, whose fortunes and fingers fluctuated between "Croppies Get
+Up" and "Croppies Lie Down."
+
+From Bangor Borrow explored the surrounding places of interest.  He
+ascended Snowdon arm-in-arm with Henrietta, singing "at the stretch
+of my voice a celebrated Welsh stanza," the boy-guide following
+wonderingly behind.  In spite of the fatigues of the climb, "the
+gallant girl" reached the summit and heard her stepfather declaim two
+stanzas of poetry in Welsh, to the grinning astonishment of a small
+group of English tourists and the great interest of a Welshman, who
+asked Borrow if he were a Breton.
+
+There is no question that Borrow was genuinely attached to Henrietta.
+"I generally call her daughter," he writes, "and with good reason,
+seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me--that she
+has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing
+something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the
+Dutch style," {415a} not to speak of her ability to play on the
+Spanish guitar.  She was "the dear girl," or "the gallant girl,"
+between whom and her stepfather existed a true spirit of comradeship.
+In 1844 she wrote to him, "And then that FUNNY look {415b} would come
+into your eyes and you would call me 'poor old Hen.'"  He seemed
+incapable of laughing, and one intimate friend states that she "never
+saw him even smiling, but there was a twinkle in his eyes which told
+you that he was enjoying himself just the same." {416a}
+
+About this time Mrs George Borrow wrote to old Mrs Borrow at Oulton
+Hall, saying that all was well with her son.
+
+
+"He is very regular in his morning and evening devotions, so that we
+all have abundant cause for thankfulness . . . As regards your dear
+son and his peace and comfort, you have reason to praise and bless
+God on his account . . . He is fully occupied.  He keeps a DAILY
+Journal of all that goes on, so that he can make a most amusing book
+in a month, whenever he wishes to do so."
+
+
+The first sentence is very puzzling, and would seem to suggest that
+Borrow's moods were somehow or other associated with outbursts
+against religion.  "Be sure you BURN this, or do not leave it about,"
+the old lady is admonished.
+
+On the day following the ascent of Snowdon, Mrs Borrow and Henrietta
+returned to Llangollen by train, leaving Borrow free to pursue his
+wanderings.  He eventually arrived at Llangollen on 6th September, by
+way of Carnarvon, Festiniog and Bala.  After remaining another twenty
+days at Llangollen, he despatched his wife and stepdaughter home by
+rail.  He then bought a small leather satchel, with a strap to sling
+it over his shoulder, packed in it a white linen shirt, a pair of
+worsted stockings, a razor and a prayer-book.  Having had his boots
+resoled and his umbrella repaired, he left Llangollen for South
+Wales, upon an excursion which was to occupy three weeks.  During the
+course of this expedition he was taken for many things, from a pork-
+jobber to Father Toban himself, as whom he pronounced "the best Latin
+blessing I could remember" over two or three dozen Irish reapers to
+their entire satisfaction.  Eventually he arrived at Chepstow, having
+learned a great deal about wild Wales.
+
+One of the excursions that Borrow made from Bangor was to Llanfair in
+search of Gronwy, the birthplace of Gronwy Owen.  He found in the
+long, low house an old woman and five children, descendants of the
+poet, who stared at him wonderingly.  To each he gave a trifle.
+Asking whether they could read, he was told that the eldest could
+read anything, whether Welsh or English.  In Wild Wales he gives an
+account of the interview.
+
+
+"'Can you write?' said I to the child [the eldest], a little stubby
+girl of about eight, with a broad flat red face and grey eyes,
+dressed in a chintz gown, a little bonnet on her head, and looking
+the image of notableness.
+
+"The little maiden, who had never taken her eyes off of me for a
+moment during the whole time I had been in the room, at first made no
+answer; being, however, bid by her grandmother to speak, she at
+length answered in a soft voice, 'Medraf, I can.'
+
+"'Then write your name in this book,' said I, taking out a pocket-
+book and a pencil, 'and write likewise that you are related to Gronwy
+Owen--and be sure you write in Welsh.'
+
+"The little maiden very demurely took the book and pencil, and
+placing the former on the table wrote as follows:-
+
+"'Ellen Jones yn perthyn o bell i gronow owen.' {417a}
+
+"That is, 'Ellen Jones belonging, from afar off to Gronwy Owen.'"
+{417b}
+
+
+Ellen Jones is now Ellen Thomas, and she well remembers Borrow coming
+along the lane, where she was playing with some other children, and
+asking for the house of Gronwy Owen.  Later, when she entered the
+house, she found him talking to her grandmother, who was a little
+deaf as described in Wild Wales.  Mrs Thomas' recollection of Borrow
+is that he had the appearance of possessing great strength.  He had
+"bright eyes and shabby dress, more like a merchant than a gentleman,
+or like a man come to buy cattle [others made the same mistake].
+But, dear me! he did speak FUNNY Welsh," she remarked to a student of
+Borrow who sought her out, he could not pronounce the 'll'
+[pronouncing the word "pell" as if it rhymed with tell, whereas it
+should be pronounced something like "pelth"], and his voice was very
+high; but perhaps that was because my grandmother was deaf."  He had
+plenty of words, but bad pronunciation.  William Thomas {418a}
+laughed many a time at him coming talking his funny Welsh to him, and
+said he was glad he knew a few words of Spanish to answer him with.
+Borrow was, apparently, unconscious of any imperfection in his
+pronunciation of the "ll".  He has written:  "'Had you much
+difficulty in acquiring the sound of the "ll"?'  I think I hear the
+reader inquire.  None whatever:  the double l of the Welsh is by no
+means the terrible guttural which English people generally suppose it
+to be." {418b}
+
+Mrs Thomas is now sixty-seven years of age (she was eleven and not
+eight at the time of Borrow's visit) and still preserves carefully
+wrapped up the book from which she read to the white-haired stranger.
+The episode was not thought much of at the time, except by the child,
+whom it much excited. {418c}
+
+It was in all probability during this, his first tour in Wales, that
+Borrow was lost on Cader Idris, and spent the whole of one night in
+wandering over the mountain vainly seeking a path.  The next morning
+he arrived at the inn utterly exhausted.  It was quite in keeping
+with Borrow's nature to suppress from his book all mention of this
+unpleasant adventure. {419a}
+
+The Welsh holiday was unquestionably a success.  Borrow's mind had
+been diverted from critics and his lost popularity.  He had forgotten
+that in official quarters he had been overlooked.  He was in the land
+of Ab Gwilym and Gronwy Owen.  "There never was such a place for
+poets," he wrote; "you meet a poet, or the birthplace of a poet,
+everywhere." {419b}  He was delighted with the simplicity of the
+people, and in no way offended by their persistent suspicion of all
+things Saxon.  At least they knew their own poets; and he could not
+help comparing the Welsh labouring man who knew Huw Morris, with his
+Suffolk brother who had never heard of Beowulf or Chaucer.  He
+discoursed with many people about their bards, surprising them by his
+intimate knowledge of the poets and the poetry of Wales.  He found
+enthusiasm "never scoffed at by the noble simple-minded genuine
+Welsh, whatever treatment it may receive from the coarse-hearted,
+sensual, selfish Saxon." {419c}  Sometimes he was reminded "of the
+substantial yoemen of Cornwall, particularly . . . of my friends at
+Penquite." {419d}  Wherever he went he experienced nothing but
+kindness and hospitality, and it delighted him to be taken for a
+Cumro, as was frequently the case.
+
+What Borrow writes about his Welsh is rather contradictory.
+Sometimes he represents himself as taken for a Welshman, at others as
+a foreigner speaking Welsh.  "Oh, what a blessing it is to be able to
+speak Welsh!" {420a} he exclaims.  He acknowledged that he could read
+Welsh with far more ease than he could speak it.  There is absolutely
+no posing or endeavour to depict himself a perfect Welsh scholar,
+whose accent could not be distinguished from that of a native.  The
+literary results of the Welsh holiday were four Note Books written in
+pencil, from which Wild Wales was subsequently written.  Borrow was
+in Wales for nearly sixteen weeks (1st Aug.--16th November), of which
+about a third was devoted to expeditions on foot.
+
+In the annual consultations about holidays, Borrow's was always the
+dominating voice.  For the year 1855 the Isle of Man was chosen,
+because it attracted him as a land of legend and quaint customs and
+speech.  Accordingly during the early days of September Mrs Borrow
+and Henrietta were comfortably settled at Douglas, and Borrow began
+to make excursions to various parts of the island.  He explored every
+corner of it, conversing with the people in Manx, collecting ballads
+and old, smoke-stained carvel {420b} (or carol) books, of which he
+was successful in securing two examples.  He discovered that the
+island possessed a veritable literature in these carvels, which were
+circulated in manuscript form among the neighbours of the writers.
+
+The old runic inscriptions that he found on the tombstones exercised
+a great fascination over Borrow.  He would spend hours, or even days
+(on one occasion as much as a week), in deciphering one of them.
+Thirty years later he was remembered as an accurate, painstaking man.
+His evenings were frequently occupied in translating into English the
+Manx poem Illiam Dhoo, or Brown William.  He discovered among the
+Manx traditions much about Finn Ma Coul, or M'Coyle, who appears in
+The Romany Rye as a notability of Ireland.  He ascended Snaefell,
+sought out the daughter of George Killey, the Manx poet, and had much
+talk with her, she taking him for a Manxman.  The people of the
+island he liked.
+
+
+"In the whole world," he wrote in his 'Note Books,' "there is not a
+more honest, kindly race than the genuine Manx.  Towards strangers
+they exert unbounded hospitality without the slightest idea of
+receiving any compensation, and they are, whether men or women, at
+any time willing to go two or three miles over mountain and bog to
+put strangers into the right road."
+
+
+During his stay in the Isle of Man, news reached Borrow of the death
+of a kinsman, William, son of Samuel Borrow, his cousin, a cooper at
+Devonport.  William Borrow had gone to America, where he had won a
+prize for a new and wonderful application of steam.  His death is
+said to have occurred as the result of mental fatigue.  In this
+Borrow saw cause for grave complaint against the wretched English
+Aristocracy that forced talent out of the country by denying it
+employment or honour, which were all for their "connections and lick-
+spittles."
+
+The holiday in the Isle of Man had resulted in two quarto note books,
+aggregating ninety-six pages, closely written in pencil.  Again
+Borrow planned to write a book, just as he had done on the occasion
+of the Cornish visit.  Nothing, however, came of it.  Among his
+papers was found the following draft of a suggested title-page:-
+
+
+BAYR JAIRGEY
+AND
+GLION DOO
+THE RED PATH AND THE BLACK VALLEY
+WANDERINGS IN QUEST OF MANX LITERATURE
+
+
+A curious feature of Mrs Borrow's correspondence is her friendly
+conspiracies, sometimes with John Murray, sometimes with Woodfall,
+the printer, asking them to send encouraging letters that shall
+hearten Borrow to greater efforts.  On 26th November 1850 John Murray
+wrote to her:  "I have determined on engraving [by W. Holl] Phillips'
+portrait {422a} . . . as a frontispiece to it [Lavengro].  I trust
+that this will not be disagreeable to you and the author--in fact I
+do it in confident expectation that it will meet with YOUR assent; I
+do not ask Mr Borrow's leave, remember."
+
+It must be borne in mind that Mrs Borrow had been in London a few
+days previously, in order to deliver to John Murray the manuscript of
+Lavengro.  Mrs Borrow's reply to this letter is significant.  With
+regard to the engraving, she writes (28th November), "I LIKE THE IDEA
+OF IT, and when Mr Borrow remarked that he did not wish it (as we
+expected he would) I reminded him that HIS leave WAS not asked."
+
+Again, on 30th October 1852, Mrs Borrow wrote to Robert Cooke asking
+that either he or John Murray would write to Borrow enquiring as to
+his health, and progress with The Romany Rye, and how long it would
+be before the manuscript were ready for the printer.  "Of course,"
+she adds, "all this is in perfect confidence to Mr Murray and
+yourself as you BOTH of you know my truly excellent Husband well
+enough to be aware how much he every now and then requires an impetus
+to cause the large wheel to move round at a quicker pace . . . Oblige
+me by committing this to the flames, and write to him just as you
+would have done, without hearing A WORD FROM ME."  On yet another
+occasion when she and Borrow were both in London, she writes to Cooke
+asking that either he "or Mr Murray will give my Husband a look, if
+it be only for a few minutes . . . He seems rather low.  Do, NOT let
+this note remain on your table," she concludes, "or MENTION it."
+
+If Borrow were a problem to his wife and to his publisher, he
+presented equal difficulties to the country folk about Oulton.  To
+one he was "a missionary out of work," to another "a man who kep'
+'isself to 'isself"; but to none was he the tired lion weary of the
+chase.  "His great delight . . . was to plunge into the darkening
+mere at eventide, his great head and heavy shoulders ruddy in the
+rays of the sun.  Here he hissed and roared and spluttered, sometimes
+frightening the eel-catcher sailing home in the half-light, and
+remembering suddenly school legends of river-sprites and monsters of
+the deep." {423a}
+
+In the spring following his return from the Isle of Man, Borrow made
+numerous excursions on foot through East Anglia.  He seemed too
+restless to remain long in one place.  During a tramp from Yarmouth
+to Ely by way of Cromer, Holt, Lynn and Wisbech, he called upon Anna
+Gurney. {423b}  His reason for doing so was that she was one of the
+three celebrities of the world he desired to see.  The other two were
+Daniel O'Connell {423c} and Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus),
+Lord Berners winner of the Derby.  Two of the world's notabilities
+had slipped through his fingers by reason of their deaths, but he was
+determined that Anna Gurney, who lived at North Repps, should not
+evade him.  He gave her notice of his intention to call, and found
+her ready to receive him.
+
+
+"When, according to his account, {424a} he had been but a very short
+time in her presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her
+hand to one of her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and
+put it into his hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point,
+which he tried to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him
+continuously; when, said he, 'I could not study the Arabic grammar
+and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the book and ran
+out of the room.'"
+
+
+It is said that Borrow ran until he reached Old Tucker's Inn at
+Cromer, where he ate "five excellent sausages" and found calm.  He
+then went on to Sheringham and related the incident to the Upchers.
+
+These lonely walking tours soothed Borrow's restless mind.  He had
+constant change of scene, and his thoughts were diverted by the
+adventures of the roadside.  He encountered many and interesting
+people, on one occasion an old man who remembered the fight between
+Painter and Oliver; at another time he saw a carter beating his horse
+which had fallen down.  "Give him a pint of ale, and I will pay for
+it," counselled Borrow.  After the second pint the beast got up and
+proceeded, "pulling merrily . . . with the other horses."
+
+Ale was Borrow's sovereign remedy for the world's ills and wrongs.
+It was by ale that he had been cured when the "Horrors" were upon him
+in the dingle.  "Oh, genial and gladdening is the power of good ale,
+the true and proper drink of Englishmen," he exclaims after having
+heartened Jack Slingsby and his family.  "He is not deserving of the
+name of Englishman," he continues, "who speaketh against ale, that is
+good ale." {425a}  To John Murray (the Third) he wrote in his letter
+of sympathy on the death of his father:  "Pray keep up your spirits,
+and that you may be able to do so, take long walks and drink plenty
+of Scotch ale with your dinner . . .  God bless you."
+
+He liked ale "with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as well
+may be--ale at least two years old." {425b}  The period of its
+maturity changed with his mood.  In another place he gives nine or
+ten months as the ideal age. {425c}  He was all for an Act of
+Parliament to force people to brew good ale.  He not only drank good
+ale himself; but prescribed it as a universal elixir for man and
+beast.  Hearing from
+
+Elizabeth Harvey "of a lady who was attached to a gentleman," Borrow
+demanded bluntly, "Well, did he make her an offer?"  "No," was the
+response.  "Ah," Borrow replied with conviction, "if she had given
+him some good ale he would." {425d}  He loved best old Burton, which,
+with '37 port, were his favourites; yet he would drink whatever ale
+the roadside-inn provided, as if to discipline his stomach.  It has
+been said that he habitually drank "swipes," a thin cheap ale,
+because that was the drink of his gypsy friends; but Borrow's
+friendship certainly did not often involve him in anything so
+distasteful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII:  THE ROMANY RYE.  1854-1859
+
+
+
+Borrow was not a great correspondent, and he left behind him very few
+letters from distinguished men of his time.  Among those few were
+several from Edward FitzGerald, whose character contrasted so
+strangely with that of the tempestuous Borrow.  In 1856 FitzGerald
+wrote:-
+
+
+31 GREAT PORTLAND STREET,
+LONDON, 27th October 1856.
+
+My Dear Sir,--It is I who send you the new Turkish Dictionary
+[Redhouse's Turkish & English Dictionary] which ought to go by this
+Post; my reasons being that I bought it really only for the purpose
+of doing that little good to the spirited Publisher of the book (who
+thought when he began it that the [Crimean] War was to last), and I
+send it to you because I should be glad of your opinion, if you can
+give it.  I am afraid that you will hardly condescend to USE it, for
+you abide in the old Meninsky; but if you WILL use it, I shall be
+very glad.  I don't think _I_ ever shall; and so what is to be done
+with it now it is bought?
+
+I don't know what Kerrich told you of my being too LAZY to go over to
+Yarmouth to see you a year ago.  No such thing as that.  I simply had
+doubts as to whether you would not rather remain unlookt for.  I know
+I enjoyed my evening with you a month ago.  I wanted to ask you to
+read some of the Northern Ballads too; but you shut the book.
+
+I must tell you.  I am come up here on my way to Chichester to be
+married! to Miss Barton (of Quaker memory) and our united ages amount
+to 96!--a dangerous experiment on both sides.  She at least brings a
+fine head and heart to the bargain--worthy of a better market.  But
+it is to be, and I dare say you will honestly wish we may do well.
+
+Keep the book as long as you will.  It is useless to me.  I shall be
+to be heard of through Geldeston Hall, Beccles.  With compliments to
+Mrs Borrow, believe me,
+
+Yours truly,
+EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+P.S.--Donne is well, and wants to know about you.
+
+
+A few months later FitzGerald wrote again:
+
+
+ALBERT HOUSE, GORLESTON,
+6th July 1857.
+
+Dear Borrow,--Will you send me [The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam] by
+bearer.  I only want to look at him, for that Frenchman {427a} has
+been misquoting him in a way that will make [Professor] E. Cowell [of
+Cambridge] answerable for another's blunder, which must not be.  You
+shall have 'Omar back directly, or whenever you want him, and I
+should really like to make you a copy (taking my time) of the best
+Quatrains.  I am now looking over the Calcutta MS. which has 500!--
+very many quite as good as those in the MS. you have; but very many
+in BOTH MSS. are well omitted.
+
+I have been for a fortnight to Geldeston where Kerrich is not very
+well.  I shall look for you one day in my Yarmouth rounds, and you
+know how entirely disengaged and glad to see you I am here.  I have
+two fresh Nieces with me--and I find I gave you the WORST wine of two
+samples Diver sent me.  I wish you would send word by bearer you are
+better--this one word written will be enough you see.
+
+My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or
+something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon sink
+into the village Churchsward.  Why, OUR time seems coming.  Make way,
+Gentlemen!--Yours very truly,
+
+EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+
+What effect the sweet gentleness of FitzGerald's nature had upon that
+of Borrow is not known, for the replies have not been preserved.
+FitzGerald was a man capable of soothing the angriest and most
+discontented mind, and it is a misfortune that he saw so little of
+Borrow.  In the early part of the following year (24th Jan. 1857)
+FitzGerald wrote to Professor E. B. Cowell of Cambridge:-
+
+
+"I was with Borrow a week ago at Donne's, and also at Yarmouth three
+months ago:  he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray.  He read me
+a long Translation he had made from the Turkish:  which I could not
+admire, and his Taste becomes stranger than ever." {428a}
+
+
+From Wales Mrs George Borrow had written (Sept. 1854) to old Mrs
+Borrow:  "He [Borrow] will, I expect at Christmas, publish his other
+work [The Romany Rye] together with his poetry in all the European
+languages." {428b}  In November (1854) the manuscript of The Romany
+Rye was delivered to John Murray, who appears to have taken his time
+in reading it; for it was not until 23rd December that he expressed
+his views in the following letter.  Even when the letter was written
+it was allowed to remain in John Murray's desk for five weeks, not
+being sent until 27th January:-
+
+
+My Dear Borrow,--I have read with care the MS. of The Romany Rye and
+have pondered anxiously over it; and in what I am about to write I
+think I may fairly claim the privilege of a friend deeply interested
+in you personally, as well as in your reputation as author, and by no
+means insensible to the abilities displayed in your various works.
+It is my firm conviction then, that you will incur the certainty of
+failure and run the risque of injuring your literary fame by
+publishing the MS. as it stands.  Very large omissions seem to me--
+and in this, Elwin, {429a} no mean judge, concurs--absolutely
+indispensable.  That Lavengro would have profited by curtailment, I
+stated before its publication.  The result has verified my
+anticipations, and in the present instance I feel compelled to make
+it the condition of publication.  You can well imagine that it is not
+my INTEREST to shorten a book from two volumes to one unless there
+were really good cause.
+
+Lavengro clearly has not been successful.  Let us not then risque the
+chance of another failure, but try to avoid the rock upon which we
+then split.  You have so great store of interesting matter in your
+mind and in your notes, that I cannot but feel it to be a pity that
+you should harp always upon one string, as it were.  It seems to me
+that you have dwelt too long on English ground in this new work, and
+have resuscitated some characters of the former book (such as F.
+Ardry) whom your readers would have been better pleased to have left
+behind.  Why should you not introduce us rather to those novel scenes
+of Moscovite and Hungarian life respecting which I have heard you
+drop so many stimulating allusions.  Do not, I pray, take offence at
+what I have written.  It is difficult and even painful for me to
+assume the office of critic, and this is one of the reasons why this
+note has lingered so long in my desk.  Fortunately, in the advice I
+am tendering I am supported by others of better literary judgment
+than myself, and who have also deep regard for you.  I will specify
+below some of the passages which I would point out for omission.--
+With best remembrances, I remain, my dear Borrow, Your faithful
+publisher and sincere friend,
+
+JOHN MURRAY.
+
+
+Suggestions for Omission.
+
+The Hungarian in No. 6.
+The Jockey Story, terribly spun out, No. 7.
+Visit to the Church, too long.
+Interview with the Irishman, Do.
+Learning Chinese, too much repetition in this part of a very
+interesting chapter.
+The Postilion and Highwayman.
+Throughout the MS. condensation is indispensable.  Many of the
+narratives are carried to a tedious length by details and repetition.
+The dialogue with Ursula, the song, etc., border on the indelicate.
+I like much Horncastle Fair, the Chinese scholar, except objection
+noted above.
+Grooming of the horse.
+January 27, 1855.
+
+
+On 29th January, Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray a letter that was
+inspired by Borrow himself.  Dr Knapp discovered the original draft,
+some of which was in Borrow's own hand.  It runs:-
+
+
+Dear Mr Murray,--We have received your letters.  In the first place I
+beg leave to say something on a very principal point.  You talk about
+CONDITIONS of publishing.  Mr Borrow has not the slightest wish to
+publish the book.  The MS. was left with you because you wished to
+see it, and when left, you were particularly requested not to let it
+pass out of your own hands.  But it seems you have shown it to
+various individuals whose opinions you repeat.  What those opinions
+are worth may be gathered from the following fact.
+
+The book is one of the most learned works ever written; yet in the
+summary of the opinions which you give, not one single allusion is
+made to the learning which pervades the book, no more than if it
+contained none at all.  It is treated just as if all the philological
+and historical facts were mere inventions, and the book a common
+novel . . .
+
+With regard to Lavengro it is necessary to observe that if ever a
+book experienced infamous and undeserved treatment it was that book.
+It was attacked in every form that envy and malice could suggest, on
+account of Mr Borrow's acquirements and the success of The Bible in
+Spain, and it was deserted by those whose duty it was, in some degree
+to have protected it.  No attempt was ever made to refute the vile
+calumny that it was a book got up against the Popish agitation of
+'51.  It was written years previous to that period--a fact of which
+none is better aware than the Publisher.  Is that calumny to be still
+permitted to go unanswered?
+
+If these suggestions are attended to, well and good; if not, Mr
+Borrow can bide his time.  He is independent of the public and of
+everybody.  Say no more on that Russian Subject.  Mr Borrow has had
+quite enough of the press.  If he wrote a book on Russia, it would be
+said to be like The Bible in Spain, or it would be said to be unlike
+The Bible in Spain, and would be blamed in either case.  He has
+written a book in connection with England such as no other body could
+have written, and he now rests from his labours.  He has found
+England an ungrateful country.  It owes much to him, and he owes
+nothing to it.  If he had been a low ignorant impostor, like a person
+he could name, he would have been employed and honoured.--I remain,
+Yours sincerely,
+
+MARY BORROW.
+
+
+On 5th April 1856 Mrs Borrow wrote again, requesting Murray to return
+the manuscript, but for what purpose she does not state.  Two days
+later it was despatched by rail from Albemarle Street.
+
+Some years before, Borrow had met Rev. Whitwell Elwin, Rector of
+Booton, somewhere about the time he (Elwin) came up to London to edit
+The Quarterly Review, viz., 1853. {431a}  The first interview between
+the two men has been described as characteristic of both.
+
+
+"Borrow was just then very sore with his slashing critics, and on
+someone mentioning that Elwin was a 'Quartering reviewer,' he said,
+'Sir, I wish you a better employment.'  Then hastily changing the
+subject, he called out, 'What party are you in the Church--
+Tractarian, Moderate, or Evangelical?  I am happy to say, _I_ am the
+old HIGH.'  'I am happy to say I am NOT,' was Elwin's emphatic reply.
+Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he
+endeavoured to speak as broadly as possible.  'I told him,' said
+Elwin, 'that he had not cultivated it with his usual success.'  As
+the conversation proceeded it became less disputatious, and the two
+ended by becoming so cordial that they promised to visit each other.
+Borrow fulfilled his promise in the following October, when he went
+to Booton, and was 'full of anecdote and reminiscence,' and delighted
+the rectory children by singing them songs in the gypsy tongue.
+Elwin during this visit urged him to try his hand at an article for
+the Review.  'Never,' he said, 'I have made a resolution never to
+have anything to do with such a blackguard trade.'" {432a}
+
+
+Elwin became greatly interested in The Romany Rye.  He endeavoured to
+influence its composition, and even wrote to Borrow begging him "to
+give his sequel to Lavengro more of an historical, and less of a
+romancing air."  He was not happy about the book.  He wrote to John
+Murray in March:-
+
+
+"'It is not the statements themselves which provoke incredulity, but
+the melodramatic effect which he tries to impart to all his
+adventures.'  Instead of 'roaring like a lion,' in reply, as Elwin
+had expected, he returned quite a 'lamb-like' note, which gave
+promise of a greater success for his new work than its precursor."
+{432b}
+
+
+Borrow appears to have become tired of biding his time with regard to
+The Romany Rye, and on 27th Feb. 1857 he wrote to John Murray to say
+that "the work must go to press, and that unless the printing is
+forthwith commenced, I must come up to London and make arrangements
+myself.  Time is passing away.  It ought to have appeared many years
+ago.  I can submit to no more delays."  The work was accordingly
+proceeded with, and Elwin wrote a criticism of the work for The
+Quarterly Review from the proof-sheets:-
+
+
+"When the review was almost finished, it was on the point of being
+altogether withdrawn, owing to a passage in Romany Rye which Elwin
+said was clearly meant to be a reflection on his friend Ford, 'to
+avenge the presumed refusal of the latter to praise Lavengro in The
+Quarterly Review.'  'I am very anxious,' he said, 'to get Borrow
+justice for rare merits which have been entirely overlooked, but if
+he persists in publishing an attack of this kind I shall, I fear, not
+be able to serve him.'  The objectionable paragraphs had been written
+by Borrow under a misapprehension, and he cancelled them as soon as
+he was convinced of his error." {433a}
+
+
+John Murray determined not to publish the book unless the offending
+passage were removed.  He wrote to Borrow the following letter:-
+
+
+8th April 1857.
+
+My Dear Borrow,--When I have done anything towards you deserving of
+apology I will not hesitate to offer one.  As it is, I have acted
+loyally towards you, and with a view to maintain your interests.
+
+I agreed to publish your present work solely with the object of
+obliging you, and in a great degree at the strong recommendation of
+Cooke.  I meant (as was my duty) to do my very best to promote its
+success.  You on your side promised to listen to me in regard to any
+necessary omissions; and on the faith of this, I pointed out one
+omission, which I make the indispensable condition of my proceeding
+further with the book.  I have asked nothing unfair nor unreasonable-
+-nay, a compliance with the request is essential for your own
+character as an author and a man.
+
+You are the last man that I should ever expect to "frighten or
+bully"; and if a mild but firm remonstrance against an offensive
+passage in your book is interpreted by you into such an application,
+I submit that the grounds for the notion must exist nowhere but in
+your own imagination.  The alternative offered to you is to omit or
+publish elsewhere.  Nothing shall compel me to PUBLISH what you have
+written.  Think calmly and dispassionately over this, and when you
+have decided let me know.
+
+Yours very faithfully,
+JOHN MURRAY.
+
+
+The reference that had so offended Murray and Elwin had, in all
+probability been interpolated in proof form, otherwise it would have
+been discovered either when Murray read the manuscript or Elwin the
+proofs.  By return of post came the following reply from Borrow, then
+at Great Yarmouth:-
+
+
+Dear Sir,--Yesterday I received your letter.  You had better ask your
+cousin [Robert Cooke] to come down and talk about matters.  AFTER
+Monday I shall be disengaged and shall be most happy to see him.  And
+now I must tell you that you are exceedingly injudicious.  You call a
+chapter heavy, and I, not wishing to appear unaccommodating, remove
+or alter two or three passages for which I do not particularly care,
+whereupon you make most unnecessary comments, obtruding your private
+judgment upon matters with which you have no business, and of which
+it is impossible that you should have a competent knowledge.  If you
+disliked the passages you might have said so, but you had no right to
+say anything more.  I believe that you not only meant no harm, but
+that your intentions were good; unfortunately, however, people with
+the best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm.  In your
+language you are frequently in the highest degree injudicious; for
+example, in your last letter you talk of obliging me by publishing my
+work.  Now is not that speaking very injudiciously?  Surely you
+forget that I could return a most cutting answer were I disposed to
+do so.
+
+I believe, however, that your intentions are good, and that you are
+disposed to be friendly.--Yours truly,
+
+GEORGE BORROW.
+
+
+The tone of this letter is strangely reminiscent of some of the Rev
+Andrew Brandram's admonitions to Borrow himself, during his
+association with the Bible Society.  Borrow bowed to the wind, and
+the offending passage was deleted, and The Romany Rye eventually
+appeared on 30th April 1857, in an edition of a thousand copies.  The
+public, or such part of it as had not forgotten Borrow, had been kept
+waiting six years to know what had happened on the morning after the
+storm.  Lavengro had ended by the postilion concluding his story with
+"Young gentleman, I will now take a spell on your blanket--young
+lady, good-night," and presumably the three, Borrow, Isopel Berners
+and their guest had lain down to sleep, and a great quiet fell upon
+the dingle, and the moon and the stars shone down upon it, and the
+red glow from the charcoal in the brazier paled and died away.
+
+The Romany Rye is a puzzling book.  The latter portion, at least,
+seems to suggest "spiritual autobiography."  It reveals the man, his
+atmosphere, his character, and nowhere better than among the jockeys
+at Horncastle.  It gives a better and more convincing picture of
+Borrow than the most accurate list of dates and occurrences, all
+vouched for upon unimpeachable authority.  It is impressionism
+applied to autobiography, which has always been considered as
+essentially a subject for photographic treatment.  Borrow thought
+otherwise, with the result that many people decline to believe that
+his picture is a portrait, because there is a question as to the
+dates.
+
+Among the reviews, which were on the whole unfriendly, was the
+remarkable notice in The Quarterly Review, by the Rev. Whitwell
+Elwin:- {435a}
+
+
+"Nobody," he wrote, "sympathises with wounded vanity, and the world
+only laughs when a man angrily informs it that it does not rate him
+at his true value.  The public to whom he appeals must, after all, be
+the judge of his pretensions.  Their verdict at first is frequently
+wrong, but it is they themselves who must reverse it, and not the
+author who is upon his trial before them.  The attacks of critics, if
+they are unjust, invariably yield to the same remedy.  Though we do
+not think that Mr Borrow is a good counsel in his own cause, we are
+yet strongly of the opinion that Time in this case has some wrongs to
+repair, and that Lavengro has NOT obtained the fame which was its
+due.  It contains passages which in their way are not surpassed by
+anything in English Literature."
+
+
+The value of these prophetic words lies in the fine spirit of
+fatherly reproof in which the whole review was written.  It is the
+work of a critic who regarded literature as a thing to be approached,
+both by author and reviewer, with grave and deliberate ceremony, not
+with enthusiasm or prejudice.  From any other source the following
+words would not have possessed the significance they did, coming from
+a man of such sane ideas with the courage to express them:-
+
+
+"Various portions of the history are known to be a faithful narrative
+of Mr Borrow's career, while we ourselves can testify, as to many
+other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with
+which he has described both men and things.  Far from his showing any
+tendency to exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have
+known, and they are not a few, are rather within the truth than
+beyond it.  However picturesquely they may be drawn, the lines are
+invariably those of nature.  Why under these circumstances he should
+envelop the question in mystery is more than we can divine.  There
+can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the
+work is a narrative of actual occurrences." {436a}
+
+
+The Appendix itself, which had drawn from Elwin the grave declaration
+that "Mr Borrow is very angry with his critics," is a fine piece of
+rhetorical denunciation.  It opens with the deliberate restraint of a
+man who feels the fury of his wrath surging up within him.  It tells
+again the story of Lavengro, pointing morals as it goes.  Then the
+studied calm is lost--Priestcraft, "Foreign Nonsense," "Gentility
+Nonsense," "Canting Nonsense," "Pseudo-Critics," "Pseudo-Radicals" he
+flogs and pillories mercilessly until, arriving at "The Old Radical,"
+he throws off all restraint and lunges out wildly, mad with hate and
+despair.  As a piece of literary folly, the Appendix to The Romany
+Rye has probably never been surpassed.  It alienated from Borrow all
+but his personal friends, and it sealed his literary fate as far as
+his own generation was concerned.  In short, he had burnt his boats.
+
+Borrow had sent a copy of The Romany Rye to FitzGerald, which is
+referred to by him in a letter written from Gorleston to Professor
+Cowell (5th June 1857):-
+
+
+"Within hail almost lives George Borrow who has lately published, and
+given me, two new Volumes of Lavengro called Romany Rye, with some
+excellent things, and some very bad (as I have made bold to write to
+him--how shall I face him!).  You would not like the Book at all, I
+think." {437a}
+
+
+Borrow was bitterly disappointed at the effect produced by The Romany
+Rye.  On someone once saying that it was the finest piece of literary
+invective since Swift, he replied, "Yes, I meant it to be; and what
+do you think the effect was?  No one took the least notice of it!"
+{437b}
+
+The Romany Rye was not a success.  The thousand copies lasted a year.
+When it appeared likely that a second edition would be required,
+Borrow wrote to John Murray urging him not to send the book to the
+press again until he "was quite sure the demand for it will at least
+defray all attendant expenses."  He saw that whatever profits had
+resulted from the publication of the first edition, were in danger of
+being swallowed up in the preparation of a second.  When this did
+eventually make its appearance in 1858, it was limited to 750 copies,
+which lasted until 1872.
+
+Borrow's own attitude with regard to the work and his wisdom in
+publishing it is summed up in a letter to John Murray (17th Sept.
+1857):-
+
+
+"I was very anxious to bring it out," he writes; "and I bless God
+that I had the courage and perseverance to do so.  It is of course
+unpalatable to many; for it scorns to foster delusion, to cry 'peace
+where there is no peace,' and denounces boldly the evils which are
+hurrying the country to destruction, and which have kindled God's
+anger against it, namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty,
+covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and above all the rage for
+gentility, which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and
+honourable feeling."
+
+
+The writing of the Appendix had aroused in Borrow all his old
+enthusiasm, and he appears to have come to the determination to
+publish a number of works, including a veritable library of
+translations.  At the end of The Romany Rye appeared a lengthy list
+of books in preparation. {438a}
+
+In August 1857 Borrow paid a second visit to Wales, walking "upwards
+of four hundred miles."  Starting from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire,
+he visited Tenby, Pembroke, Milford Haven, Haverford, St David's,
+Fishguard, Newport, Cardigan, Lampeter; passing into Brecknockshire,
+he eventually reached Mortimer's Cross in Hereford and thence to
+Shrewsbury.  In October he was at Leighton, Donnington and Uppington,
+where he found traces of Gronwy Owen, the one-time curate and all-
+time poet.
+
+Throughout his life Borrow had shown by every action and word written
+about her, the great love he bore his mother.  When his wife wrote to
+her and he was too restless to do so himself, he would interpolate
+two or three lines to "My dear Mamma."  She was always in his
+thoughts, and he never wavered in his love for her and devotion to
+her comfort; whilst she looked upon him as only a mother so good and
+so tender could look upon a son who had become her "only hope."
+
+For many years of her life it had been ordained that this brave old
+lady should live alone. {439a}  In the middle of August 1858 the news
+reached Borrow that his mother had been taken suddenly ill.  She was
+in her eighty-seventh year, and at such an age all illnesses are
+dangerous.  Borrow hastened to Oulton, and arrived just in time to be
+with her at the last.
+
+Thus on 16th August 1858, of "pulmonary congestion," died Anne
+Borrow, who had followed her husband about with his regiment, and had
+reared and educated her two boys under circumstances of great
+disadvantage.  She had lost one; but the other, her youngest born,
+whom she had so often shielded from his father's reproaches, had been
+spared to her, and she had seen him famous.  Upon her grave in Oulton
+Churchyard the son caused to be inscribed the words, "She was a good
+wife and a good mother," than which no woman can ask more. {440a}
+
+The death of his mother was a great shock to Borrow.  "He felt the
+blow keenly," Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray, "and I advised a tour
+in Scotland to recruit his health and spirits."  Accordingly he went
+North early in October, leaving his wife and Henrietta at Great
+Yarmouth.  He visited the Highlands, walking several hundred miles.
+Mull struck him as "a very wild country, perhaps the wildest in
+Europe."  Many of its place-names reminded him strongly of the Isle
+of Man.  At the end of November he finished up the tour at Lerwick in
+Shetland, where he bought presents for his "loved ones," having seen
+Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick, Thurso among
+other places.  His impressions were not altogether favourable to the
+Scotch.  "A queerer country I never saw in all my life," he wrote
+later . . . "a queerer set of people than the Scotch you would
+scarcely see in a summer's day." {440b}
+
+In the following year (1859) an excursion was made to Ireland by
+Borrow and his family.  Making Dublin his headquarters, where he left
+his wife and Henrietta comfortably settled, he tramped to Connemara
+and the Giant's Causeway, the expedition being full of adventure and
+affording him "much pleasure," in spite of the fact that he was
+"frequently wet to the skin, and indifferently lodged."
+
+Borrow had inherited from his mother some property at Mattishall
+Burgh, one and a half miles from his birth-place, consisting of some
+land, a thatched house and outbuildings, now demolished.  This was
+let to a small-holder named Henry Hill.  Borrow thought very highly
+of his tenant, and for hours together would tramp up and down beside
+him as he ploughed the land, asking questions, and hearing always
+something new from the amazing stores of nature knowledge that Henry
+Hill had acquired.  This Norfolk worthy appears to have been
+possessed of a genius for many things.  He was well versed in herbal
+lore, a self-taught 'cellist, playing each Sunday in the
+Congregational Chapel at Mattishall, and an equally self-taught
+watch-repairer; but his chief claim to fame was as a bee-keeper,
+local tradition crediting him with being the first man to keep bees
+under glass.  He would solemnly state that his bees, whom he looked
+upon as friends, talked to him.  On Sundays the country folk for
+miles round would walk over to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry
+Hill's bees, and hear him expound their lore.  It was perforce
+Sunday, there was no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that
+generation, who seemed always to live on the verge of starvation.
+Borrow himself expressed regret to Henry Hill that it had not been
+possible to add the education of the academy to that of the land.  He
+saw that the combination would have produced an even more remarkable
+man.
+
+In Norfolk all strangers are regarded with suspicion.  Lifelong
+friendships are not contracted in a day.  The East Anglian is shrewd,
+and requires to know something about those whom he admits to the
+sacred inner circle of his friendship.  Borrow was well-known in the
+Mattishall district, and was looked upon with more than usual
+suspicion.  He was unquestionably a strange man, in speech, in
+appearance, in habits.  He could and would knock down any who
+offended him; but, worst of all, he was the intimate of gypsies, sat
+by their fires, spoke in their tongue.  The population round about
+was entirely an agricultural one, and all united in hating the
+gypsies as their greatest enemies, because of their depredations.
+Add to this the fact that Borrow was a frequenter of public-houses,
+of which there were SEVEN in the village, and was wont to boast that
+you could get at the true man only after he had been mellowed into
+speech by good English ale.  Then he would open his heart and
+unburden his mind of all the accumulated knowledge that he possessed,
+and add something to the epic of the soil.  Borrow's overbearing
+manner made people shy of him.  On one occasion he told John, the son
+and successor of Henry Hill, that he ought to be responsible for the
+debt of his half-brother; the debt, it may be mentioned, was to
+Borrow.
+
+There is no better illustration of the suspicion with which Borrow
+was regarded locally, than an incident that occurred during one of
+his visits to Mattishall.  He called upon John Hill at Church Farm to
+collect his rent.  The evening was spent very agreeably.  Borrow
+recited some of his ballads, quoted Scripture and languages, and sang
+a song.  He was particularly interested on account of Mrs Hill being
+from London, where she knew many of his haunts.  He remained the
+whole evening with the family and partook of their meal; but was
+allowed to go to one of the seven public-houses for a bed, although
+there were spare bedrooms in the house that he might have occupied.
+Such was the suspicion that Borrow's habits created in the minds of
+his fellow East Anglians. {442a}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII:  JULY 1859-JANUARY 1869
+
+
+
+After his second tour in Wales, Borrow had submitted to John Murray
+the manuscript of his translation of The Sleeping Bard, which in 1830
+had so alarmed the little Welsh bookseller of Smithfield.  "I really
+want something to do," Borrow wrote, "and seeing the work passing
+through the press might amuse me."  Murray, however, could not see
+his way to accept the offer, and the manuscript was returned.  Borrow
+decided to publish the book at his own expense, and accordingly
+commissioned a Yarmouth man to print him 250 copies, upon the title-
+page of which John Murray permitted his name to appear.
+
+In the note in which he tells of the Welsh bookseller's doubts and
+fears, Borrow goes on to assure his readers that there is no harm in
+the book.
+
+
+"It is true," he says, "that the Author is any thing but mincing in
+his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the
+Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious.
+There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope
+however that there is not so much as there was.  Indeed can we doubt
+that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in
+'60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which
+Smithfield shrank from in '30."
+
+
+The edition was very speedily exhausted, largely on account of an
+article entitled, The Welsh and Their Literature, written years
+before, that Borrow adapted as a review of the book, and published
+anonymously in The Quarterly Review (Jan. 1861).  The Sleeping Bard
+was not reprinted.
+
+The next event of importance in Borrow's life was his removal to
+London with Mrs Borrow and Henrietta.  Towards the end of the Irish
+holiday (4th Nov. 1859), Mrs Borrow had written to John Murray:  "If
+all be well in the Spring, I shall wish to look around, and select a
+pleasant, healthy residence within from three to ten miles of
+London."  Borrow may have felt more at liberty to make the change now
+that his mother was dead, although whilst she was at Oulton he was as
+little company for her at Great Yarmouth as he would have been in
+London.  Whatever led them to the decision to take up their residence
+in London, Borrow and his wife left Great Yarmouth at the end of
+June, and immediately proceeded to look about them for a suitable
+house.  Their choice eventually fell upon number 22 Hereford Square,
+Brompton, which had the misfortune to be only a few doors from number
+26, where lived Frances Power Cobbe.  The rent was 65 pounds per
+annum.  The Borrows entered upon their tenancy at the Michaelmas
+quarter, and were joined by Henrietta, who had remained behind at
+Great Yarmouth during the house-hunting.
+
+Miss Cobbe has given in her Autobiography a very unlovely picture of
+George Borrow during the period of his residence in Hereford Square.
+No woman, except his relatives and dependants, will tolerate egoism
+in a man.  Borrow was an egoist.  If not permitted to lead the
+conversation, he frequently wrapped himself in a gloomy silence and
+waited for an opportunity to discomfit the usurper of the place he
+seemed to consider his own.  Among his papers were found after his
+death a large number of letters from poor men whom Borrow had
+assisted.  His friend the Rev. Francis Cunningham once wrote to him a
+letter protesting against his assisting Nonconformist schools.  He
+gave to Church and Chapel alike.  This disproves misanthropy, and
+leaves egoism as the only explanation of his occasional lapses into
+bitterness or rudeness.  When in happy vein, however, "his
+conversation . . . was unlike that of any other man; whether he told
+a long story or only commented on some ordinary topic, he was always
+quaint, often humorous." {445a}
+
+Miss Cobbe would not humour an egoist, because constitutionally
+women, especially clever women, dislike them, unless they wish to
+marry them.  When she heard it said, as it very frequently was said,
+that Borrow was a gypsy by blood, she caustically remarked that if he
+were not he "OUGHT to have been."  Miss Cobbe had living with her a
+Miss Lloyd who, "amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham)
+enthusiasm for Wales, . . . cultivated his acquaintance.  I,"
+continued Miss Cobbe frankly, "never liked him, thinking him more or
+less of a hypocrite." {445b}
+
+On one occasion Borrow had accepted an invitation from Miss Cobbe to
+meet some friends, but subsequently withdrew his acceptance "on
+finding that Dr Martineau was to be of the party . . . nor did he
+ever after attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining
+that Dr Martineau would not be present!"  This she explained by the
+assertion that Dr Martineau had "horsed" Borrow when he was punished
+for running away from school at Norwich.  It appeared "irresistibly
+comic" to her mind.
+
+There is an amusing account given by Miss Cobbe of how she worsted
+Borrow, which is certainly extremely flattering to her
+accomplishments.  Once when talking with him she happened to say
+
+
+"something about the imperfect education of women, and he said it was
+RIGHT they should be ignorant, and that no man could endure a clever
+wife.  I laughed at him openly," she continues, "and told him some
+men knew better.  What did he think of the Brownings?  'Oh, he had
+heard the name; he did not know anything of them.  Since Scott, he
+read no modern writer; Scott WAS GREATER THAN HOMER!  What he liked
+were curious, old, erudite books about mediaeval and northern
+things.'  I said I knew little of such literature, and preferred the
+writers of our own age, but indeed I was no great student at all.
+Thereupon he evidently wanted to astonish me; and, talking of
+Ireland, said, 'Ah, yes; a most curious, mixed race.  First there
+were the Firbolgs,--the old enchanters, who raised mists.'  . . .
+'Don't you think, Mr Borrow,' I asked, 'it was the Tuatha-de-Danaan
+who did that?  Keatinge expressly says that they conquered the
+Firbolgs by that means.'  (Mr B. somewhat out of countenance), 'Oh!
+Aye!  Keatinge is THE authority; a most extraordinary writer.'
+'Well, I should call him the Geoffrey of Monmouth of Ireland.'  (Mr
+B. changing the VENUE), 'I delight in Norse-stories; they are far
+grander than the Greek.  There is the story of Olaf the Saint of
+Norway.  Can anything be grander?  What a noble character!'  'But,' I
+said, 'what do YOU think of his putting all those poor Druids on the
+Skerry of Shrieks, and leaving them to be drowned by the tide?'
+(Thereupon Mr B. looked at me askant out of his gipsy eyes, as if he
+thought me an example of the evils of female education!)  'Well!
+Well!  I forgot about the Skerry of Shrieks.  Then there is the story
+of Beowulf the Saxon going out to sea in his burning ship to die.'
+'Oh, Mr Borrow! that isn't a Saxon story at all.  It is in the
+Heimskringla!  It is told of Hakon of Norway.'  Then, I asked him
+about the gipsies and their language, and if they were certainly
+Aryans?  He didn't know (or pretended not to know) what Aryans were;
+and altogether displayed a miraculous mixture of odd knowledge and
+more odd ignorance.  Whether the latter were real or assumed I know
+not!" {446a}
+
+
+These were some of the neighbourly little pleasantries indulged in by
+Miss Cobbe, regarding a man who was a frequent guest at her house.
+
+
+"His has indeed been a fantastic fate!" writes Mr Theodore Watts-
+Dunton.  "When the shortcomings of any illustrious man save Borrow
+are under discussion, 'les defauts de ses qualites' is the criticism-
+-wise as charitable--which they evoke.  Yes, each one is allowed to
+have his angularities save Borrow.  Each one is allowed to show his
+own pet unpleasant facets of character now and then--allowed to show
+them as inevitable foils to the pleasant ones--save Borrow.  HIS
+weaknesses no one ever condones.  During his lifetime his faults were
+for ever chafing and irritating his acquaintances, and now that he
+and they are dead, these faults of his seem to be chafing and
+irritating people of another generation.  A fantastic fate, I say,
+for him who was so interesting to some of us!" {447a}
+
+
+On occasion Borrow could be inexcusably rude, as he was to a member
+of the Russian Embassy who one day called at Hereford Square for a
+copy of Targum for the Czar, when he told him that his Imperial
+master could fetch it himself.  Again, no one can defend him for
+affronting the "very distinguished scholar" with whom he happened to
+disagree, by thundering out, "Sir, you're a fool!"  Such lapses are
+deplorable; but why should we view them in a different light from
+those of Dr Johnson?
+
+What would have been regarded in another distinguished man as a
+pleasant vein of humour was in Borrow's case looked upon as evidence
+of his unveracity.  A contemporary tells how, on one occasion, he
+went with him into "a tavern" for a pint of ale, when Borrow pointed
+out
+
+
+"a yokel at the far end of the apartment.  The foolish bumpkin was
+slumbering.  Borrow in a stage whisper, gravely assured me that the
+man was a murderer, and confided to me with all the emphasis of
+honest conviction the scene and details of his crime.  Subsequently I
+ascertained that the elaborate incidents and fine touches of local
+colour were but the coruscations of a too vivid imagination, and that
+the villain of the ale-house on the common was as innocent as the
+author of The Romany Rye." {447b}
+
+
+If Borrow had been called upon to explain this little pleasantry he
+would in all probability have replied in the words of Mr Petulengro,
+that he had told his acquaintance "things . . . which are not exactly
+true, simply to make a fool of you, brother."
+
+It is strange how those among his contemporaries who disliked him,
+denied Borrow the indulgence that is almost invariably accorded to
+genius.  Those who were not for him were bitterly against him.  In
+their eyes he was either outrageously uncivil or insultingly rude.
+Dr Hake, although a close friend, saw Borrow's dominant weakness, his
+love of the outward evidences of fame.  Dr Hake's impartiality gives
+greater weight to his testimony when he tells of Borrow's first
+meeting with Dr Robert Latham, the ethnologist, philologist and
+grammarian.  Latham much wanted to meet Borrow, and promised Dr Hake
+to be on his best behaviour.  He was accordingly invited to dinner
+with Borrow.  Latham as usual began to show off his knowledge.  He
+became aggressive, and finally very excited; but throughout the meal
+Borrow showed the utmost patience and courtesy, much to his host's
+relief.  When he subsequently encountered Latham in the street he
+always stopped "to say a kind word, seeing his forlorn condition."
+
+Dr Hake had settled at Coombe End, Roehampton, and now that the
+Borrows were in London, the two families renewed their old
+friendship.  Borrow would walk over to Coombe End, and on arriving at
+the gate would call out, "Are you alone?"  If there were other
+callers he would pass by, if not he would enter and frequently
+persuade Dr Hake, and perhaps his sons, to accompany him for a walk.
+
+"There was something not easily forgotten," writes Mr A. Egmont Hake,
+"in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates,
+singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart." {448a}  They had
+many pleasant tramps together, mostly in Richmond Park, where Borrow
+appeared to know every tree and showed himself very learned in deer.
+He was
+
+
+"always saying something in his loud, self-asserting voice; sometimes
+stopping suddenly, drawing his huge stature erect, and changing the
+keen and haughty expression of his face into the rapt and half
+fatuous look of the oracle, he would without preface recite some long
+fragment from Welsh or Scandinavian bards, his hands hanging from his
+chest and flapping in symphony.  Then he would push on again, and as
+suddenly stop, arrested by the beautiful scenery, and exclaim, 'Ah!
+this is England, as the Pretender said when he again looked on his
+fatherland.'  Then on reaching any town, he would be sure to spy out
+some lurking gypsy, whom no one but himself would have known from a
+common horse-dealer.  A conversation in Romany would ensue, a
+shilling would change hands, two fingers would be pointed at the
+gypsy, and the interview would be at an end." {449a}
+
+
+One day he asked Dr Hake's youngest boy if he knew how to fight a man
+bigger than himself, and on being told that he didn't, advised him to
+"accept his challenge, and tell him to take off his coat, and while
+he was doing it knock him down and then run for your life." {449b}
+
+Once Borrow arrived at Dr Hake's house to find another caller in the
+person of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, and they "went through a pleasant
+trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took the first fiddle . . .
+Borrow made himself agreeable to Watts [-Dunton], recited a fairy
+tale in the best style to him, and liked him."  Borrow did not
+recognise in Mr Watts-Dunton the young man whom he had seen bathing
+on the beach at Great Yarmouth, pleased to be near his hero, but too
+much afraid to venture to address him.  Writing of this meeting at
+Coombe End, Mr Watts-Dunton says:  "There is however no doubt that
+Borrow would have run away from me had I been associated in his mind
+with the literary calling.  But at that time I had written nothing at
+all save poems, and a prose story or two of a romantic kind."  Borrow
+hated the literary man, he was at war with the whole genus.
+
+Mr Watts-Dunton confesses that he made great efforts to enlist
+Borrow's interest.  He touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, beer,
+bruisers, philology, "gentility nonsense," the "trumpery great"; but
+without success.  Borrow was obviously suspicious of him.  Then with
+inspiration he happened to mention what proved to be a magic name.
+
+
+"I tried other subjects in the same direction," Mr Watts-Dunton
+continues, "but with small success, till in a lucky moment I
+bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett, . . . the man who, after having
+been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had
+shared a double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night,
+escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor, and
+afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had been
+hanged for murdering.  The truth was that Gwinett's supposed victim,
+having been attacked on the night in question by a violent bleeding
+of the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes' walk in
+the sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to
+sea, where he had been in service ever since.  The story is true, and
+the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on what
+authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett's dictation for a
+platter of cow-heel.
+
+"To the bewilderment of Dr Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose
+Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of
+'Achilles' wrath,' and appealed to Dr Hake (who, of course, had never
+heard of the book or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the
+pamphlet had gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor
+theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story.  Borrow was caught
+at last.  'What?' said he, 'you know that pamphlet about Ambrose
+Gwinett?'  'Know it?' said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked
+me if I knew 'Macbeth'; 'of course I know Ambrose Gwinett, Mr Borrow,
+don't you?'  'And you know the play?' said he.  'Of course I do, Mr
+Borrow,' I said, in a tone that was now a little angry at such an
+insinuation of crass ignorance.  'Why,' said he, 'it's years and
+years since it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I
+did go to see THAT.'  'Well I should rather think you DID, Mr
+Borrow,' said I.  'But,' said he, staring hard at me, 'you--you were
+not born!'  'And I was not born,' said I, 'when the "Agamemnon" was
+produced, and yet one reads the "Agamemnon," Mr Borrow.  I have read
+the drama of "Ambrose Gwinett."  I have it bound in morocco, with
+some more of Douglas Jerrold's early transpontine plays, and some
+AEschylean dramas by Mr Fitzball.  I will lend it to you, Mr Borrow,
+if you like.'  He was completely conquered, 'Hake!' he cried, in a
+loud voice, regardless of my presence, 'Hake! your friend knows
+everything.'  Then he murmured to himself.  'Wonderful man!  Knows
+Ambrose Gwinett!'
+
+"It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause me to
+have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for the memory
+of George Borrow." {451a}
+
+
+After this, intercourse proved easy.  At Borrow's suggestion they
+walked to the Bald-Faced Stag, in Kingston Vale, to inspect Jerry
+Abershaw's sword.  This famous old hostelry was a favourite haunt of
+Borrow's, where he would often rest during his walk and drink "a cup
+of ale" (which he would call "swipes," and make a wry face as he
+swallowed) and talk of the daring deeds of Jerry the highwayman.
+
+Many people have testified to the pleasure of being in the company of
+the whimsical, eccentric, humbug-hating Borrow.
+
+
+"He was a choice companion on a walk," writes Mr A. Egmont Hake,
+"whether across country or in the slums of Houndsditch.  His
+enthusiasm for nature was peculiar; he could draw more poetry from a
+wide-spreading marsh with its straggling rushes than from the most
+beautiful scenery, and would stand and look at it with rapture."
+{451b}
+
+
+Since the tour in Wales in 1854, from which he returned with the four
+"Note Books," Borrow had been working steadily at Wild Wales.  In
+1857 the book had been announced as "ready for the press"; but this
+was obviously an anticipation.  The manuscript was submitted to John
+Murray early in November 1861.  On the 20th of that month he wrote
+the following letter, addressing it, not to Borrow, but to his wife:-
+
+
+Dear Mrs Borrow,--The MS. of Wild Wales has occupied my thoughts
+almost ever since Friday last.
+
+I approached this MS. with some diffidence, recollecting the
+unsatisfactory results, on the whole, of our last publication--Romany
+Rye.  I have read a large part of this new work with care and
+attention, and although it is beautifully written and in a style of
+English undefiled, which few writers can surpass, there is yet a want
+of stirring incident in it which makes me fearful as to the result of
+its publication.
+
+In my hands at least I cannot think it would succeed even as well as
+Romany Rye--and I am fearful of not doing justice to it.  I do not
+like to undertake a work with the chance of reproach that it may have
+failed through my want of power to promote its circulation, and I do
+wish, for Borrow's own sake, that in this instance he would try some
+other publisher and perhaps some other form of publication.
+
+In my hands I am convinced the work will not answer the author's
+expectations, and I am not prepared to take on me this amount of
+responsibility.
+
+I will give the best advice I can if called upon, and shall be only
+too glad if I can be useful to Mr Borrow.  I regret to have to write
+in this sense, but believe me always, Dear Mrs Borrow,
+
+Your faithful friend,
+JOHN MURRAY.
+
+
+The reply to this letter has not been preserved.  It would appear
+that some "stirring incidents" were added, among others most probably
+the account of Borrow blessing the Irish reapers, who mistook him for
+Father Toban.  This anecdote was one of John Murray's favourite
+passages.  It is evident that some concession was made to induce
+Murray to change his mind.  In any case Wild Wales appeared towards
+the close of 1862 in an edition of 1000 copies.  The publisher's
+misgivings were not justified, as the first edition produced a
+profit, up to 30th June 1863, of 531 pounds, 14s., which was equally
+divided between author and publisher.  The second, and cheap, edition
+of 3000 copies lasted for thirteen years, and the deficiency on this
+absorbed the greater part of the publisher's profit.
+
+In a way it is the most remarkable of Borrow's books; for it shows
+that he was making a serious effort to regain his public.  It is an
+older, wiser and chastened Borrow that appears in its pages, striding
+through the land of the bards at six miles an hour, his satchel slung
+over his shoulder, his green umbrella grasped in his right hand,
+shouting the songs of Wales, about which he knew more than any man he
+met.  There are no gypsies (except towards the end of the book a
+reference to his meeting with Captain Bosvile), no bruisers, the pope
+is scarcely mentioned, and "gentility-nonsense" is veiled almost to
+the point of elimination.  It seems scarcely conceivable that the
+hand that had written the appendix to The Romany Rye could have so
+restrained itself as to write Wild Wales.  Borrow had evidently read
+and carefully digested Whitwell Elwin's friendly strictures upon The
+Romany Rye.  Instead of the pope, the gypsies and the bruisers of
+England, there were the vicarage cat, the bards and the thousand and
+one trivial incidents of the wayside.  There were occasional gleams
+of the old fighting spirit, notably when he characterises sherry,
+{453a} as "a silly, sickly compound, the use of which will transform
+a nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of
+sketchers, scribblers, and punsters,--in fact, into what Englishmen
+are at the present day."  He has created the atmosphere of Wales as
+he did that of the gypsy encampment.  He shows the jealous way in
+which the Welsh cling to their language, and their suspicion of the
+Saesneg, or Saxon.  Above all, he shows how national are the Welsh
+poets, belonging not to the cultured few; but to the labouring man as
+much as to the landed proprietor.  Borrow earned the respect of the
+people, not only because he knew their language; but on account of
+his profound knowledge of their literature, their history, and their
+traditions.  No one could escape him, he accosted every soul he met,
+and evinced a desire for information as to place-names that instantly
+arrested their attention.
+
+The most curious thing about Wild Wales is the omission of all
+mention of the Welsh Gypsies, who, with those of Hungary, share the
+distinction of being the aristocrats of their race.  Several
+explanations have been suggested to account for the curious
+circumstance.  Had Borrow's knowledge of Welsh Romany been scanty, he
+could very soon have improved it.  The presence of his wife and
+stepdaughter was no hindrance; for, as a matter of fact, they were
+very little with him, even when they and Borrow were staying at
+Llangollen; but during the long tours they were many miles away.  In
+all probability the Welsh Gypsies were sacrificed to British
+prejudice, much as were pugilism and the baiting of the pope.
+
+In spite of its simple charm and convincing atmosphere, Wild Wales
+did not please the critics.  Those who noticed it (and there were
+many who did not) either questioned its genuineness, or found it
+crowded with triviality and self-glorification.  It was full of the
+superfluous, the superfluous repeated, and above all it was too long
+(some 250,000 words).  The Spectator notice was an exception; it did
+credit to the critical faculty of the man who wrote it.  He declined
+"to boggle and wrangle over minor defects in what is intrinsically
+good," and praised Wild Wales as "the first really clever book . . .
+in which an honest attempt is made to do justice to Welsh
+literature."
+
+Borrow had much time upon his hands in London, which he occupied
+largely in walking.  He visited the Metropolitan Gypsyries at
+Wandsworth, "the Potteries," and "the Mounts," as described in Romano
+Lavo-Lil.  Sometimes he would be present at some sporting event, such
+as the race between the Indian Deerfoot and Jackson, styled the
+American Deer--tame sport in comparison with the "mills" of his
+boyhood.  He did very little writing, and from 1862, when Wild Wales
+appeared, until he published The Romano Lavo-Lil in 1874, his
+literary output consisted of only some translations contributed to
+Once a Week (January 1862 to December 1863).
+
+In 1865 he was to lose his stepdaughter, who married a William
+MacOubrey, M.D., described in the marriage register as a physician of
+Sloane Street, London, and subsequently upon his tombstone as a
+barrister.  In the July of 1866 Borrow and his wife went to Belfast
+on a visit to the newly married pair.  From Belfast Borrow took
+another trip into Scotland, crossing over to Stranraer.  From there
+he proceeded to Glen Luce and subsequently to Newton Stewart, Castle
+Douglas, Dumfries, Ecclefechan, Gretna Green, Carlisle, Langholm,
+Hawick, Jedburgh, Yetholm (where he saw Esther Blyth of Kirk
+Yetholm), Kelso, Abbotsford, Melrose, Berwick, Edinburgh, Glasgow,
+and so back to Belfast, having been absent for nearly four weeks.
+
+Mrs Borrow's health had been the cause of the family leaving Oulton
+for Great Yarmouth, and about the time of the Irish visit it seems to
+have become worse.  When Borrow was away upon his excursion he
+received a letter at Carlisle in which his wife informed him that she
+was not so well; but urging him not to return if he were enjoying his
+trip and it were benefiting his health.
+
+In the autumn of the following year (1867) they were at Bognor, Mrs
+Borrow taking the sea air, her husband tramping about the country and
+penetrating into the New Forest.  On their return to town Mrs Borrow
+appears to have become worse.  There was much correspondence to be
+attended to with regard to the Oulton Estate, and she had to go down
+to Suffolk to give her personal attention to certain important
+details.  Miss Cobbe throws a little light on the period in a letter
+to a friend, in which she says:
+
+
+"Mr Borrow says his wife is very ill and anxious to keep the peace
+with C. (a litigious neighbour).  Poor old B. was very sad at first,
+but I cheered him up and sent him off quite brisk last night.  He
+talked all about the Fathers again, arguing that their quotations
+went to prove that it was NOT our gospels they had in their hands.  I
+knew most of it before, but it was admirably done.  I talked a little
+theology to him in a serious way (finding him talk of his 'horrors')
+and he abounded in my sense of the non-existence of Hell, and of the
+presence and action on the soul of _A_ Spirit, rewarding and
+punishing.  He would not say 'God'; but repeated over and over again
+that he spoke not from books but from his own personal experience."
+{456a}
+
+
+On 24th January (1869) Mrs Borrow was taken suddenly ill and the
+family doctor being out of town, Borrow sent for Dr W. S. Playfair of
+5 Curzon Street.  A letter from Dr Playfair, 25th January, to the
+family doctor is the only coherent testimony in existence as to what
+was actually the matter with Mrs Borrow.  It runs:-
+
+
+"I found great difficulty in making out the case exactly," he writes,
+"since Mr Borrow himself was so agitated that I could get no very
+clear account of it.  I could detect no marked organic affection
+about the heart or lungs, of which she chiefly complained.  It seemed
+to me to be either a very aggravated form of hysteria, or, what
+appears more likely, some more serious mental affection.  In any
+case, the chief requisite seemed very careful and intelligent nursing
+or management, and I doubt very much, from what I saw, whether she
+gets that with her present surroundings.  If it is really the more
+serious mental affection, I should fancy that the sooner means are
+taken to have her properly taken care of, the better."
+
+
+Dr Playfair saw in Borrow's highly nervous excitable nature, if not
+the cause of his wife's breakdown, at least an obstacle to her
+recovery, and was of opinion that Mrs Borrow's disorder had been
+greatly aggravated by her husband's presence.
+
+Mrs Borrow never rallied from the attack, and on the 30th she died of
+"valvular disease of the heart and dropsy," being then in her
+seventy-seventh year.  On 4th February she was buried in Brompton
+Cemetery, and the lonely man, her husband, returned to Hereford
+Square.  The grave bears the inscription, "To the Beloved Memory of
+My Mother, Mary Borrow, who fell asleep in Jesus, 30th January 1869."
+It is strange that this should be in Henrietta's and not Borrow's
+name.
+
+Mrs Borrow evidently made over her property to her husband during her
+lifetime, as there is no will in existence, and no application
+appears to have been made either by Borrow or anyone else for letters
+of administration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX:  JANUARY 1869-1881
+
+
+
+The death of his wife was a last blow to Borrow, and he soon retired
+from the world.  At first he appears to have sought consolation in
+books, to judge from the number of purchases he made about this time;
+but it was, apparently, with pitiably unsuccessful results.  In a
+letter to a friend Miss Cobbe gives a picture in his lonliness:
+
+
+"Poor old Borrow is in a sad state," she wrote.  "I hope he is
+starting in a day or two for Scotland.  I sent C. with a note begging
+him to come and eat the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent
+back word, 'Yes.'  Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a
+most agitated manner said he had come to say 'he would rather not.
+He would not trouble anyone with his sorrows.'  I made him sit down,
+and talked as gently to him as possible, saying:  'It won't be a
+trouble Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me.'  But it was all of
+no use.  He was so cross, so RUDE, I had the greatest difficulty in
+talking to him.  I asked about his servant, and he said I could not
+help him.  I asked him about Bowring, and he said:  'Don't speak of
+it.'  (It was some dispute with Sir John Bowring, who was an
+acquaintance of mine, and with whom I offered to mediate.)  'I asked
+him would he look at the photos of the Siamese,' and he said:  'Don't
+show them to me!'  So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I had
+been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met Mr L--
+, who told me of certain curious books of mediaeval history.  'Did he
+know them?'  'No, and he DARE SAID Mr L-- did not, either!  Who was
+Mr L--?'  I described that OBSCURE individual, (one of the foremost
+writers of the day), and added that he was immensely liked by
+everybody.  Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times,
+'Immensely liked!  As if a man could be immensely liked!' quite
+insultingly.  To make a diversion (I was very patient with him as he
+was in trouble), 'I said I had just come home from the Lyell's and
+had heard--' . . .  But there was no time to say what I had heard!
+Mr Borrow asked:  'Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man who
+stands at the door (of some den or other) and BETS?'  I explained who
+Sir Charles was, {459a} (of course he knew very well), but he went on
+and on, till I said gravely:  'I don't think you will meet those sort
+of people here, Mr Borrow.  We don't associate with blacklegs,
+exactly.'" {459b}
+
+
+In the Autumn of 1870 Borrow became acquainted with Charles G. Leland
+("Hans Breitmann") as the result of receiving from him the following
+letter:-
+
+
+BRIGHTON, 24th October 1870.
+
+Dear Sir,--During the eighteen months that I have been in England, my
+efforts to find some mutual friend who would introduce me to you have
+been quite in vain.  As the author of two or three works which have
+been kindly received in England, I have made the acquaintance of many
+literary men and enjoyed much hospitality; but I assure you very
+sincerely that my inability to find you out or get at you has been a
+source of great annoyance to me.  As you never published a book which
+I have not read through five times--excepting The Bible in Spain and
+Wild Wales, which I have only read once--you will perfectly
+understand why I should be so desirous of meeting you.
+
+As you have very possibly never heard of me before, I would state
+that I wrote a collection of Ballads satirising Germany and the
+Germans under the title of Hans Breitmann.
+
+I never before in my life solicited the favour of any man's
+acquaintance, except through the regular medium of an introduction.
+If my request to be allowed the favour of meeting and seeing you does
+not seem too outre, I would be to glad to go to London, or wherever
+you may be, if it can be done without causing you any inconvenience,
+and if I should not be regarded as an intruder.  I am an American,
+and among us such requests are parfaitment (sic) en regle.
+
+I am, . . .
+
+CHARLES G. LELAND.
+
+
+Borrow replied on 2nd Nov.:
+
+
+Sir,
+
+I have received your letter and am gratified by the desire you
+express to make my acquaintance.
+
+Whenever you please to come I shall be happy to see you.
+
+Truly yours,
+GEORGE BORROW. {460a}
+
+
+The meeting unquestionably took place at Hereford Square, and Leland
+found Borrow "a tall, large, fine-looking man who must have been
+handsome in his youth." {460b}  The result of the interview was that
+Leland sent to Borrow a copy of his Ballads and also The Music Lesson
+of Confucius, then about to appear.  At the same time he wrote to
+Borrow drawing his attention to one of the ballads written in German
+Romany jib, and enquiring if it were worth anything.  Whilst
+deprecating his "impudence" in writing a Romany gili and telling, as
+a pupil might a master, of his interest in and his association with
+the gypsies, he continues:  "My dear Mr Borrow, for all this you are
+entirely responsible.  More than twenty years ago your books had an
+incredible influence on me, and now you see the results."  After
+telling him that he can NEVER thank him sufficiently for the
+instructions he has given in The Romany Rye as to how to take care of
+a horse on a thirty mile ride, he concludes--"With apologies for the
+careless tone of this letter, and with sincere thanks for your
+kindness in permitting me to call on you and for your courteous
+note,--I am your sincere admirer."
+
+
+The account that Leland gives of this episode in his Memoirs is
+puzzling and contradictory in the light of his first letter.  He
+writes:
+
+
+"There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted
+in those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him,
+exercised in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature.
+This was George Borrow.  I was in the habit of reading a great deal
+in the British Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced
+to him. {461a}  [Leland seems to be in error here; see ante, page
+460.]  He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish, and
+made the remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living
+who could read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was
+'fished' out of Sir W. Betham).  We discussed several Gypsy words and
+phrases.  I met him in the same place several times." {461b}
+
+
+Leland states that he sent a note to Borrow, care of John Murray,
+asking permission to dedicate to him his forthcoming book, The
+English Gypsies and Their Language; but received no reply, although
+Murray assured him that the letter had been received by Borrow.  "He
+received my note on the Saturday," Leland writes--"never answered it-
+-and on Monday morning advertised in all the journals his own
+forthcoming work on the same subject." {461c}  Had Borrow asked him
+to delay publishing his own book, Leland says he would have done so,
+"for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of Gypsyism, that I
+would have been very glad to have gratified him with such a small
+sacrifice." {462a}
+
+However Borrow may have heard that Leland had in preparation a book
+on the English Gypsies, he seemed to feel that it was a trespass upon
+ground that was peculiarly his own.  Having revised and prepared for
+the press the new edition of the Gypsy St Luke for the Bible Society
+(published December 1872), and the one-volume editions of Lavengro
+and The Romany Rye, he set to work to forestall Leland with his own
+Romano Lavo-Lil.
+
+In spite of his haste, however, Borrow was beaten in the race, and
+Leland got his volume out first.  When the Romano Lavo-Lil {462b}
+appeared in March 1874, Borrow found what, in all probability he had
+not dreamed of, that the thirty-three years intervening between its
+publication and that of The Zincali, had changed the whole literary
+world as regards "things of Egypt."  In 1841 Borrow had produced a
+unique book, such as only one man in England could have written, and
+that man himself {462c}; but in 1874 he found himself not only out of
+date, but out-classed.
+
+The title very thoroughly explains the scope of the work.  The
+Vocabulary had existed in manuscript for many years.  For some
+reason, difficult to explain, Borrow had omitted from this Vocabulary
+a number of the gypsy words that appeared in Lavengro and The Romany
+Rye.  In spite of this "Mr Borrow's present vocabulary makes a goodly
+show," wrote F. H. Groome, ". . . containing no fewer than fourteen
+hundred words, of which about fifty will be entirely new to those who
+only know Romany in books." {463a}
+
+After praising the Gypsy songs as the best portion of the book,
+Groome proceeds:
+
+
+"Of his prose I cannot say so much.  It is the Romany of the study
+rather than of the tents [!]  Mr Borrow has attempted to rehabilitate
+English Romany by enduing it with forms and inflections, of which
+some are still rarely to be heard, some extinct, and others
+absolutely incorrect; while Mr Leland has been content to give it as
+it really is.  Of the two methods I cannot doubt that most readers
+will agree with me in thinking that Mr Leland's is the more
+satisfactory." {463b}
+
+
+The Athenaeum sternly rebuked Borrow for seeming "to make the mistake
+of confounding the amount of Rommanis which he has collected in this
+book with the actual extent of the language itself."  The reviewer
+pays a somewhat grudging tribute to other portions of the book, the
+accounts of the Gypsyries and the biographical particulars of the
+Romany worthies, but the work suffers by comparison with those of
+Paspati and Leland.  He acknowledges that Borrow was one of the
+pioneers of those who gave accounts of the Gypsies in English, who
+gave to many their present taste for Gypsy matters,
+
+
+"but," he proceeds, "we cannot allow merely sentimental
+considerations to prevent us from telling the honest truth.  The fact
+is that the Romano Lavo-Lil is nothing more than a rechauffe of the
+materials collected by Mr Borrow at an early stage of his
+investigations, and nearly every word and every phrase may be found
+in one form or another in his earlier works.  Whether or not Mr
+Borrow HAS in the course of his long experience become the DEEP Gypsy
+which he has always been supposed to be, we cannot say; but it is
+certain that his present book contains little more than he gave to
+the public forty years ago, and does not by any means represent the
+present state of knowledge on the subject.  But at the present day,
+when comparative philology has made such strides, and when want of
+accurate scholarship is as little tolerated in strange and remote
+languages as in classical literature, the Romano Lavo-Lil is, to
+speak mildly, an anachronism."
+
+
+This notice, if Borrow read it, must have been very bitter to him.
+All the loyalty to, and enthusiasm for, Borrow cannot disguise the
+fact that his work, as far as the Gypsies were concerned, was
+finished.  He had first explored the path, but others had followed
+and levelled it into a thoroughfare, and Borrow found his facts and
+theories obsolete--a humiliating discovery to a man so shy, so proud,
+and so sensitive.
+
+The Romano Lavo-Lil was Borrow's swan song.  He lived for another
+seven years; but as far as the world was concerned he was dead.  In
+an obituary notice of Robert Latham, Mr Watts-Dunton tells a story
+that emphasizes how thoroughly his existence had been forgotten.  At
+one of Mrs Procter's "at homes" he was talking of Latham and Borrow,
+but when he happened to mention that both men were still alive, that
+is in the early Seventies, and that quite recently he had been in the
+company of each on separate occasions, he found that he had lost
+caste in the eyes of his hearers for talking about men as alive "who
+were well known to have been dead years ago." {464a}
+
+There is an interesting picture of Borrow as he appeared in the
+Seventies, given by F. H. Groome, who writes:
+
+
+"The first time I ever saw him was at Ascot, the Wednesday evening of
+the Cup week in, I think, the year 1872.  I was stopping at a wayside
+inn, half-a-mile on the Windsor road, just opposite which inn there
+was a great encampment of Gypsies.  One of their lads had on the
+Tuesday affronted a soldier; so two or three hundred redcoats came
+over from Windsor, intending to wreck the camp.  There was a babel of
+cursing and screaming, much brandishing of belts and tent-rods, when
+suddenly an arbiter appeared, a white-haired, brown-eyed, calm
+Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of
+ale--in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were
+sworn friends over a loving-quart.  "Mr Burroughs," said one of the
+Gypsies (it is the name by which Gypsies still speak of him), and I
+knew that at last I had met him whom of all men I most wished to
+meet.  Matty Cooper, the 'celebrated Windsor Frog' (vide Leland),
+presented me as 'a young gentleman, Rya, a scholard from Oxford'; and
+'H'm,' quoth Colossus, 'a good many fools come from Oxford.'  It was
+a bad beginning, but it ended well, by his asking me to walk with him
+to the station, and on the way inviting me to call on him in London.
+I did so, but not until nearly a twelve-month afterwards, when I
+found him in Hereford Square, and when he set strong ale before me,
+as again on the occasion of my third and last meeting with him in the
+tent of our common acquaintance, Shadrach Herne, at the Potteries,
+Notting Hill.  Both these times we had much talk together, but I
+remember only that it was partly about East Anglia, and more about
+'things of Egypt.'  Conversations twenty years old are easy to
+imagine, hard to reproduce . . .  Probably Borrow asked me the Romany
+for 'frying-pan,' and I modestly answered, 'Either maasalli or
+tasseromengri' (this is password No. 1), and then I may have asked
+him the Romany for 'brick,' to which he will have answered, that
+'there is no such word' (this is No. 2).  But one thing I do
+remember, that he was frank and kindly, interesting and interested; I
+was only a lad, and he was verging on seventy.  I could tell him
+about a few 'travellers' whom he had not recently seen--Charlie
+Pinfold, the hoary polygamist, Plato and Mantis Buckland, Cinderella
+Petulengro, and Old Tom Oliver ('Ha! so he has seen Tom Oliver,' I
+seem to remember that)." {466a}
+
+
+There was nothing now to keep Borrow in London.  Nobody wanted to
+read his books, other stars had risen in the East.  His publisher had
+exclaimed with energy, as Borrow himself would relate, "I want to
+meet with good writers, but there are none to be had:  I want a man
+who can write like Ecclesiastes."  There is something tragic in the
+account that Mr Watts-Dunton gives of his last encounter with Borrow:
+
+
+"The last time I ever saw him," he writes, "was shortly before he
+left London to live in the country.  It was, I remember well, on
+Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular
+and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were
+reeling and boiling over the West-End.  Borrow came up and stood
+leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might
+be.  Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for
+sunsets.  Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and
+certainly my pen could not describe it . . . I never saw such a
+sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its
+association with 'the last of Borrow,' I shall never forget it."
+{466b}
+
+
+In 1874 Borrow withdrew to Oulton, there to end his lonely life, his
+spirit seeming to enjoy the dreary solitude of the Cottage, with its
+mournful surroundings.  His stepdaughter, the Henrietta of old,
+remained in London with her husband, and Borrow's loneliness was
+complete.  Sometimes he was to be seen stalking along the highways at
+a great pace, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a Spanish cloak, a
+tragic figure of solitude and despair, speaking to no one, no one
+daring to speak to him, who locally was considered as "a funny
+tempered man."
+
+In a fragment of a letter from Edward FitzGerald to W. B. Donne (June
+1874), there is an interesting reference to Borrow:-
+
+
+"Wait!" he writes.  "I have one little thing to tell you, which,
+little as it is, is worth all the rest, if you don't know already.
+
+"Borrow--has got back to his own Oulton Lodge.  My Nephew, Edmund
+Kerrich, now Adjutant to some Volunteer Battalion, wants a house
+NEAR, not IN, Lowestoft:  and got some Agent to apply for Borrow's--
+who sent word that he is himself there--an old Man--wanting
+Retirement, etc.  This was the account Edmund got.
+
+"I saw in some Athenaeum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.'s
+'Rommany Lil' or whatever the name is.  I can easily understand that
+B. should not meddle with SCIENCE of any sort; but some years ago he
+would not have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have cooled
+him now." {467a}
+
+
+Borrow sent a message to FitzGerald through Edmund Kerrich of
+Geldeston, asking him to visit Oulton Cottage.  The reply shows all
+the sweetness of the writer's nature:-
+
+
+LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE,
+Jan. 10/75.
+
+Dear Borrow,--My nephew Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation
+that you sent to me, through him, some while ago.  I think the more
+of it because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk
+away from human company as much--as I have!  For the last fifteen
+years I have not visited any one of my very oldest friends, except
+the daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and Donne--once
+only, and for half a day, just to assure myself by--my own eyes how
+he was after the severe illness he had last year, and which he never
+will quite recover from, I think; though he looked and moved better
+than I expected.
+
+Well--to tell you all about WHY I have thus fallen from my company
+would be a tedious thing, and all about one's self too--whom,
+Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person
+talked about.  Suffice to say, 'so it is'; and one's friends, however
+kind and 'loyal' (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy
+themselves pretty reasonably without one.
+
+So with me.  And is it not much the same with you also?  Are you not
+glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than
+the grasshopper?  If one ever had this solitary habit, it is not
+likely to alter for the better as one grows older--as one grows OLD.
+I like to think over my old friends.  There they are, lingering as
+ineffaceable portraits--done in the prime of life--in my memory.
+Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen-years
+separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse.  I do
+not say THAT would be your case; but you must, at any rate, be less
+inclined to disturb the settled repose into which you, I suppose,
+have fallen.  I remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five
+years ago; then at Donne's in London; then at my own happy home in
+Regent's Park; then ditto at Gorleston--after which, I have seen
+nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me by my good sister
+Kerrich.
+
+So shall things rest?  I could not go to you, after refusing all this
+while to go to older--if not better--friends, fellow Collegians,
+fellow schoolfellows; and yet will you still believe me (as I hope
+THEY do)
+
+Yours and theirs sincerely,
+EDWARD FITZGERALD.
+
+
+Borrow was still a remarkably robust man.  Mr Watts-Dunton tells how,
+
+
+"At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o'clock in
+Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at
+Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in
+the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water
+like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off
+some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then,
+after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would
+have done Sir Walter Scott's eyes good to see.  Finally, he would
+walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night.  And if the
+physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened
+to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was
+still more so.  Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen
+could describe.  There is a kind of humour the delight of which is
+that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as
+much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchetty,
+and odd as to draw them.  This was the humour of Borrow." {469a}
+
+
+He was seventy years of age when, one March day during a bitterly-
+cold east wind, he stripped and plunged into one of the Fen Ponds in
+Richmond Park, which was covered with ice, and dived and swam under
+the water for a time, reappearing some distance from the spot where
+he had entered the water. {469b}
+
+The remaining years of Borrow's life were spent in Suffolk.  He would
+frequently go to Norwich, however; for the old city seemed to draw
+him irresistibly from his hermitage.  He would take a lodging there,
+and spend much of his time occupying a certain chair in the Norfolk
+Hotel in St Giles.  There were so many old associations with Norwich
+that made it appear home to him.  He was possessed of sentiment in
+plenty, it had caused his old mother to wish that "dear George would
+not have such fancies about THE OLD HOUSE" in Willow Lane.
+
+Later, Dr and Mrs MacOubrey removed to Oulton (about 1878), and
+Borrow's life became less dismal and lonely; but he was nearing his
+end.  Sometimes there would be a flash of that old unconquerable
+spirit.  His stepdaughter relates how,
+
+
+"on the 21st of November [1878], the place [the farm] having been
+going to decay for fourteen months, Mr Palmer [the tenant] called to
+demand that Mr Borrow should put it in repair; otherwise he would do
+it himself and send in the bills, saying, 'I don't care for the old
+farm or you either,' and several other insulting things; whereupon Mr
+Borrow remarked very calmly, 'Sir, you came in by that door, you can
+go out by it'--and so it ended." {470a}
+
+
+It was on an occasion such as this that Borrow yearned for a son to
+knock the rascal down.  He was an infirm man, his body feeling the
+wear and tear of the strenuous open-air life he had led.  In 1879,
+according to Mrs MacOubrey, he was "unable to walk as far as the
+white gate," the boundary of his estate.  He was obviously breaking-
+up very rapidly.  The surroundings appear to have reflected the
+gloomy nature of the master of the estate.  The house was
+dilapidated, "with everything about it more or less untidy," {470b}
+although at this period his income amounted to upwards of five
+hundred pounds a year.
+
+
+"During his latter years," writes Mr W. A. Dutt, "his tall, erect,
+somewhat mysterious figure was often seen in the early hours of
+summer mornings or late at night on the lonely pathways that wind in
+and out from the banks of Oulton Broad . . . the village children
+used to hush their voices and draw aside at his approach.  They
+looked upon him with fear and awe. . . .  In his heart, Borrow was
+fond of the little ones, though it amused him to watch the impression
+his strange personality made upon them.  Older people he seldom spoke
+to when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would flash out
+such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows
+as would make timid country folk hasten on their way filled with
+vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye." {470c}
+
+
+Even to the last the old sensitiveness occasionally flashed out, as
+on the occasion of a visit from the Vicar of Lowestoft, who drove
+over with an acquaintance of Borrow's to make the hermit's
+acquaintance.  The visitor was so incautious as to ask the age of his
+host, when, with Johnsonian emphasis, came the reply:  "Sir, I tell
+my age to no man!"  This occurred some time during the year 1880.
+Immediately his discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to
+the summer-house, where he drew up the following apothegm on
+"People's Age":  -
+
+
+"Never talk to people about their age.  Call a boy a boy, and he will
+fly into a passion and say, 'Not quite so much of a boy either; I'm a
+young man.'  Tell an elderly person that he's not so young as he was,
+and you will make him hate you for life.  Compliment a man of eighty-
+five on the venerableness of his appearance, and he will shriek out:
+'No more venerable than yourself,' and will perhaps hit you with his
+crutch."
+
+
+On 1st December 1880 Borrow sent for his solicitor from Lowestoft,
+and made his will, by which he bequeathed all his property, real and
+personal, to his stepdaughter Henrietta, devising that it should be
+held in trust for her by his friend Elizabeth Harvey.  It was
+evidently Borrow's intention so to tie up the bequest that Dr
+MacOubrey could not in any way touch his wife's estate.
+
+The end came suddenly.  On the morning of 26th July 1881 Dr and Mrs
+MacOubrey drove into Lowestoft, leaving Borrow alone in the house.
+When they returned he was dead.  Throughout his life Borrow had been
+a solitary, and it seems fitting that he should die alone.  It has
+been urged against his stepdaughter that she disregarded Borrow's
+appeals not to be left alone in the house, as he felt himself to be
+dying.  He may have made similar requests on other occasions; still,
+whatever the facts, it was strange to leave so old and so infirm a
+man quite unattended.
+
+On 4th August the body was brought to London, and buried beside that
+of Mrs George Borrow in Brompton Cemetery.  On the stone, which is
+what is known as a saddle-back, is inscribed:
+
+
+IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF
+GEORGE HENRY BORROW, ESQ.,
+WHO DIED JULY 26TH, 1881 (AT HIS RESIDENCE "OULTON
+COTTAGE, SUFFOLK")
+IN HIS 79TH YEAR.
+(AUTHOR OF THE BIBLE IN SPAIN, LAVENGRO--AND
+OTHER WORKS.)
+"IN HOPE OF A GLORIOUS RESURRECTION."
+
+
+A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow to
+purchase the whole of Borrow's manuscripts, library, and papers for
+the Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a thousand pounds, was
+considered too high, and they passed into the possession of another.
+Eventually they found their way into the reverent hands of the man
+who subsequently made Borrow his hero, and who devoted years of his
+life to the writing of his biography--Dr W. J. Knapp.
+
+It was Borrow's fate, a tragic fate for a man so proud, to outlive
+the period of his fame.  Not only were his books forgotten, but the
+world anticipated his death by some seven or eight years.  His was a
+curiously complex nature, one that seems specially to have been
+conceived by Providence to arouse enmity among the many, and to
+awaken in the hearts of the few a sterling, unwavering friendship.
+It is impossible to reconcile the accounts of those who hated him
+with those whose love and respect he engaged.
+
+He was in sympathy with vagrants and vagabonds--a taste that was
+perhaps emphasised by the months he spent in preparing Celebrated
+Trials.  If those months of hack work taught him sympathy with
+pariahs, it also taught him to write strong, nervous English.
+
+He was one of the most remarkable characters of his century--
+whimsical, eccentric, lovable, inexplicable; possessed of an odd, dry
+humour that sometimes failed him when most he needed it.  He lived
+and died a stranger to the class to which he belonged, and was the
+intimate friend and associate of that dark and mysterious personage,
+Mr Petulengro.  He hated his social equals, and admired Tamerlane and
+Jerry Abershaw.  It has been said that he was born three centuries
+too late, and that he belonged to the age when men dropped
+mysteriously down the river in ships, later to return with strange
+stories and great treasure from the Spanish Main.  Mr Watts-Dunton
+has said:-
+
+
+"When Borrow was talking to people in his own class of life there was
+always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism.  What Carlyle
+called the 'armed neutrality' of social intercourse oppressed him.
+He felt himself to be in the enemy's camp.  In his eyes there was
+always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his
+interlocutor and weighing him against himself.  He seemed to be
+observing what effect his words were having, and this attitude
+repelled people at first.  But the moment he approached a gypsy on
+the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by
+the wayside, he became another man.  He threw off the burden of
+restraint.  The feeling of the 'armed neutrality' was left behind,
+and he seemed to be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that
+could give him pleasure.  This it was that enabled him to make
+friends so entirely with the gypsies.  Notwithstanding what is called
+'Romany guile' (which is the growth of ages of oppression), the basis
+of the Romany character is a joyous frankness.  Once let the
+isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from the 'Gorgio' be broken
+through, and the communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins
+to show itself.  The gypsies are extremely close observers; they were
+very quick to notice how different was Borrow's bearing towards
+themselves from his bearing towards people of his own race, and
+Borrow used to say that 'old Mrs Herne and Leonora were the only
+gypsies who suspected and disliked him.'" {474a}
+
+
+This convincing character sketch seems to show the real Borrow.  It
+accounts even for that high-piping, artificial voice (a gypsy trait)
+that he assumed when speaking with those who were not his intimate
+friends, and which any sudden interest in the conversation would
+cause him to abandon in favour of his own deep, rich tones.  Mr F. J.
+Bowring, himself no friend of Borrow's for very obvious reasons, has
+described this artificial intonation as something between a beggar's
+whine and the high-pitched voice of a gypsy--in sort, a falsetto.  He
+tells how, on one occasion, when in conversation with Borrow, he
+happened to mention to him something of particular interest
+concerning the gypsies, Borrow became immensely interested,
+immediately dropped the falsetto and spoke in his natural voice,
+which Mr Bowring describes as deep and manly.
+
+Even his friends were led sometimes into criticisms that appear
+unsympathetic. {474b}  He was, Dr Hake has said, "essentially
+hypochondriacal.  Society he loved and hated alike:  he loved it that
+he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not
+the prince that he felt himself in its midst." {474c}  It is the son
+who shows the better understanding, although there is no doubt about
+Dr Hake's loyalty to Borrow.  There is a faithful presentation of a
+man such as Borrow really seems to have been, in the following
+words:-
+
+
+"Few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow.
+His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so
+bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval beardless face, his
+loud rich voice and bold heroic air were such as to impress the most
+indifferent lookers-on.  Added to this there was something not easily
+forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our
+gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart." {475a}
+
+
+If Borrow wrote that he was ashamed of being an Englishman and
+referred to their "pinched and mortified expressions," if he found
+the virtues of the Saxons "uncouth and ungracious," he never
+permitted others to make disparaging remarks about his country or his
+countrymen. {475b}  He was typically English in this:  agree with his
+strictures, add a word or two of dispraise of the English, and there
+appeared a terrifying figure of a patriot; "not only an Englishman
+but an East Englishman," which in Borrow's vocabulary meant the
+finest of the breed.  He might with more truth have said a
+Cornishman.  "I could not command myself when I heard my own glorious
+land traduced in this unmerited manner," {475c} he once exclaimed.
+He permitted to himself, and to himself only, a certain latitude in
+such matters.
+
+That Borrow exaggerated is beyond all question, but it must not be
+called deliberate.  He desired to give impressions of scenes and
+people, and he was inclined to emphasize certain features.  Isopel
+Berners he wished it to be known was a queenly creature, and he
+described her as taller than himself (he was 6 feet 2 inches without
+his shoes).  Exaggeration is colour, not form.  A disbelief in his
+having encountered the convict son of the old apple-woman near
+Salisbury does not imply that the old woman herself is a fiction.
+Borrow insisted upon Norfolk as his county, "where the people eat the
+best dumplings in the world, and speak the purest English."  He even
+spoke with a strong, if imperfect, East Anglian accent.  As a matter
+of fact his father was Cornish and his mother of Huguenot stock.  It
+would be absurd to argue from this obvious exaggeration of the actual
+facts that Borrow was a myth.
+
+Then he has been taken to task for not being a philologist as well as
+a linguist.  He may have used the word philologist somewhat loosely
+on occasion.  "Think what the reader would have lost," says one
+eminent but by no means prejudiced critic {476a} with real sympathy
+and insight, "had Borrow waited to verify his etymologies."  In all
+probability Nature will never produce a Humboldt-Le Sage combination
+of intellect.  Language was to Borrow merely the key that permitted
+him access to the chamber of men's minds.  It must be confessed that
+sometimes he invaded the sacred precincts of philology.  His chapter
+on the Basque language in The Bible in Spain has been described as
+"utterly frantic," and German philologists, speechless in their
+astonishment, have expressed themselves upon his conclusions in marks
+of exclamation!  He was not qualified to discourse upon the science
+of language.
+
+He was a staunch member of the Church of England, because he believed
+there was in it more religion than in any other Church; but this did
+not hinder him from consorting with the godless children of the
+tents, or contributing towards the upkeep of Nonconformist-schools.
+The gypsies honoured and trusted him because, crooked themselves,
+they appreciated straightness and clean living in another.  They had
+never known him use a bad word or do a bad thing.  He was, on
+occasion, arrogant, overbearing, ungracious, in short all the
+unattractive things that a proud and masterful man can be; but his
+friendship was as strong as the man himself; his charity above the
+narrow prejudices of sect.  When he threw his tremendous power into
+any enterprise or undertaking, it was with the determination that it
+should succeed, if work and self-sacrifice could make it.  "The
+wisest course," he thought, was, " . . . to blend the whole of the
+philosophy of the tombstone with a portion of the philosophy of the
+publican and something more, to enjoy one's pint and pipe and other
+innocent pleasures, and to think every now and then of death and
+judgment."
+
+Borrow loved mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able quite
+to penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality.  Those who
+came nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent
+good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men.
+Of all Borrow's friends it is probable that none understood him so
+well as Hasfeldt.  He recognised the strength of character of the
+white-haired man who sang when he was happy, and he refused to be
+affected by his gloomy moods.  "Write and tell me," he requests, "if
+you have not fallen in love with some nun or Gypsy in Spain, or have
+met with some other romantic adventure worthy of a roaming knight."
+On another occasion (June 1845) he boasts with some justification,
+"Heaven be praised, I can comprehend you as a reality, while many
+regard you as an imaginary, fantastic being.  But they who portray
+you have not eaten bread and salt with you."
+
+Borrow's contemporary recognition was a chance; he was writing for
+another generation, and some of the friends that he left behind have
+loyally striven to erect to him the only monument an artist desires--
+the proclaiming of his works.
+
+Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of magnificence,
+and, lest he should be enticed away from her, had instilled into his
+soul a hatred of all things artificial and at variance with her
+august decrees.  He was shy and suspicious with the men and women who
+regulated their lives by the narrow standards of civilisation and
+decorum; but with the children of the tents and the vagrants of the
+wayside he was a single-minded man, eager to learn the lore of the
+open air.  He recognised in these vagabonds the true sons and
+daughters of "the Great Mother who mixes all our bloods."
+
+
+
+APPENDIX:  LIST OF BORROW'S WORKS
+
+
+
+1825
+
+Celebrated Trials, and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence,
+from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825.  Six volumes, with
+plates.  London.
+
+Faustus:  His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell.  Translated from
+the German [of F. M. von Klinger].  W. Simpkin and R. Marshall,
+London.
+
+1826
+
+Romantic Ballads.  Translated from the Danish:  and Miscellaneous
+Pieces.  S. Wilkin, Norwich.
+
+1835
+
+Targum:  or, Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and
+Dialects.  St Petersburgh.  Reprinted later by Jarrold & Sons,
+Norwich.
+
+The Talisman.  From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin.  With Other
+Pieces.  St Petersburg.
+
+1841
+
+The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain.  With an
+Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious
+Dictionary of their Language.  Two volumes.  John Murray, London.
+
+1842
+
+The Bible in Spain; or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments
+of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the
+Peninsula.  Three volumes.  John Murray, London.
+
+Lavengro:  The Scholar--The Gypsy--The Priest.  Three volumes.  John
+Murray, London.
+
+The Romany Rye:  a Sequel to Lavengro.  Two volumes.  John Murray,
+London.
+
+The Sleeping Bard; or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell.  By
+Elis Wyn.  Translated from the Cambrian British.  John Murray,
+London.
+
+1862
+
+Wild Wales:  Its People, Language, and Scenery.  Three volumes.  John
+Murray, London.
+
+Romano Lavo-Lil:  Word-Book of Romany; or, English Gypsy Language.
+With Many Pieces in Gypsy, Illustrative of the Way of Speaking and
+Thinking of the English Gypsies; with Specimens of Their Poetry, and
+an Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of
+Various Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England.  John Murray,
+London.
+
+1884
+
+The Turkish Jester; or, the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi.
+Translated from the Turkish.  Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.
+
+1892
+
+The Death of Balder.  Translated from the Danish of Evald.  Jarrold &
+Sons, Norwich.
+
+From the foregoing list has been omitted the mysterious Life and
+Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller, and those works that
+Borrow edited or translated for the British and Foreign Bible
+Society.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{3a}  Afterwards General Morshead and friend of the Duke of York.
+Captain Morshead, himself a Cornishman, is credited with doing
+everything in his power to dissuade Thomas Borrow from enlisting, but
+without result.
+
+{4a}  Lavengro, page 2.  References to Borrow's works throughout this
+volume are to the Standard Edition, published by John Murray.
+
+{4b}  Ann, the third of eight children born to Samuel Perfrement and
+Mary his wife, 23rd January 1772.
+
+{4c}  Locally, the name is pronounced "PARfrement."  This is quite in
+accordance with the Norfolk dialect, which changes "e" into "a."
+Thus "Ernest" becomes "Arnest"; "Earlham," "Arlham"; "Erpingham,"
+"Arpingham," and so on.  In Norfolk there are grave peculiarities of
+pronunciation, which have caused many a stranger to wish that he had
+never enquired his way, so puzzling are the replies hurled at him in
+an incomprehensible vernacular.
+
+{5a}  Married the Rev. Wm. Holland, rector of Walmer and afterwards
+rector of Brasted, Kent.
+
+{6a}  Lavengro, page 5.
+
+{6b}  Lavengro, page 5.
+
+{7a}  George in honour of the King, it is said, and Henry after his
+father's eldest brother.
+
+{7b}  Lavengro, page 6.
+
+{7c}  Lavengro, page 6.
+
+{7d}  Lavengro, page 6.
+
+{7e}  Lavengro, page 7.
+
+{7f}  Lavengro, page 7.
+
+{9a}  Lavengro, page 16.
+
+{9b}  The widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the Paston Letters.
+
+{9c}  Lavengro, page 15.
+
+{10a}  Lavengro, pages 398-9.
+
+{10b}  "Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those
+which I can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen
+flourish, pass away, and become forgotten, except by myself, who, in
+spite of all my endeavours, never can forget anything."--Lavengro,
+page 166.
+
+{10c}  Lavengro, page 16.
+
+{11a}  Lavengro, pages 19-20.
+
+{11b}  Lavengro, page 22.
+
+{12a}  The gypsies "have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family
+having a public and private name, one by which they are known to the
+Gentiles, and another to themselves alone . . .  There are only two
+names of trades which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper
+names, Cooper and Smith:  these names are expressed in the English
+gypsy dialect by Vardo-mescro and Petulengro (Romano Lavo-Lil, page
+185).  Thus the Smiths are known among themselves as the Petulengros.
+Petul, a horse shoe, and engro a "masculine affix used in the
+formation of figurative names."  Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes
+from Bosh a fiddle, Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor =
+to fight.
+
+{12b}  The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard narrated at a provincial
+Bible Society's meeting that when Borrow first called at Earl Street
+"he said that he had been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had
+passed several years with them, but had been recognised at a fair in
+Norfolk and brought home to his family by his uncle."  There is,
+however, nothing to confirm this story.
+
+{13a}  Lavengro, page 164.
+
+{13b}  The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait
+making; but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of
+the English that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when
+found.
+
+{13c}  Lavengro, page 45.
+
+{14a}  David Haggart, born 24th June 1801, was an instinctive
+criminal, who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a
+drummer in the West Norfolks.  Eventually he obtained his discharge
+and continued on his career of crime and prison-breaking, among other
+things murdering a policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821,
+he was hanged at Edinburgh.
+
+{15a}  Lavengro, page 138.
+
+{15b}  John Crome (1768-1821), landscape painter.  Apprenticed 1783
+as sign-painter; introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded
+the Norwich School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy
+1806.
+
+{17a}  Borrow was always a magnificent horseman.  "Vaya! how you
+ride!  It is dangerous to be in your way!" said the Archbishop of
+Toledo to him years later.  In The Bible in Spain he wrote that he
+had "been accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a saddle."
+The Rev. Wentworth Webster states that in Madrid "he used to ride
+with a Russian skin for a saddle and WITHOUT STIRRUPS."
+
+{20a}  Letter from "A School-fellow of Lavengro" in The Britannia,
+26th April 1851.
+
+{21a}  "It is probable, that had I been launched about this time into
+some agreeable career, that of arms, for example, for which, being
+the son of a soldier, I had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I
+might have thought nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any
+kind; but, having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to
+my genius which appeared open to me."--Lavengro, page 89.
+
+{21b}  The Rev. Thomas D'Eterville, M.A., "Poor Old Detterville," as
+the Grammar School boys called him, of Caen University, who arrived
+at Norwich in 1793.  He acquired a small fortune by teaching
+languages.  There were rumours that he was engaged in the contraband
+trade, an occupation more likely to bring fortune than teaching
+languages.
+
+{21c}  Letter from "A School-fellow of Lavengro" in The Britannia,
+26th April 1851.
+
+{22a}  It was here, in 1827, that he saw the world's greatest
+trotter, Marshland Shales, and in common with other lovers of horses
+lifted his hat to salute "the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the
+best in mother England."  In Lavengro Borrow antedated this event by
+some nine years.
+
+{23a}  Manuscript autobiographical notes supplied by Borrow to Mr
+John Longe, 1862.
+
+{24a}  Lavengro, page 134.
+
+{25a}  This account is taken from a letter by "A Schoolfellow of
+Lavengro" in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.
+
+{25b}  In a letter to Borrow, dated 15th October 1862, John Longe,
+J.P., of Spixworth Park, Norwich, in acknowledging some biographical
+particulars that Borrow had sent him for inclusion in Burton's
+Antiquities of the Royal School of Norwich, wrote:-
+
+"You have omitted an important and characteristic anecdote of your
+early days (fifteen years of age).  When at school you, with
+Theodosius and Francis W. Purland, ABSENTED yourself from home and
+school and took up your abode in a certain 'Robber's Cave' at Acle,
+where you RESIDED three days, and once more returned to your homes."
+
+{26a}  According to the original manuscript of Lavengro, it appears
+that Roger Kerrison, a Norwich friend of Borrow's, strongly advised
+the law as "an excellent profession . . . for those who never intend
+to follow it."--Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp, i., 66.
+
+{27a}  The Rev. Wm. Drake of Mundesley, in a letter which appeared in
+The Eastern Daily Press, 22nd September 1892:-
+
+" . . . I was at the Norwich Grammar School nine years, from 1820 to
+1829, and during that time (probably in 1824 and 1825) George Borrow
+was lodging in the Upper Close . . .  The house was a low old-
+fashioned building with a garden in front of it, and the fact of
+Borrow's residence there is fixed in my memory because I had spent
+the first five or six years of my own life in the same house, from
+1811 to 1816 or 1817.  My father occupied it in virtue of his being a
+minor canon in Norwich Cathedral.  I remember Borrow very distinctly,
+because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who used to gather
+round the railings of his garden, and occasionally he would ask one
+or two of them to have tea with him.  I have a faint recollection
+that he gave us some of our first notions of chess, but I am not sure
+of this.  I . . . remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man,
+usually dressed in black.  In person he was not unlike another
+Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different notoriety
+from that which now belongs to Borrow's name.  I mean John Thurtell,
+who murdered Mr Weare."
+
+{27b}  Wild Wales, page 3.
+
+{28a}  Wild Wales, page 157.
+
+{28b}  Forty years later Borrow wrote of these days: --"'How much
+more happy, innocent, and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I
+translated Iolo's ode than I am at the present time!'  Then covering
+my face with my hands I wept like a child."--Wild Wales, page 448.
+
+{30a}  There is no doubt that Borrow became possessed of a copy of
+Kiaempe Viser, first collected by Anders Vedel, which may or may not
+have been given to him, with a handshake from the old farmer and a
+kiss from his wife, in recognition of the attention he had shown the
+pair in his official capacity.  He refers to the volume repeatedly in
+Lavengro, and narrates how it was presented by some shipwrecked
+Danish mariners to the old couple in acknowledgment of their humanity
+and hospitality.  It is, however, most likely that he was in error
+when he stated that "in less than a month" he was able "to read the
+book."--Lavengro, pages 140-4.
+
+{30b}  Wild Wales, page 2.
+
+{30c}  Wild Wales, page 374.
+
+{30d}  Wild Wales, page 9.  There is an interesting letter written to
+Borrow by the old lawyer's son on the appearance of Lavengro, in
+which he says:  "With tearful eyes, yet smiling lips, I have read and
+re-read your faithful portrait of my dear old father.  I cannot
+mistake him--the creaking shoes, the florid face, the polished pate--
+all serve as marks of recognition to his youngest son!"
+
+{31a}  Wild Wales, page 374.
+
+{31b}  During the five years that he was articled to Simpson &
+Rackham, Borrow, according to Dr Knapp, studied Welsh, Danish,
+German, Hebrew, Arabic, Gaelic, and Armenian.  He already had a
+knowledge of Latin, Greek, Irish, French, Italian, and Spanish.
+
+{31c}  Lavengro, page 235.
+
+{32a}  Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), the historical painter.
+
+{32b}  Lavengro, page 166.
+
+{33a}  William Taylor (1765-1836) was an admirer of German literature
+and a defender of the French Revolution.  He is credited with having
+first inspired his friend Southey with a liking for poetry.  He
+travelled much abroad, met Goethe, attended the National Assembly
+debates in 1790, translated from the German and contributed to a
+number of English periodicals.
+
+{33b}  Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 1877.
+
+{33c}  Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 1877.
+
+{33d}  Letter from "A School-fellow of Lavengro" in The Britannia,
+26th April 1851.
+
+{34a}  Memoir of Wm. Taylor, by J. W. Robberds.
+
+{34b}  Memoir of Wm. Taylor, by J. W. Robberds.
+
+{34c}  Letter from "A School-fellow of Lavengro" in The Britannia,
+26th April 1851.
+
+{35a}  The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in a letter, 17th February 1887.
+
+{35b}  Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 1877.
+
+{35c}  Lavengro, page 355.
+
+{36a}  John Bowring, F.R.S. (1792-1872), began life in trade, went to
+the Peninsula for Milford & Co., army contractors, in 1811, set up
+for himself as a merchant, travelled and acquired a number of
+languages.  He was ambitious, energetic and shrewd.  He became editor
+of The Westminster Review in 1824, and LL.D., Gronigen, in 1829.  He
+was sent by the Government upon a commercial mission to Belgium,
+1833; to Egypt; Syria and Turkey, 1837-8; M.P. for Clyde burghs,
+1835-7, and for Bolton, 1841; was instrumental in obtaining the issue
+of the florin as a first step toward a decimal system of currency;
+Consul of Canton, 1847; plenipotentiary to China; governor,
+commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral of Hong Kong, 1854; knighted
+1854; established diplomatic and commercial relations with Siam,
+1855.  He published a number of volumes of translations from various
+languages.  He died full of years and honours in 1872.
+
+{36b}  The Romany Rye, page 368, et seq.
+
+{38a}  Lavengro, pages 177-8.
+
+{39a}  Lavengro, pages 179-80.  Captain Borrow was in his sixty-sixth
+year at his death; b. December 1758, d. 28th February 1824.  He was
+buried in St Giles churchyard, Norwich, on 4th March 1824.
+
+{40a }  The Romany Rye, page 302.
+
+{40b}  In his will Captain Borrow bequeathed to George his watch and
+"the small Portrait," and to John "the large Portrait" of himself;
+his mother to hold and enjoy them during her lifetime.  Should Mrs
+Borrow die or marry again, elaborate provision was made for the
+proper distribution of the property between the two sons.
+
+{41a}  In particular Borrow believed in Ab Gwilym "the greatest
+poetical genius that has appeared in Europe since the revival of
+literature" (Wild Wales, page 6).  "The great poet of Nature, the
+contemporary of Chaucer, but worth half-a-dozen of the accomplished
+word-master, the ingenious versifier of Norman and Italian Tales."
+(Wild Wales, page xxviii.).
+
+{42a}  Lines to Six-Foot-Three.  Romantic Ballads.  Norwich 1826.
+
+{42b}  Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840) before becoming a publisher
+was a schoolmaster, hosier, stationer, bookseller, and vendor of
+patent medicines at Leicester, where he also founded a newspaper.  In
+1795 he came to London, was sheriff in 1807, and received his
+knighthood a year later.
+
+{43a}  It has been urged against Borrow's accuracy that Sir Richard
+Phillips had retired to Brighton in 1823, vide The Dictionary of
+National Biography.  In the January number (1824) of The Monthly
+Magazine appeared the following paragraph:  "The Editor [Sir Richard
+Phillips], having retired from his commercial engagements and removed
+from his late house of business in New Bridge Street, communications
+should be addressed to the appointed Publishers [Messrs Whittakers];
+but personal interviews of Correspondents and interested persons may
+be obtained at his private residence in Tavistock Square."  This
+proves conclusively that Sir Richard was to be seen in London in the
+early part of 1824.
+
+{44a}  Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal
+Jurisprudence from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825, 6 vols.,
+with plates.  London, 1825.
+
+{44b}  Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe.
+By Sir Richard Phillips.  London, 1821.
+
+{45a}  Dr Knapp identified the editor as "William Gifford, editor of
+The Quarterly Review from 1809 to September 1824."  (Life of George
+Borrow, i. 93.)  The late Sir Leslie Stephen, however, cast very
+serious doubt upon this identification, himself concluding that the
+editor of The Universal Review was John Carey (1756-1826), whose name
+was actually associated with an edition of Quintilian published in
+1822.  Carey was a known contributor to two of Sir Richard Phillips'
+magazines.
+
+{45b}  The Monthly Magazine, July 1824.
+
+{46a}  It appeared in six volumes.
+
+{46b}  The work when completed contained accounts of over 400 trials.
+
+{46c}  It appeared on 19th March following.
+
+{46d}  Lavengro, page 210.
+
+{47a}  The picture was duly painted in the Heroic manner, the artist
+lending to the ex-mayor, for some reason or other, his own
+unheroically short legs.  Haydon received his fee of a hundred
+guineas, and the picture now hangs in St Andrew's Hall, Norwich.
+
+{48a}  Letter from Roger Kerrison to John Borrow, 28th May 1824.
+
+{48b}  Memoirs, C. G. Leland 1893.
+
+{49a}  Borrow himself gave the sum as "eighteen-pence a page."  The
+books themselves apparently did not become the property of the
+reviewer.--The Romany Rye, page 324.
+
+{49b}  Borrow says that he demanded lives of people who had never
+lived, and cancelled others that Borrow had prepared with great care,
+because be considered them as "drugs."--Lavengro, pages 245-6.
+
+{50a}  "'Sir,' said he, 'you know nothing of German; I have shown
+your translation of the first chapter of my Philosophy to several
+Germans:  it is utterly unintelligible to them.'  'Did they see the
+Philosophy?' I replied.  'They did, sir, but they did not profess to
+understand English.'  'No more do I,' I replied, 'if the Philosophy
+be English.'"--Lavengro, page 254.
+
+{50b}  A German edition of the work appeared in Stuttgart in 1826.
+
+{52a}  This sentence is quoted in The Gypsies of Spain as a heading
+to the section "On Robber Language," page 335.
+
+{52b}  Lavengro, pages 216-7.
+
+{52c}  Lavengro, page 271.
+
+{53a}  Faustus:  His Life, Death and Descent into Hell.  Translated
+from the German.  London:  W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825, pages
+xxii., 251.  Coloured Plate.
+
+{53b}  A letter from Borrow to the publishers, which Dr Knapp quotes,
+and dates 15th September 1825, but without giving his reasons, was
+written from Norwich, and runs:
+
+Dear Sir, -
+
+As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to take
+thirty copies of Faustus instead of the money.  The book has been
+BURNT in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked about, I
+may, perhaps, be able to dispose of some in the course of a year or
+so.--Yours, G. BORROW.
+
+{55a}  Lavengro, page 310.
+
+{55b}  The Romany Rye, Appendix, page 303.
+
+{57a}  Probably it was only a portion of the whole amount of 50
+pounds that Borrow drew after the completion of the work.  One thing
+is assured, that Sir Richard Phillips was too astute a man to pay the
+whole amount before the completion of the work.
+
+{58a}  Dr Knapp's Life of George Borrow, i., page 141.
+
+{60a}  Dr Knapp gives the date as the 22nd; but Mr John Sampson makes
+the date the 24th, which seems more likely to be correct.
+
+{61a}  The Athenaeum, 25th March 1899.
+
+{61b}  Lavengro, page 362.
+
+{62a}  Lavengro, page 362.
+
+{62b}  Lavengro, page 374.
+
+{63a}  Lavengro, pages 431-2.
+
+{64a}  Lavengro, page 451.
+
+{64b}  Mr Watts-Dunton in a review of Dr Knapp's Life of Borrow says
+that she "was really an East-Anglian road-girl of the finest type,
+known to the Boswells, and remembered not many years ago."--
+Athenaeum, 25th March 1899.
+
+{66a}  Mr Petulengro is made to say the "Flying Tinker."
+
+{66b}  Dr Knapp sees in the account of Murtagh's story of his travels
+Barrow's own adventures during 1826-7, but there is no evidence in
+support of this theory.  Another contention of Dr Knapp's is more
+likely correct, viz., that the story of Finn MacCoul was that told
+him by Cronan the Cornish guide during the excursion to Land's End.
+
+{67a}  It will be remembered that in The Romany Rye Borrow takes his
+horse to the Swan Inn at Stafford, meets his postilion friend and is
+introduced by him to the landlord, with the result that he arranges
+to act as "general superintendent of the yard," and keep the hay and
+corn account.  In return he and his horse are to be fed and lodged.
+Here Borrow encounters Francis Ardry, on his way to see the dog and
+lion fight at Warwick, and the man in black.
+
+{67b}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 360.
+
+{68a}  Introduction to The Romany Rye in The Little Library, Methuen
+& Co., Ltd.
+
+{69a}  The Romany Rye, page 162.
+
+{69b}  The Romany Rye, page 162.
+
+{69c}  The Romany Rye, page 50.
+
+{69d}  "Let but the will of a human being be turned to any particular
+object, and it is ten to one that sooner or later he achieves it."--
+Lavengro, page 16.
+
+{73a}  They appeared as Romantic Ballads, translated from the Danish,
+and Miscellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow.  Norwich.  S. Wilkin,
+1826.  Included in the volume were translations from the Kiaempe
+Viser and from Oehlenschlaeger.
+
+{74a}  Correspondence and Table-Talk of B. R. Haydon.  London, 1876.
+The position of the letter in the Haydon Journal is between November
+1825 and January 1826; but it is more likely that it was written some
+months later.  Unfortunately, Borrow's portrait cannot be traced in
+any of Haydon's pictures.
+
+{75a}  Lavengro, page 9.
+
+{75b}  There was a tradition that Borrow became a foreign
+correspondent for the Morning Herald, and it was in this capacity
+that he travelled on the Continent in 1826-7; but Dr Knapp clearly
+showed that such a theory was untenable.
+
+{75c}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 11.
+
+{75d}  The Bible in Spain, page 219.
+
+{75e}  Letter to his mother, August 1833.
+
+{75f}  The Bible in Spain, page 172.
+
+{75g}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 31.
+
+{76a}  The Bible in Spain, page 703.
+
+{76b}  The Bible in Spain, page 67.
+
+{76c}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 19.
+
+{76d}  Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, by Lt.-Col.
+E. H. D. E. Napier.  London, 1842.
+
+{76e}  The Gypsies of Spain, pages 10-11.
+
+{76f}  Patteran, or Patrin; a gypsy method of indicating by means of
+grass, leaves, or a mark in the dust to those behind the direction
+taken by the main body.
+
+{76g}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 31.
+
+{77a}  If he went abroad, he certainly did so without obtaining a
+passport from the Foreign Office.  The only passports issued to him
+between the years 1825-1840 were:
+
+27th July 1833, to St Petersburg;
+2nd November 1836 and 20th December 1838, to Spain,
+
+as far as the F. O. Registers show.
+
+{77b}  Dr Knapp takes Borrow's statement, made 29th March 1839, "I
+have been three times imprisoned and once on the point of being
+shot," as indicating that he was imprisoned at Pamplona in 1826.  The
+imprisonments were September 1837, Finisterre; May 1838, Madrid; and
+another unknown.  The occasion on which he was nearly shot, which may
+be assumed to be connected with one of the imprisonments (otherwise
+he was more than "once nearly shot"), was at Finisterre, when he,
+with his guide, was seized as a Carlist spy "by the fishermen of the
+place, who determined at first on shooting us."  (Letter to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 15th September 1837.)
+
+{78a}  The incident is given in Lavengro under date of 1818, when
+Marshland Shales was fifteen years old.  It was not, however, until
+1827 that he appeared at the Norwich Horse Fair and was put up for
+auction.  "Such a horse as this we shall never see again; a pity that
+he is so old," was the opinion of those who lifted their hats as a
+token of respect.
+
+{79a}  This and subsequent letters from Borrow to Sir John Bowring
+not specially acknowledged have been courteously placed at the
+writer's disposal by Mr Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring's
+grandson.
+
+{81a}  In The Monthly Review, March 1830, there appeared among the
+literary announcements a paragraph to the same effect.
+
+{83a}  From the original draft of his letter of 20th May to Dr
+Bowring, omitted from the letter itself.
+
+{86a}  Mr Thomas Seccombe in Bookman, February 1902.
+
+{86b}  It is only fair to add that Mr Seccombe wrote without having
+seen the correspondence quoted from above.  His words have been given
+as representing the opinion held by most people regarding the Borrow-
+Bowring dispute.  It has been said that Bowring sought to suck
+Borrow's brains; it would appear, however, that Borrow strove rather
+to make every possible use that he could of Bowring.
+
+{87a}  Preface to The Sleeping Bard, 1860.
+
+{87b}  Ibid.
+
+{88a}  The Bible in Spain, page 201.
+
+{88b}  Dr Knapp gives the date as during the early days of September,
+but without mentioning his authority.
+
+{90a}  The Romany Rye, page 362.
+
+{91a}  Lavengro, page 403.
+
+{91b}  Lavengro, page 446.
+
+{92a}  Vicar of Pakefield, in Norfolk, 1814-1830; Lowestoft, 1830-63.
+He married a sister of J. J. Gurney of Earlham Hall.
+
+{93a}  Dr Knapp was in error when he credited J. J. Gurney with the
+introduction.  In a letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 10th Feb. 1833,
+Borrow wrote, "I must obtain a letter from him [Rev. F. Cunningham]
+to Joseph Gurney."
+
+{93b}  T. Pell Platt, formerly the Hon. Librarian of the Society; W.
+Greenfield, its lately deceased Editorial Superintendent.
+
+{94a}  S. V. Lipovzoff (1773-1841) had studied Chinese and Manchu at
+the National College of Pekin, and had lived in China for 20 years;
+belonged to the Russian Foreign Office (Asiatic section); head of
+Board of Censors for books in Eastern languages printed in Russia:
+Corresponding member of Academy of Sciences for department of
+Oriental Literature and Antiquities.  "A gentleman in the service of
+the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs, who has spent the greater
+part of an industrious life in Peking and the East."--J. P.
+H[asfeldt] in the Athenaeum, 5th March 1836.
+
+{94b}  Asmus, Simondsen & Co., Sarepta House.
+
+{95a}  Borrow's report upon Puerot's translation, 23rd September 5th
+October, 1835.
+
+{96a}  The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, vol. i., July 1888 to
+October 1899.  In the MS. autobiographical note he wrote later for Mr
+John Longe, Borrow stated that he walked from London to Norwich in
+November 1825.  He may have performed the journey twice.
+
+{96b}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, to whom he
+wrote on his return home, circa January, acquainting him with what
+had transpired in London, assuring him that "I am returned with a
+firm determination to exert all my energies to attain the desired end
+[the learning of Manchu]; and I hope, Sir, that I shall have the
+benefit of your prayers for my speedy success, for the language is
+one of those which abound with difficulties against which human skill
+and labour, without the special favour of God, are as blunt hatchets
+against the oak; and though I shall almost weary Him with my own
+prayers, I wish not to place much confidence in them, being at
+present very far from a state of grace and regeneration, having a
+hard and stony heart, replete with worldy passions, vain wishes, and
+all kinds of ungodliness; so that it would be no wonder if God to
+prayers addressed from my lips were to turn away His head in wrath."
+
+{97a}  Borrow always writes Mandchow, but, for the sake of uniformity
+his spelling is corrected throughout.
+
+{98a}  Letter to Rev. Francis Cunningham, circa January 1833.
+
+{99a}  Dr Knapp ascribes the translation to Dr Pazos Kanki, who
+undertook it at the instance of the Bishop of Puebla, but gives no
+authority.  Dr Kanki was a native of La Paz, Peru, and translated St
+Luke into his native dialect Aimara.  He had no more connection with
+Mexico than "stout Cortez" with "a peak in Darien."
+
+{99b}  Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp, i., page 157.
+
+{100a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
+
+{100b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
+
+{100c}  Letter to Rev J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
+
+{101a}  Caroline Fox wrote in her Memories of Old Friends (1882):
+"Andrew Brandram gave us at breakfast many personal recollections of
+curious people.  J. J. Gurney recommended George Borrow to their
+Committee [!]; so he stalked up to London, and they gave him a hymn
+to translate into the Manchu language, and the same to one of their
+own people to translate also.  When compared they proved to be very
+different.  When put before their reader, he had the candour to say
+that Borrow's was much the better of the two.  On this they sent him
+to St Petersburg, got it printed [!] and then gave him business in
+Portugal, which he took the liberty greatly to extend, and to do such
+good as occurred to his mind in a highly executive manner [22nd
+August 1844]."
+
+{102a}  Mr Lipovzoff's unfortunate name was a great stumbling-block.
+Borrow spelt it many ways, varying from Lipoffsky to Lipofsoff.  It
+has been thought advisable to adopt Mr Lipovzoff's OWN spelling of
+his name, in order to preserve some uniformity.
+
+{104a}  Minutes of the Editorial Sub-Committee, 29th July 1833.
+
+{105a}  Harriet Martineau's Autobiography.
+
+{106a}  Letter to his mother, 30th July 1833.
+
+{107a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th August 1833.
+
+{107b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th August 1833.
+
+{108a}  Borrow is always puzzling when concerned with dates.  He
+writes to his mother telling her that he left on the 7th, and later
+gives the date, in a letter to Mr Jowett, as 24th July, O.S. (5th
+August).  The 7th seems to be the correct date.
+
+{108b}  Letter to his mother.
+
+{109a}  "If I had my choice of all the cities of the world to live
+in, I would choose Saint Petersburg."--Wild Wales, page 665.
+
+{110a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, undated:  received 26th September
+1833.
+
+{111a}  In a letter dated 3rd/15th August, the Prince wrote to Mr
+Venning at Norwich, "On returning thence, your son came to introduce
+to me the Englishman who has come over here about the translation of
+the Manchu Bible, and who brought with him your letter."--Memorials
+of John Venning, 1862.
+
+{112a}  Best known for his Grammar, written in German.
+
+{112b}  Nephew of J. C Adelung, the philologist.
+
+{113a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, undated, but received 26th
+September 1833.
+
+{114a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{114b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{114c}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{115a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+
+{115b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
+Probably this means the New Testament only, as there was no intention
+of printing the Old Testament at that date.
+
+{116a}  In a letter to his mother, dated 1st/13th Feb., Borrow
+writes:  "The Bible Society depended upon Dr Schmidt and the Russian
+translator Lipovzoff to manage this business [the obtaining of the
+official sanction], but neither the one nor the other would give
+himself the least trouble about the matter, or give me the slightest
+advice how to proceed."
+
+{117a}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{118a}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.
+
+{118b}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.
+
+{118c}  Letter to the Rev. F. Cunningham, 17th/29th Nov. 1834.
+
+{119a}  1st/13th May 1834.
+
+{121a}  This spelling is adopted throughout for uniformity.  Borrow
+writes Chiachta.
+
+{121b}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{121c}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{121d}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
+
+{123a}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 15th/23rd April 1834.
+
+{123b}  In a letter dated 1st/13th May 1834.
+
+{123c}  A suburb of Norwich.
+
+{126a}  Mrs Borrow eventually received from Allday Kerrison 50
+pounds, 11s. 1d., the amount realised from the sale of John's
+effects.
+
+{126b}  This was partly on account of the Bible Society for storage
+purposes.  In the minutes of the Sub-Committee, 18th August 1834,
+there is a record of an advice having been received from Borrow that
+he had drawn "for 400 Roubles for one year's rent in advance for a
+suitable place of deposit for the Society's paper, etc., part of
+which had been received."
+
+{126c}  Letter to John P. Hasfeldt from Madrid, 29th April 1837.
+
+{129a}  In the minutes of the Sub-Committee, 18th August (N.S.) 1834,
+there is a note of Borrow having drawn 210 roubles "to pay for
+certain articles required to complete the Society's fount of Manchu
+type."
+
+{132a}  "My letters to my private friends have always been written
+during gleams of sunshine, and traced in the characters of hope."
+
+{132b}  "You may easily judge of the state of book-binding here by
+the fact that for every volume, great or small, printed in Russia,
+there is a duty of 30 copecks, or threepence, to be paid to the
+Russian Government, if the said volume be exported unbound."
+
+{135a}  John Hasfeldt.
+
+{135b}  Letter to Mr J. Tarn, Treasurer of the Bible Society,
+15th/27th December 1834.
+
+{136a}  Letter to the Rev. Joseph Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.
+
+{138a}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Feb./4th March
+1834.  In his Report on Puerot's translation, received on 23rd Sep.
+1835, Borrow writes:  "To translate literally, or even closely,
+according to the common acceptation of the term, into the Manchu
+language is of all impossibilities the greatest; partly from the
+grammatical structure of the language, and partly from the abundance
+of its idioms."  The lack of "some of those conjunctions generally
+considered as indispensable" was one of the chief difficulties.
+
+{138b}  Letter, 31st Dec. 1834.
+
+{139a}  Letter, 31st Dec. 1834.
+
+{139b}  Letter, 20th Feb./4th Mar. 1835.
+
+{139c}  Letter, 20th Feb./4th Mar. 1835.
+
+{139d}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.
+
+{139e}  Ibid.
+
+{140a}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 3rd/15th May 1835.
+
+{141a}  Letter to Mr J. Tarn.
+
+{141b}  None of these translations ever appeared, owing to the
+refusal of the Russian Government to grant permission.  John Hasfeldt
+wrote to Borrow, June 1837, apropos of the project:  "You know the
+Russian priesthood cannot suffer foreigners to mix themselves up in
+the affairs of the Orthodox Church.  The same would have happened to
+the New Testament itself.  You may certainly print in the Manchu-
+Tartar or what the d-l you choose, only not in Russian, for that the
+long-bearded he-goats do not like."
+
+{142a}  Letter to Rev. F. Cunningham, 27th/29th Nov. 1834.
+
+{142b}  The principal interest in Targum lies in the number of
+languages and dialects from which the poems are translated; for it
+must be confessed that Borrow's verse translations have no very great
+claim to attention on account of their literary merit.  The "Thirty
+Languages" were, in reality, thirty-five, viz.:-
+
+Ancient British.    Gaelic.           Portuguese.
+   "    Danish.     German.           Provencal
+   "    Irish.      Greek.            Romany.
+   "    Norse.      Hebrew.           Russian.
+Anglo-Saxon.        Irish.            Spanish.
+Arabic.             Italian.          Suabian.
+Cambrian British.   Latin.            Swedish.
+Chinese.            Malo-Russian.     Tartar.
+Danish.             Manchu.           Tibetan.
+Dutch.              Modern Greek.     Turkish.
+Finnish.            Persian.          Welsh.
+French.             Polish.
+
+{143a}  A copy was presented by John Hasfeldt to Pushkin, who
+expressed in a note to Borrow his gratification at receiving the
+book, and his regret at not having met the translator.
+
+{143b}  These two volumes were printed in one and published at a
+later date by Messrs Jarrold & Son, London & Norwich.
+
+{143c}  5th March 1836.
+
+{143d}  From a letter to Borrow from Dr Gordon Hake.
+
+{143e}  Borrow's Report to the Committee of the Bible Society,
+received 23rd September 1835.
+
+{144a}  Borrow's Report to the Committee of the Bible Society,
+received 23rd September 1835.
+
+{144b}  Ibid.
+
+{145a}  Kak my tut kamasa.
+
+{145b}  Borrow's Report to the Committee of the Bible Society,
+received 23rd September 1835.  He gives an account of the episode in
+The Gypsies of Spain, page 6.
+
+{146a}  The Thirty-First Annual Report.
+
+{146b}  Athenaeum, 5th March 1836.
+
+{147a}  Borrow's Report to the Committee of the Bible Society,
+received 23rd September 1835.
+
+{148a}  18th/30th June 1834.
+
+{149a}  27th October 1835.
+
+{150a}  His salary was paid continuously, and included the period of
+rest between the Russian and Peninsula expeditions.
+
+{150b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 26th October 1835.
+
+{150c}  In a letter dated 27th October 1835.
+
+{151a}  Minutes of the General Committee of the Bible Society, 2nd
+Nov. 1835.
+
+{153a}  In his first letter from Spain, addressed to Rev. J. Jowett
+(30th Nov. 1835), Borrow tells of this incident in practically the
+same words as it appears in The Bible in Spain, pages 1-3.
+
+{154a}  The Bible in Spain, pages 73-4.
+
+{154b}  Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 30th Nov. 1835.
+
+{155a}  Dr Knapp states that upon this expedition he was accompanied
+by Captain John Rowland Heyland of the 35th Regiment of Foot, whose
+acquaintance he had made on the voyage out.--Life of George Borrow,
+i., page 234.
+
+{155b}  Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 30th Nov. 1835.
+
+{155c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th Dec. 1835.
+
+{159a}  Letter to Dr Bowring, 26th December 1835.
+
+{159b}  The Bible in Spain, page 67.
+
+{159c}  Dated 8th and 10th January 1836, giving an account of his
+journey to Evora.
+
+{160a}  The Bible in Spain, page 78.
+
+{160b}  The Bible in Spain, pages 77-8.
+
+{161a}  The Bible in Spain, page 87.
+
+{161b}  The Bible in Spain, page 88.
+
+{162a}  The Bible in Spain, page 99.
+
+{162b}  Lavengro, page 191.
+
+{162c}  The Bible in Spain, pages 97-8.
+
+{162d}  Not 5th Jan., as given in The Bible in Spain.
+
+{162e}  The Bible in Spain, page 103.
+
+{164a}  The Bible in Spain, Preface, page vi.
+
+{164b}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 179.
+
+{164c}  "Throughout my life the Gypsy race has always had a peculiar
+interest for me.  Indeed I can remember no period when the mere
+mention of the name Gypsy did not awaken within me feelings hard to
+be described.  I cannot account for this--I merely state it as a
+fact."--The Gypsies of Spain, page 1.
+
+{165a}  The Gypsies of Spain, pages 184-5.
+
+{165b}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 186.
+
+{166a}  The Bible in Spain, page 109.
+
+{166b}  Dr Knapp states that the wedding described in The Gypsies of
+Spain took place during these three days.--Life of George Borrow, by
+Dr Knapp, i., page 242.
+
+{167a}  The Bible in Spain, page 162.
+
+{167b}  "I am not partial to Madrid, its climate, or anything it can
+offer, if I except its unequalled gallery of pictures."--Letter to
+Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd March 1836.
+
+{167c}  24th February 1836.
+
+{167d}  Letter to his mother, 24th February 1836.
+
+{168a}  Letter to his mother, 24th February 1836
+
+{168b}  Ibid.
+
+{168c}  Ibid.
+
+{168d}  Ibid.
+
+{169a}  The Bible in Spain, page 173.
+
+{170a}  Born 1790, commissariat contractor in 1808 during the French
+invasion, he was of great assistance to his country.  In 1823 he fled
+from the despotism of Ferdinand VII.; he returned twelve years later
+as Minister of Finance under Toreno.  He resigned in 1837, was again
+in power in 1841, and died in 1853.
+
+{170b}  George William Villiers, afterwards 4th Earl of Clarendon,
+born 12th Jan. 1800; created G.C.B., 19th Oct. 1837; succeeded his
+uncle as Earl of Clarendon, 1838; K.G., 1849.  He twice refused a
+Marquisate, also the Governor-generalship of India.  He refused the
+Order of the Black Eagle (Prussia) and the Legion of Honour.  Lord
+Privy Seal, 1839-41; Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1840-1,
+1864-5; Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 1847-52.  Secretary of State for
+Foreign Affairs, 1853-8, 1865-6, 1868-9.  Died 27th June 1870.
+
+{171a}  The Bible in Spain, page 165.
+
+{173a}  Extracts accompanying letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd March
+1836.
+
+{173b}  Ibid.
+
+{173c}  Ibid.
+
+{174a}  Letter of 22nd March 1837.
+
+{175a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd May 1836.
+
+{175b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 22nd May 1836.
+
+{175c}  Letter dated 6th April 1836.
+
+{175d}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th April 1836.
+
+{175e}  Ibid.
+
+{176a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th April 1836.
+
+{176b}  Ibid.  Borrow's destitution was entirely accidental, and
+immediately that his letter was received at Earl Street the sum of
+twenty-five pounds was forwarded to him.
+
+{177a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th April 1836.
+
+{178a}  Letter of 9th May 1836.
+
+{178b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th June 1836.
+
+{178c}  Ibid.
+
+{178d}  Ibid.
+
+{179a}  The Duke's secretary who had shown so profound a respect for
+the decrees of the Council of Trent.
+
+{179b}  Late of the Royal Navy, who for sheer love of the work
+distributed the Scriptures in Spain, and who later was to come into
+grave conflict with Borrow.
+
+{180a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th June 1836.
+
+{181a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 7th July 1836.
+
+{181b}  Ibid.
+
+{181c}  Ibid.
+
+{181d}  Ibid.
+
+{182a}  Dr Usoz was a Spaniard of noble birth, a pupil of Mezzofanti,
+and one of the editors of El Espanol.  He occupied the chair of
+Hebrew at Valladolid.  He was deeply interested in the work of the
+Bible Society, and was fully convinced that in nothing but the
+reading of the Bible could the liberty in Spain be found.
+
+{182b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th December 1837.
+
+{182c}  La Granja was a royal palace some miles out of Madrid, to
+which the Queen Regent had withdrawn.  On the night of 12th August,
+two sergeants had forced their way into the Queen Regent's presence,
+and successfully demanded that she should restore the Constitution of
+1812.  This incident was called the Revolution of La Granja.
+
+{183a}  The Bible in Spain, pages 197-206.
+
+{183b}  30th July 1836.
+
+{183c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 10th August 1836.
+
+{184a}  17th October 1836.
+
+{185a}  The Bible in Spain, pages 209-11.
+
+{185b}  Ibid., page 211.
+
+{186a}  The Rev. Wentworth Webster in The Journal of Gypsy Lore
+Society, vol. i., July 1888-Oct. 1889.
+
+{187a}  Letter from Rev. A. Brandram, 6th Jan. 1837.
+
+{188a}  Isidor Just Severin, Baron Taylor (1789-1879), was a
+naturalised Frenchman and a great traveller.  In 1821 he, with
+Charles Nodier, wrote the play Bertram, which was produced with great
+success at Paris in 1821.  Later he was made Commissaire du Theatre
+Francais, and authorised the production of Hernani and Le Mariage de
+Figaro.  Later he became Inspecteur-General des Beaux Arts (1838).
+When seen by Borrow in Seville he was collecting Spanish pictures for
+Louis-Philippe.
+
+{189a}  The Bible in Spain, page 221.
+
+{190a}  The Bible in Spain, page 237.
+
+{190b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 26th Dec. 1836.
+
+{191a}  In letter to the Rev. A. Brandram (26th Dec. 1836), Borrow
+gives the quantity of brandy as two bottles.  This letter was written
+within a few hours of the act and is more likely to be accurate.
+
+{191b}  The Bible in Spain, page 254.
+
+{191c}  Borrow's letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.
+
+{191d}  He was authorised to purchase 600 reams at 60 reals per ream,
+whereas he paid only 45 reals a ream for a paper "better," he wrote,
+"than I could have purchased at 70."
+
+{192a}  Author of La Historia de las Cortes de Espana durante el
+Siglo XIX. (1885) and other works of a political character.  He was
+also proprietor and editor of El Espanol.  Isturitz had intended
+raising Borrego to the position of minister of finance when his
+government suddenly terminated.
+
+{192b}  General report prepared by Borrow in the Autumn of 1838 for
+the General Committee of the Bible Society detailing his labours in
+Spain.  This was subsequently withdrawn, probably on account of its
+somewhat aggressive tone.  In the course of this work the document
+will be referred to as General Report, Withdrawn.
+
+{192c}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.
+
+{193a}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 14th Jan. 1837.
+
+{194a}  27th January 1837.
+
+{194b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 27th Feb. 1837.
+
+{195a}  Letter from Rev. A. Brandram to Borrow, 22nd March 1837.
+
+{195b}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Dec. 1837.
+
+{195c}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 27th February 1837.
+
+{195d}  Rev. Wentworth Webster in The Journal of the Gypsy Lore
+Society, vol. i., July 1888-October 1889.
+
+{196a}  General Report withdrawn.
+
+{196b}  General Report, withdrawn.
+
+{196c}  Borrow to Richard Ford.  Letters of Richard Ford 1797-1858.
+Ed. R. E. Prothero.  Murray, 1905.
+
+{197a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 7th June 1837.
+
+{197b}  Ibid.
+
+{197c}  Ibid.
+
+{198a}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 27th February
+1837.
+
+{199a}  As the method adopted was practically the same in every town
+he visited, no further reference need be made to the fact, and in the
+brief survey of the journeys that Borrow himself has described so
+graphically, only incidents that tend to throw light upon his
+character or disposition, and such as he has not recorded himself,
+will be dealt with.
+
+{200a}  Via Pitiegua, Pedroso, Medina del Campo, Duenas Palencia.
+
+"I suffered dreadfully during this journey," Borrow wrote, "as did
+likewise my man and horses, for the heat was the fiercest which I
+have ever known, and resembled the breath of the simoon or the air
+from an oven's mouth."--Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 5th July 1837.
+
+{200b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 5th July 1837.
+
+{201a}  The Bible in Spain, pages 352-4.
+
+{202a}  The Bible in Spain, page 364.
+
+{203a}  This is the story particularly referred to by Richard Ford in
+report upon the MS. of The Bible in Spain.
+
+{203b}  In the Report to the General Committee of the Bible Society
+on Past and Future Operations in Spain, November 1838.
+
+{204a}  The Bible in Spain, page 409.
+
+{204b}  In The Bible in Spain Borrow says he was arrested on
+suspicion of being the Pretender himself; but in a letter to Rev. A.
+Brandram, 15th September 1837, he says that he and his guide were
+seized as Carlist spies, and makes no mention of Don Carlos.
+
+{205a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th September 1837.
+
+{205b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th September 1837.
+
+{205c}  By way of Ferrol, Novales, Santa Maria, Coisa d'Ouro,
+Viviero, Foz, Rivadeo, Castro Pol, Navaia, Luarca, the Caneiro, Las
+Bellotas, Soto Luino, Muros, Aviles and Gijon.
+
+{205d}  To the Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1837.  The story also
+appears in The Bible in Spain, pages 479-480.
+
+{206a}  Borrow's original idea in printing only the New Testament was
+that in Spain and Portugal he deemed it better not to publish the
+whole Bible, at least not "until the inhabitants become
+christianised," because the Old Testament "is so infinitely
+entertaining to the carnal man," and he feared that in consequence
+the New Testament would be little read.  Later he saw his mistake,
+and was constantly asking for Bibles, for which there was a big
+demand.
+
+{207a}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 29th September 1837.
+
+{208a}  George Dawson Flinter, an Irishman in the service of Queen
+Isabella II., who fought for his adopted Queen with courage and
+distinction, and eventually committed suicide as a protest against
+the monstrously unjust conspiracy to bring about his ruin, September
+
+{209a}  By way of Ontaneda, Ona, Burgos, Vallodolid, Guadarrama.
+
+{209b}  General Report, withdrawn.
+
+{209c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 1st November 1837.
+
+{210a}  The Bible in Spain, page 507.
+
+{211a}  He was created G.C.B. 19th Oct. 1837.
+
+{212a}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 20th Nov. 1837.
+
+{212b}  To the Rev. A. Brandram, 20th Nov. 1837.
+
+{213a}  History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, W. Canton.
+
+{213b}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th March 1838.
+
+{214a}  Mr Brandram wrote to Graydon (12th April 1838):  "Mr Rule
+being at Madrid and having conferred with Mr Borrow and Sir George
+Villiers, it appears to have struck them all three that a visit on
+your part to Cadiz and Seville could not at present be advantageous
+to our cause."
+
+{214b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 20th November 1837.
+
+{214c}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 28th November 1837.  The comment
+on the badness of the London edition had reference to the
+translation, which Borrow had condemned with great vigour; he
+subsequently admitted that he had been too sweeping in his
+disapproval.
+
+{215a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 28th November 1837.
+
+{215b}  Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th May 1838.
+
+{215c}  Ibid.
+
+{216a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 241.
+
+{216b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Dec. 1837.
+
+{216c}  These Bibles fetched, the large edition (Borrow wrote "I
+would give my right hand for a thousand of them") 17s. each, and the
+smaller 7s. each, whereas the New Testaments fetched about half-a
+crown.
+
+{216d}  Letter dated 16th Jan. 1838.
+
+{217a}  In The Bible in Spain he says "the greater part," in The
+Gypsies of Spain he says "the whole."
+
+{217b}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 275.
+
+{218a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 280.
+
+{218b}  Ibid.
+
+{218c}  Ibid., page 282.
+
+{219a}  On 25th December 1837.
+
+{219b}  It is strange that Borrow should insist that he had Sir
+George Villiers' approval; for Sir George himself has clearly stated
+that he strongly opposed the opening of the Despacho.
+
+{220a}  15th January 1838.
+
+{221a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 30th March 1838.
+
+{221b}  In The Gypsies of Spain Borrow gives the number as 500 (page
+281); but the Resolution, confirmed 20th March 1837, authorised the
+printing of 250 copies only.  In all probability the figures given by
+Borrow are correct, as in a letter to Mr Brandram, dated 18th July
+1839, he gives his unsold stock of books at Madrid as:-
+
+Of Testaments .  .  .  .  .  .  . 962
+Of Gospels in the Gypsy Tongue  . 286
+Of ditto in Basque  .  .  .  .  . 394
+
+{222a}  Original Report, withdrawn.
+
+{222b}  The Gypsies of Spain, pages 280-1.
+
+{224a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th March 1838.
+
+{224b}  The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, by W.
+Canton.
+
+{225a}  Mr Canton writes in The History of the British and Foreign
+Bible Society:  "His [Graydon's] opportunity was indeed
+unprecedented; and had he but more accurately appreciated the
+unstable political conditions of the country, the susceptibilities,
+suspicious and precarious tenure of ministers and placemen, the
+temper of the priesthood, their sensitive attachment to certain
+tenets of their faith, and their enormous influence over the civil
+power, there is reason to believe that he might have brought his
+mission to a happier and more permanent issue."
+
+{226a}  [11th] May 1838.
+
+{227a}  Letter from George Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram [11th] May
+1838.
+
+{227b}  23rd April 1838.
+
+{227c}  The Marin episode is amazing.  The object of distributing the
+Scriptures was to enlighten men's minds and bring about conversion,
+and a priest was a distinct capture, more valuable by far than a
+peasant, and likely to influence others; yet when they had got him no
+one appears to have known exactly what to do, and all were anxious to
+get rid of him again.
+
+{228a}  The Bible in Spain, page 536.
+
+{228b}  Ibid.
+
+{229a}  Original Report, withdrawn.
+
+{229b}  Original Report, withdrawn.
+
+{231a}  Sometimes this personage is referred to in official papers as
+the "Political Chief," a too literal translation of Gefe Politico.
+In all cases it has been altered to Civil Governor to preserve
+uniformity.  Many of the official translations of Foreign Office
+papers can only be described as grotesque.
+
+{232a}  This is the official translation among the Foreign Office
+papers at the Record Office.
+
+{232b}  The Bible in Spain, page 539.
+
+{233a}  There is an error in the dating of this letter.  It should be
+1st May.
+
+{234a}  In a letter to Count Ofalia, Sir George Villiers states that
+"George Borrow, fearing violence, prudently abstained from going to
+his ordinary place of abode."
+
+{234b}  Borrow pays a magnificent and well-deserved tribute to this
+queen among landladies.  (The Bible in Spain, pages 256-7.)  She was
+always his friend and frequently his counsellor, thinking nothing of
+the risk she ran in standing by him during periods of danger.  She
+refused all inducements to betray him to his enemies, and, thoroughly
+deserved the eulogy that Borrow pronounced upon her.
+
+{234c}  It was subsequently stated that the arrest was ordered
+because Borrow had refused to recognise the Civil Governor's
+authority and made use "of offensive expressions" towards his person.
+The Civil Governor had no authority over British subjects, and Borrow
+was right in his refusal to acknowledge his jurisdiction.
+
+{235a}  The Bible in Spain, page 547.
+
+{238a}  Dispatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th
+May.
+
+{238b}  Ibid.
+
+{239a}  Despatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston,
+12th May 1838.
+
+{239b}  Ibid.
+
+{240a}  Despatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston.
+
+{240b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th May 1838.
+
+{241a}  Despatch from Sir George Villiers to Viscount Palmerston, 5th
+May 1838.
+
+{241b}  In a letter to the Rev. A. Brandram, 17th May 1838.
+
+{242a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at
+the Record Office.
+
+{242b}  Mr William Mark's (the British Consul at Malaga) Official
+account of the occurrence, 16th May 1838.
+
+{243a}  Mr William Mark's (the British Consul at Malaga) Official
+account of the occurrence, 16th May 1838.
+
+{243b}  Ibid.
+
+{243c}  Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May 1838.
+
+{243d}  Ibid.
+
+{244a}  Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th May 1838.
+
+{244b}  Ibid.
+
+{244c}   Sir George Villiers' Despatch to Viscount Palmerston, 12th
+May 1838.
+
+{246a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at
+the Record Office.
+
+{246b}  The Bible in Spain, page 578.
+
+{247a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 241.
+
+{247b}  The Bible in Spain, page 579.
+
+{249a}  History of the British and Foreign Bible Society.  By W.
+Canton.
+
+{252a}  On [11th] May 1838.
+
+{253a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th May 1838.
+
+{254a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th May 1838.
+
+{255a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at
+the Record Office.
+
+{255b}  Sir George Villiers to Count Ofalia, 25th May 1838.
+
+{255c}  Letter to Mr A. Brandram, 25th May 1838.
+
+{256a}  At the time of writing Borrow had not seen any of these
+tracts himself; but Sir George Villiers, who had, expressed the
+opinion that "one or two of them were outrages not only to common
+sense but to decency."--Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 25th June
+1838.
+
+{256b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th June 1838.
+
+{257a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th June 1838.
+
+{257b}  Ibid.
+
+{259a}  The quotations from Lieut. Graydon's tracts were not sent by
+Borrow to Mr Brandram until some weeks later.  They ran:- A True
+History of the Dolorous Virgin to whom the Rebellious and Fanatical
+Don Carlos Has Committed His Cause and the Ignorance which It
+Displays.
+
+EXTRACTS.
+
+Page 17.  You will readily see in all those grandiose epithets
+showered upon Mary, the work of the enemy of God, which tending
+essentially towards idolatry has managed, under the cloak of
+Christianity, to introduce idolatry, and endeavours to divert to a
+creature, and even to the image of that creature, the adoration which
+is due to God alone.  Without doubt it is with this very object that
+on all sides we see erected statues of Mary, adorned with a crown,
+and bearing in her arms a child of tender years, as though to
+accustom the populace intimately to the idea of Mary's superiority
+over Jesus.
+
+Page 30.  This, then, is our conclusion.  In recognising and
+sanctioning this cult, the Church of Rome constitutes itself an
+idolatrous Church, and every member of it who is incapable of
+detecting the truth behind the monstrous accumulation of impieties
+with which they veil it, is proclaimed by the Church as condemned to
+perdition.  The guiding light of this Church, which they are not
+ashamed to smother or to procure the smothering of, by which
+nevertheless they hold their authority, to be plain, the word of God,
+should at least teach them, if they set any value on the Spirit of
+Christ, that their Papal Bulls would be better directed to the
+cleansing of the Roman Church from all its iniquities than to the
+promulgation of such unjust prohibitions.  Yet in struggling against
+better things, this Church is protecting and hallowing in all
+directions an innumerable collection of superstitions and false
+cults, and it is clear that by this means it is abased and labelled
+as one of the principal agents of Anti-Christ."
+
+{262a}  The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, by W.
+Canton.
+
+{265a}  This letter reached Borrow when his "foot was in the
+stirrup," as he phrased it, ready to set out for the Sagra of Toledo.
+He felt that it could only have originated with "the enemy of mankind
+for the purpose of perplexing my already harrassed and agitated
+mind"; but he continues, "merely exclaiming 'Satan, I defy thee,' I
+hurried to the Sagra. . . . But it is hard to wrestle with the great
+enemy."  General Report, withdrawn.
+
+{265b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th July 1838.
+
+{265c}  Mr Brandram informed Borrow that the General Committee wished
+him to visit England if he could do so without injury to the cause
+(29th June).
+
+{266a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 14th July 1838.
+
+{269a}  The Bible in Spain, page 602.
+
+{269b}  Ibid., page 606.
+
+{269c}  Ibid., page 606.
+
+{270a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 27th July 1838.
+
+{270b}  This would have been impossible.  If his age were seventy-
+four, he would of necessity have been four years old in 1838.
+
+{271a}  By Mr A. G. Jayne in "Footprints of George Borrow," in The
+Bible in the World, July 1908.
+
+{271b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 17th July 1838.
+
+{273a}  This letter, in which there was a hint of desperation,
+disturbed the officials at Earl Street a great deal.  Mr Brandram
+wrote (28th July) that he was convinced that the Committee would
+"still feel that if you are to continue to act with them THEY MUST
+SEE YOU, and I will only add that it is UTTERLY FOREIGN TO THEIR
+WISHES that you should EXPOSE YOURSELF IN THE DARING MANNER YOU ARE
+NOW DOING.  I lose not a post in conveying this impression to you."
+
+{273b}  The Translation of this communication runs:- "Madrid, 7th
+July 1838--I have the honour to inform your Excellency that according
+to official advices received in the first Secretary of State's
+Office, it appears that in Malaga, Murcia, Valladolid, and Santiago,
+copies of the New Testament of Padre Scio, without notes, have been
+exposed for sale, which have been deposited with the political chiefs
+of the said provinces, or in the hands of such persons as the chiefs
+have entrusted with them in Deposit; it being necessary further to
+observe that the parties giving them up have uniformly stated that
+they belonged to Mr Borrow, and that they were commissioned by him to
+sell and dispose of them.
+
+"Under these circumstances, Her Majesty's Government have deemed it
+expedient that I should address your Excellency, in order that the
+above may be intimated to the beforementioned Mr Borrow, so that he
+may take care that the copies in question, as well as those which
+have been seized in this City, and which are packed up in cases or
+parcels marked and sealed, may be sent out of the Kingdom of Spain,
+agreeably to the Royal order with which your Excellency is already
+acquainted, and through the medium of the respective authorities who
+will be able to vouch for their Exportation.  To this Mr Borrow will
+submit in the required form, and with the understanding that he
+formally binds himself thereto, they will remain in the meantime in
+the respective depots."
+
+{275a}  General Report, withdrawn.
+
+{277a}  Borrow's letter to the Rev. A. Brandram, 1st Sept. 1838.
+
+{277b}  To Lord William Hervey, Charge d'Affaires at Madrid (23rd
+Aug. 1838).
+
+{278a}  To Rev. G. Browne, one of the Secretaries of the Bible
+Society, 29th Aug. 1838.
+
+{279a}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 19th September 1838.
+
+{279b}  The Bible in Spain, page 621.
+
+{279c}  Letter to Dr Usoz, 22nd Feb. 1839.
+
+{279d}  Ibid.
+
+{279e}  Ibid.
+
+{280a}  The Report has here been largely drawn upon and has been
+referred to as "Original Report, withdrawn."
+
+{282a}  History of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
+
+{284a}  On the publication of The Bible in Spain the Prophetess
+became famous.  Thirty-six years later Dr Knapp found her still
+soliciting alms, and she acknowledged that she owed her celebrity to
+the Ingles rubio, the blonde Englishman.
+
+{285a}  The Bible in Spain, page 627.
+
+{285b}  To Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Jan. 1839.
+
+{286a}  On 6th Feb. 1839.
+
+{288a}  Letter to Mr W. Hitchin of the Bible Society, 9th March 1839.
+
+{288b}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 26th March 1839.
+
+{290a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 10th April 1839.
+
+{293a}  Letter to the Rev. A. Brandram, 2nd May 1839.
+
+{294a}  Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, by Lt.-Col.
+E. Napier, 46th Regt.  Colburn, 1842, 2 vols.
+
+{294b}  Ibid.
+
+{295a}  Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, by Lt.-Col.
+E. Napier, 46th Regt.  Colburn, 1842, 2 vols.
+
+{297a}  A reference to Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer,
+4 vols., 1820.  This book was republished in 3 vols. in 1892, an
+almost unparalleled instance of the reissue of a practically
+forgotten book in a form closely resembling that of the original.
+Melmoth the Wanderer was referred to in the most enthusiastic terms
+by Balzac, Thackeray and Baudelaire among others.
+
+{298a}  The Bible in Spain, page 663.
+
+{299a}  Maria Diaz had written on 24th May:  "Calzado has been here
+to see if I would sell him the lamps that belong to the shop [the
+Despacho].  He is willing to give four dollars for them, and he says
+they cost five, so if you want me to sell them to him, you must let
+me know.  It seems he is going to set up a beer-shop."  It is not on
+record whether or no the lamps from the Bible Society's Despacho
+eventually illuminated a beer-shop.
+
+{300a}  Letter from Borrow to the Rev. A. Brandram, 28th June 1839.
+
+{301a}  28th June.
+
+{302a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 18th July 1839.
+
+{307a}  Letter from Borrow to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.
+
+{307b}  Ibid.
+
+{307c}  Mr John M. Brackenbury, in writing to Mr Brandram, made it
+quite clear that he had no doubt that the "inhibition was assuredly
+accelerated, if not absolutely occasioned, by the indiscretion of
+some of those who entered Spain for the avowed object of circulating
+the Scriptures, and of others who, not being Agents of the British
+and Foreign Bible Society, were nevertheless considered to be
+connected with it, as they distributed your editions of the Old and
+New Testaments.  Our objects were defeated and your interests
+injured, therefore, when the Spanish Government required the
+departure from this country of those who, by other acts and deeds
+wholly distinct from the distribution of Bibles and Testaments, had
+been infracting the Laws, Civil and Ecclesiastical."
+
+{307d}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.
+
+{308a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 29th Sept. 1839.
+
+{308b}  Ibid.
+
+{309a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+{310a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+{313a}  From the Public Record Office.
+
+{315a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 25th Nov. 1839.
+
+{316a}  Rev. Wentworth Webster in The Journal of the Gypsy Lore
+Society.
+
+{317a}  The phrasing of the official translation has everywhere been
+followed.
+
+{319a}  The Official Translation among the Foreign Office Papers at
+the Record Office.
+
+{320a}  28th Dec. 1839.
+
+{321a}  Henrietta played "remarkably well on the guitar--not the
+trumpery German thing so-called--but the real Spanish guitar."--Wild
+Wales, page 6.
+
+{322a}  Wild Wales, page 6.
+
+{323a}  Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 18th March 1840.
+
+{323b}  Ibid.
+
+{328a}  The Romany Rye, page 312.
+
+{328b}  Ibid., page 313.
+
+{328c}  Wild Wales, page 289.
+
+{329a}  Lavengro, page 261.
+
+{329b}  The Romany Rye, page 22.
+
+{329c}  The Journals of Caroline Fox.
+
+{330a}  The Letters of Richard Ford 1797-1858.--Edited, R. E.
+Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{330b}  Ibid.
+
+{331a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page xiv.
+
+{331b}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{331c}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 238.
+
+{332a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{332b}  Ibid.
+
+{332c}  Ibid.
+
+{332d}  Ibid.
+
+{333a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{333b}  Ibid.
+
+{333c}  The Bible in Spain, page 41.
+
+{334a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{334b}  In The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct. 1892.  She also tells
+how "at the Exhibition in 1851, whither we went with his step-
+daughter, he spoke to the different foreigners in their own
+languages, until his daughter saw some of them whispering together
+and looking as if they thought he was 'uncanny,' and she became
+alarmed, and drew him away."
+
+{334c}  Ibid.
+
+{334d}  The Gypsies of Spain, page vii.
+
+{335a}  A Publisher and His Friends.  Samuel Smiles.
+
+{335b}  Richard Ford, 1796-1858.  Critic and author.  Spent several
+years in touring about Spain on horseback.  Published in 1845, Hand-
+Book for Travellers in Spain.  Contributed to the Edinburgh,
+Quarterly, and Westminster Reviews from 1837.
+
+{335c}  The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858.  Ed. R. E. Prothero,
+M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{336a}  Dr. Knapp points out that the title is inaccurate, there
+being no such word as "Zincali."  It should be "Zincale."
+
+{336b}  The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858.  Ed. R. E. Prothero,
+M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{337a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 1.  As the current edition of The
+Zincali has been retitled The Gypsies of Spain, reference is made to
+it throughout this work under that title and to the latest edition.
+
+{337b}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 32.
+
+{338a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 81.
+
+{338b}  Ibid., page 186.
+
+{338c}  Ibid., page 283.
+
+{339a}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 274.
+
+{340a}  Introduction to Lavengro.  The Little Library, Methuen, 2
+vols., 1, xxiii.-xxiv.  C. G. Leland expressed himself to the same
+effect.
+
+{340b}  Academy, 13th July 1874.
+
+{340c}  Wild Wales, page 186.
+
+{340d}  The Bible in Spain, page 64.
+
+{341a}  Lavengro, page 81.
+
+{343a}  Ford to John Murray.  The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858.
+Ed. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{344a}  Ford to John Murray.  The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858.
+Ed. R. E. Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{347a}  Dr Knapp's Life of George Borrow.
+
+{349a}  The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797-1858.  Edited, R. E.
+Prothero, M.V.O., 1905.
+
+{352a}  Times, 12th April 1843, Hansard's summary reads:  "It might
+have been said, to Mr Borrow with respect to Spain, that it would be
+impossible to distribute the Bible in that country in consequence of
+the danger of offending the prejudices which prevail there; yet he, a
+private individual, by showing some zeal in what he believed to be
+right, succeeded in triumphing over many obstacles."
+
+{353a}  This is obviously the letter that Borrow paraphrases at the
+end of Chapter XLII. of The Bible in Spain.
+
+{354a}  In the Appendix to The Romany Rye Borrow wrote, "Having the
+proper pride of a gentleman and a scholar, he did not, in the year
+'43, choose to permit himself to be exhibited and made a zany of in
+London."  Page 355.
+
+{355a}  Letters to John Murray, 27th Jan. and 13th March, 1843.
+
+{355b}  Letters to John Murray, 27th Jan. and 13th March, 1843.
+
+{355c}  Borrow wrote later on that he was "a sincere member of the
+old-fashioned Church of England, in which he believes there is more
+religion, and consequently less cant, than in any other Church in the
+world" (The Romany Rye, page 346).  On another occasion he gave the
+following reason for his adherence to it:  "Because I believe it is
+the best religion to get to heaven by" (Wild Wales, page 520).
+
+{356a}  No trace can be found among the Bible Society Records of any
+such translation.
+
+{357a}  This portrait has sometimes been ascribed to Thomas Phillips,
+R.A., in error.
+
+{360a}  Memories of Old Friends (1835-1871).  London 1882.
+
+{360b}  Memories of Eighty Years, page 164.
+
+{360c}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{360d}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Express, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{361a}  Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake, ed. by C. E.
+Smith, 1895.
+
+{362a}  The Romany Rye, page 344.
+
+{362b}  Dr Knapp's Life of George Borrow, ii. 44.
+
+{362c}  Hungary in 1851.  By Charles L. Brace.
+
+{363a}  Mrs Borrow to John Murray, 4th June 1844.
+
+{364a}  Memoirs, C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{365a}  Both these MSS. were acquired by the Trustees of the British
+Museum in 1892 by purchase.  The Gypsy Vocabulary runs to fifty-four
+Folios and the Bohemian Grammar to seventeen Folios.
+
+{365b}  24th April 1841.
+
+{365c}  Dr Knapp's Life of George Borrow, ii. page 5.
+
+{367a}  As late even as 13th March 1851, Dr Hake wrote to Mrs Borrow:
+"He [Borrow] had better carry on his biography in three more
+volumes."
+
+{372a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in Athenaeum, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{374a}  There is something inexplicable about these dates.  On 6th
+November Borrow agrees to alter a passage that in the 14th of the
+previous July he refers to as already amended.
+
+{375a}  Vestiges of Borrow:  Some Personal Reminiscences, The Globe,
+21st July 1896.
+
+{376a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in Athenaeum, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{376b}  The Gypsies of Spain, page 287.
+
+{376c}  "His sympathies were confined to the gypsies.  Where he came
+they followed.  Where he settled, there they pitched their greasy and
+horribly smelling camps.  It pleased him to be called their King.  He
+was their Bard also, and wrote songs for them in that language of
+theirs which he professed to consider not only the first, but the
+finest of the human modes of speech.  He liked to stretch himself
+large and loose-limbed before the wood fires of their encampment and
+watch their graceful movements among the tents" (Vestiges of Borrow:
+Some Personal Reminiscences, Globe, 21st July 1896).
+
+{376d}  This was said in the presence of Mr F. G. Bowring, son of Dr
+Bowring.
+
+{378a}  Mr F. J. Bowring writes:  "I was myself present at Borrow's
+last call, when he came to take tea AS USUAL, and not a word of the
+kind [as given in the Appendix], was delivered."
+
+{378b}  There is no record of any correspondence with Borrow among
+the Museum Archives.  Dr F. G. Kenyon, C.B., to whom I am indebted
+for this information, suggests that the communications may have been
+verbal.
+
+{379a}  Memoirs of Eighty Years.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{380a}  Annals of the Harford Family.  Privately printed, 1909.  Mr
+Theodore Watts-Dunton, in the Athenaeum, 25th March 1899, has been
+successful in giving a convincing picture of Borrow:  "As to his
+countenance," he writes, "'noble' is the only word that can be used
+to describe it.  The silvery whiteness of the thick crop of hair
+seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty of the hairless face,
+but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this strangeness was
+intensified by a certain incongruity between the features (perfect
+Roman-Greek in type), and the Scandinavian complexion, luminous and
+sometimes rosy as an English girl's.  An increased intensity was lent
+by the fair skin to the dark lustre of the eyes.  What struck the
+observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of the
+man's appearance."
+
+{380b}  Memoirs of Eighty Years.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{381a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{381b}  The story is narrated by Dr Augustus Jessopp in the
+Athenaeum, 8th July 1893.
+
+{381c}  Wild Wales, page 487.
+
+{381d}  Wild Wales, page 36 et seq.
+
+{382a}  Memoirs of Eighty Years.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{383a}  Memoirs of Eighty Years.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{383b}  Memoirs of Eighty Years.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{384a}  George Borrow in East Anglia.  W. A. Dutt.
+
+{384b}  Memoirs of Eighty Years.  By Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{385a}  William Bodham Donne and His Friends.  By Catherine B.
+Johnson.
+
+{385b}  William Whewell (1794-1866), Master of Trinity College,
+Cambridge, 1848-66; Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1843-56;
+secured in 1847 the election of the Prince Consort as Chancellor;
+enlarged the buildings of Trinity College and founded professorship
+and scholarships for international law.  Published and edited many
+works on natural and mathematical science, philosophy, theology and
+sermons.
+
+{386a}  Mr John Murray in Good Words.
+
+{390a}  To John Murray; the letter is in Mrs Borrow's hand but
+drafted by Borrow himself, 29th Jan. 1855.
+
+{391a}  16th April 1845.
+
+{391b}  See post.
+
+{393a}  The Romany Rye, page 338.
+
+{393b}  Life of Frances Power Cable, by herself.
+
+{393c}  Borrow goes on to an anti-climax when he states that he
+believes him [Scott] to have been by far the greatest [poet], with
+perhaps the exception of Mickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate
+Poland, that Europe has given birth to during the last hundred
+years."
+
+{393d}  The Romany Rye, pages 344-5.
+
+{393e}  Romano Lavo-Lil, page 274.
+
+{393f}  The Romany Rye, page 134.
+
+{394a}  Letter from Borrow to Dr Usoz, 22nd Feb. 1839.
+
+{394b}  Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 45.
+
+{396a}  "Notes upon George Borrow" prefaced to an edition of
+Lavengro.  Ward, Lock & Co.
+
+{398a}  Mr W. Elvin in the Athenaeum, 6th Aug. 1881.
+
+{399a}  John Wilson Croker (1780-1857):  Politician and Essayist;
+friend of Canning and Peel.  At one time Temporary Chief Secretary
+for Ireland and later Secretary of the Admiralty.  Supposed to have
+been the original of Rigby in Disraeli's Coningsby.
+
+{399b}  Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, "Notes upon George Borrow" prefaced
+to an edition of Lavengro.  Ward, Lock & Co.
+
+{400a}  The Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell in Obiter Dicta, and Series,
+1887.
+
+{400b}  Francis Hindes Groome in Bookman, May 1899.
+
+{404a}  "Swimming is a noble exercise, but it certainly does not tend
+to mortify either the flesh or the spirit."--The Bible in Spain, page
+688.
+
+{404b}  Mr John Murray in Good Words.
+
+{404c}  In The Eastern Daily Press, 1st October 1892.
+
+{405a}  Borrow's reference is to the county motto, "One and All."
+
+{407a}  The Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp, ii., 79-80.
+
+{407b}  George Borrow, by R. A. J. Walling.
+
+{407c}  George Borrow, by R. A. J. Walling.
+
+{408a}  George Borrow, by R. A. J. Walling.
+
+{409a}  The Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{411a}  This is rather awkwardly phrased, as Mrs Borrow was alive at
+that date.
+
+{412a}  The first reference to the famous Appendix is contained in a
+letter to John Murray (11th Nov. 1853) in which Borrow writes:  "In
+answer to your inquiries about the fourth volume of Lavengro, I beg
+leave to say that I am occasionally occupied upon it.  I shall
+probably add some notes."
+
+{412b}  The Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{413a}  The Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{415a}  Wild Wales, page 6.
+
+{415b}  There appears to have been a slight cast in his (Borrow's)
+left eye.  The Queen of the Nokkums remarked that, like Will Faa, he
+had "a skellying look with the left eye" (Romano Lavo-Lil, page 267).
+Mr F. H. Bowring, who frequently met him, states that he "had a
+slight cast in the eye."
+
+{416a}  E[lizabeth] H[arvey] in The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct.
+1892.
+
+{417a}  Ellen Jones actually wrote -
+
+Ellen Jones
+yn pithyn pell
+i gronow owen
+
+{417b}  Wild Wales, pages 227-8.
+
+{418a}  This was the mason of whom Borrow enquired the way, and who
+"stood for a moment or two, as if transfixed, a trowel motionless in
+one of his hands, and a brick in the other," who on recovering
+himself replied in "tolerable Spanish."--Wild Wales, page 225.
+
+{418b}  Wild Wales, page 5.
+
+{418c}  These particulars have been courteously supplied by Mr George
+Porter of Denbigh, who interviewed Mrs Thomas on 27th Dec. 1910.
+Borrow's accuracy in Wild Wales was photograph.  The Norwich jeweller
+Rossi mentioned in Wild Wales (page 159 et seq.) was a friend of
+Borrow's with whom he frequently spent an evening:  conversing in
+Italian, "being anxious to perfect himself in that language."  I
+quote from a letter from his son Mr Theodore Rossi.  "There was an
+entire absence of pretence about him and we liked him very much--he
+always seemed desirous of learning."
+
+{419a}  This story is told by Mr F. J. Bowring, son of Sir John
+Bowring.  He heard it from Mrs Roberts, the landlady of the inn.
+
+{419b}  Wild Wales, page 274.
+
+{419c}  Wild Wales, page 130.
+
+{419d}  Wild Wales, page 130.
+
+{420a}  Wild Wales, page 150.
+
+{420b}  These carvels were written by such young people as thought
+themselves "endowed with the poetic gift, to compose carols some time
+before Christmas, and to recite them in the parish churches.  Those
+pieces which were approved of by the clergy were subsequently chanted
+by their authors through their immediate neighbourhoods."
+(Introduction to Bayr Jairgey, Borrow's projected book on the Isle of
+Man.)
+
+{422a}  Painted by H. W. Phillips in 1843.
+
+{423a}  Vestiges of Borrow:  Some Personal Reminiscences.  The Globe,
+21st July 1896.
+
+{423b}  The Anglo-Saxon scholar (1795-1857), who though paralysed
+during the whole of her life visited Rome, Athens and other places.
+She was the first woman elected a member of the British Association.
+
+{423c}  To judge from Borrow's opinion of O'Connell previously
+quoted, "notoriety" would have been a more appropriate word in his
+case.
+
+{424a}  Given to the Rev. A. W. Upcher and related by him in The
+Athenaeum, 22nd July 1893.
+
+{425a}  Lavengro, page 361.
+
+{425b}  The Romany Rye, page 309.
+
+{425c}  Wild Wales, page 285.
+
+{425d}  The Eastern Daily Press, 1st Oct. 1892.
+
+{427a}  Garcin de Tassy.  Note sur les Ruba'iyat de 'Omar Khaiyam,
+which appeared in the Journal Asiatique.
+
+{428a}  Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald, 1889.
+
+{428b}  Songs of Europe, or Metrical Translations from All the
+European Languages, With Brief Prefatory Remarks on Each Language and
+its Literature. 2 vols.  (Advertised as "Ready for the Press" at the
+end of The Romany Rye.  See page 438.)
+
+{429a}  Rev. Whitwell Elwin, editor of The Quarterly Review.  See
+post, p. 431.
+
+{431a}  Elwin could not very well have known Borrow all his, Borrow's
+life, as Dr Knapp states, for he was fifteen years younger, being
+born 26th Feb. 1816.
+
+{432a}  Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters.  Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.
+
+{432b}  Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters.  Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.
+
+{433a}  Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters.  Ed. Warwick Elwin, 1902.
+
+{435a}  Entitled Roving Life in England.  March 1857.
+
+{436a}  Elwin had already testified, also in The Quarterly Review, to
+the accuracy of Borrow's portrait of B. R. Haydon in Lavengro, as
+confirmed by documentary evidence, and this after first reading the
+account as "a comic exaggeration."
+
+{437a}  Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald, 1889.
+
+{437b}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in Athenaeum, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{438a}  Works by the Author of The Bible in Spain, ready for the
+Press.
+
+In Two Volumes, Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings.--In Two Volumes,
+Wild Wales, Its People, Language, and Scenery.--In Two Volumes, Songs
+of Europe; or, Metrical Translations From all the European Languages.
+With brief Prefatory Remarks on each Language and its Literature.--In
+Two Volumes, Koempe Viser; Songs about Giants and Heroes.  With
+Romantic and Historical Ballads, Translated from the Ancient Danish.
+With an Introduction and Copious Notes.--In One Volume, The Turkish
+Jester; or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Efendi.  Translated
+from the Turkish.  With an Introduction.--In Two Volumes, Penquite
+and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland.  A Book on
+Cornwall.--In One Volume, Russian Popular Tales, With an Introduction
+and Notes.  Contents:- The Story of Emelian the Fool; The Story of
+the Frog and the Hero; The Story of the Golden Mountain; The Story of
+the Seven Sevenlings; The Story of the Eryslan; The Story of the Old
+Man and his Son, the Crane; The Story of the Daughter of the Stroey;
+The Story of Klim; The Story of Prince Vikor; The Story of Prince
+Peter; The Story of Yvashka with the Bear's Ear.--In One Volume, The
+Sleeping Bard; or, Visions of the World, Death, & Hell.  By Master
+Elis Wyn.  Translated from the Cambrian British.--In Two Volumes
+(Unfinished), Northern-Skalds, Kings, and Earls.--The Death of
+Balder; A Heroic Play.  Translated from the Danish of Evald.--In One
+Volume, Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo:  The Red Path and the Black
+Valley.  Wanderings in Quest of Manx Literature.
+
+{439a}  "She was a lady of striking figure and very graceful manners,
+perhaps more serious than vivacious."--Mr A. Egmont Hake in The
+Athenaeum, 13th August 1881.
+
+{440a}  She bequeathed to her son by will "all and every thing" of
+which she died possessed, charging him with the delivery of any gift
+to any other person she might desire.
+
+{440b}  Wild Wales, page 548.
+
+{442a}  These particulars have been kindly supplied by Mr D. B. Hill
+of Mattishall, Norfolk.
+
+{445a}  Mr. A. Egmont Hake in The Athenaeum, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{445b}  The Life of Frances Power Cobbe, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{446a}  The Life of Frances Power Cobbe, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{447a}  "In Defence of Borrow," prefixed to The Romany Rye.  Ward,
+Locke & Co.
+
+{447b}  Vestiges of Borrow; Some Personal Reminiscences.  The Globe,
+21st July 1896.
+
+{448a}  The Athenaeum, 13th August 1881.
+
+{449a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in Macmillan's Magazine, November 1881.
+
+{449b}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in The Athenaeum, 13th August 1881.
+
+{449c}  Memoirs of Eighty Years, by Dr Gordon Hake, 1892.
+
+{450a}  The Athenaeum, 10th September 1881.
+
+{451a}  The Athenaeum, 10th September 1881.
+
+{451b}  The Athenaeum, 13th August 1881.
+
+{453a}  "Sherry drinkers, . . . I often heard him say in a tone of
+positive loathing, he DESPISED.  He had a habit of speaking in a
+measured syllabic manner, if he wished to express dislike or
+contempt, which was certainly very effective.  He would say:  'If you
+want to have the Sherry TANG, get Madeira (that's a gentleman's
+wine), and throw into it two or three pairs of old boots, and you'll
+get the taste of the pig skins they carry the Sherry about in."--Rev.
+J. R. P. Berkeley's Recollections.  The Life of George Borrow, by Dr
+Knapp.
+
+{456a}  Life of Frances Power Cobbe, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{459a}  The Geologist, 1797-1875.
+
+{459b}  The Life of Frances Power Cobbe, by Herself, 1894.
+
+{460a}  Charles Godfrey Leland, by E. R. Pennell, 1908
+
+{460b}  Memoirs, by C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{461a}  In her biography of Leland, Mrs Pennell states that an
+American woman, a Mrs Lewis ("Estelle") introduced Leland to Borrow
+at the British Museum and that they talked Gypsy.  "I hear he
+expressed himself as greatly pleased with me," was Leland's comment.
+The correspondence clearly shows that Leland called on Borrow.
+
+{461b}  Memoirs of C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{461c}  Memoirs of C. G. Leland, 1893.
+
+{462a}  Leland's annoyance with Borrow did not prevent him paying to
+his memory the following tribute:-
+
+"What I admire in Borrow to such a degree that before it his faults
+or failings seem very trifling, is his absolutely vigorous,
+marvellously varied originality, based on direct familiarity with
+Nature, but guided and cultured by the study of natural, simple
+writers, such as Defoe and Smollett.  I think that the 'interest' in,
+or rather sympathy for gypsies, in his case as in mine, came not from
+their being curious or dramatic beings, but because they are so much
+a part of free life, of out-of-doors Nature; so associated with
+sheltered nooks among rocks and trees, the hedgerow and birds, river-
+sides, and wild roads.  Borrow's heart was large and true as regarded
+English rural life; there was a place in it for everything which was
+of the open air and freshly beautiful."--Memoirs of C. G. Leland,
+1893.
+
+{462b}  Romano Lavo-Lil.  Word-Book of the Romany, or English Gypsy
+Language.  With Specimens of Gypsy Poetry, and an Account of Certain
+Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating
+to Gypsy Life in England.
+
+{462c}  "There were not two educated men in England who possessed the
+slightest knowledge of Romany."--F. H. Groome in Academy,--13th June
+1874.
+
+{463a}  F. H. Groome in Academy, 13th June 1874.
+
+{463b}  Ibid
+
+{464a}  The Athenaeum, 17th March 1888.
+
+{466a}  The Bookman, February 1893.
+
+{466b}  The Athenaeum, 10th Sept. 1881.
+
+{467a}  William Bodham Donne and His Friends.  Edited by Catherine B.
+Johnson, 1905.
+
+{469a}  Mr T. Watts-Dunton, in The Athenaeum, 3rd Sept. 1881.
+
+{469b}  Mr A. Egmont Hake, in The Athenaeum, 13th Aug. 1881.
+
+{470a}  The Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp.
+
+{470b}  East Anglia, by J. Ewing Ritchie, 1883.
+
+{470c}  George Borrow in East Anglia
+
+{473a}  W. E. Henley.
+
+{474a}  The Athenaeum, 25th March 1899.
+
+{474b}  Many attacks have been made upon Borrow's memory:  one well-
+known man of letters and divine has gone to lengths that can only be
+described as unpardonable.  It is undesirable to do more than deplore
+the lapse that no doubt the writer himself has already deeply
+regretted.
+
+{474c}  Memoirs of Eighty Years, 1892.
+
+{475a}  Mr A. Egmont Hake in The Athenaeum, 13th August 1881.
+
+{475b}  In The Bible in Spain.  "Next to the love of God, the love of
+country is the best preventative of crime."  (Page 53.)
+
+{475c}  The Bible in Spain, page 97.
+
+{476a}  Mr Thomas Seccombe in The Bookman, Feb. 1892.
+
+{477a}  Wild Wales, page 628.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Life of George Borrow, by Herbert Jenkins
+
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