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diff --git a/old/63880-0.txt b/old/63880-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d5c8b57..0000000 --- a/old/63880-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9335 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Borrow, by R. A. J. Walling - - -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: George Borrow - the Man and his Work - - -Author: R. A. J. Walling - - - -Release Date: November 25, 2020 [eBook #63880] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BORROW*** - - -Transcribed from the 1908 Cassell and Company edition by David Price. - - _By the Same Author_ - - A - Sea Dog of Devon - - A Life of Sir - John Hawkins - With Introduction by Lord Brassey - 6s. net - - * * * * * - - _Cheap Edition of GEORGE_ - _BORROW’S_ “_THE BIBLE_ - _IN SPAIN_.” 8_d._ _net_ - _cloth_, 1_s._ 6_d._ _net leather_ - - * * * * * - - CASSELL AND CO., LTD. - - [Picture: George Borrow by Henry Philips pinxt; Emery Walker photo] - - - - - - GEORGE BORROW - THE MAN AND HIS WORK - - - * * * * * - - BY - R. A. J. WALLING - _Author of_ “_A Sea Dog of Devon_” - - * * * * * - - [Picture: Decorative graphic] - - * * * * * - - CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED - LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE - MCMVIII - - * * * * * - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - * * * * * - - - - -PREFACE - - -ONE writing of Borrow since the publication of Dr. W. I. Knapp’s “Life, -Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow” (Murray, 1899) must of -need acknowledge the invaluable services conferred upon the student by -that monumental work. Its store of documents is the harvest of a -lifetime of devoted labour, and it bridges many a yawning gulf which -aforetime left the Borrovian explorer disconsolate. In this monograph, -where Dr. Knapp is directly quoted, the fact is generally mentioned -either in the text or by way of footnote; but it seemed fitting that -there should be some more definite expression of my indebtedness to his -affectionate diligence in those long and fruitful researches, which alone -have made possible a consecutive story of Borrow’s life. - -An inquiry into the Cornish origin of the Borrow family, into the -circumstances of Borrow’s visit to the home of his forbears, and of his -tour in Cornwall, was responsible for the inception of the present book. -The astonishing contrast between the Borrow of the common conception and -Borrow as he really was in the flesh and in the spirit gradually forced -itself upon me. Borrow has been popularly regarded in two lights. Many -people have had a vague idea that if he was not a gypsy he was “half a -gypsy, or something of the sort.” More instructed opinion has accepted -his affection for East Anglia, the country of his birth, and his -glorification of Anglo-Saxonism, as sufficient evidence that he was -himself an Anglo-Saxon. Both views are wrong. He was of Celtic origin; -his genius was Celtic, though its attributes were modified by many -influences. Here is the explanation of many things in Borrow’s life and -work which can be explained in no other way. If the part of the book -referring to his Cornish associations appears to be out of proportion to -the rest, my excuse lies here also. - -Further, the Cornish episodes are those least known in Borrow’s life. My -object has been, so far as the narrative is concerned, to strengthen the -connecting links between those portions of his career which he set forth -in his autobiographies, rather than to re-traverse ground where he -himself trailed the pen. - -Gratitude must be expressed for much assistance given to me in the -elucidation of obscure points and in the tracing of documents. First, I -am indebted to Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, not only for liberty to draw -upon his rich store of recollections of his friend, but for much advice, -assistance, and suggestion, the value of which it is difficult to -overestimate. No little of the revival of interest in Borrow and the -subjects with which he dealt is due to the vogue given to “gypsyism” in -literature by the extraordinary success of that wonderful novel, -“Aylwin,” and the fascinations of its heroine, Sinfi Lovel, of whom Mr. -Watts-Dunton and Borrow conversed during those walks commemorated in Dr. -Gordon Hake’s sonnet: - - While he, Lavengro, towering by your side, - With rose complexion and bright silvery hair, - Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride - To tell the legends of the fading race— - As at the summons of his piercing glance, - Its story peopling his brown eyes and face, - While you called up that pendant of romance - To Petulengro with his boxing glory, - Your Amazonian Sinfi’s noble story! - -Mr. Francis Edwards, of Marylebone, has generously given permission for -the reproduction of exceedingly interesting passages from unique copies -of Borrow’s books in his possession. To the kindness of Mrs. Ford, of -Pencarrow, is due some of the additional information about the relations -of Borrow with her husband, Richard Ford. For East Anglian memories I -have consulted, among others, Mr. William Dutt, of Lowestoft, and Mr. -William Mackay, of Oulton. Family documents and reminiscences have been -contributed by Mr. W. H. Borrow, of South Hampstead; Mr. E. Pollard, of -Penquite; Mr. William Pollard, of Woolston, and, above all, by Dr. -Reginald Taylor, of Gray’s’ Inn Road (son of the “gallant girl” of the -’fifties in Cornwall), to whom my thanks are due especially for the -material of the detailed account of Borrow’s Cornish tour. - -In the biographical sense, the most important new matter is the -correspondence between Borrow and Sir John Bowring, supplied by the -courtesy of Sir John’s sons, Mr. Lewin B. Bowring, of Torquay, and Mr. F. -H. Bowring, of West Hampstead. This throws a little light on the -mysterious “Veiled Period.” The quarrel between Borrow and Bowring will -possibly never be explained quite fully; the correspondence now -summarised or printed for the first time shows that for more than twenty -years Bowring was a good friend of Borrow—“my only friend,” as he said in -1842. Judgment on the merits of the dispute, so far as the evidence can -be taken at present, must go against Borrow. - -I have entered with some diffidence upon the discussion of Borrow’s -“gypsyism”; any degree of confidence which may appear is the offspring of -the enthusiastic aid afforded to me by Mr. R. A. Scott-Macfie, the -secretary of the Gypsy Lore Society. - - R. A. J. W. - -Plymouth, - _October_, 1908. - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHAPTER PAGE - 1. THE WIND ON THE HEATH 1 - 2. A WANDERING YOUTH 21 - 3. PUBLISHER’S HACK AND HEDGESMITH 46 - 4. BORROW AND BOWRING 67 - 5. IN FOREIGN PARTS 85 - 6. THE SUMMER HOUSE AT OULTON 106 - 7. “LAVENGRO” AND HIS CRITICS 128 - 8. “SUCCESS TO OLD CORNWALL!” 146 - 9. A GALLANT GIRL AND HER FAMILY 168 - 10. THE BOOK THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN 189 - 11. THE LAND OF ELIS WYN 208 - 12. LONDON AGAIN 224 - 13. DEATH OF MRS. BORROW 238 - 14. THE PASSING OF THE ROMANY RYE 251 - 15. BORROW’S GYPSYISM 264 - 16. BORROW’S BOOKS 293 - 17. CHARACTERISTICS 337 -INDEX 349 - - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - -GEORGE BORROW _Frontispiece_ - - _After the Portrait by Henry Phillips_, _by - permission of Mr. John Murray_, _the owner of the - Painting_. -PAGE OF BORROW’S DRAFT OF “THE ZINCALI” _page_ 276 - - _By permission of Mr. Watts-Dunton_. -PORTION OF PAGE OF BORROW’S COPY OF THE “ROMANTIC _page_ 331 -BALLADS” WITH HIS MS. REVISION - - _By permission of Mr. Francis Edwards_ - - - - - -CHAPTER I -THE WIND ON THE HEATH - - - “WHAT is your opinion of death, Mr. Petulengro?” . . . “There’s night - and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, - all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very - sweet, brother; who would wish to die?” - -THE speakers were two young men, met casually on breezy Household Heath -outside the city of Norwich; the time towards sunset on a fine evening; -the year at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The tall young -Englishman who questioned and the lithe swart gypsy who answered were -friends of some years’ standing, but of infrequent intercourse. The one, -with an absorbing curiosity in all things rare and strange, especially in -rare and strange dialects and languages, the other, with a gypsy’s agile, -half-developed intellect and pagan philosophy, had a common bond in their -love of The Wild and their passion for pugilism and horse-dealing. - -The quality of this friendship was peculiar, but not more remarkable than -the manner of its origin. Norman Cross, on the North Road, is a lonely -place, remote from the trafficking of the world, peopled mainly now by -ghosts. In the year 1810 it was the home of several thousands of -sorrowful men. There was enacted the sequel of many an incident in the -world-tragedy of the Great Conflict, for on that solitary cross-road the -Government had built sixteen prisons to hold six thousand Frenchmen, -human spoil of war, and fenced them round with a palisade. Outside were -barracks for the militia who guarded the prisoners and captives, and -wooden houses for the officers who commanded the militia. It was a -fantastic environment for an episode which determined the career and -directed the effort of such genius as was latent in a boy of seven. - -In one of the wooden huts on the roadside dwelt Captain Thomas Borrow, a -Cornishman, adjutant of the West Norfolk Militia. With him were his -wife, formerly Ann Perfrement, the descendant of Huguenot refugees, and -their two sons, John, aged ten, and George, aged seven. The younger boy, -even at that age, was fond of self-communion, of solitary wandering; shy -of normal relations with his fellows and prone to scrape acquaintance -with the oddest people he could find. He absorbed impressions readily; -he never forgot what he saw or heard. He observed how the unhappy -prisoners earned some scanty comforts by straw-plaiting; his dark face -was often lit up by the light of the bonfires on which callous authority -threw the dainty work of French fingers, prohibited and condemned because -it interfered with the prosperity of the Bedfordshire straw industry. He -was one of the astonished listeners to the adventure of the French -officer who hid himself in a refuse bin and was shot out of prison and -collected by the scavengers. He picked up the friendship of a -snake-collector, who told him the tale of the King of the Vipers, and -made him a present of a toothless snake, which thereafter he carried -about in his bosom as a pet. - -This companion of his lonely excursions was with him on the day when he -strolled into a green lane where the gypsies had encamped. With it he -turned the tables on the pair of vagabonds who threatened to assault him -and drown him in the toad pond for prying into their tents; and, for his -supposititious occult power over a poisonous reptile, he was endowed by -them with the title of “sapengro,” or snake-master. Who had been, one -moment before, a “young highwayman” and a “Bengui’s bantling” {3} became -a “precious little gentleman” and a “gorgeous angel” when the snake -“stared upon his enemy with its glittering eyes”; and presently was -introduced with ceremony to their son, a lad of thirteen, ruddy and -roguish of face, with whom he swore eternal brotherhood. - -The gypsies camped in the green lane at Norman Cross were of the mighty -tribe of Smith, and the roguish lad was Ambrose. It was Ambrose Smith -who figured thereafter in the writings of the little sapengro as Jasper -Petulengro. It was he who uttered the pæan of the sun, moon and stars, -and the wind on the heath, when George Borrow met him eight or nine years -afterwards near the encampment outside the city of Norwich. - -George was then a youth pretending to learn law in the respectable office -of Simpson and Rackham, in Tuck’s Court, but was far more ardently -engaged in studying the by-products of human society and threading the -byways of literature. He had been wandering on the heath until he “came -to a place where, beside a thick furze, sat a man, his eyes fixed -intently on the red ball of the setting sun.” The conversation, which -may be found in the twenty-fifth chapter of “Lavengro,” is one of the -most remarkable and most poetical dialogues in the English tongue. It -strikes with perfect accuracy the keynote of George Borrow’s life. The -whole chapter is a microcosm of Borrow, his philosophy, his morals, and -his tastes. Its exordium is a passionate statement of his efforts in -search of the heart of things, his pursuit of the elusive answer to the -eternal Question. Its middle includes some reflections on philological -research, mingled in Borrow’s incomparable manner with the pathos of -failure and the humour of success. It has its fling at the -metaphysicians. It reports in vivid words the earnest sermon of a field -preacher; it describes with great wealth of comparison and eloquence the -singing of a hymn on that Norfolk moor by a crowd of commonplace people -elevated to a pitch of intense feeling by religious enthusiasm: a hymn -which echoed in the ears of the listener many times in after years when -in the great cathedrals of the world he was disappointed with religion -decked out in all the panoply of pomp and circumstance; its peroration is -Mr. Petulengro’s immortal pronouncement on the problem of mortality—and -its epilogue is the gypsy’s invitation to his brother to “put on the -gloves, and I will try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be -alive.” - -This is the very essence of Borrow—languages, religion, hedge-philosophy, -and pugilism. The only element missing from the mixture is one of his -characteristic outbursts in praise of the brown ale of old England. -“There’s likewise a wind on the heath” lets us some way into the heart of -Borrow’s secret. - -The little sapengro of Norman Cross, the inquisitive youth who discussed -Death with Jasper Petulengro, and was boxed out of the mood of morbid -introspection, in which he declared, “I would wish to die,” into a -healthy appreciation of the sweetness of Life, played many parts in his -long career. He became scoffing sceptic, Bible missionary and -Papist-hater, traveller, and recluse, philologist and poet. But his -principal service to his day and generation and to their posterity had -nothing to do with philosophy or religion, with belabouring “Romanisers” -or with evangelical propagandism, with topography or with languages, or -with poetry in the academic sense. It had everything to do with his -wanderings in green lanes, his “love of Nature unconfined,” his -acquaintance with the gypsies, his passion for The Wild, and his devotion -to the ruder athletics. Many an artist imagines that he would make a -reputation as a man of business; many a wizard of accounts has secret -dreams of literary fame. Borrow had an impotent desire for scholarship -and the celebrity of learning; but he laboured better than he knew. His -invaluable bequest is to be disinterred from the numerous pages of five -books, dug out from a mass of irrelevance and banality; and its -inspiration will be found in the words of Mr. Petulengro: “There’s -likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would -wish to die?” {6} - -The man who, preaching from this text, imposed worship on the -English-speaking world, was intensely alive, intensely egoistic. Often -“engrossed with the sufferings of himself and of his soul,” as one has -written of his hero Byron, he yet had a keen outlook upon that part of -society in which he could move freely, and, as he saw intensely, was able -to produce intense impressions of his visions upon his readers. He was a -strange, romantic, wayward, irresponsible man—irresponsible, that is, to -any but his own code of honour, manliness and virtue. - -He was a very Don Quixote of letters. He went about the world tilting at -every windmill he encountered; not infrequently he would construct -windmills on which to break his lance. If he was often unhorsed and -maimed, that did not matter; it merely made his next onslaught more -severe. In one of his contests with persons who had offended him he -speaks of them as malignant pseudo-critics, by whom he would not allow -himself to be poisoned. “No, no! he will rather hold them up by their -tails, and show the creatures wriggling, blood and foam streaming from -their broken jaws.” Possibly only a man who had been worsted in his -battle could have been guilty of this. But—_furor arma ministrat_; this -was Borrow on the war-path against his critics. The true Borrovian likes -to think of Borrow at another period and in different circumstances. It -was a crabbed literary person who mangled and was mangled in this -fashion. The lover of his genius pictures him otherwise—the young and -handsome and vigorous Lavengro, stalking over the high roads and the -byways of England, disputing with scholar or with gypsy, camping in -lonely dingles, conjugating Armenian verbs with Isopel Berners. He has -six feet three inches of height. His hair is white, but he has the -complexion of healthy youth, and eyes dark and deep as mountain tarns. -He revels in the friendship of gypsies and all the vagrants of earth, and -cares for few other friends. He would rather sing ballads in the tent of -a Romany chal than be entertained in the palace of a prince; he prefers -the society of a prize-fighter to the converse of any duke. Recall his -picture of himself: - - “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 a friend - While he his bony fist can bend; - And, though averse to brawl and strife, - Will fight a Dutchman with a knife; - Oh, that is just the lad for me, - And such is honest six-foot-three.” - -Or, again, in his riper age, as he is described by Mr. Egmont Hake (Dr. -Gordon Hake’s fourth son)—a huge figure of a fine old man, eccentric of -humour, rich beyond measure in the experience from which he drew -anecdote, full of quaint whimsy and natural conceit. He was, says Mr. -Hake (_Athenæum_, August 13th, 1881), “a choice companion on a walk, -whether across country or in the slums of Houndsditch. His enthusiasm -for nature was peculiar; he could draw more poetry from a widespreading -marsh with its straggling rushes than from the most beautiful scenery, -and would stand and look at it with rapture.” He rejoiced in a -hedge-alehouse, or a coaching inn; he was moved to passionate delight by -local reminiscences of highway robbers, vagrom scoundrels, pugilists, and -vagabonds of all degrees; good beer was a poem to him. Under all these -impressions he expanded nobly; contact with conventional respectability -shrivelled him up; his _bête noire_ was “gentility.” His strength and -vigour remained unimpaired almost to the end of his life; at seventy he -would break the ice on a pond and plunge in to bathe. - -No man less fit than this for literary controversy was ever born into the -world. It was an evil fate that launched him upon those sordid -disputations disfiguring the Appendices to “The Romany Rye,” from which -the “blood and foam” passage I have quoted is drawn. - -Few men bringing to the literary mart so slight a cargo as Borrow brought -have obtained so great a price for it. Some of his work, judged by any -conventional standard, is remarkably poor. The best of it, judged by the -only proper standard (which is entirely unconventional) is so good that -immortality might be predicted for it by a person inclined to take the -risk of being confuted in some remotely future incarnation. A great -number of the enterprises in which Borrow dissipated many years of his -life may be dismissed as of no literary importance and of no possible -value to any other son of man. His philology, _quâ_ philology, is -grossly unscientific; its uses are, in fact, not scientific but artistic. -They reside in the quaint hues it helped him to mix on his palette, the -whimsical, half-serious, half-humorous disquisitions into which an -unusual word would lead him, the ease with which it enabled him to -glorify his picture with the tints of foreign skies and the forms of -strange men. If we are to assess his linguistic achievements by their -practical and immediate results, the years Borrow spent upon them were -squandered. The seeds of his philological learning, - - “Like Hebrew roots, were found - To flourish most in barren ground.” - -They produced a meagre crop of translations, of no consequence either as -exercises or as poetry. But that would be a perverse view to take of -Borrow’s studies. Their virtue was not in their verbal fruits, but in -the quality they added to his later work. For example, those “deeds of -northern kings rehearsed” were rehearsed a great deal better by other -people, and the works of Elis Wyn had been more efficiently dealt with by -a Welshman. But would the shining history of Isopel Berners have been as -glorious if Lavengro had not been the sort of man to compare her with -Ingeborg, the northern queen who engaged and defeated in single combat -each of her long string of redoubtable brothers? Or would not the -fascinating converse of Lavengro with the Methodist preacher, Peter -Williams, have lost half its charm if the young man had not been able to -talk familiarly with him of Master Elis Wyn and the Bardd Cwsg? It is -the reflected colour of all this word-learning that gives it a high place -in Borrow’s development. - -He began to study languages almost before he was out of frocks. He did -not find his _métier_ till he was thirty-eight: “The Zincali; or, The -Gypsies of Spain” was published in 1841. This was late for a man who had -been so deeply devoted to the pen. His processes were slow, too. His -other books of any significance numbered only four, and they occupied -twenty-one years in gestation. “The Bible in Spain” was dated 1842, -“Lavengro” appeared in 1850, “The Romany Rye” in 1857, and “Wild Wales” -in 1862. Much was concentrated in these few works, laboriously -elaborated as they were, and produced with horrible pangs of travail. -They crystallised—if such a term may be used of Borrow—the experiences of -a long life of wandering through the world, and they recorded the -opinions collected or developed by a self-centred man of violent -prejudices. They provide an almost unparalleled conglomeration of good -and bad, of false and sound. They commit inexcusable crimes against -every canon of taste—and they have in them the true stuff of poetry and -romance. The glamour of these last is over them all. The poetry of -Borrow, one of the most natural poets who have written in English, takes -its spring in the keen observation and appreciation of the elemental joys -found in Nature’s least-trodden ways, and the elemental humours of her -least sophisticated children. It recalls Sidney’s epigram of the -excellent poets that never versified and the versifiers that need never -answer to the name of poets. For Borrow’s verse, on the whole, is -villainous, and much of his prose is truest poetry. He restored to us, -at any rate for a time, the picaresque element in romantic literature, -and revived our indulgent fondness for the good-humoured villains of low -life. - -With the jovial virtues of Le Sage, however, Borrow combined in a -remarkable way some of the quaintest characteristics of Sterne. The mark -of “Shandyism” is strong upon portions of his work—but let it be said at -once that the philo-pugilist Borrow is absolutely free from any taint of -the pornographic _double entendre_ of the Rev. Laurence Sterne, M.A. -Captain Tom Borrow often rivals My Uncle Toby, and the battle with Ben -Bryan in Hyde Park may be compared as a staple reminiscence with the -Siege of Namur; but there is no Widow Wadman in “Lavengro.” Ab Gwilym -becomes in some points as delightful as Slawkenbergius, and there are -episodes in “The Bible in Spain” and “Lavengro” which may compare with -the stories of the Dead Ass and of Lefevre, the Monk and Maria; but it -can be said of Borrow’s books with more truth than a sententious critic -once said it of Sterne’s, that they may be submitted to the taste, -feeling, good sense, and candour of the public “without the least -apprehension that the perusal of any part of them will be followed by -consequences unfavourable to the interests of society.” It may be a -negative virtue that a book fails “to bring the blush of shame to the -cheek of innocence”; but, for what it is worth, any book of Borrow’s has -that merit. - -Interesting as these comparisons may be to his admirers, Borrow must not -be judged by any purely literary standards. One discerning critic, Mr. -Thomas Seccombe, has observed that he “wrote with infinite difficulty.” -That is evident in almost every page. He had no fatal facility in -composition. He developed no graces of style. The man who loves -Stevenson is probably a man who will also love Borrow, but for reasons -quite apart from style. Borrow’s awkward forms and ugly lapses were -calculated to make Stevenson’s delicately tuned literary organism shudder -in its marrow. Their likeness lies in their love of Out-of-Doors, their -capacity for discovering and enjoying the unusual adventure in the -commonplace environment. - -I doubt whether Borrow definitely and consciously copied his style from -anybody, or modelled it on any man’s writings; but if we are to go -anywhere for his master we must go to Defoe, whose “wondrous volume” was -his “only study and principal source of amusement” in his very small -boyhood at East Dereham. How he apostrophises the wizard! “Hail to -thee, spirit of Defoe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee? -England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare -them easier far than Defoe, ‘unabashed Defoe,’ as the hunchbacked rhymer -styled him.” England may not owe to Defoe all that Borrow declares she -does of her “astonishing discoveries both by sea and land,” and her -“naval glory,” but she certainly owes to him some of the gift that Borrow -bestowed upon her. George had many other points of resemblance to the -“illiterate fellow” of Swift’s satire besides this—that they were both at -divers times accused of being illiterate fellows, and both answered back -with compound interest of invective. Both were not only writing men, but -also men of action. Both prided themselves something unduly upon their -philological attainments. Both did late in life the literary work that -won them lasting fame. Above all, they shared what Defoe wittily -described as his “natural infirmity of homely, plain writing.” That is, -they had command of a tense, nervous, vigorous English without ornate -excrescences or fanciful refinements of any kind—the style which is -greatest because it is no style at all, the style which bites into the -mind and irritates the imagination. Both were able to give -verisimilitude to the most fantastical narratives; both were masters of -the form of autobiographical fiction. The parallel may finish with the -remark that neither of them was a bookish man. - -Borrow was not even a great reader. He spent many hours among books—but -such books! They were mainly collections of ballads picked from a -variety of languages fit “to add a storey to the Tower of Babel,” the -detritus of the libraries he visited. He was fond of an uncommon book, -whatever its intrinsic merit, but he was fonder of an uncommon human -being. Men were his books. A ghostly procession of the authors with -whom Borrow had hobnobbed—leaving out of account his investigations in -shady paths on behalf of the Newgate Calendar—would afford a motley -spectacle of tatterdemalions, the rag, tag, and bobtail of literature. -He had inflated ambitions of scholarship, but, in fact, he had received -only an ill-regulated education, and his taste refused all conventional -rules as inventions of the Devil. - -The Bible, Shakespeare in a lesser degree, and Defoe most of all—these -were his classics. No bad assortment, either; but the restriction of -one’s reading to these three would hardly testify to a catholic taste. -His favourite poet was Byron. The two are as unlike in most particulars -of their dispositions and careers as two heirs of mortality can be; but -it is not difficult to realise that Byron’s life and poetry would touch -deep springs in the nature of Borrow. Like Byron, he worked all his -affections, all his passions, all his prejudices into the very texture of -his books, and in them ran through all the gamut of his most violent -emotions. Like Byron, he had a fond weakness for melancholy—what Goethe -called “the hypochondriac humour.” As in the case of Byron, his -melancholy alternated with spasms of furious elemental rage, expressed in -the unbridled vituperation of his fellow men. So that, though no two -characters more widely different figure in literary history, there were -points of contact and bases of agreement between them. It was, indeed, a -soul attuned to Borrow who wrote: - - “’Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one’s laurels, - By blood or ink; ’tis sweet to put an end - To strife: ’tis sometimes sweet to have our quarrels - Particularly with a tiresome friend: - Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels; - Dear is the helpless creature we defend - Against the world: and dear the schoolboy spot - We ne’er forget, though there we are forgot.” - -The lines may be said to depict Borrow in some of his best-known -aspects—winning laurels by blood and ink, quarrelling with tiresome -friends, rejoicing in the good things of life, defending his dependents, -and treasuring the memories of his childhood. - -He threw himself into his works in such a fashion that it is impossible -to elucidate them without reference to his personal career, or to -understand his proceedings without reference to his books. They are all -more or less in the autobiographical form, and they are all more or less -real autobiographies: how much more and how much less it is often -difficult to say. The secret of the books, the reason for the -fascination they exert upon mankind, must be found in the man; his own -secret must be sought in two directions. One has already been -indicated—his love of The Wild. From his gypsies and wanderers, his -hedge-tinkers and vagroms, all the denizens of the heath and the green -lanes—the society which began to vanish with the enclosure of the English -fields, and is fast disappearing from the land,—material unpromising and -uncongenial enough to the general, Borrow contrived to extract fine -poetry and mildly thrilling romance. - -And how was it that a man whose pet weakness was his idolatry of the -Anglo-Saxons, who joyed in thinking himself representative of what was -best and manliest in a race whose aversion from the Romany is so -pronounced, was the man of all others in England who seemed to get into -closest touch with the gypsies, to understand them and to be understood -of them? Perhaps a little because of his philological craze and the -avidity with which he set himself to pick up their language. But the -real explanation is that, in fact, Borrow was no Anglo-Saxon at all. His -vainglorious boasts of Anglo-Saxon breeding were based on nothing more -substantial than the fact that his father and mother happened to be -living in Norfolk at the time when he came into the world. He was a Celt -of Celts. His genius was truly Celtic. His father was a Cornishman -whose family had resided in the West-country peninsula—Lord Courtney’s -“emerald, set in a sapphire sea”—for many generations, and was a Cornish -and therefore a Celtic family to the very tips of its numerous fingers. -His mother was of French descent. Here was a pretty parentage for a -bluff and hearty champion of optimistic and progressive Anglo-Saxondom! - -Borrow was fond of Norfolk: the rest was affectation. He had all the -Celtic characteristics—the quick and lively imagination, the poetic -temperament, the intensely emotional nature, the tendency to melancholy. -The only writer who, within my knowledge, has laid effective stress on -this is Mr. Watts-Dunton. Borrow loved the wide level landscapes, the -marshes and broads of East Anglia, just as FitzGerald did, a descendant -of Irishmen who was born in the East. Various reasons conspired to -produce this affection. Norfolk was the scene of his boyish exploits. -In Norfolk lived the mother he worshipped. There he met the wife who was -his truest friend and finest comrade. But the spirit of East Anglia, the -Teutonic tradition, did not preside over Borrow’s destiny and direct his -moral and intellectual fortunes. It was the spirit of Old Cornwall, its -remote hills peeping out of vales of mystery towards an empyrean where -every cloud breathed legend, the land of weird imaginings, of saintly -lore, and chivalric romance. The bluff and blunt and downright -John-Bullery that Borrow affected was but a pose; the heat of the fires -of the Underworld creeps up into his work, and the pale light of the -Overworld shines down upon it. He is constantly on the brink of moral -tragedy and ever listening to the rumble of the spiritual upheaval. What -stirs him most to eloquence and deep feeling is Celtic Ireland or Celtic -Wales, the wild music of the speech of Murtagh the Papist gossoon, the -“noble mountains, green fields, and majestic woods” of the Cymric land. - -Many peculiarities of Borrow, on a superficial examination, seem to offer -flat contradiction to this view. His “Poperyphobia” appears to be -difficult to reconcile with his unquestionable sympathy with the Celtic -spirit of Ireland. He affects the Orange hue; whenever he sees a -Catholic head he hits it. We need not seek far for the explanation. His -mother was of a Huguenot family which had been driven out of France by -the persecutions of the Catholic Church: Borrow idolised his mother. -Further, it never mattered to him whether an injury was two days or two -centuries old; he hated the offender just the same. His father had -quarrelled, long before George was born, with a gentleman named Hambly. -To the end of his life Borrow swore that a person named Hambly could -never be good. His adulation of violent sports and his pathetic belief -in the immaculate supremacy of the English in all athletics are other -facts which on the surface may seem to upset the theory of an obsessing -Celtic mysticism. But even here his ancestry counts for much. The -Cornish were ever devoted to athletic contests; their cousins the Welsh -are in one of the realms of sport unparalleled and unapproachable. -Borrow’s good-ale-of-old-England fetish surprised the decent and sober -people of Wales, and his “wishy-washy tea” is the national beverage of -Cornwall. But his devotion to malt liquor was a part of his protest -against “gentility-nonsense” and “temperance-canting,” about which he -raved with even more than usual violence and incoherence. In the -mid-Victorian age in which he wrote, the glorification of beer-swilling -was as un-“genteel” as even Borrow could have desired. - -All these idiosyncrasies, however, count for little beside the deeper -characteristics of Borrow’s life and work, over which the Celtic genius -reigned. Racial traits were strongly marked in him, and he is a standing -refutation of Mr. George Moore’s dictum that “the land makes the Celt,” -and that it is not a question of race. In this heredity we must look for -the beginnings of any proper view of Borrow. - - - - -CHAPTER II -A WANDERING YOUTH - - -THE Borrows of Tredinnick, in the parish of St. Cleer, were proud Cornish -yeomen. For centuries they had occupied the same house and farmed the -same land. Now they have been scattered over the world, in true Cornish -fashion, and there is not a Borrow left in the district. - -Tredinnick is a little old house in a hollow, about a mile north-west of -St. Cleer Church, near Liskeard, among the hills of Eastern Cornwall. It -is a long, low, stone-fronted building of two storeys, backed by a row of -tall elms standing at the roadside, with an apple orchard behind, and the -ground at the side sloping away into a deep valley of orchards and -meadows. The place is quite unpretentious; the farm is little more than -fifty acres in extent, and the house has lost in the lapse of time the -neatness that would have shown in the abode of Borrow’s _gentillâtre_. -Still, for a farmhouse, it is commodious. It has walls two feet thick, -and in the long, raftered, slate-floored kitchen are deep window-seats, -and an open hearth and chimney-corner, the crock-hook depending in the -midst. Lavengro would have rejoiced in such a place. The dining-room -and sitting-room are on the other side of the entrance, and -communicate—respectable but undistinguished rooms. - -In this home was born, in December, 1758, Thomas, father of George -Borrow. He was a posthumous child. We have a very fair picture of him -in the opening chapters of “Lavengro.” We see him in youth, the -favourite of his mother, whose special care of him was the cause of -jealousy in his six brothers. We learn that shortly after he was -eighteen his mother died, and he adopted “the profession of arms, which -he followed during the remainder of his life.” But Lavengro, candidly -stating that he knows little about the early life of his father, does not -tell us the circumstances in which he left the homestead at Tredinnick, -after bringing to a disastrous end his apprenticeship to one Edward -Hambly, a maltster. He is described as “cool and collected, slow to -anger, though perfectly fearless, patient of control, of great strength, -and, to crown all, a proper man with his hands.” This may in some -measure account for the adulation of prize-fighting which in “Lavengro,” -as Mr. Birrell has pointed out, scandalised “the religious world” that -had welcomed with such effusive joy “The Bible in Spain.” George Borrow -inherited a love of adventure and a fondness for “the noble art,” and -probably also the aversion from “gentility” apparent in the lines with -which his autobiography opens. Yet it is strange that he was really -proud of his gentle descent, proud of his Cornish father and his -little-landed ancestry, and proud of the French extraction of his mother -and the small and delicate hands he got from her. - -The manner of departure of Lavengro’s father out of Cornwall had an -intimate connection with that properness of his with his hands. He was -at Menheniot Fair with a party of youths from Liskeard, three or four -miles distant, when a row arose between young Menheniot and young -Liskeard; probably some breeze of incident blew upon the embers of a -village feud. Slow as he was to anger and patient of control, Borrow -nevertheless entered with zest into the fray, for he headed the Liskeard -party and brought the struggle to a climax by knocking down the -constable. Thereafter, fearing the consequences of his adventure, he -departed from the ancestral roof-tree, and began the wandering life which -he was leading when he met the mother of Lavengro. And small wonder at -his flight, for the constable he knocked down was none other than his own -master, the head-borough, Edward Hambly. The date of the scrimmage was -July 28th, 1783. He disappeared for five months. In December he turned -up at Bodmin and enlisted in the Coldstream Guards, who had a recruiting -party there under Captain William Morshead, later the celebrated general. -The captain, knowing his antecedents, did all he could to prevent the -enlistment, but without success. - -Thomas Borrow may well have recalled the constable of Menheniot in later -years when he did battle in Hyde Park with “big Ben Brain” (read Bryan), -giving that celebrity a little useful practice for the contest in which -he became “champion of England, having conquered the heroic Johnson,” and -paving the way for the friendship to which all such encounters should -lead. Bryan, wrote George in after years, “expired in the arms of my -father, who read the Bible to him in his later moments.” What marvel -that “Lavengro” is a medley of religion and beer-drinking, prize-fighting -and philosophy? - -Thomas vanished for several years into the privacy of a private of the -Coldstreams. Such a man, however, was not likely to remain permanently -in the obscurity of the ranks. He climbed steadily. After eight or nine -years, spent mostly with the regiment in London, he emerged into view -again as a sergeant, and in 1792 was transferred to the West Norfolk -Militia, whose headquarters were at East Dereham. This was the origin of -all we hear later about the pretty little town of “D—.” - -At Dumpling Green, near by, resided Miss Ann Perfrement, sweet and twenty -when Sergeant Borrow marched into her perspective. She was the daughter -of a farmer who had descended from a Huguenot family, immigrants to -Norfolk among many others—including the Martineaus—after the revocation -of the Edict of Nantes. Miss Perfrement was occasionally engaged to act -minor parts in plays performed at Dereham by companies sent to the -country towns from the Theatre Royal in Norwich. Her stage presence -fascinated the Sergeant, who had reached the age of thirty-eight proof -against all feminine blandishments. He pursued his courtship of the -amateur actress with ardour and success. She accepted him, and a most -happy union began with their wedding on February 11th, 1793. - -The movements of a regiment, even of militia, in those stirring days were -apt to be incalculable. The West Norfolks threaded the United Kingdom -from end to end, combining the swiftness of a bishop with the unexpected -evolutions of a knight upon the chessboard. Sergeant Borrow got his -commission as captain and adjutant in 1798; in 1800, either at Chelmsford -or Colchester, was born his elder son, John, who became first a military -officer and then an artist, and was one of Haydon’s pupils. In 1803 he -was back in Norfolk, recruiting. At East Dereham, on July 5th in that -year, George Borrow opened his eyes upon a world of which he was to see -so much more than falls to the lot of most sons, even of soldiers. - -This bundle of potentialities was named George in honour of the King his -father served, and Henry after a Cornish uncle. The first few years of -his life were spent, like those of the young Sternes, at the tail of the -regiment, marching and countermarching in Essex, Kent, and Sussex, -wandering from barracks to barracks as the exigencies of the army -dictated in that day of Napoleonic scares. At the age of six he returned -to “pretty D—,” and there received some of the vivid impressions he has -reproduced in indelible colours upon the earlier pages of “Lavengro”—the -dignified rector and Philo, the clerk, reading “their respective portions -of the venerable liturgy,” and rolling “many a portentous word -descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High”; and the “Lady -Bountiful, leaning on her gold-headed cane.” There he revelled in the -boy’s first flush of delight over “Robinson Crusoe,” and imbibed the -germs of that worship of Defoe which shines in all his work. - -The next peregrination of the family was to Norman Cross, where George -met the snake-catcher and received from him the present of the fangless -viper with which he contrived so effectually to subdue the wrath of old -Gypsy Smith and his evil-looking mort, who “wore no cap, and her long -hair fell on either side of her head like horse-tails half way down her -waist; her skin was dark and swarthy, like that of a toad.” We know how -he was named “Sapengro,” and how brotherhood was sworn between him and -the gypsies’ son Ambrose, who figures immortally as Jasper Petulengro. - -The sojourn at Norman Cross lasted fifteen months. Then, in July, 1811, -the regiment returned to East Dereham, where George took his introduction -to the science of languages. The embryo “polyglot gentleman” laid a -sound foundation upon Lilly’s Latin Grammar. However, their wanderings -were by no means at an end. For years there was to be little rest and -small possibility of regular schooling. In 1812 the West Norfolks were -moving again—marching through the Midlands and the North by slow stages -towards Edinburgh, stopping a month or two here and there. For example, -at Huddersfield they billeted long enough for George to be sent to the -local school. The conditions of such a life were hardly favourable to -the development of scholarship upon conventional lines. How valuable -they were to the cultivation of the kind of genius that lay behind the -forehead of George Borrow it is difficult to overestimate. He -assimilated rich and varied experience through every pore. He acquired -the love of a roving life, the passionate devotion to the road, that -never left him till the end of his days. His father was a wanderer -before he was born; he was a wanderer himself throughout his boyhood. It -was fit training for the man who was afterwards to be dubbed “the -Wandering Jew of Literature.” - -In April of 1813 the West Norfolks descended upon Edinburgh, Captain -Thomas on horseback leading the van, and Mrs. Borrow and her boys -bringing up the rear in a “po’-shay.” There were many gay days of -military merry-making at Edinburgh Castle before, in the autumn, John and -George were entered at the High School. Probably they spent only one -session at the academy of classical learning which had, a generation -earlier, turned out so great a genius as Sir Walter Scott. - -There is not much in Borrow’s record of the time to illustrate that -session, or to show what point in his youthful struggle with the dead -languages the incipient philologist reached. Here, as ever, his -interests were in the by-paths of life and learning. David Haggart was -more to him than the ministrations of his painstaking master, Mr. Carson. -Borrow had a catholic and withal a discriminating taste in vagabonds. It -manifested itself even at this early age. Just as in later years he was -fascinated by the personality of John Thurtell, so was he charmed at -Edinburgh by that weird brigand Haggart, who enlisted in the West -Norfolks as a drummer-boy, having been unearthed at Leith Races by one of -Captain Borrow’s recruiting sergeants. The drummer-boy whom George made -his companion subsequently became burglar, highway robber, murderer, and -prison-breaker, and only suspended his nefarious activities at the end of -the hangman’s rope in the year 1821. - -The regiment left Edinburgh for home in 1814, on the cessation of the -war. The mustering-out took place at Norwich, where feastings and -congratulations were the order of many days. George’s parents lodged at -the Crown and Angel Inn, while he was sent to the Grammar School. This -time there was some hope that he might be able to continue his studies -undisturbed. Napoleon prevented its realisation by escaping from Elba -and getting the Norfolk militiamen sent to Ireland, where sympathetic -disturbances were occurring. They did not embark at Harwich, however, -until after the battle of Waterloo. From Cork they went to Clonmel, and -George had his first taste of the fascinating country whose very name -always seemed to exercise a spell upon him. At Clonmel he was sent to -school, and began to learn Greek. What was of greater consequence, he -met a wild Irish boy, the Murtagh who figures so finely in “Lavengro.” -Murtagh taught him Erse in return for a pack of cards. But even more -important still, it was here that he learned to ride on horseback and -picked up the love of horse-flesh which was one of the grand passions of -his life. Oh, that cob!—on which he rode round the Devil’s Mountain—“may -the sod lie lightly over the bones of the strongest, speediest, and most -gallant of its kind.” - -The wanderings of the elder Borrows finally ceased in 1816. After the -Irish campaign, they returned to Norwich to settle down, and took a house -in Willow Lane. George, now thirteen, was sent again to the Grammar -School to receive his first regular course of “education.” Fortunately, -the process was quite unable to interfere with his natural development. -It was hardly possible that a boy who had been beating about the roads -and townships of the three kingdoms ever since he could toddle, had -learnt snake-charming and the Irish language, explored the mysteries of -gypsyism and horse-dealing, and picked up such a collection of odds and -ends of lore as reposed in his retentive brain, should comfortably -abandon his vagrom modes of thought and life for the mechanical lessons -and the conventional ways of a Grammar School ruled by a martinet. His -wander-years had quite unfitted him for methodical study, and he found -even less interest in the common pursuits of the school than does the -average healthy rascal of thirteen. Consequently, he had no soft corner -in the heart of the “head,” Edward Valpy, a pedagogue of the ancient -style who had no toleration for intransigence, and never risked the -spoiling of the child by any economy of the rod. - -George had some Latin and a little Greek, picked up at Huddersfield and -Edinburgh and Clonmel, but he had probably found Murtagh a more congenial -authority than the excellent Lilly, and his Erse was more than his Greek. -Now that his body was moored to the desk at Norwich, his mind wandered -wantonly from the languages he had to study to those for which, in the -Valpeian _régime_, there was no provision. With his never-failing -capacity for picking up the quaintest and most out-of-the-way people to -be found about him, he made the acquaintance of Father D’Éterville, the -“elderly personage . . . rather tall and something of a robust make,” who -wore “a snuff-coloured coat and drab pantaloons . . . an immense frill, -seldom of the purest white, but invariably of the finest French cambric,” -and told the young student that if he wished to be a poet he should -emulate Monsieur Boileau rather than the vagabond Dante! The Rev. Thomas -D’Éterville was a French _émigré_ who had come over in 1792, and had -qualifications from the University of Caen. With him George studied -French and Italian, and made a beginning of Spanish. - -Among his contemporaries drilled and thrashed by Valpy were several men -who obtained varying degrees of fame in the world of thought and action. -The Grammar School boys of the time included James Martineau, Sir -Archdale Wilson, and Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. Their achievements were -considerable, but it is, in one mind at all events, an open question -whether Borrow’s did not excel them all. Certainly no man of them made -so many idolatrous friends, and probably no man so many bitter enemies. - -George was no ordinary schoolboy. His devotion to learning was intense, -but peculiar to himself. In his boyish pranks and recreations he was -just as unconventional. On one occasion, the wander-fever having seized -him, he communicated it to three friends of his own age. They decided to -run away from school, with some wild idea of emulating the feats of his -favourite Robinson Crusoe. The plan, worked out by Borrow, was that they -should escape to the Norfolk coast and take any ship that would convey -them out of England. Till they could find some convenient means of -emigration, they proposed to conceal themselves in a lair upon the shore, -and to subsist by forays upon the portable and comestible property of the -people of the district. The adventure began early in the morning and -terminated within a few hours. They were discovered some dozen miles -away by a gentleman who recognised one of them, and ignominiously -restored to the affection of their parents—and the insatiable wrath of -Valpy. The “head” took Borrow, as the ringleader, and flogged him -severely. It was said that for this purpose the culprit was “horsed” on -the back of Martineau, and that the punishment was so bad that Borrow had -to keep his bed for a fortnight. George could with difficulty forget a -slight or forgive an injury, real or imaginary, and Dr. Knapp declares -that he hated Martineau ever afterwards, and up to the time of his death -would never visit any house where he knew he must meet the theologian. -It is true that he did not care to meet Martineau, but the reason -assigned for his aversion must be given up as a fable. Martineau -ridiculed the story, and asserted with every show of truth that he never -“horsed” Borrow. - -Dr. Jessopp was another of his schoolfellows. He has an anecdote of -Borrow appearing at school one day, his face stained brown with walnut -juice, and of Valpy, inquiring sententiously, “Borrow, are you suffering -from jaundice, or is it only dirt?” - -Such hours of leisure as were not occupied by D’Éterville and his French -and Italian, or by the explorations into Spanish and the Romany, were -given up to his worship of Nature and his devotion to sport. He fished -in the Yare at Earlham, and went fowling over the surrounding fields and -marshes with “a condemned musket bearing somewhere on its lock in rather -antique characters, ‘Tower, 1746.’” But, above all, he haunted Harford -Bridge. For at Harford Bridge did not the amazing John Thurtell reside? -This son of a respectable alderman of Norwich had been in warlike -adventures abroad, but now that the wars were over had returned to his -native parts to get such entertainment out of life as a man might to whom -every form of sport came gaily welcome, and the more violent it was the -more gaily. So distinguished a patron of the prize-ring and so ungenteel -a gentleman was certain to make a strong appeal to young Borrow, who made -his acquaintance and acquired from him the art of boxing. As we have -seen, his father, the captain, had been a bruiser when occasion demanded, -and had fought Ben Bryan. His fondness for the sport was hereditary. He -developed it during his visits to Thurtell, and it never left him. One -of the kinds of “canting nonsense” denounced in the Appendix to “The -Romany Rye” is the “unmanly cant”—a phrase in which he summed up all -objections to the practice of fisticuffs. His mentor in the noble art is -lightly sketched in “The Zincali” in connection with the description of a -prize-fight. The “terrible Thurtell, lord of the concourse,” made a sad -ending. He committed the murder which inspired the familiar ballad of -“William Weare”: - - “He cut his throat from ear to ear, - His brains he battered in; - His name was Mr. William Weare, - He lived in Lyon’s Inn.” - -Thurtell induced Weare, who had relieved him of £400 at a gaming-table, -to drive to Elstree in Hertfordshire, where he disposed of him in the -artistic fashion just related. One of his companions turned King’s -evidence, and he was hanged at Hertford in 1823. {34} - -So, learning his grammar at school, visiting D’Éterville at Strangers’ -Hall for French and Italian, trespassing on the grounds of the admirable -Mr. Gurney in search of fish, being initiated into the art and mystery of -pugilism, strolling to Thorpe, and Eaton, and Cringleford, George passed -two years. He was fourteen when he saw the fight depicted in “The -Zincali.” The next year he was one of the spectators at the great annual -Tombland Fair, when he encountered once more the gypsy Ambrose Smith, and -went with him to the encampment on Mousehold Heath, discoursing by the -way of the quality of beauty, as exemplified in the person of Tawno -Chikno and the earl’s daughter who fell in love with him, and making the -acquaintance of the weird old hag “whose name was Herne and she came of -the hairy ones.” While the gypsies remained in camp on Mousehold Heath, -the lad visited them frequently, and was introduced by Jasper—terribly -angering his mother-in-law, Mrs. Herne—into the mysteries of the Romany -language. His extraordinary facility in acquiring and retaining words -obtained for him the nickname of Lavengro, or “word-fellow.” - -George left school in 1819, and was articled to the firm of Simpson & -Rackham, solicitors, of Tuck’s Court, Norwich, apparently on the advice -of his friend Roger Kerrison, son of a substantial citizen. Though it is -clear that he never entertained any enthusiasm for the profession, he -diligently pursued his studies at the irksome desk. They were not, -however, those of the law, but of languages and poetry. By devoting -himself to his parchments and his law books, and seeking to fill the -station of life to which he had been dedicated, he might have made an -indifferently bad country solicitor. Thank heaven, nothing was further -from his thoughts. He was taken specially under the wing of the head of -the firm, William Simpson, then Town Clerk, and an excellent good fellow. -George lodged in his house in the Upper Close. Tuck’s Court, where he -sat at the desk, was nearly opposite the old Norfolk Hotel. - -It was not long before he added another to his strange gallery of -cronies—a Welsh groom employed by a gentleman living at the end of the -court, a queer, mis-shapen man, the butt of George’s fellow-clerks, who -hailed his every appearance with the ballad of: - - “Taffy was a Welshman, - Taffy was a thief.” - -To Borrow, however, he was not a freak of nature, sent by a kindly -Providence to lighten the laborious hours of Simpson & Rackham’s office, -but a man who knew the Welsh language, and might assist him in learning -it. In return for his help, George induced the other boys to cease their -persecution, and declared that this had the effect of releasing the -Welshman from the horns of a dilemma—for he was cogitating whether “to -hang himself from the balk of the hayloft or to give his master warning.” -So he won his way into the epic of “Dafydd ab Gwilym” and the songs of -the Welsh bards. - -Borrow’s adventures were now of a character different from those of his -schoolboy days. He began to enter upon profound intellectual waters. -His mania for languages grew upon him. We have already seen him -acquiring Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and Erse. He now set -about Welsh, Danish, and other tongues, and in pursuit of German he fell -in with William Taylor. The meeting had an important influence upon his -development. Taylor was a scholar of fine parts, a man deeply versed in -German literature at a time when, as Professor Dowden has said, “German -characters were as undecipherable to most Englishmen as Assyrian -arrow-heads.” He was the friend of Southey, whom he entertained in -Norwich at the house, No. 21, King Street, which was the resort of all -the wit and learning that centred in the city. Taylor found young Borrow -a man after his own heart, took to him readily, and offered to teach him -German. It is hardly necessary to say that George accepted such an -invitation, nor that he learnt a good deal more than German at the feet -of Taylor, whose views on most questions were advanced and unrestricted. -The scholar was an agnostic in matters of religion, and an iconoclast in -many sorts. His great failing was drunkenness: he ultimately became a -sot. - -Miss Martineau wrote that: - - “In Taylor’s old age . . . his habits of intemperance kept him out of - sight of the ladies, and he got around him a set of ignorant and - conceited young men, who thought they could set the world right by - their destructive propensities. One of his chief favourites was - George Borrow, as George Borrow himself has given us to understand. - When this polyglot gentleman appeared before the public as a devout - agent of the Bible Society in foreign parts, there was one burst of - laughter from all who remembered the old Norwich days.” - -Professor Dowden has pleasantly reminded us of the delight Harriet -Martineau took in “pricking a literary windbag”; sometimes she pricked -more substantial things, and her rapier broke. At any rate, she is -hardly a good witness on the subject of Borrow, for no love was lost -between the families. - -And Taylor, at the time when he took up George, was a man of some -consequence in the literary world, apart from “the little Academe” of -Norwich. He knew his Kotzebue, his Goethe, his Schiller, his Klopstock; -he was in himself a reference library of what was then outlandish -knowledge. He raised a bright light above the intellectual circle of the -city, in spite of the sarcasm of Harriet Martineau, who rallies his -eccentricity, his “defences of suicide, avowals that snuff alone had -rescued him from it, information, given as certain, that ‘God Save the -King’ was sung by Jeremiah in the Temple of Solomon”—and so forth. But -his solid claim to consideration is good; he lives as “the -Anglo-Germanist” of Borrow’s books rather than as “godless Billy Taylor.” - -I have taken leave to doubt that Borrow’s melancholy was the fruit of the -theological opinions he acquired from Taylor. Effort has been made to -trace all his sufferings to this association, and to the moral -disintegration that is supposed to have set in as the result of his -intercourse with an atheist. It seems to me an unfair and regrettable -imputation. Borrow was destined to go through his Werterian period, and, -child of the Celtic spirit that he was, it was bound to be a period of -acute strain and stress. He felt all things intensely. If he had not -encountered the mocking philosophy of “Billy Taylor” through personal -contact, he would have met it elsewhere. It could no more be missed by -the youth of 1820 than by the youth of a later century. - -What we know with certainty of Taylor is that he was the earliest scholar -and critic to divine what there was in George Borrow and to encourage his -literary bent. We have to be grateful to him for that. He wrote to -Southey: - - “A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller’s ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ - with a 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.” - -The catalogue of Borrow’s languages is thus largely and rapidly extended. -We need not stay to inquire how he obtained them all, nor need we assume -that his acquaintance with them was in any sense complete or scientific. -It was probably little more than a dictionary acquaintance; he had an -extraordinary facility for getting the rudiments of a language in a few -weeks with little more assistance than the dictionary could supply. His -Welsh and Danish studies are the most important to notice here; they had -a considerable influence upon the course of his life during the few years -now approaching. “Ab Gwilym” and the ballads of the Norsemen obsessed -him. - -A personage visited Taylor at Norwich in the year 1821 to whom this sort -of young man could not fail to be interesting. It was John Bowring, on a -business mission to the city. Borrow was a guest at a dinner party given -by Taylor in July of that year, when Bowring was present with Lewis -Evans, a Welsh doctor who had physicked the army in Spain during the -Peninsular War. The philological mood was strong on Borrow—and Bowring -was certainly a considerable philologist. He had recently made one of -his long journeys on the Continent, combining business pains with -literary joys in his accustomed manner, and had compiled an anthology -which he described as a “Specimen of Russian Poets.” This collection it -was which inspired the present of a diamond ring, conferred on him by -Alexander I. A man of such stamp must naturally have appeared something -of a hero in the eyes of this youth. Why is it that he makes anything -but a heroic figure in Borrow’s works? - -Rightly or wrongly—wrongly, as I think—in after years the “Norwich young -man” considered himself to have received much injury at the hands of -Bowring. Consequently, Bowring became the most vicious and most -worthless scoundrel that ever wore shoe-leather. This was Borrow’s way: -he was a prince of haters. The poet and linguist, the diplomatist, the -political disciple of the illustrious Jeremy Bentham, was melted down -into the Old Radical of the Appendix to “The Romany Rye,” and caricatured -in the postboy’s story at the end of “Lavengro.” No accurate view of -Bowring can be acquired from these acerbitous descriptions; line must be -altered and colour modified with great liberality. Bowring may have made -pretensions that could not be sustained, but his proper pretensions were -certainly far greater than Borrow, in the berserking spirit that -possessed him twenty years afterwards, was ready to admit. The polite -tag with which he headed the eleventh chapter of the Appendix was: - - “This very dirty man with his very dirty face - Would do any dirty act which would get him a place.” - -Borrow’s lively account of the dinner party, written with Archilochian -bitterness, cannot be read without many reservations. He makes out -Bowring a literary pirate and a morally reprehensible cheat, a fraudulent -ignoramus, trading for cheap glory on other people’s lack of knowledge, -claiming an acquaintance with languages and poetry which he does not -possess—evading conversation that will test his assertions, and dodging -all the keen questions of the young Solon who tells the tale. Borrow -poses him with his Red Rhys of Eryry, with his Ghengis Khan, and with his -Koran. Finding that Borrow knows nothing of the Slavonic languages, -Bowring immediately becomes garrulous on the subject of Slavonic lore and -literatures; when in later years they meet again and Borrow has the -Slavonic languages at the tip of his tongue, Bowring hurriedly changes -the subject! That deductions have to be made from such an account of the -matter is obvious; they may well be generous. - -It is clear that, at the time, the young man entertained none of these -opinions about Bowring, for he sought his help in a troublesome period of -his own life, and was ready to engage in a literary collaboration with -him. What actually happened was that, as a result of this meeting at the -hospitable board of William Taylor, Borrow was induced to pursue even -with greater ardour than before his translations from the Celtic and the -Norse languages. It may have been largely a waste of time. Possibly -George would have done better either by sticking to his law books or by -cultivating his bent for original composition; but that was no fault of -Bowring, from whom he received inspiration and encouragement in a course -of study that was exceedingly congenial to him. - -He went on delving in the musty old folios of the Corporation Library. -Their yellow pages were more precious to him than aught in the world; the -songs he puzzled out of the “Danica Literatura” were sweeter than the - - “Celestial syrens’ harmony - That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres.” - -True delight to him was the acquisition of Anglo-Saxon, the improvement -of his Welsh and Scandinavian; the sum and crown of bliss was to pore -over Llhuyd’s “Archæologia Britannica” and to translate Olaus Wormius—of -whom he became so desperately fond that in a fit of youthful freakishness -he adopted the signature “George Olaus Borrow.” His pencilled notes are -still to be seen on the margins of the ancient tomes so generously handed -over to his tender mercies by the city authorities. - -Meanwhile, piles of notebooks and manuscripts were growing in the house -in the Upper Close; the rhymed translation of “Ab Gwilym” and English -versions of the old Norse ballads were proceeding laboriously but -steadily. To the industry of the bookworm was added the passion of the -author. “Ab Gwilym,” Olaus Wormius, and William Taylor in the aggregate -were far too strong an influence for worthy Mr. Simpson of Tuck’s Court -to counteract. Wigs and parchment could not stand against philology and -poetry. Whatever notions Borrow ever entertained about pursuing the law -as a profession gradually paled before the _furor scribendi_. Thomas -Campbell was editing Colburn’s _New Monthly_, and Taylor wrote to him on -behalf of Borrow. The result was the appearance in the magazine of a -rhymed English version of Schiller’s ballad, “Der Taucher,” which was -signed “G. O. B.”—the “O” standing for the Olaus of his adoption. This -represented all that Campbell did for him. Borrow was more successful -with Sir Richard Phillips, the editor and proprietor of _The Monthly -Magazine_, to whom his name was also introduced by Taylor. In the late -months of 1823 several poetical translations appeared in the _Monthly_. -It must be confessed that they hardly reached even to the merit of -mediocrity. During the same period Borrow was hard at work translating -Klinger’s “Faustus” and other matters. It was not a sanitary life for a -youth of twenty. The inevitable consequences were ill-health, morbid -melancholy, and a particularly turbid period of Werterism, during which -threats of suicide were frequent. All this has been laid at the door of -William Taylor. It would be far more appropriate to charge it upon -Klinger, Olaus Wormius, and Ab Gwilym. Borrow contrived very effectually -“to suck melancholy out of a song.” - -This, of course, was very unsatisfactory preparation for the career of a -respectable solicitor in a cathedral city. His father protested in vain. -Before the noble old captain died, leaving the brothers dependent on -their own resources (since he had been able to make provision only just -sufficient for his widow), George had decided that his association with -the law should be determined at the same time as his apprenticeship. -Roger Kerrison had already departed to London, and Borrow wrote to him -there: - - “If ever my health mends, and possibly it may by the time my - clerkship expires, I intend to live in London, write plays, poetry, - etc., abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted; for I would not for - an ocean of gold remain any longer than I am forced in this dull and - gloomy town.” {45} - -Borrow’s father died on February 28th, 1824. A month later, within a day -or two of the expiry of his articles, George was on the coach bound for -London, accompanied by a little green box full of manuscripts, and in his -pocket a letter of introduction from William Taylor to Sir Richard -Phillips, the publisher. He had burnt his legal boats and destroyed his -youthful bridges; he was fairly started upon the literary life. - - - - -CHAPTER III -PUBLISHER’S HACK AND HEDGESMITH - - -BORROW’S “literary” life in London—where he lodged at 16, Millman Street, -Bedford Row, with his friend Kerrison—was a period of the deadliest and -most miserable drudgery. No author is a man of genius to his publisher, -as Heine tells us. Borrow was certainly not a man of genius to Sir -Richard Phillips, and their association for about ten months was a time -of strain and irritation to both. Consequently, in Borrow’s opinion, -Barabbas was Sir Richard Phillips. He lives only as “the publisher” in -“Lavengro,” in which he is pictured as a subject fit merely for the odium -and execration of the human race. Discount from this estimate of Sir -Richard is highly necessary. He appears to have been a moderately -inoffensive person, whose chief weakness was metaphysics, and a -worse-assorted pair than he and Borrow it would be hard to imagine. - -What was the literary ammunition with which Borrow expected to bring the -publisher of _The Monthly Magazine_ to his feet? It consisted wholly of -translations and versifications. Their intrinsic merit was very slight, -and there was no market for them. Some might be useful to fill up an odd -corner, but they were certainly no staple commodity for a person -intending to get a living by literature. Under the combined disadvantage -of unmarketable wares and an uncongenial temperament, Borrow might well -have considered himself lucky to be taken on by Phillips as a factotum to -do the scavenging of his business. But while they were together the -youth tasted the bitterest cup and fed on the hardest crust that Grub -Street had to offer to the worshippers of the Muses. It had been more -humane if Phillips had repeated to Borrow the advice which Mr. Wilcox, -the bookseller, offered to Dr. Johnson when he proposed to live as an -author: “You had better buy a porter’s knot.” Hard physical exertion -would have served him better than the labour he endured, this child of -The Wild, cooped up in London compiling criminal records or translating -philosophical treatises into the German language. - -Phillips had just retired from the business of pure publishing, which was -a gloomy fact in the prospect of Borrow’s cargo of ballads. He retained -_The Monthly Magazine_, it was true, and had started a pretentious -periodical under the resounding title of _The Universal Review or -Chronicle of the Literature of all Nations_, apparently in the hope—which -proved vain—that it would provide a career for his son. This was the -_Oxford Review_ which figures in the pages of “Lavengro.” The actual -editor was the redoubtable William Gifford, and the work of which -superfluous copies lay about on the floor in such prodigal profusion was -his translation of Juvenal. The incongruity of such an atmosphere for -the kind of genius that possessed young Borrow! With a pathetic belief -in the potency of Danish ballads to move the stoniest heart and draw -guineas from the tightest purse, he introduced the subject. Phillips -would have none of it, and when his visitor began to declaim of - - “Buckshank bold and Elphinstone, - And more than I can mention here,” - -he stopped him, saying that “it was very pretty indeed, and beat Scott -hollow, and Percy too”—but nobody then cared for Percy, nor for Scott -either, save as a novelist. If Borrow could produce something which -should rival the merits of “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” by Legh Richmond, -there might be a chance of doing business. The young aspirant for -literary fame searched London for a copy of the book which he was -recommended to imitate, and, when he found it, discovered that he could -by no possibility do anything like it, for it was a religious book, -“written from the heart,” and Borrow had to confess to the publisher that -he did not know much about religion in an intimate way. The only thing -to do was to accept that which the publisher was prepared to offer him, -the task of reviewing books for the new periodical, and of collating -records of “Celebrated Trials.” - -Another enterprise was undertaken by Borrow, which in itself was -sufficient to prove his undoing even if the life had been congenial to -him. Phillips was the author of a work of philosophy entitled “The -Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe.” In an ill -moment the new recruit engaged to translate this portentous tome into -German for publication. Shades of Olaus Wormius and Ab Gwilym! Borrow’s -German was the first stumbling-block. It was good enough to enable him -to read German works and to turn German into English, but to work with it -as a colloquial tongue was quite a different matter. In this respect he -had contracted to do the impossible. But even if his German had been -perfect he would have been a fish out of water, for he knew nothing of -metaphysics. This is not the place to discuss the value of Sir Richard -Phillips’s book, which has doubtless taken up some dusty nook on a -library shelf for its permanent and undisturbed place of residence. But -it was enough for Borrow to be told that nobody could understand his -German version: in his opinion the cause of that did not reside so much -in his imperfect acquaintance with the language as in the folly of the -author. Borrow did not understand him and his terminology; consequently, -the theories and the language of Sir Richard Phillips were equally -absurd. The contumely poured upon the publisher in “Lavengro” was -probably not fully deserved. A German edition of the Philosophy, -translated by Theobald and Lebret, appeared at Stuttgart in 1826, and, -for what it was worth, the Germans succeeded in understanding this. But, -for the rest, if Borrow was treated no worse than other publishers’ hacks -were treated, his lot was no more pleasant. Phillips was exigent about -the work for which he paid so meanly, and none too kindly in his manner. -Even about the “Celebrated Trials,” which was the enterprise George liked -best of them all, Borrow was worried in an unconscionable fashion. - -Of course, there was another life than this: his own private life, his -intercourse with such friends as he had already in London and with the -new acquaintances he made during his unconventional wanderings about the -city. His brother John, the artist, reached London on April 29th, -commissioned to induce Benjamin Haydon to paint the portrait of a Mr. -Robert Hawkes, who was Mayor of Norwich in 1822. John had been asked to -do the portrait himself, but distrusted his powers and preferred that the -commission should go to Haydon. George went with his brother to -interview “the painter of the Heroic,” who was not by way of painting -provincial mayors as a matter of preference, but was in the chronic state -of impecuniosity which made the fee of a hundred pounds an irresistible -bait. The mission was successful. Haydon went down to Norwich, and -executed a portrait of the worthy Mr. Hawkes “striding under a Norman -arch out of the cathedral.” The Norman arch seems to have been suggested -locally, and it appealed strongly to Haydon’s sense of the grandiose, -though many people may be inclined to agree with George that the mayors -of the day, as a rule, would have been better painted issuing from The -Chequers or The Brewers Three. - -Whatever distractions he could discover or invent, Borrow’s life was -miserable, and brought on severe attacks of melancholia, which he first -described as “the Horrors” and afterwards as “the Fear.” “What a life! -What a dog’s life!” he tells us he would exclaim after “escaping” from -the presence of the publisher. His woes, real and imaginary—and a great -many of them were the effect of his morbid imaginings—drove him to -desperate thoughts. After his brother’s visit, Knapp tells us, he wrote -to Kerrison: “Dear Roger,—Come to me immediately. I believe I am dying.” -He was probably very far from dying, but Kerrison had an idea that George -was liable to suicidal impulses, did not like assuming the responsibility -for such an irresponsible person, and shifted his lodgings. The mood -passed, and Borrow went on hawking his ballads among the publishers of -London with no more success than before. He relates how he called on -“glorious John” twenty times without success. We are not to place too -much reliance upon the exactitude of this statement. Meanwhile, the -“Celebrated Trials” was going on. It was a tremendous compilation, with -little of Borrow’s own work in it. Its 3,600 pages represented nearly a -year’s adventures among the bookstalls and the files of old newspapers -and fly-sheets. One piece of characteristic literary work with which he -endowed the world was his translation of Klinger’s “Faustus,” which -shortly appeared. This had been done at Norwich in the Simpson & Rackham -days. Finally, the book of “Trials” was completed, and the _Universal -Review_ died of inanition. “I did not like reviewing at all . . . I -never could understand why reviews were instituted,” says Lavengro. And -he continued to detest reviewers and reviewing to the end of his days. -In 1853, when Whitwell Elwin was deputising for Lockhart as editor of the -_Quarterly_, he met Borrow. Their interview, Elwin’s son tells us, was -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!’” - -At the death of the _Universal Review_, his relations with Phillips came -to an end. He had little money and no resources. Once more he resumed -the weary round, tramping in search of purchasers for his translations, -and gradually approaching a condition of penury, but maintaining his -attitude of aggression and independence. It is into this brief period -that he has worked some of the most effective scenes of “Lavengro,” the -friendship with the old apple-woman who had a stall on London Bridge, and -with the Armenian merchant to whom he suggested that his wealth should be -devoted to the liberation and aggrandisement of Armenia. Languages and -poetry still obsessed his dreams. But audacious poverty at last bit a -deeper wound than could be salved by poetry, and he resolved, only just -too late, to accept an engagement the Armenian had offered him. It was -sharp upon his disappointment at finding that the Armenian had taken him -at his word, and gone away bent upon the conquest of Persia, that, -returning from an excursion to Greenwich, Blackheath, and Shooter’s Hill, -in the course of which he came upon the “Petulengros” in camp, he saw a -notice in a bookseller’s window, “Wanted, a Novel or Tale.” “Lavengro” -relates how he shut himself up from the 13th to the 18th of May, and -wrote “The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell,” which he sold to the -bookseller for twenty pounds. - -How much of all this is truth and how much is fiction it is difficult to -determine. There is probably a basis of fact for it. Borrow, with all -his imagination and all his romance, was not an inventive writer, and -though the idea of “Joseph Sell” may have been suggested by the history -of “Rasselas,” it is more probable that by some stroke of luck of this -kind he did obtain the money with which to set out on his tour of the -English roads. The circumstance that no “Life of Joseph Sell” has ever -been discovered is nothing to set against this probability, and against -the feeling with which Lavengro narrates its inception and -accomplishment. Borrow’s love of mystification entirely accounts for it. -There was a choice between saying exactly what he did, what his tale or -history was entitled, and obscuring the whole matter by a fictitious -name; and it would not have been Borrow if he had not chosen the latter -course. By whatever work, he did obtain money enough to allow him to -shake the dust of London off his shoes and begin those wanderings through -English rural districts which provided the adventures described in the -second and better half of “Lavengro.” - -Borrow was big and strong and a magnificent walker; never before, as Mr. -Watts-Dunton has said, had there appeared on English roads so -majestic-looking a tramp, with bundle and stick. He went south-west to -Salisbury Plain, and there is a powerful account in “Lavengro” of sunrise -at Stonehenge. The only thing to compare with it is Thomas Hardy’s -prose-poem of the same magical place by moonlight. One cannot read -without a thrill the passage where, “taking off my hat I advanced slowly, -and cast myself with my face upon the dewy earth in the middle of the -portal of giants. The spirit of Stonehenge was strong upon me.” - -There is little, of importance to Borrow’s own life, to decipher in the -story of his wayfaring which is not incorporated in the book itself. -Perhaps one of the most weird of his adventures was the encounter with -the scholar and gentleman afflicted by the “touching” mania; one of the -most sensational the attempt made by Mrs. Herne, the gypsy crone, to -poison him with a doctored cake; one of the most impressive his meeting -with the Welsh Methodist preacher, Peter Williams, and his wife, -Winifred—Peter Williams who suffered tortures untold because he imagined -that in his boyhood he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. He -met Romanist missionaries, who at that time were very active on the -highways and byways of England; dog-fighters and prize-fighters; -everywhere out-of-the-way adventures occurred to him. He bought the -stock-in-trade of Jack Slingsby, a hedgesmith and tinker, who was afraid -to remain on the roads because of the enmity of the terrible bully, -Blazing Bosvile, alias the Flaming Tinman; and in the course of his -wanderings in search of business, he pulled up in Mumper’s Dingle, where -was enacted the romance of Isopel Berners. The scene is said to have -been identified as Mumber Lane, near Willenhall, in Staffordshire. - -In all the writings of Borrow there is but one episode of love. This -romantic wanderer, so far as he informs us or we can ascertain, had been -only once in love in nearly forty years, and that for a few weeks; nor -was he then so deeply immersed that he took any particular pains to bring -the lady to his own way of thinking. But this one episode has endowed -English literature with a figure which takes a proud place in the gallery -of fair women, the figure of Isopel Berners. Like everything else in -Lavengro’s life, his sweetheart must be remarkable, his courtship must be -unconventional, the adventure must have a vague and misty ending. - -Watch Isopel as she descends, with her donkey and cart, behind the -Flaming Tinman and Moll, his mort, into Mumper’s Dingle, where Lavengro -has camped. - - “Dashing past the other horse and cart, which by this time had - reached the bottom of the pass, appeared an exceedingly tall woman—or - rather girl, for she could scarcely have been above eighteen. She - was dressed in a tight bodice and a blue stuff gown; hat, bonnet, or - cap she had none, and her hair, which was flaxen, hung down on her - shoulders unconfined; her complexion was fair, and her features - handsome, with a determined but open expression.” - -In conversation with the Flaming Tinman, who is working himself up to the -proper pitch of a quarrel with the amateur tinker, the tall girl remarks -that she would engage to thrash that weedy-looking youth with one hand. -Forth bursts Lavengro, with his eternal Norse lore: “‘You might beat me -with no hands at all,’ said I, ‘fair damsel, only by looking at me—I -never saw such a face and figure—both regal—why, you look like Ingeborg, -Queen of Norway; she had twelve brothers, and could lick them all, though -they were heroes: - - “‘On Dovrefeld, in Norway, - Were once together seen - The twelve heroic brothers - Of Ingeborg, the queen!’” - -A pretty invocation, indeed, to a hawker travelling with a donkey-cart! - - “None of your chaffing, young fellow,” said the tall girl, “or I will - give you what shall make you wipe your face; be civil, or you will - rue it.” - -Lavengro admitted that he was “perhaps a peg too high,” and offered her -“something a bit lower.” It was a Romany couplet. The rage of the tall -girl, whilom Queen Ingeborg, may be imagined when she found herself -associated with the gypsies; there is no despite of gypsies quite so deep -as that of the English of the “lower orders,” as they might say at -Marlborough. And, after a little more of Lavengro’s solemn chaff: -“Before I could put myself on guard, she struck me a blow on the face -which had nearly brought me to the ground.” - -Fit exordium to the love-story of travelling hawker and hedge-tinker, to -be promoted later by lessons in Armenian given by the Knight of the -Solder-iron to the Damsel of the Donkey-cart. And the scene that -follows—Lavengro’s fight with the Flaming Tinman, who transferred his -mortal enmity for Jack Slingsby to the temporary owner of Jack Slingsby’s -stock-in-trade—is a fit sequel. The heroic combat was the real beginning -of the courtship. “The tall girl” saw foul play on the part of the -Tinman, and immediately became “the young man’s” champion and assumed the -office of his second. It was by her advice, after he had been knocked -off his legs several times by the Tinman’s flashing fist, that, instead -of fighting with his left, he got in the blow with his “long right” that -settled the hash of Blazing Bosvile. The Tinman and his mort took -themselves off after this discomfiture, leaving Lavengro and Isopel -Berners in undisputed possession of the Dingle. - -We learn little about Isopel in details of fact, except that she was born -in “Long Melford workhouse,” and put “out to service,” where she -experienced all the joys that were usually stored up in service for -workhouse girls in the early part of the nineteenth century. When her -mistress attempted to knock her down with a besom, Belle knocked down the -mistress with her fist. So she went back to the Great House, was put in -a dark cell, and fed for a fortnight on bread and water. At her next -essay to serve she was no more fortunate; this time she knocked down her -master for being rude to her, and had to fly the house. A travelling -hawkeress, going the roads with silk and linen, took a fancy to her, and -carried her on many journeys. Belle protected her from insult and -violence; in return the old woman, at her death, left the girl her stock. -She was thus in business on her own account, and casually travelling with -the Bosviles, when she fell in with Lavengro. - -In his erratic way, Borrow paints a charming idyll of the few succeeding -weeks during which they lived in the Dingle: an idyll of natural beauty, -and a picture of such womanly modesty and strength of character as to -make Isopel Berners one of the heroines the heart cherishes. The -uneducated Amazon, the feminine pugilist, who can take her own part in -any quarrel, is by nature a modest girl, a woman with the finest -perceptions and the most delicate instincts; she has a vein of poetry in -her composition which gives her a certain affinity with the wandering -philologist, who has in turn a vein of chivalry in his. While she dwells -in her tent and he in his, while she goes up and down the neighbourhood -on her business, and Lavengro stays in the Dingle to make new shoes for -her donkey, Isopel is all the time dreaming what might have been. For -all his chivalry, the young man is strange and plain-spoken, rarely -paying a compliment, never making an advance, boring her with -philological disquisitions, talking of things indifferent to her, -pestering her with Armenian declensions, or sitting dull and silent while -he sips the tea she has made for him. Here is a characteristic passage: - - “I took another cup; we were again silent. ‘It is rather - uncomfortable,’ said I at last, ‘for people to sit together without - having anything to say.’ - - “‘Were you thinking of your company?’ said Belle. - - “‘What company?’ said I. - - “‘The present company.’ - - “‘The present company? Oh, ah!—I remember that I said one only feels - uncomfortable in being silent with a companion when one happens to be - thinking of the companion. Well, I had been thinking of you the last - two or three minutes, and had just come to the conclusion that, to - prevent us both feeling occasionally uncomfortable towards each - other, having nothing to say, it would be as well to have a standing - subject on which to employ our tongues. Belle, I have determined to - give you lessons in Armenian.’” - -Which he proceeds forthwith to do. What was a girl to make of a man like -that? When that Lavengro’s heart was sore thereafter for the lack of -Belle Berners, he had to thank his moroseness and his Armenian nouns for -it. - -So proceeded, without passion, without even a symptom of philandering on -either side, the Romance of Mumper’s Dell—dreadfully misunderstood by the -postilion who sheltered there in the thunderstorm, and by Mrs. Chikno -when the gypsies encamped near by—but never advancing, so far as the two -chief actors were concerned. It is continued from the last volume of -“Lavengro” into the first volume of the “Romany Rye.” In the latter, for -a hundred pages we are waiting upon some development of it; but it is as -elusive as a pixy. We continually tremble upon the brink of a -declaration. Take this scene, powerful but inconclusive. Upon the -departure of Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro, after their visit of ceremony: - - “Then you are going?” said I, when Belle and I were left alone. - - “Yes,” said Belle; “I am going on a journey; my affairs compel me.” - - “But you will return again?” said I. - - “Yes,” said Belle; “I shall return once more.” - - “Once more,” said I. “What do you mean by once more? The - Petulengros will soon be gone; and will you abandon me in this - place?” - - “You were alone here,” said Belle, “before I came, and I suppose you - found it agreeable, or you would not have stayed in it.” - - “Yes,” said I. “That was before I knew you; but having lived with - you here, I should be very loth to live here without you.” - - “Indeed,” said Belle. “I did not know that I was of so much - consequence to you. Well—the day is wearing away—I must go and - harness Traveller to the cart.” - -He does some little service for her, as harnessing the donkey and putting -the bundles into the cart. The narrative proceeds, and the chapter ends -thus: - - “I put the bundles into the cart, and then led Traveller and the cart - up the winding path to the mouth of the dingle. Belle followed. At - the top I delivered the reins into her hands, we looked at each other - steadfastly for some time. Belle then departed, and I returned to - the dingle, where, seating myself on my stone, I remained for upwards - of an hour in thought.” - -Great is ellipsis—but romance cannot live by ellipsis alone. The next -chapter begins, “On the following morning,” and is a spirited account of -a feast of roast sucking-pig in the gypsy encampment! - -There is never room for a doubt that Lavengro was by this time fairly in -love with Belle. But there is also no room for doubt that Belle had -realised that he was not for her, nor was she for him. Their ways lay -apart. Belle’s way was the broad road of the Atlantic to America, where -she hoped to conduct her life free from the disadvantages that attended -the career in England of a workhouse girl with a name which, as Lavengro -had told her, belonged to the nomenclatures of the ancient aristocracy. -His way was through many strange lands, through a life of adventure and -turmoil, to an old age of mingled glory, hypochondria, and megrims. So -that Belle had resolved to nip the romance in the bud, and her last -journey from the Dingle was made with the purpose of selling her donkey -and cart and her silks and linens, and going to Liverpool to take ship -for the New World. She returned once more, as she had promised. It was -late at night; Lavengro was asleep in his tent; but he had banked up the -fire, and placed the kettle over it. The little noise of her arrival -woke him, and he dressed so as to go out and unharness her donkey. Now -that it was all impossible, and Belle had made her irrevocable decision, -Lavengro, of course, came to the point. On their last day together, he -set her conjugating the Armenian verb _siriel_, and when he had worried -her through it, told her that the English equivalent of _siriel_ was “to -love.” And, in his whimsical, moonshiny, teasing way, having driven -Isopel to tears, he suddenly proposed to her that they should be off -together to America, settle down in some forest, and conjugate the verb -_siriel_ conjugally! - -And, as there was never a doubt that Lavengro had managed to get himself -in love with Belle, so there was never a doubt that Belle was strongly -tempted to acknowledge that she loved this strange fellow of six feet -three with the black eyes and the white hair and the long right arm, who -could beat Blazing Bosvile and make donkey shoes, and mend kettles and -talk all the languages that were heard in the Tower of Babel. But well -for Belle’s peace of mind that she resisted the temptation; for Lavengro, -the constitutional wanderer, would have led her a pretty life when they -had buried themselves in the depths of an American forest to conjugate -Armenian verbs! - -The next morning he set off with his friend Jasper for a horse fair, -leaving Belle behind. “On arriving at the extremity of the plain, I -looked towards the dingle. Isopel Berners stood at the mouth; the beams -of the early morning sun shone full on her noble face and figure. I -waved my hand towards her. She slowly lifted up her right arm. I turned -away, and never saw Isopel Berners again.” - -For while Lavengro was away Belle departed from the Dingle, and left -never a trace behind her. Now that he had lost the treasure upon which -he had set so small a price, Lavengro was very sore at heart, and would -have given much to recall her and to consummate his day-dreams. But all -that he ever heard of her again was in a letter addressed by her to “the -young man in Mumper’s Dingle.” Herein she explained why she had refused -his offer, which, if he had made it in the early part of their -acquaintance, she would have accepted. She proffered him some very good -advice about his manners, told him she thought he was a bit mad at -bottom, gave him a lock of her glorious hair, and left this maxim with -him: “Fear God, and take your own part.” Which was so much to Lavengro’s -liking that he made it the motto of the second portion of his life-story, -“The Romany Rye”; and there it is to this day under his name, and over -the imprint of Mr. Murray. - -Was Isopel Berners a reality, and did Borrow meet her in Mumper’s Dingle? -Or is the whole of this history an invention? Dr. Knapp’s elaborate -researches do not help us much, because there is no documentary evidence -about the episode. He can merely tell us that Borrow did make such a -journey, did buy a tinker’s stock-in-trade, and did live in Mumper’s -Dingle. So that we must look for internal evidence. - -I have no doubt that Isopel Berners was a reality, and a very substantial -one; I have no doubt that she was extraordinarily tall, strong, and -beautiful; and that her hair was wonderfully fine. I do not insist that -she was either as tall, as strong, or as beautiful as she is painted in -“Lavengro”; for Shorsha had a habit of exaggerating—it was one of the -many constitutional defects of his character; he could not help it. - -The reason is very simple for this faith about Isopel Berners, the -prototype of Queen Ingeborg, who, as Mr. Birrell has said, need fear -comparison with no damsel that ever lent sweetness to the stage, relish -to rhyme, or life to novels. Borrow never created a character. He has -left many portraits; but to imagine an Isopel Berners, to invent the -incident, was as impossible for him as flying. The romance of Isopel -Berners would never have been written if George Borrow, when he was -travelling England on foot upon the money he earned by writing “Joseph -Sell” and by mending kettles, had not met Isopel’s prototype in Mumper’s -Dingle. - -The adventures of the rest of this year of 1825 may be told very briefly. -Borrow left the Dingle when it appeared certain that he would see no more -of Isopel, and, with money borrowed from Jasper Petulengro—or rather -forced by his gypsy friend upon an unwilling recipient—bought a fine -horse and set off wandering again. His roadside encounters, with the -bee-keeper and brewer of mead, with the gentleman who had learnt Chinese -by the aid of the hieroglyphics on teapots, and all the rest of them, -being more or less impersonal and extraneous to his own history, may be -left for consideration in connection with “The Romany Rye.” He took a -situation for a time as assistant in a stable-yard at a coaching -inn—having abandoned the tinker’s craft and given the pony and -stock-in-trade to his gypsy friends,—ultimately sold his horse at -Horncastle Fair, and tramped back to Norwich, where his mother was -living. - - - - -CHAPTER IV -BORROW AND BOWRING - - -WE now have Borrow a youth of twenty-two. His life has been full of -weird adventure, but to all appearances quite unprofitable in any worldly -sense. His future is nebulous. Dreams are dreamed; visions are -vanished. He seems to be farther from fame and fortune than when he set -off in the coach for London, with the green box in the boot carrying his -Danish ballads and his “Ab Gwilym.” His castles in the clouds have come -crashing to earth in irremediable ruin. - -Borrow was indignant with a scurvy world which had treated him harshly. -The plain truth was that the world had no feeling about him at all, one -way or the other. He had nothing to sell that anybody wanted to buy, and -no means of making a living. He had a long road to travel before he -found himself. In 1825 he went home to Norwich a failure, with the sense -of defeat very strong upon him. The mother who was at once his best -adviser and sincerest worshipper was not likely to chide his folly as the -father had done. She was ready to receive him with demonstrations of -love, and to share her little with him. This was part of the ignominy -which he hated—that he was obliged to impose himself upon the household -in Willow Lane. In a world out of joint, the cursed spite was that he -could do nothing to set it right. - -Long time he struggled hard to lift himself out of this rut. He -continued to fail. When at last he did succeed, these years became to -him a horrible nightmare. He would not speak of them; he tried not to -think of them. He resolutely refused to permit the public a glimpse into -the sordid secrets they contained. From 1825 to 1832 he lived a life of -which he wished nobody to know anything. Out of some correspondence -between him and Richard Ford arose the phrase, “the Veiled Period.” Ford -implored him to lift the veil a little and allow his admirers to know -what he was doing. There were many reasons why he declined to do so. He -endeavoured to puzzle the public about it, and perhaps succeeded partly -in mystifying himself. He suggested a kind of vague romance of -wanderings in remote parts of Europe. Some of the suggestions were -founded on a slight basis of fact; that is all that can be said for them. - -As to the facts: there is no doubt that he did buy a horse with money -lent to him by Ambrose Smith, and sell it at a profit. As in the case of -Isopel, it may not be unwise to allow some discount off the published -accounts of the transaction. Very possibly the horse was not such a fine -horse as that noble animal with whose assistance Lavengro electrified the -jockeys at Horncastle Fair; perhaps the profit on the sale was not so -great as it was made to appear in “The Romany Rye.” But there was such a -transaction. Ambrose Smith reminded him of it, long years afterwards, -when he visited the great author at Oulton. - -Soon after his return to Norwich, he was busy again about his literary -schemes. He tried to sell copies of his translation of Klinger, which he -took from the publisher in lieu of payment for the work. While with -Phillips in London, he had projected a volume of poetical translations of -Danish ballads. The plan then came to naught. Now he printed the book -in Norwich by subscription, after a correspondence with Allan Cunningham -about it. Cunningham was full of admiration for the old songs drawn from -the “Kjaempe Viser.” “Swayne Vonved” was his favourite, and it remained -Borrow’s own pet throughout life. Five hundred copies of the “Romantic -Ballads” were printed, of which 200 were subscribed for. These, at ten -and sixpence a copy, paid all the expenses of the issue. There was an -arrangement under which the London publisher, John Taylor, took the rest -and placed his imprint on the title-page. Cunningham gave the young poet -a great deal of good advice about promoting the interests of the book. -He neglected it, with characteristic self-sufficiency. He had published -ballads, and if the great public did not share Mopsa’s affection for -ballads in print, the nineteenth-century Autolycus could not help it, and -would be content with what he could get out of the local subscribers in -Norwich. - -In 1826 he was in London, and in correspondence with Benjamin Haydon -about sitting for a figure in one of his pictures—possibly the “Mock -Election.” In the course of the correspondence Borrow speaks of -proceeding presently to the South of France. This is the first hint of -those brief travels on the Continent which became magnified by the -pervading haze into world-wide wanderings. “Were you ever at Kiachta?” -Bowring asked him in a letter some years later. He was never within some -thousands of miles of Kiachta. In 1826 he probably did go tramping -through part of Europe, but he did not reach the East, as some confused -references in the books suggest. The tale of Murtagh in “The Romany Rye” -may incorporate some of his adventures. At any rate, that alluring -narrative was certainly not given to Borrow in the year 1825 at -Horncastle Fair. There is clear evidence of that in the fact that a -portion of it was picked up nearly thirty years later in very different -circumstances. - -The real itinerary of the tour of 1826 is probably by way of Paris on -foot to Bayonne; across the Pyrenees into Spain; Pamplona, the Riviera, -Italy, Genoa, and thence home by ship. Slight traces can be found of -such a journey. There is the lightly-touched meeting with Vidocq in -Paris. That delectable rascal’s career always had a strong fascination -for Borrow, whose appetite for picturesque blackguards was greedy. -Vidocq at this time was fifty years of age. A quarter of a century of -adventure as a showman, a soldier, a galley-slave, and a highwayman had -terminated in 1812 with his appointment to the head of a detective office -in Paris, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief. By the -year 1825 the authorities were persuaded that the principle was -unworkable, and dismissal ended Vidocq’s career of corruption and -swindling. If Borrow met him in Paris the next year, therefore, he found -his hero a free lance. The _Mémoires_ of M. Vidocq, which appeared in -1828, and are probably at least as trustworthy as Baron Munchausen, were -among Borrow’s favourite reading; his relish for literature, embloomed -with the flowers of crime and perfumed by the breath of criminals, had -been cultivated by the compilation of the “Celebrated Trials,” and it -never left him. Vidocq and Peyrecourt loom large in passages of his -works; whether they made so great a figure in his actual experiences in -France is another question. He appears to have met Baron Taylor at -Bayonne, and naturally found in the “picturesque and romantic” voyager a -congenial companion. From these lofty associations the descent on the -other side of the Pyrenees to Quesada {72} and his “Army of Faith,” the -gang of frontiersmen who were helping themselves freely in the name of -the Church, was sudden and severe. But Borrow seems to have fallen even -further, for there is a dim suggestion of his imprisonment at Pamplona, -of his emergence from gaol in a state of beggary, and his succour at the -hands of a party of gypsies whose patteran he followed in the mountains. -He tramped eastwards, ultimately brought up at Genoa, penniless, and was -assisted by some person or persons unknown to get ship for England. - -This is as far as Dr. Knapp has been able to trace the elusory course of -the Wandering Jew of Literature. The theory that he acted as the -travelling commissioner of a London newspaper finds no support. By 1827 -he was back in Norwich, keeping his mother’s small household accounts, -visiting the Tombland Fair to inspect “Marshland Shales,” the glorious -chieftain of all the equine race, grubbing for booksellers, writing -articles for newspapers. It was a mean and anxious way of life, -abominable to Borrow, who hated poverty and was ashamed of it. Therein -may be sought the real reason why he “veiled” these years of his life. -His next appearance in the literary arena is in the distinguished company -of Dr. John Bowring. - -The Bowring episode in Borrow’s life is one of its most remarkable and -least explicable features. Bowring seems to have been a good friend to -Borrow for many years, to have engaged with him in literary -collaboration, and to have exerted himself in various directions on his -behalf. His reward, so far as Borrow’s works go, is a scurrilous sketch -of himself in “Lavengro,” a long denunciation in the Appendix to “The -Romany Rye,” and the bitter hatred of a man who knew how to hate as -fiercely as he could love intensely. The whole story of their severance -is obscure, but there can be little doubt that Borrow was entirely in the -wrong, that the charges he made against Bowring of treachery and -falsehood were baseless, and that of many people pilloried in Borrow’s -books Bowring was among the least deserving such scurvy treatment. We -have observed already the circumstances of the first meeting between -Borrow and Bowring at Taylor’s house in Norwich. We shall see that -Bowring came to his rescue when he was in the sorest straits, and was, in -fact, doing much to help him during part of the “veiled period.” - -It has been the writer’s fortune to secure {73} a series of letters from -Borrow to Bowring, which throw much light upon his schemes and modes of -life in the last three of those mysterious years between his return from -the Continent and his engagement by the Bible Society. He did not remain -long in Norwich. In 1829 he was in London, residing at No. 17, Great -Russell Street, Bloomsbury, and deeply employed about certain -translations of Scandinavian poetry which were to form the basis of a new -book on more elaborate lines than those of the “Romantic Ballads.” -Bowring and Borrow had a plan for issuing in collaboration a collection -of English versions, with interpretations, of those Northern poets whom a -purblind public, not yet obsessed by the Scandinavian spirit in poetry -and music, resolutely disregarded and despised. This was the “literary -project” of which the world heard so much in the Appendix. The -arrangements went so far that a prospectus of the work was put out. The -title proposed was “The Songs of Scandinavia,” and the collection was to -be published in two volumes octavo. The project remained a project, and -the niche left by expectant librarians for the two octavo volumes was -never filled. But in connection with the negotiations and arrangements -between Borrow and Bowring a correspondence occurred which is full of -interest and contains one or two characteristic bits of Borrovian humour. -Incidentally, the letters, if taken in sequence, and read together with -another one of the year 1842, show that, up to a time not far ante-dating -the publication of “The Romany Rye,” with its gross attack on Bowring, -the two men were on the best possible terms. Indeed, in 1842 Borrow -speaks of his old collaborator as “my oldest, I may say my only, friend.” -{75} - -It were greatly to be wished that the sordid dispute with Bowring might -be numbered among the delenda of Borrow’s history, but some mention of it -will be necessary. Unhappily, no satisfactory explanation can be given -which is at all flattering to Borrow. For these letters prove -conclusively that he introduced into “Lavengro” and its sequel opinions -about Bowring which he certainly did not hold at the time of which he was -writing. - -In 1829 their Scandinavian scheme was in the tideway. They had written -and they had met for the discussion of their plans; Borrow had done a -great deal of translation. He was exceedingly anxious that at any rate -the first volume should appear at once; for, as he said in a letter -written on the last day of the year, he was “_terribly afraid of being -forestalled in the Kiampe 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.” The italicised passage is -underlined in Borrow’s letter; it is a curious foretaste of some of the -choicer invective which he afterwards bestowed on Scott and the Scots, -and of his disagreement with Lockhart. The preparations were hurried on -with a view to the appearance of the first part of the book in February. -The drafting of the prospectus was left to Borrow, and on January 8th -(1830) he sent a copy to Bowring for his inspection, inviting “the -correction of your master-hand.” He had, he said, “endeavoured to frame -a Danish style,” but was not sure whether he had succeeded. “Alter, I -pray you,” he exclaimed, “whatever false logic has crept into it, find a -remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit for its intended -purpose.” There follows a delightful touch of egotism. He has, he -explains, had a rising headache for two days, which has “almost” -prevented him from doing anything. But, he adds with fine nonchalance, -“I sat down this morning and translated a hundred lines of the ‘May -Day’”—as though a hundred lines of English verse were a trifle which he -threw off without effort, _malgré_ his “rising headache.” - -Bowring examined the prospectus, made what revisions he thought -necessary, and sent it back. - -“I approve of the prospectus in every respect,” wrote Borrow (January -14th). “It is businesslike, and there is nothing flashy in it. I do not -wish to suggest one alteration.” He goes on to describe the energy with -which he is working, and speaks of having rendered four hundred lines in -one day! The last paragraph of this letter displays Borrow in a -different attitude towards reviews and reviewing from that which he -adopted in after years. “When you see the foreign editor,” he tells -Bowring, - - “I should feel much obliged if you would speak to him about my - reviewing Tegnér, and inquire 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 from - 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.” - -But this condition of things, in which the romantic ferment caused by -Steffens and Oehlenschläger in Denmark was to be reproduced in England by -Borrow’s translations, did not last long. Difficulties arose in -connection with the publication of the proposed book, and the enthusiasm -paled as the year progressed. The two volumes receded from view; the -twin mountain in labour finally brought forth a review article of some -forty pages. This was despatched in the summer to the _Foreign Quarterly -Review_, was held back for twelve months, and appeared at last in the -number for June, 1831. In this Bowring wrote in lively style on Danish -and Norwegian literature, and Borrow supplied sixteen specimens of verse. - -In the meantime, Bowring was doing what he could to assist his _protégé_ -to some profitable employment. He sent him an ancient manuscript which -Grundtvig, the Danish poet, wanted to have transcribed. Borrow said -(June 7th) the task would not be overpaid at £49, but as he was “doing -nothing particular” at the time, and might learn something from it, he -would do it for £20. Bowring also exerted his influence to get him work -in the magazines. During the summer of 1830, Borrow flitted from Great -Russell Street to No. 7, Museum Street, and in the autumn, went to -Norwich for a holiday. In the letter (September 14th) in which he tells -Bowring of his proposal to leave London for Norwich, we get the first -hint of a project which now and then flashed through his mind for a year -or two—that of entering the military service: “I have thought of -attempting to get into the French service, as I should like prodigiously -to serve under Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign.” This remained a -thought, though, as we shall see, other plans of the same character went -a little further. In the same letter he complained that he was very -unwell, but traced his malady to ennui and unsettled prospects, and hoped -that cold bathing in October and November would prove of some service to -him. There is no reference in this correspondence to one task which he -himself asserts he achieved in 1830. That was the translation of Elis -Wyn. At the instance of “a little bookseller of my acquaintance” in -Smithfield, he rendered from the Welsh Wyn’s, “Visions of the Sleeping -Bard.” This was the nearest approach he made to the promise of literary -success; but even here his malign fate dogged him. When the little -bookseller saw the translation, he begged off the bargain on the plea -that “the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the -genteel part of the English public out of their wits. . . . Myn Diawl! I -had no idea till I read him in English that Elis Wyn had been such a -terrible fellow!” The sly dig at the “genteel” public may be reasonably -attributed to the bookmaker rather than to the bookseller. - -Before he departed from London, Borrow, returning some books to Bowring, -utters (September 17th) one of those ejaculations on public affairs which -he subsequently inserted as tags to many of his letters: “More -Revolutions, I see. The King of Saxony has run away, and the Kent -peasantry are burning stacks and houses. _Where will all this end_?” - -A dozen plans for carving a way to undying fame and modest fortune, all -equally futile, were built up and fell down about this time. Apparently -Borrow could not rid himself of the delusion that a hungry world was -waiting to devour the beauties of the Gaelic Bards, if only they were -served up in a suitable form for general consumption. He launched at the -devoted heads of the Highland Society of London a scheme under which the -Society was to employ (and pay) him for two years in translating the -Gaelic Bards into English verse. The scheme left the Highland Society as -cold as the Bards would have left the reading world. He turned his -artillery upon the British Museum. The Codex Exoniensis was to be -copied; he applied for the work, but without success. It was done in -1831 by one of the regular officials of the Museum. Discouraged but not -dismayed, he sought other employment in Bloomsbury, and asked Bowring to -put in a word for him. The Doctor pointed out that in his position it -was necessary to go about such a matter with discretion. It would not do -for him to originate an application, but if the authorities of the Museum -could be induced to seek his opinion, he would give Borrow such a -character as would “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.” But this design failed like the rest. In a letter to -Bowring he described himself, with melancholy eloquence, as “drifting -upon the sea of the world, and likely to be so.” To Borrow there was “no -fiercer hell than failure”; but the inferno was of his own creation. His -greatest failure was the failure to realise that there was no sort of -demand for the work he insisted on doing, and that its intrinsic value -was far below the standard at which he placed it. - -Compelled thus to abandon his literary ambitions for the present, he -turned his efforts in another direction. He began the pursuit of a -shimmering phantom over which, in the course of his life, he contrived to -waste a great deal of valuable time. Upon what he based the idea does -not appear, but Borrow seems to have imagined that he had some claim to -official employment abroad. It did not much matter whether the work was -made for him by the British Government or by a foreign State, so long as -he should be given the opportunity of displaying his philological prowess -in foreign parts. After the appearance of the joint article in the -_Foreign Quarterly_, as Bowring seemed to be able to do nothing for him -at the British Museum, Borrow asked him to see what he could do towards -getting him a post under the Belgian Government. Bowring made the -application, but without success; the Belgians were not at the moment in -need of any English assistance, however talented. Borrow keenly -recognised his friend’s diligence in the matter, and turned his heaviest -artillery on the Ministry at Brussels, who were so obstinately blind to -the advantages of having Mr. George Borrow in their service. They did -not seem, he said in a letter to Bowring written from Willow Lane, -Norwich, and dated September 11th, 1831, either to know or to care for -the opinion of the great Cyrus, whose advice to his captains he quoted -from Xenophon: “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.” Belgium, having failed to appreciate -the worth of George Borrow, at once became the most contemptible nation -on earth: - - “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 50,000 Frenchmen to - clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have generally - been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, and who, if they - had 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 deserved to be—hewers of wood and drawers of water.” - -This sardonic outburst is one of the earliest samples of the polemical -style which Borrow was to develop so strongly in later years. - -As he could neither go to fight Bedouins under Clausel nor enter the -Belgian service in Europe, it appears to have occurred to his friend -Bowring that he might care to follow in his father’s footsteps, and that -the British service might suit him at a pinch. If Borrow would like to -purchase a commission, Bowring offered to introduce his name to the War -Secretary. Borrow replied that his name had been down for several years -for the purchase of a commission, but he had never had sufficient -interest to procure an appointment. He would not now mind serving in the -militia if they were to be embodied for service in Ireland (“that unhappy -country”), but he wished to leave the question open for a few months in -order to see whether something more promising turned up. If he had not -secured employment within two or three months, he would then ask Bowring -to redeem his promise in the matter of the War Secretary, and to -recommend him to a corps in one of the Eastern colonies on the plea that -he was “well grounded in Arabic” and had some talent for languages: - - “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 in 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. . . - .” - -This letter concluded with a postscript in which he requested that his -best remembrances might be presented to Mrs. Bowring and to Edgar, their -son; and, he added, “tell them 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.” - -Reform staved off the “rustic war,” and other things intervened to -prevent Borrow from carrying out his half-formed intention of becoming a -military man. - - - - -CHAPTER V -IN FOREIGN PARTS - - -“ROMANCE brought up” the year 1832. It was a year full of events with an -important bearing on the course of Borrow’s life. In the first place, he -became acquainted with the Skeppers, of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft. The -introduction to this family issued in a friendship with Mr. Skepper’s -sister, the widow of a young naval officer named Clarke. In Mrs. Clarke, -a woman somewhat older than himself—she was thirty-six and he was -twenty-nine—he met the woman who was to bring into his life its fairest -influence and its rarest happiness. But the story of this romance must -be postponed for a few pages in order to the relation of a sequence of -affairs without which it cannot be understood. They resulted from sundry -conversations about Borrow—between the Skeppers and the Rev. Francis -Cunningham, Rector of Pakefield, and in turn between Cunningham and -Joseph Gurney, his brother-in-law, from whose meadows at Earlham George -had fished in boyhood. - -Both Cunningham and Gurney were interested in the work of the Bible -Society, and between them the idea was hatched of employing Borrow’s -philological learning in its behalf. The Society happened at the moment -to be looking for a man to superintend the printing of the New Testament -in Manchu. There were many negotiations, and ultimately the engagement -was consummated which made Borrow’s modest fortune. - -To go to St. Petersburg on this business of the Bible Society’s was an -adventure after Borrow’s own heart. He had passed through some -exceedingly stormy waters, and in this employment he found a secure and -congenial harbour. He could well afford to regard lightly the critical -attitude of certain people in Norwich, who did not forget to recall the -episode of “godless Billy Taylor.” Their temper was reflected in the -letter of Harriet Martineau referring to Borrow as a “polyglot -gentleman,” and remarking that his appearance as “a devout agent of the -Bible Society” evoked “one shout of laughter from all who remembered the -old Norwich days.” Borrow did not like their laughter, and he did not -forgive their contempt. But for the time he was too busy with the -actualities of his new situation to trouble about them, and too elated -with his suddenly brightened prospects to be cast down by the jeers of -the scornful. - -He was going a journey into a far country, and he was going on a more or -less philological errand. His task was to undertake the production in -the Russian capital of the Manchu version of the Sacred Books made by -Lipotsof. Invited to London to see the officials of the Society, he set -off in high spirits—and on foot. The long road stretched for a hundred -and twelve miles between Norwich and London—that road which some ten -years before he had travelled by coach with the little green box of -poetical translations. He now tramped it in 27½ hours, and his expenses -_en route_ amounted to fivepence halfpenny! This feat was one of his -favourite boasts. It was, in its way, a remarkable achievement. Few -big, healthy young men would care to undertake such long-sustained -exertion on a pint of ale, half a pint of milk, a roll of bread, and two -apples. But such is Borrow’s tale of his commissariat arrangements on -this expedition. - -The Society desired him to learn the Manchu language before he set out -for Russia. They gave him six months for the purpose. Even for a -meteoric philologist like Borrow, who swallowed a language by memorising -its dictionary, six months meant short commons. He could not possibly -acquire more than a nodding acquaintance with that most difficult of the -tongues of Babel. However, he set about his task with zeal. - -There is one amusing passage in the correspondence between him and the -Secretary of the Bible Society. Observe the true Borrovian spirit -asserting itself in the letter where he expresses pleasure at the -prospect of “becoming useful to the Deity, to man, and to myself.” -Observe the solemn admonition of the good secretary, when he perceived -that a sense of human frailty was not one of Borrow’s most striking -characteristics: “Doubtless you mean the prospect of glorifying God.” -Thereafter, the Borrovian spirit was subdued (in correspondence) to the -proper standard of orthodoxy. - -At the end of June, 1833, he set sail for St. Petersburg, by way of -Hamburg, and was highly delighted with the Russian capital. He made his -way into the acquaintanceship of a number of literary people, in whose -society he found congenial entertainment. Among them he speedily -established for himself quite a reputation. It was here that he began -his long friendship with Hasfeldt, which produced a prolific -correspondence. Hasfeldt was a Dane attached to the Russian Government, -and a linguist of attainments, who added to his income by the teaching of -European languages. He conceived a remarkable fondness for “tall -George,” as he called him; the affection was returned as fully as Borrow -could return a friendship, and that was in much higher measure than many -estimates of him suggest. He met Russian scholars, and found many -opportunities for extending his philological studies in the direction of -the Oriental languages. - -His work on the Chinese version was hard and long. He had to use German -printers, who did not always feel for the task the enthusiasm which -Borrow expected everybody to throw into anything in which he himself was -concerned. They had to be bribed with vodka, and other things, in order -that progress might be secured. The Bible Society presumably swallowed -the vodka in their delight at the energy Borrow displayed, and they -passed a resolution to pay him any expenses to which he might be put in -the execution of the commission. He had to furbish up an old fount of -type in the Chinese character, that had been lying rusting in a cellar -for many years, and to get everything in order himself, because, of -course, it was impossible to obtain compositors who knew anything of the -Manchu. He even turned printer. So keen was the zest with which he -entered into the work that he submitted a proposal to the Society to -undertake the distribution of the books when they were printed, going -overland to China, and looking in upon the Tartars on the way! Without -doubt he would have done it but for the fact that the Russian Government -refused to grant him a passport for the purpose. It is characteristic of -Borrow that years afterwards he said, and doubtless thought, that he had -been overland to China. - -The work of printing done, he paid a hurried visit to Moscow, gathering -impressions for the description of the Kremlin to be found in “The Bible -in Spain,” and on September 9th, 1835, he left St. Petersburg for -England, having spent the previous night in a solemn leave-taking of -Hasfeldt. While in St. Petersburg hard at work, and feeling run down, he -had “the Horrors” several times, but affected to have found a cure for it -in the shape of strong port wine. It was during his stay in Russia that -the news arrived of the death of his brother John in Mexico. He had -discovered other activities to occupy him besides the translation of the -Testament into Chinese. He turned homilies of the Church of England into -Russian and Manchu, and did translations of some of the sacred Buddhist -books from Manchu into English. He conceived at the moment no high -opinion of the Buddhist philosophy. “You will be surprised,” he writes -to the Rev. F. Cunningham, “that Satan by such inconsistent trash should -have been able to ensnare the souls of millions!” If that had been read -in the Martineau household there might have been another “burst of -laughter.” It was while he was in St. Petersburg, too, that he published -his “Targum,” a collection of poetic translations from thirty different -languages and dialects. When Pushkin, the poet, after Borrow’s -departure, received a presentation copy of this book, he expressed his -great regret that he had not met the author. - -Borrow reached London on the 18th September, and went down to Norfolk, -feeling anxious again about his future, and hoping that the Bible Society -would be able to find some further employment for him. He was not -disappointed. The Society had not yet given up hope that they might find -a way to send him to China, but in the meantime they resolved to -commission him to Portugal. On November 2nd they passed a resolution -that he should be asked to go to Lisbon and Oporto to inquire about -“means and channels for promoting the circulation of the Holy Scriptures -in Portugal.” {91} Here is the origin of two of his books, of which one -was “The Bible in Spain.” On November 6th he sailed from London, -touching at Falmouth on the 8th, and was at Lisbon on the 13th. He was -to confer with one Wilby about the work; but, Wilby being away, Borrow -consoled himself with the company of Captain Heyland, of the 35th Foot, -whose acquaintance he had made on the voyage. With him he made several -trips, upon one of which he met the _bohémienne_ landlady of Cintra. -During this first expedition to the Peninsula, he set up relations with -the gypsies of Spain, which provided the germ of the first of his books -that attracted anything like general attention. At Badajoz he -encountered a gypsy tribe, by whom he was detained ten days. In that -time he had translated the Gospel of Saint Luke into the Câlo, or Spanish -gypsy language, and the version was subsequently printed by the Bible -Society. One of the Romany chals, Antonio Lopez, accompanied him most of -the way to Madrid, delaying three days at Merida in a gypsy house. -Antonio finally went off with a gitana. Borrow bought a donkey from the -girl, and rode on the animal’s back as far as Talavera, where he sold it -to a Toledo Jew whom he met on the road. The rest of the journey to -Madrid he did by the diligence, like a common Christian. - -By the time of his arrival there, he had formed a definite project of -printing the New Testament in Spanish and in Spain, without comment or -note of any sort. The law would prohibit the circulation of such a book -if it were printed outside and brought into the country. It was decided -to use the current Catholic version, in order not to excite any more -prejudices than could be helped, and to sell cheaply, and thus to spread -the book among people who had never seen it before. This was a time in -Spain of constant political excitement, chronic Ministerial change, and -periodical revolution; and Borrow had much trouble in getting official -recognition for the enterprise, without which he might as well have left -it alone. But the way was smoothed for him by Sir George Villiers, the -British Minister, and at the end of twelve months he returned to England -with an active campaign mapped out in his mind, for which he soon -obtained the approval of the Society. In a letter to his mother about -this, he remarked that his “ordination” would be put off till his return. -This is the first and the last that we hear of any proposal to enter the -Church. - -On his way out to Spain the second time, he happened across Santa Coloma, -the Carlist, who is frequently met with hereafter in his Spanish -adventures. “The Bible in Spain” relates very closely the events of the -next two years—his wanderings and escapes, his enterprise in Madrid, -where he set up a bookselling shop, his imprisonment for insulting the -Government and the Catholic Church—an offence of which he was quite -innocent, for such was not his method at the time. The trouble was -brought on him by an evangelical firebrand, named Lieutenant Graydon, who -led Borrow into one of his scrapes with the Peninsular powers by claiming -to be associated with him in the work of the Bible Society. Borrow’s -imprisonment resulted in a declaration by him in the Spanish Press, -directed against Graydon. He said that neither himself nor the Bible -Society was actuated by any enmity against either the Government or the -Catholic clergy of Spain, and concluded by avowing himself the sole agent -of the Society in the Peninsula. Out of this grew an estrangement -between Borrow and the Society. It happened that Graydon was one of the -pets of Mr. Brandram, joint secretary of the Society, and was actually -regarded as one of their agents, though he received no pay, being the -holder of a Government pension. He was an enthusiastic evangelist, who -seems to have lacked nothing save discretion, but manifested this defect -by fierce attacks upon the Catholic faith in its stronghold, instead of -contenting himself with prosecuting the primary work of the Society, -which was the distribution of the unadulterated Scriptures. In the -event, Graydon was withdrawn from Spain, but it was expressly stated that -this step was taken only in the interests of his own safety, and that the -Society would pass no judgment on the merits of the dispute between him -and Borrow until Graydon had returned to England and had an opportunity -of vindicating himself. Borrow at the same time was ordered to cease -issuing his advertisement. It is difficult to judge a man like Graydon. -His good faith in all he did can hardly be doubted, but there is no -question that the result of his ill-timed action was to put an end to the -work of the Society and the circulation of the Bible in Spain for many -years. - -The relations between Earl Street and Borrow grew more strained, and very -soon he had practically a command to come to London. He packed up and -returned, but such was the force of his character that he fascinated Earl -Street into sending him to Spain a third time. He was only home a month -or two, and got back to the Peninsula on the last day of 1838. But the -mission was not of much further use, for there had been another change of -Ministry in the meanwhile, and Borrow and the Society were again out of -official favour. - -He proceeded to Seville, settling there for a purpose, as we shall -presently see. In the sunlit southern city he was encountered by an -English traveller, who has left a most entertaining account of him. This -was Lieutenant-Colonel Elers Napier, in whose “Excursions along the -Shores of the Mediterranean” appears the remarkable figure of a Man of -Mystery, who is easily identified as Don Jorge—though apparently Napier -never learned who he was. Borrow, six feet three, with piercing black -eyes, snowy head, and swarthy, hairless face, made a profound impression -on his new friend—and we may be sure that he omitted nothing that would -deepen it. He showed off all his best points and maintained a rigid -silence upon the question of his identity, so that in Napier’s -recollections he assumes almost supernatural proportions, and is -described throughout as “The Unknown.” He revealed all his miscellaneous -acquaintance with languages, Occidental and Oriental. He conversed with -the Colonel in Spanish, in Latin, in French (“the purest Parisian -accent”), in Italian. He spoke English perfectly, but did not appear to -be an Englishman. He was even as conversant with Hindu as the -Anglo-Indian himself; he seemed, Napier says, to know everything and -everybody, but was apparently known to nobody himself. His almost magic -power over the gypsies, his familiarity with their patois and their -customs, the way in which they almost worshipped him when he took Napier -by night for a visit to one of their weird encampments, added to the -marvel. - -But the real significance of the visit to Seville is not to be sought in -the archives of the Bible Society or in the jottings of Colonel Napier. -Borrow’s friendship with Mrs. Clarke, of Oulton, arose in the fashion -already mentioned. His long absences from England did not impair it, and -in 1838 it developed in peculiar circumstances, which were the subject -from time to time of scandal utterly unfounded, and of gossip more or -less impertinent and irrelevant. Whether Borrow, during the years from -1832 to 1838 nurtured dreams of any relation closer than friendship it is -hardly possible to determine. He was not “a marrying man,” and probably -the sober little romance that ended in their wedding was a thing of -sudden growth. That theory is encouraged by a passage in his -correspondence as late as 1838, when he told his friend Usóz that it was -better to suffer the halter than the yoke, and expressed his conviction -that bachelordom was the better kingdom for him. But at the end of the -same year, during his stay in England, he visited his friends at Oulton, -and found a state of affairs that doubtless altered his judgment. - -The business of Mrs. Clarke, who was the principal heiress of the Oulton -Hall estate, was in a highly complicated condition. She had none but -professional advisers, save Borrow, and leant with obvious relief upon -his friendship to guide her through a puzzling maze of family disputes. -It would be wearisome to attempt to follow the controversies about the -disposition of the property. They finally involved Chancery proceedings, -and Dr. Knapp asserts that Mrs. Clarke’s solicitors advised her that it -would be well for her to disappear for a time. The reason for this -counsel is obscure, but the fact that it was followed is important. Mrs. -Clarke consulted Borrow about it, with the result that her evanishment -took the form of a journey to Spain, accompanied by her daughter -Henrietta. The fact created an amazing quantity of idle speculation and -not too generous suggestion. The plan was arranged in March, 1839. -Borrow was then in Madrid, and immediately posted off to Seville to -prepare a house for the reception of the two ladies, having given them -some useful hints, drawn from his long experience of Spain, as to the -household gods they ought to bring with them. They arrived in June, and -were installed at No. 7, Plazuela de la Pila Seca, which Borrow had -modestly furnished and was himself occupying. - -The little wind of scandal that played about this arrangement will not -disturb the equanimity of those who know their Borrow. The _ménage_ was -unquestionably a little difficult to explain to the Spaniards to whom -explanation was necessary, and to this difficulty Dr. Knapp attributes -Borrow’s expedition to Tangier at the end of August. This was the trip -with which “The Bible in Spain” suddenly closed down in the approved -Borrovian style. The scandal was of short duration and small effect. -But in after years other suggestions were made, including the highly -improbable and offensive one that Mrs. Clarke was at this time pursuing -Borrow with the object of matrimony, and “travelled over half Europe in -search of him.” Another friendly theory advanced was that Borrow’s -proceedings were governed by mercenary motives, and that he married Mrs. -Clarke because she had an income of three or four hundred a year. - -Meanwhile, the quarrel with the Bible Society was dragging its slow -length along. The correspondence is confused and in general -uninteresting, except that it shows how Borrow’s attitude towards Earl -Street had altered since the time when he climbed down before the -protests of the good secretary in the first days of their association. -He was on his feet now. - -He felt surer of his ground than when he was at his wits’ end for -employment and subsistence. Consequently his native impatience of -restraint came out. The Bible Society never gauged their man. In one -despatch to Earl Street, Borrow had said of a certain enterprise that -“his usual good fortune accompanied them.” “This,” replied Mr. Brandram, -“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. . . . Pious -expressions may be thrust into letters _ad nauseam_, and it is not for -that I plead; but is there not a _via media_?” The breach grew wider and -severance was ordained; it was consummated very shortly after Borrow’s -return to England at the beginning of the next year. - -The visit to Tangier occupied some five or six weeks. Borrow returned to -Seville at the end of September, and set to work compiling notes and -making transcripts for his book on the Gypsies of Spain. The enterprise -was assisted by diligent friends, such as Bailly, {99a} Usóz, {99b} and -Gayangos. {99c} The fruits of their curious researches among dusty and -neglected bookshelves may be seen in the long translations from archaic -Spanish authors in “The Zincali.” It was a Spaniard who invented the -epigram on the virtues of old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old -friends to trust, and old books to read. But we may be excused for -excluding from the category of books which have the bouquet of old -crusted port the discourses of Dr. Sancho de Moncada and others to which -Borrow has treated us so liberally. - -He spared time from these labours and from the task of settling up with -the Bible Society to pay considerable attention to Mrs. Clarke and -“Hen”—the affectionate diminutive given to her daughter Henrietta. The -widow had found Seville, as Borrow promised her it should be, “a most -agreeable retreat,” where “the growls of her enemies could scarcely reach -her.” The ladies enjoyed to the full the startling change from the life -of the English fens to that of the sunny and many-hued Spanish city. -They realised his prophecy that it would be a delicious existence where, -“during the summer and autumn, the people reside in their courtyards, -over which an awning is hung. A very delicious existence it is—a species -of dream of sunshine and shade, of falling water and flowers.” And, -incidentally, of course, a very fit setting for such love-making as came -to be done: the weather is always fine when people are courting, as a -modern sage has remarked. Not much more than a month after his return -from Morocco, Borrow had proposed marriage to Mrs. Clarke, and had been -accepted. The arrangement was to a certain extent a “convenient” one for -both parties. With little prospect of further employment by the Bible -Society, and only a precarious hold on any profitable literary work, -Borrow had no glowing future before him. Mrs. Clarke felt the need of a -man to manage affairs for her at Oulton. Still, there is ample evidence -that this was a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, and that it had -little to do with the marriage. The warm English friendship had become -more intimate as the years passed, and there was nothing more natural -than this sequel when they were thrown together in the “delightful -existence” in which she hid from her “enemies” at Seville. - -Having decided to cross the Rubicon, Borrow determined that the sooner it -was done the better. There was to be no “sweet, reluctant, amorous -delay.” He began at once to make preparations for the return to England -in order that they might be married in their own country. One of the -first steps to be taken to this end was to procure his passport from the -Alcalde. Why this official disapproved of Borrow cannot be affirmed. As -a son of the True Church he may have conceived a prejudice against the -Protestant colporteur; he may have been infected by the “spy” mania; he -may have been merely anxious to display his own importance. At any rate, -he resolved to give the _Ingles rubio_ as much trouble as possible to -remove himself and his party out of Spain. He raised questions about the -validity of Borrow’s papers, refused the passport, and would not be -pacified by the offer of fees, “lawful or unlawful,” to quote Borrow, who -sent to him apparently under the impression that authority, though a -stubborn bear, might be led by the nose with gold, as the clown said to -Autolycus. When Don Jorge himself went to the office to inquire into the -matter, he was told to go away. Instead he continued to investigate the -motives of the Alcalde, who thereupon threatened to carry him to prison. -Borrow dared him to do so—and he did it. This was his third acquaintance -with the inside of a Spanish gaol. He sent a reassuring note to Mrs. -Clarke, and had a message taken to the British Consul. Colonel Napier -had noticed earlier in the year that the police kept sharp eyes on -Borrow, and attributed it to the suspicion that he was (of all things in -the world!) a Russian spy. There was clearly something in the suggestion -that he was under espionage, for while he was in prison his house was -searched for papers. Nothing “compromising” being found, he was released -the next night. - -His indignation at this outrage reached white heat, and did not die down -for months. His insistence upon redress detained Borrow in the country -much longer than he had proposed to stop. Once having got his knife into -Spanish officialdom, he twisted it round till he had gouged out his pound -of flesh. And even then, after he had returned to England, and the knife -was no longer available, Spanish officialdom received very severe -treatment from that even more terrible weapon, his pen. From Seville he -set working all the diplomatic machinery that an injured Briton could -influence; he went to Madrid on the business; he wrote incessantly and -exhaustively about it. His return to England and his marriage had to -wait until he had settled accounts with the impertinent Alcalde de -Barrio, who had laid sacrilegious hands upon a subject of her Britannic -Majesty—and that subject George Borrow. While ambassadors and consuls -and State secretaries were busily employed in official correspondence on -his behalf, he proceeded with the work on the “Gypsies,” and did not get -away from Spain till April, 1840. - -The embarkation of the colporteur and his party upon the _Royal Adelaide_ -steamer at Cadiz was an impressive ceremony. Borrow was taking a long -farewell of Spain, and he was not going home without souvenirs of his -residence there. In the previous year he had purchased the Arab horse -celebrated in his books as “Sidi Habismilk” (being interpreted, “My Lord -Mustard”). The retinue at Cadiz included not only Mrs. Clarke and -Henrietta, but also Sidi Habismilk and Hayim ben Attar, “the Jew of Fez,” -Borrow’s servant. {103} They touched at Lisbon, where General Cordova -came on board—not on business of State, but in search of a consignment of -cigars that had been sent to him in the care of the captain. Borrow -wrote an amusing sketch of the General and two Secretaries of Legation -stowing Havana cigars in their pockets “with all the eagerness of -contrabandista.” {104} The vessel arrived in the port of London on April -16th, and the party put up at the Spread Eagle, in Gracechurch Street. -As soon as the licence could be obtained, the marriage of “George Henry -Borrow, bachelor,” with “Mary Clarke, widow,” was celebrated at St. -Peter’s Church, Cornhill, and witnessed by John Pilgrim, of Norwich (the -bride’s solicitor) and by her daughter Henrietta. The wedding day was -April 23rd. - -There remained a very little business to do in London. He had an -interview with the General Purposes Committee of the Bible Society, -received a letter from Mr. Brandram, saying that there was no sphere open -“to which your services in connection with our Society can be -transferred,” and quickly terminated his relations with Earl Street. In -spite of the little differences that had arisen, there was a generous -reference to Borrow in the Report of the Society for 1840. He was said -to have succeeded “by almost incredible pains, and at no small cost and -hazard,” in his last mission to Spain, and to have assisted in -circulating during five years nearly fourteen thousand copies of the -Scriptures. Thus the Bible Society and Don Jorge said good-bye. - -At the beginning of May, Mr. and Mrs. Borrow and Miss Clarke went down to -Oulton. The Hall having been let to a farmer, they took up their -residence in a little house on the margin of the Broad, known as Oulton -Cottage. - - - - -CHAPTER VI -THE SUMMER HOUSE AT OULTON - - -WHEN Borrow went to Oulton he was thirty-seven. The comforts of the -domesticity to which he settled down were sweet, but its joys were of a -very different quality from those golden matrimonial projects of which he -had dreamed in Mumper’s Dingle. He was older, sadder, if not much wiser. -He had modified the scale of his ambitions. He was bent upon the -acquisition of such fame as he could attract through the avenue of -literature, and not disdainful of what local celebrity might come his -way. But though he was not of the temperament to apostrophise with -Cowper— - - “Domestic happiness! Thou only bliss - Of Paradise that has survived the Fall!” - -there is everything in favour of the supposition that, in marrying Mrs. -Clarke, Borrow wrought better for himself than a man of his temperament -usually has an actuarial expectation of doing in matrimony. Moreover, he -did infinitely better than a great number of literary persons who have -taken the plunge in similar circumstances. There was no such tragedy -about his marriage as befell his friend and neighbour Edward FitzGerald; -indeed, there was no tragedy at all. Its absence is due to Mrs. Borrow’s -remarkable personality, her wifely qualities, unfailing devotion to him -in all his fads and moods and whimsies. She was a perfect “helpmeet”; -she provided him with a buffer to absorb some of the shocks of outrageous -fortune; she was a patient amanuensis and an indefatigable secretary. - -The picture one constructs of his wife from the materials—slight -enough—that Borrow himself gives, and from the correspondence extant, is -that of the “flower of wifely patience”—a woman in whom tact has been -developed to such a degree as to become a kind of extra sense. She was -married to one of the queerest specimens of mankind that Nature ever -evolved; yet she secured in their union happiness for both. Her -affection for him was true and deep; it was strong enough even to prevail -over idiosyncrasies that might easily have been fatal to any chance of -domestic peace, to say nothing of marital bliss. She was one of the -women to whom “patience hath such mild composure given” that even Borrow -failed to destroy her equanimity and self-possession. Behind her -hero-worship appears now and then an illuminating gleam of feminine -commonsense—just a shooting ray upon some foible; but whenever it seems -likely to show Borrow in a specifically unfavourable light it is -immediately switched off. - -Near the easternmost point of land in England, on the margin of Oulton -Broad, in a spot where the roar of the North Sea could be heard, was the -cottage in which the best of his remaining years were to be passed. Here -he was to prosecute amid the solemn marshland the eternal search for -truth and happiness, and to find that the pursuit was even more difficult -for him than for the majority of mankind. The house contained few rooms, -but sufficient for the requirements of the little family, and its -quietude and isolation were special recommendations to Borrow in the -particular mood in which he then found himself. The scenery was of a -character for which he had strong affection, and the place itself was -linked with one or two of the powerful emotions of his youth. The Broad -stretched away from the end of his garden, and he overlooked it from the -summer-house he built as a study. Behind the house: and almost -surrounding it, were plantations of pine trees. For the rest, only an -occasional tower or windmill broke the level horizon. The scene is -different, more varied, and much fuller of life at the present day, when -the virtues of the Broads as pleasure waters and of the country round as -a residential district have been discovered and exploited. But in -certain hours and seasons it is easy to imagine Oulton as George Borrow -knew it. - -Miss Elizabeth Harvey has left us a picture of Borrow as the friends of -this period recalled him. {109} In his wooden pavilion “on the very -margin of the water,” she tells us, “he had many strange old books in -various languages. I remember he once put one before me, telling me to -read it. ‘Oh, I can’t,’ I replied. He said, ‘You ought: it’s your own -language.’ It was an old Saxon book. He used to spend a great deal of -his time in this room, writing, translating, and at times singing strange -words in a stentorian voice, while passers-by on the lake would stop to -listen with astonishment and curiosity to the singular sounds.” A note -on his personal appearance, by the same hand, may help to keep his figure -in mind: “He was six feet three, a splendid man, with handsome hands and -feet. He wore neither whiskers, beard, nor moustache. His features were -very handsome, but his eyes were peculiar, being round and rather small, -but very piercing, and now and then fierce. He would sometimes 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.’” Here was he, then, when he set up -author in real earnest, and induced “glorious John” to publish the first -book that resulted from his adventures in foreign parts. This was “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.” Most of the compilation—for such it is, and a desultory -compilation at that—had been made during his five years in Spain. It was -written at odd times, “chiefly in ventas and posadas, whilst wandering -through the country in the arduous and unthankful task of distributing -the Gospel among its children.” - -In its published form “The Zincali” was an amalgam of several schemes -that had occurred to the author from time to time during his Spanish -wanderings. He had projected a collection of the rhymes and proverbial -sayings of the gypsies of Spain, inspired thereto by the material he had -gathered at Badajoz and Merida, to which additions were made some years -later at Seville with the assistance of Juan Antonio Bailly, a French -courier with a considerable acquaintance among the Câlé. He had also -proposed a glossary of Câlo and English, which afterwards resolved itself -into a limited vocabulary of words occurring in the songs and sayings -that he and Bailly had collected. Both these schemes were imperfectly -executed. Borrow’s knowledge of the Spanish-gypsy language was quite -empirical, and Bailly’s collections were either written by illiterate -persons, or taken down from the lips of people who spoke a corrupted -jargon. Borrow and Bailly made a large number of translations from -obscure Spanish authors—and this was the material from which “The -Zincali” was constructed. He eked it out with a quantity of -out-of-the-way information and anecdote acquired during his association -with gypsies in England and Russia, and in the course of much -miscellaneous browsing among books. A more unscientific process of -writing “An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, etc.,” it would be hard to -devise. There were half a hundred works of more or less utility which he -might have consulted, and there is no evidence that he had seen more than -a tithe of that number. But, _pari passu_, there is certainly no -evidence that if he had seen them all he would have produced a better -book. In fact, here, as in every other case, his work does not depend -for its charm and its value upon any scientific basis whatever, but upon -the idiosyncrasies of Borrow himself, the mordant style, the quaint -observation, the atmosphere with which he contrives to invest his -subject. “The Zincali” was read at first, as it is read now, not so much -for the accuracy of its history or its philology as for its intrinsic -interest as literature. - -Having put together at Oulton these notes, memoranda, rhymes, -translations, descriptions, and scraps of a gypsy vocabulary, Borrow took -the compost to John Murray, who agreed to publish an edition of 750 -copies. The book attracted certain minds attuned to the Borrovian -spirit, and it was admitted to display the supreme virtue of originality. -The voice of Murray, above all, was encouraging, and to Borrow that was -the voice of the “Mæcenas of British literature.” In spite of occasional -difficulties, he held Mr. Murray in unfailing honour, and was proud to -have his work sealed with the _cachet_ of Albemarle Street. The close -association of the Murrays with Richard Ford, whose “Handbook” was long -the classic English work on Spain, had important results for Borrow. -Ford was living in retirement at Heavitree, near Exeter—the haven where, -half a century later, George Gissing found rest in his last days—and to -him the manuscript of “The Zincali” was sent for critical observation. -Ford’s knowledge of Spain was extensive and peculiar, and he immediately -perceived in Borrow a man after his own heart, who preferred byways to -highways, was full of curious learning, and invariably took the -unconventional outlook. {112} His criticism of the book was what might -have been expected. It took the form of a regret that Borrow had not -given his readers more of himself “instead of the extracts from those -blunder-headed old Spaniards, who knew nothing about gypsies.” But, on -the whole, both Murray and Ford were pleased. So were the reviewers. As -to the public, they bought the work very slowly. It appeared in April, -1841, and by June only three hundred copies had been sold. Murray -explained this genially by declaring that the state of politics had shed -a blight over literature; no book was selling, and Borrow’s only shared -the fate of the rest. - -But before this a new enterprise had been designed. It was to be an -account of Borrow’s personal adventures while engaged in the circulation -of the Scriptures in the Peninsula. The scheme appealed strongly to -Ford, and Murray thought well of it. Ford was “delighted” to know that -Borrow meditated such a work. “The more odd personal adventures the -better, and still more so if dramatic; that is, giving the exact -conversations.” “I have given him much advice,” said Ford in a letter to -Addington, “to avoid Spanish historians and _poetry_ like prussic acid; -to stick to himself, his biography, and queer adventures.” And Borrow -wrote to Ford: “I shall attend to all your advice. The book will consist -entirely of my personal adventures, travels, etc., in that country during -five years. I met with a number of strange characters, all of whom I -have introduced; the most surprising of them is my Greek servant, who -accompanied me in my ride of 1,500 miles.” And again: “‘The Bible in -Spain’ is a rum, very rum, mixture of gypsyism, Judaism, and missionary -adventure, and I have no doubt will be greedily read.” Here was the -impulse from which arose “The Bible in Spain.” - -The book which gave Borrow his first and greatest vogue was a compilation -based mainly on the letters he had sent home in the form of reports to -the Bible Society. They were unquestionably the most remarkable reports -from a literary point of view, and the most unconventional from a -religious point of view, that had ever been received by the grave and -reverend seniors of Earl Street. The Society had been staggered once or -twice. Borrow’s confession that he was a little “superstitious,” his -reference to the “prophetess” of Manzanares, his “luck”—all these were -foreign phrases, and distasteful to the pundits of the Bible Society. -They chid Borrow; but they put up with him until the final disruption, -and now, when he applied for permission to use his letters in connection -with the new book, they treated him very well. There were some -episodes—the squabble with Graydon among them—for which they were not -anxious to secure more publicity, a very natural feeling; but, Borrow -giving assurances, they “cheerfully forwarded the letters to him.” - -The relations between the Bible Society and this astounding missionary of -theirs provide a quaint chapter in literary history. Throughout a great -part of their intercourse with him they seem to have remained in a state -of bland and childlike innocence with regard to the real character and -the actual personality of their agent. They were aware of his -eccentricity, but apparently blind to the causes from which the -eccentricity sprang. This was the quality which gave his letters from -Spain their value for the purposes of the book he now began to edit. - -The year 1841 was gloomy, with bad weather and much disease. It was the -year when the murrain first appeared in Great Britain and spread havoc -throughout the agricultural districts. Of all men Borrow was most -delicately affected by the moods of Nature round him, most -sympathetically attuned—wild and fierce where Nature was fierce and wild, -gentle and sunny amid fair meads in fine weather. And during this -miserable year he found it hard to make progress with his writing. Next -spring the change came with a rush, cold and dry, with bright days -merging into a glorious summer. The country called Borrow out. He tells -us that he spent most of his time riding his Arab horse “over heaths and -through the green lanes of my native land,” or staying at home and -fishing for big pike in the ponds near Oulton Broad, or basking in the -sun. He worshipped Sidi Habismilk, and the horse worshipped his master -so manifestly as almost to encourage the belief that Borrow was really a -“horse-wizard.” The Arab followed him about like a dog. But this -magnetism of his was not confined to horses; it was exercised equally -over dogs and cats. Miss Harvey mentions that when Borrow set out from -Oulton for a walk, he was often accompanied by two dogs and a cat. -Grimalkin would, of course, be satisfied with much less pedestrianism -than her master and the dogs, and would turn back home after a quarter of -a mile or so. These diversions occupied him well into the summer. It -was only when the heat and his own laziness began to remind him of -sun-baked Andalusia that the big book came to his mind as a duty to be -done. In actual fact, it would seem that the bulk of the manuscript was -in the hands of Murray by the middle of the year in the form of a fair -copy made by Mrs. Borrow from the letters and from the new connecting -links which the author scribbled, as he says, “higgledypiggledy” on the -blank leaves of account-books and the backs of envelopes. - -The book was published in December, 1842, and dated 1843. Ford, whose -interest in it was continuous, had given Borrow much advice; he -prophesied success. “Avoid words; stick to deeds,” was his counsel. -There should be no “fine writing,” but plenty of wild adventure, -“journals . . . sorcery, Jews, Gentiles, rambles, and the interior of -Spanish prisons.” Borrow was to “avoid rant and cant. Dialogues always -tell; they are dramatic, and give an air of reality.” With how much -fidelity Borrow followed this advice needs no emphasis. How accurate was -Ford’s diagnosis of the public taste the sequel demonstrates. - -There was a loud chorus of praise from the literary papers. Those who -had approved “The Zincali” called their readers to witness how they had -unerringly detected the trail of true genius. The _Athenæum_ and the -_Examiner_ led the way. Ford wrote a pæan in the _Edinburgh_; the -_Quarterly_ was sorry it had overlooked the “Gypsies,” but made up for -the omission by its reception of “The Bible.” The author became the lion -of the hour; visiting London, he was fêted with ambassadors and “princes -and members of Parliament,” as he wrote to his wife. “On Saturday night -I went to a grand soirée, and the people came in throngs to be introduced -to me. To-night I am going to the Bishop of Norwich, to-morrow to -another place, and so on.” He was overwhelmed with congratulations from -private friends, among whose letters those of Hasfeldt from St. -Petersburg gave him most pleasure. Six editions of the book were sold in -England before the end of the year; it was pirated in America by three -houses; it was translated into French, German, and Russian. Borrow was -the most scintillating star in the literary firmament of 1843. - -The book deserved its success. It has all the Borrovian merits and few -of the Borrovian defects. There is the charm of the wonderful style, -which is no style at all, the crisp sentence, the unexpected epithet, the -penetrating phrase, jumpy and abrupt, but compelling the reader to take -the jump and make the sudden halt because it is the only thing to do. -There is the astonishing variety of adventure, of character, of colour, -of scene, the wealth of incident, the compelling force of narrative. -Ford said that Borrow “sometimes put him in mind of Gil Blas; {118} but -he had not the sneer of the Frenchman, nor did he gild the bad.” There -was, he added, a touch of Bunyan in the way in which, like that -enthusiastic tinker, he hammered away at the Devil, or his -man-of-all-work on earth—the Pope. It was, in fine, such a book as had -never been placed in the hands of the public which now read it with -tremendous avidity—the public interested in foreign missions, in the -propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts—in a word, “the religious -world.” “The Bible in Spain” coloured with all the hues of romance the -great work of disseminating the Scriptures; it introduced them to new -people and to new scenes; it candied the villainies of gypsies with the -frosted sugar of evangelical effort, and if it recited strange things of -superstitious papists and dubious prophetesses, was not the guide who -introduced these matters to them “a devout agent of the Bible Society,” -whose end justified all the means he sought? The “polyglot gentleman” -was the most piquant sensation that had ever made its way into thousands -of English drawing-rooms. - -It was obvious that so great a success must be followed up, and “The -Bible in Spain” was hardly in the press before Borrow was pondering a -scheme for a book to follow it. For many reasons, the matter was long in -maturing. The chief of them, probably, was Borrow’s health. As he grew -older, his innate melancholy deepened into hypochondria, from which he -emerged occasionally with fits of high-strung merriment. At forty years -of age he had lived three ordinary lives. He was irritable and -eccentric, the irresponsible victim of megrims. Success did not sweeten -life for him. While he was the literary lion of London, he growled at -those who fêted and flattered him as though he would devour them. He was -certainly an admirer of George Borrow himself, and he was not displeased -with the flattery; but it left him unsatisfied. Hasfeldt, with whom he -still corresponded, noted his unrest, rallied him, tried to cheer him, -adjuring him to philosophy. But the lack of peace was the effect of a -deeper cause than Hasfeldt’s friendly soul could divine; deeper than -Borrow himself could plumb. - - “I did very wrong not to bring you when I came” (so he wrote to his - wife from London, when at the zenith of his social success and at the - nadir of mental and spiritual tribulation), “for without you I cannot - get on at all. Left to myself, a gloom comes upon me which I cannot - describe. . . . My place seems to be in our own dear cottage, where, - with your help, I hope to prepare for a better world. . . . The poor - bird when in trouble has no one to fly to but his mate.” - -His condition displayed itself in ridiculous quarrels with his -neighbours, particularly about the conflicts in which their dogs were -involved. It was characteristic of Borrow that he would never admit his -own dog to be in the wrong. One dispute is set out by Dr. Knapp in a -formal correspondence with the vicar of Oulton. The parson described the -Borrow dog as “a beast of a very quarrelsome and savage disposition.” -Borrow retorted that the animal was “a harmless house-dog.” The last -passage of Borrow’s last letter on the subject was: - - “Circumstances over which Mr. Borrow at present has 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.” - -He became absolutely furious when a railway was taken through his estate -and past his house by one of the schemes of Sir Morton Peto. - -It was in this temper that he began the book which was to stir -generations into controversy, to arouse bitter criticism and tremendous -recrimination, to destroy for his lifetime the literary reputation that -Borrow had earned—the book destined, in the irony of fate, to be that -upon which such share of immortality as Borrow possesses will probably -rest. - -“Lavengro” passed through many mutations while it was planning and -writing. The idea of an autobiography had been suggested by Ford, who -wanted him to publish his “whole adventures for the last twenty years,” -describing the countries he had visited, discussing the languages he -knew, and treating of the people he had lived with. The “reader” who had -pronounced judgment for Murray upon the manuscript of “The Bible in -Spain” had thought it would be well to prefix to that narrative some -pages of autobiographical matter. These hints fructified early, for “The -Bible” had hardly issued from the press before he was suggesting to -Murray another book: “Capital subject: early life, studies and -adventures; some account of my father, William Taylor, Whiter, Big Ben, -etc. etc.” - -His first plan was more coherent and more comprehensive than the book in -its published form; it was to be an actual autobiography in three -volumes, the first to take him to the time of his father’s death, the -second to describe his literary life in London and his adventures on the -road, and to proceed to his travels abroad; the third to give his -adventures in Russia and carry him through a journey in Barbary and -Turkey, which yet remained to be undertaken. The first part of the -scheme was faithfully carried out, though Borrow wrote very slowly. -Throughout the early correspondence on the subject with Murray, he -referred to the book as “My Life: A Drama.” It was not till October, -1843, that he mentioned the title “Lavengro: A Biography.” Next month he -told Murray that he had reached his Irish experiences. “I am now in a -blacksmith’s shop in the south of Ireland, taking lessons from the Vulcan -in horse-charming and horse-shoe making.” In January, 1844, he described -it in a letter to Dawson Turner, of Yarmouth, the collector of -manuscripts, as “a kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style.” -There was much more difficulty in stringing together the “Lavengro” -episodes than in editing the letters from Spain. He was writing from -memory of matters twenty or thirty years old, not visualising recent -travels with the assistance of documents made on the spot. Further, he -laboured under a sense of the necessity for doing something specially -fine in order that his new book might not endanger the reputation he had -obtained with his last. “People will expect so much,” he wrote to -Murray. “I go on . . . scribbling away, though with a palpitating -heart.” Ford, who visited him at Oulton (January, 1844), was -enthusiastic about the book, but disapproved of Borrow’s scheme for -dropping several years (“the veiled period”—1826 to 1833): “I shall be -most anxious,” he wrote, “to hear you tell your own story and recent -adventures; but first let us lift up a corner of the curtain over _those -seven years_.” Borrow was enthusiastic, too, in the intervals of -sunshine that lit up his melancholy life. “‘Lavengro’ progresses -steadily, but I am in no hurry. It is my third book. Hitherto the -public has said: ‘Good! _Better_!’ I want it to say to No. 3, ‘BEST!’” - -It was remarkable that he had been content to remain four years at -Oulton, even though the monotony was varied by occasional visits to -London and tours through East Anglia on his Arab horse. The wandering -spirit which possessed him from the cradle to the grave had been -suppressed with difficulty, and by the aid of circumstances which were -inimical to schemes of travel and adventure. It was not for lack of -effort on Borrow’s part that he did not spend those years in going up and -down the world and to and fro in it. He had hardly begun “The Bible in -Spain” before he was recommencing the kind of campaign which marked the -early ’thirties—worrying Lord Clarendon to get him made a consul or to -engage him in some work abroad for the Government. Lord Clarendon -politely told him that it was “quite hopeless” to ask Palmerston for a -consulship; and apparently Borrow was unable to make any definite -suggestion for the useful employment of his philological learning in any -travelling commission on behalf of the nation. These schemes dropped; he -had dreams of settling in Berlin, and others, provoked by Hasfeldt, of -studying the sagas in Copenhagen; they were succeeded by visions of -travel in North Africa, in search of the wandering sect of the -Dar-Bushi-Fal and the witch-hamlet, Char Seharra, to which there are -mysterious references in the sixth chapter of “The Zincali.” But none of -these enterprises came to a head, and he performed the uncongenial role -of a stay-at-home till, having worked just over a year upon the -manuscript of “Lavengro,” he suddenly determined to take a prolonged tour -abroad. Starting on April 23rd, 1843, he proceeded by way of Paris to -Strasburg and Vienna, travelled through Hungary, Transylvania, and -Rumania to Bucharest, across the Danube, and from Rustchuk to -Constantinople, where he was in September. Thence he went to Salonika, -through Thessaly and Albania to Prevesa, afterwards visiting Corfu and -Venice, returning by Rome, Marseilles, Paris, and Havre to London, which -he reached in the middle of November. Dr. Knapp gives the itinerary. -This is one of the few expeditions of which Borrow left no records save -those worked into late editions of “The Zincali” and into the Hungarian’s -narrative in “The Romany Rye.” - -Having satiated his roving demon for a time, Borrow returned to Oulton -and resumed work upon “Lavengro.” By this time he had completed the -first volume, covering the period to his father’s death, which is the -most authentically autobiographical part of the book. Henceforward his -plans underwent a gradual change, and ultimately the original scheme went -completely adrift. Borrow was tossed about in the eddies of his passions -and prejudices as a cork in a whirlpool. “Lavengro” took charge of him. -Progress seemed to be slower than ever; the work dragged more desperately -as the departure from the first plan grew more marked. - -He took some consolation in the visit of Ford, already mentioned. “I am -here,” wrote Ford from Oulton Hall, “on a visit to El Gitano: two rum -coves in a queer country.” And he gives, in a letter to Addington -(January 26th, 1844), a delicious picture of the place and their -pursuits: - - “This is a regular Patmos, an _ultima Thule_, placed in an angle of - the most unvisited, out-of-the-way portion of England. His house - hangs over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and is girt with - dark firs, through which the wind sighs sadly. However, 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 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.” - -After Ford had left, Borrow wrote to him a letter {126a} which provides -an interesting glimpse at the process of composition of “Lavengro”: - - “AN BATUSCHA,—I have got your letter, which I should have answered - sooner had I not been to Yarmouth—not, however, to the house of the - Armenian. Thank you for the pheasants and the caviare which you were - kind enough to send. Almost as soon as I got back from Norwich the - weather became disagreeable—a strange jumble of frost, fog, and wet. - I am glad that during your stay there it has been a little more - favourable. My wife is better, and left her room, but poor Henrietta - is in bed with the same complaint. I still keep up, but not exactly - the thing. You can’t think how I miss you in our chats by the - fireside. The wine, now I am alone, has lost its flavour, and the - cigar makes me ill. I am very frequently by the Valley of the - Shadow, and, had I not summers and jaunts to look forward to, I am - afraid it would be all up with your friend, su Batuscha. - - “I still go on with my life, but slowly, lazily. What I write is, - however, good. I feel it is good: strange and wild as it is. I - expect to be in London by the beginning of March, and hope there to - write your review {126b} and receive a cheque from Murray to the tune - of some hundreds. The colt is, however, not bought yet. My wife has - set her face against it, and at present I do not like to press the - matter. She is in delicate health, and believes she has dreamt it - would either kill her or me. At present I may truly call myself _el - necio de la casa_, _pero veremos vir_. She much regrets not having - seen you. - - “When I go to London upon whom would you advise me to call? Who is - worth knowing? Now that the old man is dead, I am afraid that a - certain street will not be quite so agreeable as it was. Did the - gypsies tell you where they lived? If I knew I would go and visit - them. I suppose somewhere about Tottenham Court. - - “As I returned from Norwich I stopped at Thurton and tasted the wine. - It was really good. When you are next past that way you must taste - it yourself, and give me your opinion. I hope . . . having found - your way to these parts you will frequently favour us with your - company. God bless you. Ever yours, - - “GEORGE BORROW. - - “_Muchismas espresiones de la parti de mi esposa y de la - Henriqueta_.” - -NOTE.—The correspondence with Mr. Murray, to which reference is made in -this chapter, and some of Ford’s letters should be consulted in Dr. -Knapp. Ford’s letters to Addington are reproduced in Mr. Rowland -Prothero’s collection (Murray, 1905). - - - - -CHAPTER VII -“LAVENGRO” AND HIS CRITICS - - -AT this period Borrow suffered frequently from attacks of melancholia; -little vexations upset him terribly. He was more than once assaulted by -roughs while on his way home to Oulton from Lowestoft, and the remedy -that occurred to him was that he should be made a magistrate so that he -might take short measures with the ruffians who infested the woods. He -applied in various quarters for this appointment. But the Whigs were in -and Borrow was a Tory. Neither the influence of Lockhart nor the -admiration which Gladstone entertained for “The Bible in Spain” sufficed -to prevail against the eternal principle of “the spoils to the victors.” - -In connection with this episode, as may be imagined, several persons were -placed upon Borrow’s index. Lockhart himself soon got there. When -Ford’s “Handbook for Spain” appeared, the author was exceedingly anxious -that Borrow should write the article on it for the _Quarterly Review_. -No man could have done it with ampler knowledge or invested it with more -absorbing interest than “El Gitano,” as Lockhart dubbed him in the -correspondence on the subject. But the essay Borrow produced, written in -ill-health, and betraying all the evidences of a jaundiced and embittered -mind, was in no sense a review of Ford’s book. It was a long screed -against those persons and tendencies in Spanish politics that aroused his -ire. The extract given by Dr. Knapp is in the very best invective style -of the Appendix. Lockhart behaved exceedingly well in the matter. He -would publish the article in the _Quarterly_ if Borrow would permit him -to insert extracts from Ford’s book in suitable places, so that the -reader might be able to obtain some glimmering of the author’s style and -subject. Borrow petulantly replied that he would not have the paper -tampered with. Lockhart then very properly exercised his editorial -authority, and refused to publish it. He softened the decision by -suggesting that Borrow’s work would make an admirable magazine article, -mentioning periodicals that would be glad to have it. The suggestion was -not adopted, the article remained in proof-sheet in the hands of Murray, -and Lockhart was numbered among the increasing army of Borrow’s mortal -enemies. It was an unhappy sequel to this incident that the friendship -between Ford and Borrow cooled off, and their intercourse ceased -altogether a few years later—by no desire of Ford’s, as the -correspondence shows. - -More trouble arose from the obscure dispute with Bowring, in which Borrow -accused him of palming off upon the House of Commons as his own the -Manchu-Tartar version of the Scriptures that Borrow had printed at St. -Petersburg, in order to get for himself the consulship at Canton, while -at the same time affecting to promote the candidature of Borrow for the -post. To any impartial mind the evidence in favour of this theory is -scanty, and the theory itself improbable. That Borrow believed it there -can be no doubt; it tinged his life with added gall and wormwood, and -helped to divert the course and purpose of his book. A further grievance -was the failure of the British Museum trustees to get the funds for a -mission to the Convent of St. Catharine on Sinai in search of the -manuscript of the fourth-century Greek Testament, afterwards acquired by -Tischendorf for Alexander II. of Russia. But it would be tiresome to -follow all the convolutions of Borrow’s tempers and jealousies throughout -these troubled years. They are amply reflected in many portions of the -literary work he was doing. - -Time drifted, and it was 1848 before Murray could make a definite -announcement about “Lavengro.” In that year appeared in his “list of new -works in preparation” the following:—“‘Lavengro’: An Autobiography. By -George Borrow, author of ‘The Bible in Spain,’ etc. 3 vols., post 8vo.” -In October the first volume went to press, and then there was more -vacillation about the title of the book. It was advertised in the -_Quarterly Review_ and the _Athenæum_ in November, and December as “Life: -A Drama.” That form was immediately dropped. Borrow was taken ill and -work ceased. In July, 1849, the old advertisement describing it as an -autobiography was restored, though we well know now that by this time it -had ceased to be autobiographical in the conventional sense. Finally the -pangs of labour ended with the year 1850, and “Lavengro—The Scholar—The -Gypsy—The Priest” was delivered to the reading world and to the tender -mercies of the critics in February, 1851. - -It will be seen that the autobiographical claim was abandoned at the -last. In the preface, which he accomplished just in time to get it to -press, Borrow modified his description of the book: “In the following -pages I have endeavoured to describe a _Dream_.” Later he denied that he -ever said it was an autobiography, or that he ever authorised anybody -else to say it was; this in spite of the advertisements quoted above, and -of the general impression he had allowed to be created that he was -writing an account of his life. - -Yet, in fact, “Lavengro” is little else. It followed faithfully the -original plan throughout the first volume. Then came Borrow’s journey in -the East and his return to accumulate hatreds, nurse revenges, and -conduct wordy war with the battalions of his imaginary foes. And, in -order to vent his spleen upon them, he deliberately altered the tenour of -his book. The episodes of travel on the English roads were already -protracting themselves beyond manageable length when events occurred that -determined him to reject the whole scheme of the two remaining volumes -first designed, and to extend these episodes still further so as to drag -in some of his pet aversions and exhibit them in a disgraceful or -ridiculous light. Particularly did he pour forth the vials of his wrath -upon Bowring, the Old Radical, inserting the incident of the postilion -and his story specially for the purpose. - -But while Borrow was down in the summer-house at Oulton writing -marvellous pages on odd scraps of paper, probing profound depths of -speculation, and rising to the dizziest heights of natural eloquence, -while he allowed himself to be possessed and fascinated by the gypsies -and the jockeys, the tramps and the wastrels, the thimble-engroes and the -pugilists, and all the weird company that defile through the haunting -pages of his book, while the development of Catholic missions in England -diverted his ultra-Protestant mind to the machinations of mythical -Jesuits and gave him the figure of the Man in Black; while he piled rage -and scorn upon the devoted head of John Bowring, who added to his other -sins against the Borrovian covenant a characteristically Unitarian -indifference to the “No Popery” cry {132}—all this time “Lavengro” was -not making much progress with his life, the publisher was appealing to -him to hurry, and the hungry printer was sending up pitiable cries for -“copy.” Borrow, having gone off on a branch line, utterly declined to -return. He had occupied nearly two volumes in describing the events of a -few months—from his descent upon London and Sir Richard Phillips to his -sojourn in Mumper’s Dell. He was in the middle of the postilion’s story, -wherein the Old Radical was receiving his shrewdest knocks, when Murray -issued his ultimatum, and Mrs. Borrow was despatched to London with the -last of the manuscript (November, 1850). He had been obliged to break -off abruptly, for Murray threatened, if the book were not finished there -and then, to “throw it up.” Promising himself to complete the narrative -in a sequel, Borrow left “Lavengro” as we have it now. The reviewers and -the reading world, instead of the autobiography in common form which they -had been led to expect, received a picaresque hotch-potch about which the -best they could find to say was that it was “remarkable.” - -The almost unanimous verdict of the critics was highly unfavourable. The -_Athenæum_ (whose review was written by Dilke) spoke of the warm -expectations that had been raised and the great disappointment that was -felt; _Fraser_, in which William Stirling (Sir William Stirling-Maxwell) -discussed it, was vigorously satirical about Borrow’s trivial -mystifications, his dashes, dots, and asterisks; _Blackwood_ was “sick of -the Petulengros and their jargon,” and its reviewer acutely perceived the -internal evidence of the changes in plan and disposition which had been -made while the work was in progress. The two persons who found anything -good to say about the book were friends of Borrow—Dr. Gordon Hake and Mr. -W. B. Donne. It is curious that these were the only reviewers who -displayed much prescience in their criticism. Hake took the bold course -of prophecy: “Lavengro’s” roots, he said, would strike deep into the soil -of English letters. Donne perceived that, as he said, the public had -been looking for a second Marco Polo, and were presented instead with a -nineteenth-century Defoe. - -In spite, however, of all that could be said in its favour, the public -would have none of “Lavengro.” Three thousand copies of the first -edition were printed. Notwithstanding Murray’s confident prophecy that -it would find a ready sale, it fell almost lifeless, and twenty-one years -passed before another edition was called for. It is a little difficult -to understand the attitude of the public and the Press towards a work -which, in spite of its obvious faults, is one of the most virile and most -entrancing works of English literature. The true explanation is to be -found in the theory suggested by Mr. Watts-Dunton. “Lavengro” was a -complete failure, he said, and its reception by the Press, the -accusations of “lowness and vulgarity,” embittered Borrow. Why was it -that the public of that day considered such books as “Lavengro” and “The -Romany Rye” to be low and vulgar? The fact was that “Lavengro,” issuing -forth in the year of the great Exhibition, made its bow before the most -genteel and most philistine age of Victorian literature. A writer hardly -dared to admit that a man was a man or a woman a woman. We have arrived -at the other extreme in the process of emancipating ourselves from -philistinism, and there is no excuse in Art or Nature for many of the -books written and published at the present time. But the reception of -“Lavengro” was largely due to the mawkish sentiment against which Borrow -hysterically declaimed as “gentility-nonsense,” and we have fortunately -outgrown it. In time readers came to see the extraordinary merits of -Borrow’s books; they bought them as they were re-issued, read them, liked -them, and will go on reading and liking them. Gypsyism has, in fact, -become popular in the genteelest circles. - -Many years ago Mr. Watts-Dunton succeeded in throwing a gleam of light -upon Borrow’s own view of the work. He tells us how, when they were -discussing the question of the real nature of autobiography, Borrow -exclaimed, “What is an autobiography? Is it a mere record of the -incidents of a man’s life, or is it a picture of the man himself—his -character, his soul?” And Mr. Watts-Dunton adds observations applying -the inference to Borrow’s book. He points out what we have already -seen—that he sat down to write his own life in “Lavengro,” and that in -the first volume he did almost confine himself to matters of fact. “But, -as he went on, he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into which -destiny had woven the incidents of his life was not tinged with -sufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder. When he -wishes to dive very boldly into the ‘abysmal deeps of personality,’ he -speaks and moves partly behind the mask of some fictitious character.” -“Let it be remembered,” says Mr. Watts-Dunton, “that it was this instinct -of wonder, not the instinct of the mere _poseur_, that impelled him to -make certain exaggerated statements about the characters themselves that -are introduced into his books.” - -This view of the eccentricities and purple patches of “Lavengro” and “The -Romany Rye” is interesting, and certainly just to a point. It does not -account for the whole of the leaps that Borrow took in one direction and -another; it does not explain Mr. Platitude, or the Man in Black, or the -Old Radical. The reason for their creation has been already stated. The -“instinct of wonder,” the Celtic imagination, now brooding, now soaring, -does, however, explain much in the books that cannot be explained by -reference to actual facts of the author’s career, and does justify in a -sense his theory of autobiography—that the truest self-revelation may be -found not so much in the mere recital of bare facts as in the impression -of the form of his thought, and in the reflection of the colours that -glow in his soul. - -If the year of the great Exhibition was an unfortunate year for the -commercial fortunes of “Lavengro,” the Exhibition itself had certain -irresistible attractions for “Lavengro’s” author. It had drawn to London -a large congregation of the peoples of the earth, and the thought that in -Hyde Park twenty languages were chiming a rare cacophony was too much for -him. He went off to town to see the show, taking his step-daughter with -him. The tall man with the white hair, striding about under the glass -roof, soon began to create a minor sensation, which was by no means to -the liking of Miss Clarke. To see a group of foreigners in converse was -enough for him. He went up to them and addressed them in their own -tongue, and repeated the process so often that it began to be whispered -about that he was “uncanny,” and he excited so much remark that his -daughter thought it better to drag him away. - -While Borrow was at Oulton struggling with the composition of “Lavengro,” -quarrelling with the vicar, denouncing Sir Morton Peto, procrastinating -with his publisher, and passing some of the most miserable, if the most -fruitful years of his life, he made an acquaintance which ripened into an -important and valuable friendship. The Misses Harvey introduced the -Borrows to Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake, then resident as a physician at Bury -St. Edmund’s—the friendly critic of “Lavengro” already mentioned. Visits -were paid and repaid by the two families at Bury and at Oulton, and a -close association and familiarity grew up. Dr. Hake thus becomes one of -the most trustworthy and most interesting authorities on this portion of -Borrow’s life, and relates many exceedingly suggestive stories -illustrating the varied and strangely contradictory phases of Borrow’s -character. His sketch of the personality of his friend, inscribed in his -“Memoirs,” has often been quoted. Its principal value is that it brings -out with the authority of a medical man the cause of much that frequently -seems inexplicable in Borrow—his native hypochondria, and the reason for -his violent antipathy towards society, and especially “genteel” society: -“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 he felt -himself in its midst.” I refer again in this connection to the view -proffered to me by Mr. Watts-Dunton, gleaned from intercourse with Borrow -at a later period of his life, that his denunciation of respectability -and “gentility-nonsense” was simply by way of revenge upon the -Philistines; that he loved real respectability and good repute, -worshipped fame and success, and equally hated insignificance and -failure. - -Dr. Hake’s anecdotes illustrate his impatience of much of the kind of -fame and notice he attracted, the outbursts of violence with which he -greeted people who did not appeal to him, and the intensity of his -egoism. Poor Agnes Strickland was anxious to be introduced to him, and, -after expressing her great admiration of his books, she begged to be -allowed to send him a copy of her “Queens of England.” Borrow cried, -“For God’s sake don’t, madam; I should not know what to do with them.” -And, getting up, he said to Mr. Donne, of the London Library, who had -introduced the ill-assorted pair, “What a d— fool that woman is!” There -was Mrs. Bevan, the wife of the Suffolk banker, with whom he went to -dine, Dr. Hake being of the company. Borrow knew that the bank had -dealt, as he thought, rigorously with a friend who was in financial -straits. Mrs. Bevan, who, of course, had no responsibility in this -matter, sat next to Borrow at dinner. Dr. Hake describes her as “a -simple, unpretending woman, desirous of pleasing him,” which she sought -to do by describing the pleasure with which she had read his books. -“Pray, what books do you mean, madam?” said Borrow. “Do you mean my -account-books?” And he rose from the table, walking up and down the room -during dinner, and wandered about the house till the carriage was -ordered. There was Thackeray, whom he met at Hardwicke House, in -Suffolk. Thackeray ventured to ask him whether he had read the “Snob -Papers” in _Punch_. “In _Punch_?” said Borrow. “It is a periodical I -never look at!” - -Instances of his boorishness could be multiplied, but it is sufficiently -proved. Let us see what there is on the other side of the account. - -There is a tale told by Mr. Ewing Ritchie {140} which illustrates the -fact that Borrow thoroughly detested the practice of snubbing—when he -witnessed it as a third person. A clergyman at the supper table at -Oulton Hall (then let to a tenant who was a Nonconformist) made an -onslaught upon a young Independent minister for holding Calvinistic -opinions. The occasion of this Christian dispute was the more -appropriate as they had all just returned from an undenominational -meeting of the Bible Society, at which Borrow had made a speech. The -minister stood up to the cleric, and told him that the Thirty-nine -Articles to which he had sworn assent were Calvinistic. The reply to -this was that there was a mode of explaining away the Articles: we were -not bound to take the words “in their natural sense.” The young -Nonconformist confessed that he did not understand that way out of the -difficulty, and subsided. Then Borrow stepped into the fray, “opening -fire on the clergyman,” says Mr. Ritchie, “in a very unexpected manner, -and giving him such a setting-down as the hearers, at any rate, never -forgot. All the sophistry about the non-natural meaning of terms was -held up by Borrow to ridicule, and the clergyman was beaten at every -point.” The comment of the young minister to Mr. Ritchie was, “Never did -I hear one man give another such a dressing as on that occasion.” It was -very like to be tremendous when Borrow had his Protestant bonnet on and -at the same time thought he saw a member of the Church he loved making -himself ridiculous. - -The interview between Borrow and the Rev. Whitwell Elwin has been -previously mentioned (p. 52). “What party are you in the Church?” he -suddenly exclaimed to the Rector of Booton. “Tractarian, Moderate, or -Evangelical? I am happy to say _I_ am the old High.” “I am happy to say -I am _not_,” replied Elwin. A conversation thus begun with unpromising -differences of opinion about the ethics of review-writing, and continued -in an atmosphere of theological disputation, would ordinarily have ended -in a violent quarrel. Borrow must have been in an especially benignant -mood that day, for he allowed Elwin to throw aspersions upon his -pronunciation of the Norfolk dialect, and yet did not bring the _séance_ -to a conclusion with lightning in his eyes, thunder on his brows, and -storms of invective flowing from his eloquent tongue. “Borrow boasted,” -says Elwin, “of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he -endeavoured to speak as broadly as possible. I told him that he had not -cultivated it with his usual success.” But the clouds cleared, the -protagonists became warm friends, and promised to visit each other. It -does not appear that Elwin ever went to Oulton, but Borrow did go to -Booton, exerted himself to please his hosts by calling upon his stores of -anecdote and adventure, and entranced the children of the rectory by -singing gypsy songs to them. It will be remembered that Elwin was then -editing the _Quarterly Review_ as deputy for Lockhart. He begged Borrow -to “try his hand at an article for the _Review_.” But Borrow was far too -sore with reviews and reviewers to entertain such a proposal; the -incident of Ford’s “Handbook,” too, was recent. “Never!” he cried. “I -have made a resolution never to have anything to do with such a -blackguard trade!” - -The Booton episode is related mainly because it offers an opportunity of -referring to a trait of Borrow which has been the subject of strange -misrepresentation. Dr. Jessopp wrote for the _Daily Chronicle_ {142} a -review of a new edition of “The Romany Rye,” in which the following -remarkable passage occurred: - - “Of anything like animal passion there is not a trace in all his many - volumes. Not a hint that he ever kissed a woman or ever took a - little child upon his knee. He was beardless; his voice was not the - voice of a man. His outbursts of wrath never translated themselves - into uncontrollable acts of violence; they showed themselves in all - the rancorous hatred that could be put into words—the fire smouldered - in that sad heart of his. Those big bones and huge muscles and the - strong brain were never to be reproduced in an offspring to be proud - of. How if he were the Narses of literature—one who could be only - what he was, though we are always inclined to lament that he was not - something more?” - -One does not care to discuss the principal suggestion here involved, save -to say that there is not a tittle of evidence to support it, that it -cannot be believed by any student of some of the most robust and most -virile works in the English language, and that the alleged facts upon -which it is based have been categorically contradicted by Mr. Thomas Hake -(the eldest son of Dr. Gordon Hake) in an interesting letter to Mr. -Watts-Dunton. {143} This gentleman, the author of several novels, who -knew more of Borrow than anyone else, must not be confounded with his -younger brother, Mr. Egmont Hake (mentioned on page 8), the well-known -author of “The Story of Chinese Gordon.” It will be a great pity if Mr. -Thomas Hake does not give us his reminiscences of the author of -“Lavengro.” One point, however, of Dr. Jessopp’s impeachment of Borrow -may be taken up without offence. There is not a hint, says Dr. Jessopp, -that Borrow “ever kissed a woman or ever took a little child upon his -knee.” It is a new demand upon biographers that they shall record, even -by way of hint, the osculatory adventures of their heroes, and possibly -the best reply is that there is certainly no hint that he never kissed a -woman, and there is plenty of testimony to the fact that he was no -misogynist. But if a hint will suffice it may be found in Mr. -Watts-Dunton’s account of the conversation between them and the gypsy -woman Perpinia, whom he warned against smoking tobacco while she was -suckling an infant: “It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to -smoke at all,” growled Borrow. “Fancy kissing a woman’s mouth that smelt -of stale tobacco—pheugh!” The inference is so obvious that one need not -pursue the argument by inversion of the story. When one comes to Dr. -Jessopp’s picture of Borrow in his relation to children, however, there -is a large quantity of direct evidence gathered from many quarters which -proves it to be erroneous. Mr. Thomas Hake, in the letter just cited, -says: - - “When our family lived at Bury St. Edmund’s in the ’fifties, my - father, as you know, was one of Borrow’s most intimate friends, and - he was frequently at our house, and Borrow and my father were a good - deal in correspondence (as Dr. Knapp’s book shows), and my impression - of Borrow is exactly the contrary of that which it would be if he in - the least resembled Dr. Jessopp’s description of him. At that time - George was in the nursery and I was a child. He took a wonderfully - kind interest in us all . . . but the one he took most notice of was - George, chiefly because he was a very massive child. It was then - that he playfully christened him ‘Hales,’ because he said that the - child would develop into a second ‘Norfolk giant.’ You will remember - that he always addressed George by that name.” - -The truth is that Borrow was exceedingly fond of children. He appealed -strongly to them. No such impression as he made upon the Elwin children -at Booton, upon the boys of Dr. Gordon Hake’s family at Bury, upon the -Cornish children he encountered in 1854 (p. 170), was ever made by a man -who did not understand children and sympathise with them. - -The chronicle to the end of 1853 may be very briefly recounted. Borrow’s -mother had been persuaded in 1849 to leave the house in Willow Lane, -Norwich, where she had lived alone ever since his departure for St. -Petersburg, and take up her quarters with the family at Oulton. In the -midst of the writing of “The Romany Rye” in 1853, Dr. Hake ordered -Borrow’s wife not to remain at Oulton during the coming winter. Borrow -himself welcomed the prospect of a change, and in August he and the three -women of his household removed to Yarmouth, where they lived in lodgings -for seven years, except when they were engaged in the excursions which he -presently organised in various parts of the United Kingdom. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII -“SUCCESS TO OLD CORNWALL!” - - -BORROW’S only journey to the land of mystery and legend from which his -family sprang was made in 1853. It came about curiously. An incident -occurred, soon after he had taken up his residence in lodgings at -Yarmouth, which demonstrated both his personal courage and the easy terms -on which he always was with the water. {146} In the midst of a terrible -storm he dashed into the sea, himself saved one life from an overturned -boat, and assisted to rescue the rest of the people in danger. He became -the local hero of the hour, and an account of his gallantry was printed -in the _Bury Post_. - -The Borrows of Cornwall had been mainly a home-keeping race. The -connection of George’s branch with the parent stem had been completely -severed half a century before, and the inhabitants of the Caradon Hills -had altogether lost sight of old Tom Borrow and his life. Now, however, -the _Plymouth Mail_ reprinted from the Bury paper a paragraph about the -Yarmouth affair, and in process of time it was read at St. Cleer. The -appearance of a person by the name of Borrow in this heroic shape was -discussed with curiosity. Putting two and two together, the Cornishmen -came to the conclusion that this celebrated author and saviour of -drowning men could be none other than the son of that Tom Borrow whose -claim to fame among them was that he had knocked down the headborough at -Menheniot Fair. - -Many of the name were in the district. Henry Borrow, of Looe Down, was a -son of another Henry, George’s uncle, and therefore a cousin of the -Romany Rye. Henry had a daughter, Ann, married to Mr. Robert Taylor, of -Penquite, a person of some consideration in the locality. The upshot of -the discussion was that Mr. Taylor was requisitioned by the rest of the -family to invite the celebrity to Cornwall. In a letter of acceptance, -Borrow expressed the pleasure it gave him to receive such an invitation, -and the delight he felt in knowing that there were still some who -remembered his honoured father, who, he said, had as true a Cornish heart -as ever beat. - -Thus he spent the Christmas of 1853 in the county of which he was in the -truest sense native; and of this atmosphere, most genial to him, he -breathed eagerly. Borrow never accomplished the book he proposed to -write about Cornwall. An advertisement of it was published at the end of -“The Romany Rye,” when he was fresh home from his visit and full of the -romance he had absorbed in the westernmost peninsula of England. But, -like many of his plans, it failed to come to anything. If it had been -written, it would probably have been as full of good things as his Welsh -book, and a better whole, since it was a smaller and more manageable -subject. It will be possible presently to attempt to indicate the kind -of work this might have been. - -He left Yarmouth on December 23rd, and, this time not disdaining the -services of the detested railway, was able to reach Plymouth at midnight. -In that day Plymouth was the western terminus of the railway system. -Brunel’s great bridge, which carries the iron road at a dizzy altitude -across the Tamar from Devonshire into Cornwall, was not raised till six -years later, and people who adventured into the land of giants and -saints, pilchards and pasties, must complete their journey by coach. -Having slept a night at the Royal Hotel in Plymouth, Borrow found that -the Christmas traffic had crowded the coach, and he arrived at the -Borrovian determination to walk to Liskeard, on the main road eighteen -miles away, the nearest town to his objective among the hills. Leaving -his luggage to be carried on by the mail, he “threw his cloak on his arm -(a very old friend which had seen some thirty years’ service, the -constant companion of his travels”), and trudged off to Devonport, across -the Tamar by the ferry, and along the enchanting sylvan highway to the -town whose representative in Parliament was just then laying about the -“Puseyites” in a fashion most agreeable to Borrow. - -There was a little stir in the bookish circles of the old Cornish borough -among whom Mr. Taylor had spread the news that Borrow was coming, and a -small party assembled to meet him and lionise him. These were drawn up -under the porch of Webb’s Hotel as the huge figure strode into view. -There was the ex-Mayor, Mr. Bernard Anstis. There was the Town Clerk, -Mr. James Jago, a connection of the Borrows by marriage. There were his -own relations. Happily, under these new auspices, he dropped his -affectation of objection to be lionised, and took wine with his -worshippers at the hotel in quite a conventional manner. Then, after tea -with the Jago family, he and Taylor mounted horseback and rode off to -Penquite, four miles away, to spend an old-style rural Christmas. “A -hospitable reception, with a log on the fire” was Borrow’s own word for -it—a brief but hearty tribute to the effect it had upon him. On -Christmas Day he walked from Penquite to St. Cleer Church, about which -his notebooks mention that it lacked an organ (as it does to this day), -but that there was a fiddler in the gallery. Returning over the noble -expanse of St. Cleer Down, he was introduced to a family of relations by -marriage—the Pollards—and in the afternoon walked to their residence at -Woolston to have lively talk of travel with two sons who had been in -Australia, and to discuss the prehistoric memorials of the district, -which he describes as “Druid stones.” All the Borrows have left St. -Cleer, but the Pollards are in possession of Penquite. - -It may seem that one lingers over the details of a visit which was but a -small incident in Borrow’s life. The excuse must be offered that, if one -could but penetrate the mystery of what may be called the Spirit of Old -Cornwall, one would be in possession of the key to much that is -mysterious in Borrow. He had inherited it fully, and it shaped many of -his most pronounced characteristics. Here, if anywhere and at any time, -he was at home—far more at home than his father had ever been; what freak -of atavism may not account for that? Where eyes look out upon a world of -wonder and of miracle, where even yet magic and supernatural intervention -have their sway in that world’s affairs, and there is an underworld of -faery, where strange Celtic words are of common use and wont, the -philological, legend-loving wanderer was in a fitting atmosphere. - -Not many people remain in Cornwall now who can remember Borrow, but a few -years ago I found memories of the man and his eccentricities still lively -among old inhabitants. Borrow amazed them not only by his personal -peculiarities, but by his intellectual superiority to “they Borrowses.” -There were many Borrows round about, small farmers, excellent and worthy -undistinguished people, the friends and equals of their neighbours; the -staggering fact was that such a wonder, such a celebrity, such a walking -encyclopædia of information on matters of which they had never heard, -should have sprung from the Borrow stock. His “curious ways” were -subject of remark, but his popularity rose superior to his manners: in a -few short weeks he obtained a reputation for liveliness hardly second to -that of his father. - -I have been told that he roamed the Caradons in all weathers without a -hat, in search of sport and specimens, antiquities and dialects. He -often carried a gun. If a bird that fell to him dropped in a moorland -pool, he would plunge in after it and come out dripping water and beaming -triumph. Little parties he attended at Penquite, at the vicarage, at the -houses of friends in Liskeard, were - - “. . . As merry - As, first, good company, good wine, good welcome - Can make good people.” - -He himself kept the fireside circle roaring with his constant flow of -gypsy songs and stories. But it was an essential point that the parties -should not be genteel. “Lavengro” had not long been written, and he was -then engaged upon its sequel. Shortly he was to be writing—if it were -not already written—that chapter of the Appendix on “gentility-nonsense.” -It was, in fact, just the zenith of the anti-gentility campaign. Once he -went from Penquite into Liskeard to dine with Mr. Bernard Anstis. The -despiteful demon seized him at the ex-Mayor’s hospitable board. -Gentility showed its cloven hoof in some form or other; in the midst of -dinner Borrow protested silently against the apparition by keeping his -handkerchief in his pocket and dragging out for ostentatious use the old, -greasy, rust-stained, powder-grimed rag he kept about him for cleaning -his gun during expeditions on the moors. He seemed, said one, now -departed (John Abraham, of Liskeard), who related to me this story, to be -“perpetually repeating to himself old Burton’s maxim that ‘of all -vanities and fopperies, to brag of gentility is the greatest.’ Yet he -was proud of the fact that his father derived from what he called the -Cornish ‘_gentillâtre_.’” Mr. Taylor was a member of a card club in -Liskeard, to which belonged the doctors and lawyers and other -professional gentlemen of the town. Borrow was taken in to play cards -with them. But it was far too tame for him. While they settled down to -their rubber, he stole out to explore the back slums of the town, -“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.” - -Borrow met at St. Cleer a kindred spirit in the vicar, Berkeley. This -was an Irishman of the North—not to put too fine a point on it, an -Orangeman,—a man of some pretensions to learning and a great “original,” -as they might say in Cornwall. Berkeley’s militant Protestantism was -quite as fierce as Borrow’s. But for a certain Irish cob, as he tells -us, Borrow might have become a mere philologist. It was in Ireland that -he first developed the taste for petty adventure which he now indulged to -the full in the wilds of Cornwall. Here was common ground. Berkeley -piled coals on the fire of his anti-Papist enthusiasm. The good vicar -was, withal, convivial in disposition, exiled among a people cloaking -their essential kindness under a serious demeanour, and exceedingly -abstemious. He was open-hearted and open-handed when he had money, which -was not always. He suffered once at the hands of ruthless bailiffs. As -a burning Protestant, he was on amicable terms with the Dissenters, who -formed the majority of his parishioners in Methodist Cornwall; he was a -bitter enemy of Ritualism, and “Popery” was his _bête noire_. This -piquant personality presided over the destinies of the parish of St. -Cleer at a time when the fortunes of the Church of England reached their -lowest ebb in Cornwall, and the Methodist societies flourished like the -green bay-tree. It is related that for a considerable time the only -regular attendant at church, in addition to the parson, was a -schoolmaster of episcopal sympathies, who walked a mile and a half of a -Sunday morning to hear Berkeley’s denunciation of the Papists echoing -through an empty building. - -Berkeley was one of those Irish Protestants to whom Borrow had paid -tribute as a “most remarkable body of men who during two centuries have -fought a good fight in Ireland in the cause of civilisation and religious -truth . . . where . . . though surrounded with difficulties of every -kind, they have maintained their ground; amidst darkness they have held -up a lamp, and it would be well for Ireland were all her children like -these, her adopted ones.” This is highly controversial ground, upon -which there is no need to enter, save for the purpose of remarking that -the man who had recently written that was like to be a friendly soul to -Berkeley. And during his stay in Cornwall he was frequently at the -vicarage. He would, as Berkeley related to Dr. Knapp in the -character-sketch he reproduces, “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.” {154} He had the -“Horrors” more than once. He told Berkeley that these attacks of -depression were the result of the attempt made by a gypsy crone to poison -him, as related in “Lavengro.” The vicar and his wife visited Penquite -one evening, and found Borrow sitting, sunk in despair, by the side of a -huge fire, taking no notice of person or thing. He remained wrapped in -his mood of melancholy for hours, and was only roused from it when Mrs. -Berkeley sat down at the piano and softly played some old Scots and Irish -airs. Then, after a while, he jumped up and danced about the room, and -began to shout a joyous melody. The “Horrors” had been conjured away, -and he was another man. He made up for his previous obsession by giving -the company liberally of his best, pouring out good stories and -side-splitting anecdotes as fast as he could recite them. And, as Mrs. -Berkeley was leaving the room, he said to her, “Your music was as David’s -harp to my soul.” - -One of the sources of Borrow’s pride in his father was his long and loyal -service as a soldier; he had no respect for people who beat the sword -into a ploughshare. Berkeley records his retort upon a young man who was -telling how he had retired from the army because “the army was—aw—no -place for a gentleman now.” - -“I should judge,” said Borrow, “that it was rather the other way.” - -“Aw—what do you mean?” - -“What do I mean? Why, this: that the army is no place for a man who is -not a gentleman, and that such a person was right in leaving it.” - -Borrow was fortunate, apparently, in the occasions of some of these -Johnsonian fulminations. It is not everybody who would endure the -treatment so mildly as did the ex-army officer, or that latitudinarian -don who is reported once to have met Borrow at Dr. Hake’s house. The -pundit preached at Borrow for some time, so runs the tale, and, when he -had finished, Borrow thumped the table with his fist, crying, “Sir, -you’re a fool!” As _Punch_ very justly remarked about this prodigious -narrative, because the article in which it appeared was in praise of -Borrow, Borrow’s rudeness was made to appear to be “the end of the don -for ever . . . there was no appeal.” Yet the don probably had a case, -and if the article had been in praise of him, Borrow would certainly have -been made to appear the fool. He has suffered not a little from the -ill-regulated enthusiasm of admirers who insist on counting his petulance -and his outbursts of boorishness as his minor virtues instead of his -major vices. - -A quaint commentary on anecdotes of this sort is Berkeley’s assertion -that Borrow often repeated to him the answer he received from an old -prize-fighter in reply to the question, “What is the best way to get -through life quietly?”—“Learn to box, and keep a civil tongue in your -head.” Surely the most illuminating example of pure precept without -example that can be unearthed in all literature. Berkeley shared the -common fate of Borrow’s associates who supposed that a successful writer -would care to discuss other writers. The genial vicar found how good a -hater his visitor was; he displayed his spleen against the Martineaus; he -foamed over the inoffensive Mrs. Stowe. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was then the -fashion, and Berkeley sang its praises. Borrow showed great excitement, -and presently exploded invective against “a lot of Uncle Toms and -Tomfools!” When he cooled down he had the grace to apologise for his -vehemence. - -But in all this intercourse with the lively Orangeman, of course, Borrow -is to be seen only on one side, and that not the best, of his many-sided -character. It was his controversial side. Berkeley, not native, had -little intimate knowledge of Cornwall. Just one fact appears in his -reminiscences which may fitly bridge the gulf between these episodes and -Borrow’s real adventures. He liked to pore over the register of St. -Cleer Church, where the names of so many Borrows were inscribed, and one -day was sent into transports of delight by the discovery of a marriage -record in which the woman’s name was Jenefer—a name commoner in Cornwall -aforetime than at present. “Can you not see?” he cried. “It is -Guinevere, King Arthur’s wife!” - -Borrow, who wrote that fine passage about Stonehenge, which has been -already quoted (p. 54), who waited for sunrise over that silent plain -under the portal of giants, could not fail to be fascinated by the -archæological riches of his father’s native place. Particularly was he -entranced by the Trevethy Stone—alternatively “Trethevy.” Few parishes -in the kingdom can boast a prehistoric structure of so elaborate a kind -as this huge cromlech, few parish roads so great a store of relics of -bygone art and ancient piety as the mile or so of parish road that Borrow -traversed in order to reach it. It is at once the finest and the -least-known cromlech in the West of England, and in a splendid state of -preservation. The walls are four huge slabs of granite, only one of -which has departed from the perpendicular; the roof is a fifth huge slab, -in one corner of which is a round hole that has formed the theme of many -a heated archæological discussion. If, as is supposed, the ancients (who -without the assistance of machinery dealt with such enormous weights as -these) first constructed great earthworks, and then pulled the rocks into -position by rolling them up the slopes upon the trunks of fir-trees, the -hole may have been used for the attachment of the ropes upon which the -army of workmen hauled. Or the hole may be the work of weather, which -has wrought such pixy-pranks in granite, as may be observed in the -Devil’s Cheesewring not far off. The Trethevy cromlech must have been -the memorial, and probably the burial-place, of some great chieftain. -Whatever the grave or the cairn contained, it was, like all the other -monuments of the kind, rifled ages ago, and nothing but the silent stones -is left. - -Borrow says of his sensations when he saw it, “A thrill came over me as I -surveyed this gigantic erection.” He does not tell us what his -speculations were as to the origin of the hole; but after he had climbed -to the top and carefully measured every stone, he put his arm through the -hole, and shouted, “Success to Old Cornwall!” He spares us the obvious -comparison between the Eleusinian Mysteries and the rites of the -Mên-an-tol, or holed stone, administered to Druidic neophytes. - -From Penquite it was not a far cry, for a man who walked five miles in an -hour with ease, to the great brown-backed hill of Caradon, seamed all -along its foot with the wounds inflicted by centuries of miners. Caradon -is twelve hundred feet high, and gives a wonderful prospect over two -counties. From its summit, on a clear day, the Atlantic to the North and -the Channel to the South are the limits of vision. Across the narrow -gorge intervening strode the hat-less pedestrian of six-feet-three, -looking like some nineteenth-century giant Caradon swallowing up the -miles of bracken and heath, to the round hill where the Devil’s -Cheesewring was piled, examining with curiosity, just below the peak, the -hut of one Daniel Gumb. Gumb was no gnome, no pixy, no mythical person, -as his name might almost betoken, but a veritable person in the flesh, -stonemason and mathematician, who had carved in the block of granite that -formed the roof of his dwelling-place a problem of Euclid. There are the -squares and triangles remaining to this day to attest both his -scholarship and his craft. On a heath near by, Borrow was shown three -stone circles which carried his mind back three thousand years at least -(Sir Norman Lockyer may be able to say how much more), “the -Hurlers”—according to quaint tradition the petrified bodies of groups of -profane persons who played the ancient Cornish game of hurling on a -Sunday. There is one stone pillar a little distance to the south of the -circles, which is said to have been the messenger who was going to St. -Cleer for ale when the sudden petrifaction took place. This looks, -however, like an excrescence of modern humour, probably conceived by a -foreigner, since natives would joke with reluctance on such a subject. -Sunday is a golfless day in Cornwall even now. Another and a less ribald -version of the story was given to Borrow at Woolston. It related that -while the hurlers were gathered where the three circles now are, on -Cradock Moor there was a giant, who held in his hand a golden ball, which -he was to throw over the tower of St. Cleer Church, and the first of the -hurlers to find it was to possess it. The giant shared the fate of the -other Sabbath-breakers, and is to be seen to this day on the moor in the -form of “The Longstone”—an old round-headed cross. - -A few miles in upon the moor to the north, Borrow twice visited the very -heart and centre of Cornish romance—the lonely mountain pool of Dozmary. -Set high among the wild, uncultivated hills, the pool breathes mystery. -It is hundreds of feet above the river that winds down the combes: whence -comes the water? The love of magical solutions for natural conundrums is -deep-rooted. Colloquial opinion has held the pool in awe, reported it -fathomless; and at the present day, to explain a lake at the top of a -hill, with no visible intake of water, by saying it is fed from the -inexhaustible reservoir of the peat in the surrounding country, is not -held by some people to be facing the question adequately. But the -spiritual and legendary mysteries of Dozmary were far more attractive to -Borrow. It is reputed to be the original setting of two of the great -legends of the world—the Passing of Arthur, and the Penance of Tregeagle. - -Standing on the silver strand that belts the lake, on a moonlit night of -such winter weather as Borrow found in the hills, it is easy to -reconstruct the ritual of the Mort d’Arthur, either on the lines of -Malory or those of Tennyson, to erect stately scenes and silent -processionals, to enact the temptation of Bedivere, to select the clump -of flags in which he hid the brand Excalibur, to see his three journeys -to the shore, and finally to watch the whirling and flashing of the blade -as it left his hand and curved over the water, where rose that arm - - “Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, - And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him - Three times, and drew him under in the mere.” - -It is easy to imagine the last scene of all—Arthur coming - - “Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked, - Larger than human on the frozen hills,” - -the funeral barge appearing on the waters, bearing the three queens, the -commencement of the voyage into the unknown, to the island valley of -Avalon. By the cold moonlight the spectacle fits the frame, for all -distances are magnified and the awkward corners of daylight fact are -obscured by the mysterious glamour. It is not the setting Tennyson has -given to the Idyll, but it mates the story as told by Malory in his -re-rendering from the French. It is not far over the hills to Slaughter -Bridge, where Arthur is said to have received his mortal wound in combat -with Sir Mordred; it is a dozen miles or so to King Arthur’s Castle at -Tintagel. - -Fascinating as the great allegory is in any setting, it may be assumed, -quite safely, that Borrow was even more keenly interested in the other, -wilder, fiercer legend of Dozmary—the legend of Tregeagle. For, though -he exclaimed his pleasure at detecting a resemblance between the names -Jenefer and Guinevere in the parish records of St. Cleer, and afterwards -made a journey to the Arthurian country to the north—when he passed by -Caerleon on his tour through Wales, he did not turn aside to dream of the -Round Table, but contented himself with mentioning Caerleon as “at one -time one of the most considerable towns in Britain,” and went on to -explain that whisky really was a corruption of the Erse word for water, -and that meticulous accuracy would describe the fiery spirit as -usquebaugh! - -The Penance of Tregeagle was a very different matter. It is a variant of -the universal Satanic legend. Tregeagle is a prototype of the immemorial -man who makes compact with the Father of Evil, the bargain in this case -being a hundred years of earthly pleasure in return for his soul -immortal. The parable is an answer to the tragic question, “What shall -it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” -Tregeagle was a shepherd, who, dissatisfied with his share of the good -things of earth, expressed a petulant wish to possess all he could see. -The Devil appeared to him in guise of Knight, arrayed in black armour, -carrying a black lance, riding a black horse, accompanied by two black -hounds of hell. The stranger challenged Tregeagle’s desire; for the -forfeit of his soul at the end of a hundred years, he should have during -those hundred years a castle and broad lands and endless riches. The -shepherd accepted the terms; the Black Knight sounded his terrible horn -and rode away, with the black hounds (which dominate the story in all its -versions) snarling at his horse’s heels. In some form or other the dog -is nearly always associated with the Satanic legend. In the Faust -stories the Spirit of Evil is introduced as a dog. In “Tam o’ Shanter,” - - “There sat Auld Nick in shape o’ beast, - A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large.” - -Upon the Devil’s departure, Tregeagle fell into a trance, and, when he -awoke, the moors were changed into waving forests and verdant meadows, -and on the hill where Dozmary had been stood a splendid castle. -Tregeagle himself was arrayed in knightly costume, and saluted as their -lord by a stately retinue. - -In the course of his hundred years of prosperity all his fine stock of -original sin had black and bloody development. Rapine, murder, and -pillage went unchecked; he consummated his crimes by abducting the lovely -virgin Goonhylda, daughter of the Earl of Cornwall, and shutting her up -in the castle. Her father led an expedition to rescue her, and its -arrival at Tregeagle’s gates precisely coincided with the expiration of -his hundred years. And as the Earl’s messenger thundered there, the -sound of the terrible horn and the sinister baying of hounds was heard; -the Black Horseman came riding across the hills, calling upon Tregeagle -to surrender himself, for that his bond was due. - -Tregeagle, in a palsy of fear, stepped out, and was immediately stricken -dead by a bolt from the black clouds that had suddenly o’erspread the -scene. A storm raged, a spectre arose from the corpse of Tregeagle and -fled into the murk, pursued by the grim huntsman and his hounds. When -the storm had passed, the enchantment was over. Castle, forests and -meadows had vanished; once more stretched the wide brown moors, glittered -the surface of the pool. But Tregeagle was condemned for ever to the -service of the Devil, who delights to set him Sisyphean tasks, of which -the chief is to drain dry the pool of Dozmary by baling it with a limpet -shell which has a hole in the bottom. Let him desist for a moment, and -his torture begins; he flies shrieking before the Huntsman and his -ghastly hounds. The spectre horseman and his pack are known as “The -Devil and his Durdy Dogs.” The punishment of Tregeagle is only a small -part of their business. They travel far and wide, not only over the -moors but along the sea coasts, and their attentions are most fatal to -those who happen to be abroad at night bent on deeds of evil. There is a -tale of a herdsman who was on the moor of a winter’s night, and was -chased by the Durdy Dogs, which came rushing down from a neighbouring -tor. He could not run fast enough to escape, and just as they were close -upon him he fell on his knees in prayer. Immediately the dogs stood at -bay, howling ferociously. The terrible Huntsman shouted, “Bo Shrove!” -(“the boy prays”), and at the word both he and his hounds vanished. {166} -Similar legends of the yeth-hounds of Dartmoor are heard in Devonshire. -As the black dogs hunt Tregeagle across the Cornish hills, their baying -and his cries of agony are heard in lonely cottages at night. One draws -closer to the chimney-corner as the wind pelts moaning athwart the waste, -when this tradition is related to him by firelight in one of the crofts -near by. Crying children are told that they are “roarin’ an’ howlin’ -like Tregeagle.” - -Borrow was deeply interested, not only in these larger legends of -world-celebrity, but in the purely local folklore, the pixy stories of -the peasantry. The Cornish pixies—or “piskies,” to use the -vernacular—are diminutive fairies, generally dressed in green, very fond -of mirth and mischief, some bad, but most good. They mislead men at -night, for fun; then the only way to break the spell is for the victim to -turn his coat inside out. They play practical jokes; they resemble, now -Will o’ the Wisp, now the Scottish brownie, and again Robin Goodfellow; -when properly propitiated they sometimes make gifts to their human -neighbours of fairy food and fairy goblets. Borrow heard how the pixies -mount horses’ heads at nights, and ride them about the fields, making -stirrups of their manes; how they work in the mines, and are heard -knocking in the levels underground, like the Duegars of northern -latitudes; how some of them are under penance, like Tregeagle, to bale -dry the pool of Dozmary. - -Elizabeth Borrow, his cousin, related this characteristic story to him. -A child belonging to poor parents was observed to have developed -peculiarities. Among these was the fact that it could never get enough -to eat. This is not, one might suppose, a peculiarity of children -altogether confined to St. Cleer or even to Cornwall; but this child’s -appetite was so abnormal that its relations decided to consult a wise -woman about it. The witch told them that she had no doubt it was a -pisky. She recommended them to put a large quantity of old shoes on a -spit and make the child turn it, even if they had to beat it to compel it -to the task. This procedure was adopted, and after a sound thrashing and -much complaining the child was heard to say: - - “I am four score years and more, - But never saw such a roast before.” - -Then, as they were too young to have a child over eighty, the parents had -proof positive that it was a pisky. The murder being out, after some -time it disappeared, and their own child was magically restored to them. - - - - -CHAPTER IX -A GALLANT GIRL AND HER FAMILY - - -“THE Pollards,” praised as a “very fine family” in Borrow’s notebooks, -lived at Woolston, in the neighbouring parish of St. Ive. He told them -they reminded him of Spaniards. “The gallant girl” of eighteen, who rode -with him over the countryside, Mr. Taylor’s daughter, afterwards married -Mr. Edward Pollard, and came into possession of Penquite. Miss Taylor -was a notorious horsewoman. She owned at one time a very spirited horse, -on which she used to ride every Sunday to church at St. Cleer. There was -no mounting that horse in the ordinary way, and she invariably got into -the saddle with one leap. Outside the church gate there would always be -a crowd of people assembled to - - “See the young lady - Get up on her horse” - -when she started home for Penquite. Of that family circle round William -Pollard, who was head of the house at Woolston during Borrow’s visit, -alternately amazed, bewildered, and enchanted by the visitor, two sons -and two daughters still survive. {168} A charming lady of great age, the -daughter, has clear recollections of the events of half a century ago. -Her impression of “the walking lord of gypsy-lore,” as Dr. Hake called -him, is of “a very tall, silvery-headed man of middle age, with wonderful -brown eyes, remarkably handsome and well-knit. He seemed to know -something about everything. The fact we marvelled at was that, being -acquainted with so many languages, he did not confound one with another. -He appeared to be a wild, romantic person, a being of whom we had never -seen the like before; his energy was unbounded—he almost lived in the -open air, though it was in the depth of a bitter winter.” - -It has already been indicated that the winter of 1853–4 was unusually -severe—at any rate for Cornwall, where the climate is generally as soft -as that of Ireland. The hills and tors ascending to the north of the -country in which Borrow was staying were mantled in white during the -greater part of his visit. The clear air at these altitudes seemed to -inspirit him; he was a very different person from the Borrow who had -nursed his grievances and been tormented by his melancholy demons on the -marshes of Oulton. “One morning,” said Mrs. Edey, “after an -exceptionally heavy fall of snow during the night, he was up with the -earliest light, ploughing his way through the drifts to Woolston, where -he commandeered one of my brothers to be his companion for a whole-day -ramble over the snow-bound moors. And, said my brother, he sang as he -walked the songs of half-a-dozen nations from the time they left almost -without interruption, till they returned.” - -There are two interesting passages in her story throwing a sidelight upon -his relations with children. On his frequent walks from Penquite to -Woolston he was wont to pass a certain desolate, abandoned mine. On the -side of its premises was a little rough stone building, occupied as a -cottage by a poor woman with a large family. The children’s -poverty-stricken condition attracted his notice, and he regularly took -with him in his pocket some bit of food to present to them as they stood -looking out for the arrival of the tall stranger with the white hair. -One of the children was customarily posted on the roadside to watch for -him, and this one was dubbed by Borrow “the little sentinel.” Again, at -dinner with some legal light of the district, he was suddenly missed -during dessert, and 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 subjects 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 all about the dinner. More than once he -expressed a high opinion of the mental average of Cornish children. - -Penquite, the “substantial stone house on a hillside,” where Borrow -stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Taylor in 1854, is a characteristic -Cornish farmhouse of the older and better sort—the native home of yeomen. -The parish road ascends a steep hillock in the direct and uncompromising -manner which is the distinctive mark of an old way, beaten out before the -era of enclosure and before the development of wheeled traffic. At the -top a thicket of pine and beech trees stands sentinel beside the -“court-gate,” beyond which the road, curling to the south, brings one to -a view of orchard land speckled with snowdrops, white gates, cedars of -rich green, a slated house, French windows gleaming in the sun, and a -garden sloping towards the stream at the bottom of the valley. - -This was the destination to which Shorsha, the horse-wizard, and Robert -Taylor, the Cornish farmer, cantered up on Christmas Eve of 1853. The -Taylors left it in 1877, handing the farm on to Edward Pollard, who had -married their only daughter. At Mrs. Pollard’s death (1904), the -property passed into the hands of her eldest son, Edward. It was this -eldest son who answered my pull at the bell-knob under the ancient -granite porch, and gave me a real welcome. He has added a section to the -house at the back, but the southern front remains as it has been for many -generations. Here was the old low-ceiled parlour where Borrow and -Berkeley, the Irish vicar, discussed the comparative beauty and virtue of -Cornish women and Irish women; beyond, the stone-flagged kitchen where he -got his “hospitable reception, with a log on the fire.” But the march of -science has partly spoilt the venerable kitchen. It has left the settle -from which Shorsha’s long legs stretched to the blaze, but it has filled -up the open hearth and put a modern kitchen range in its place. Mr. -William Pollard is the son of one of that “fine family” at Woolston with -whom Borrow discoursed of Australia, whence two of the young Pollards had -just returned that Christmas. In the early ’fifties Australia was a name -to conjure with; Ballarat was a magic incantation. Two of the five -Pollard sons adventured there, and it was one of the two that I visited -Woolston to see. - -Mr. Pollard, in his ninetieth year, was a prisoner in a canopied bed, but -with a mind clear and logical, and full of memories and interests. -Scattered around him were newspapers and books, and one of the books a -contemporary of Borrow himself. “A very strange, wild person,” was his -introductory description of Borrow; “a very tall, upstanding man, wiry -and lithe, with a strong face and snow-white hair. He looked fit for -anything, and I believe he was—that he feared no man nor devil. I -remember the first evening he came here. We had tea in the parlour, and, -farmhouse fashion, we had some roast beef on the table, which my father -carved. After tea, somebody suggested that he should sing a song. He -did sing it, and a weird, wailing, outlandish song it was. No—not a -gypsy song. . . . Maybe it was the song of Swayne Vonved. He got up and -waved his arms as he sang of his hero’s adventures, he fought an -imaginary foe, and finally, as he worked himself into a fervour of -passionate song, he seized the carving-knife from the table and swished -it round his head. We all drew back, and some of us were glad when the -song was over and he dropped that carving-knife and sat down. His voice -was tremendous—‘as big as Tregeagle’s,’ as we say in Cornwall.” - -Not only the legendary lore and the ancient language of Cornwall -interested Borrow; he was equally attracted by the physical -characteristics of the peninsula, and impressed by the great wealth lying -dormant in the incalculable masses of granite on the moors. “If I were a -rich man,” he exclaimed, “I would buy up all this granite; it will be -wanted one day.” The demand for Cornish granite in various great public -works and the present activity of the quarries at the Cheesewring -illustrate his foresight. - -The Woolston people were particularly struck by Borrow’s intense -enthusiasm for the legend and the poetry of the North. He himself -relates how, on a walking tour farther west, he faced eight dreary miles -on a rainy evening, solacing himself by singing: - - “Look out, look out, Swayne Vonved!” - -the Danish ballad he had translated more than thirty years before. At -Woolston he made the Vikings live again for them. “He gave us Odin and -Thor without ceasing.” There never could have been so much Norse -mythology in that part of Cornwall before. Some of the ladies seem to -have fallen in love with his hair, but could not summon up courage to beg -a lock; and one of them saved his combings and preserved them in -tissue-paper for years. - -The keen, almost boyish, delight which Borrow took in everything he saw -and heard in the hills, and his complaisance towards the company he met, -are remarkable in the man whose odd misanthropic fancies and wretched, -paltry miseries we have been watching during many pages. The contrast is -vivid indeed. In Cornwall Borrow was both pleased and pleasing—with -occasional outbursts such as the display of spleen against “Uncle -Tomfools”—whether he were riding with “the gallant girl” over the snowy -country, listening to her superstitions about magpies— - - “One for sorrow, two for mirth; - Three for a wedding, four for death” {174a} - -—or visiting patriarchal villagers at Tremar to hear their stories of -pixies and foxes, {174b} or attending rural dinner parties, with all the -neighbourhood beaten up in his honour. Some of the pixy stories have -been given. The attitude of the countryside towards the fox in that day -was shockingly unorthodox. He was vermin to be destroyed whenever and -wherever discovered: did he not wreak incalculable damage in the farmyard -by various and subtle devices, such as taking his brush in his teeth and -whirling round like a teetotum under the poultry perches, till the -unhappy fowls, rendered dizzy by the unaccustomed spectacle, fell an easy -prey to his rapacious appetite? How a fox was shot and the murderer -brought his victim for admiration both of the brush and the deed, is -related without the turning of a hair. The crime was so common as to be -merely a habit; Mr. Baring-Gould, in his story of Parson Jack Russell, -has given a similar account of the ethics of certain districts in -Devonshire about the same period. - -Borrow revealed his curiosity and enthusiasm in many ways. On one -occasion a young lady named Every was of the party at Woolston. Part of -the conversation turned—as it inevitably would where Borrow was -concerned—on Cornish names and their derivations. The girl asked him if -he could tell her anything about her name. His mind flew at once to the -one Every or Avery whose career was familiar to him, that Captain John, -of Plymouth, the fierce pirate of the Eastern Seas, the mortal enemy of -John Company, who was reputed to have become a king in Madagascar—one of -the choicest villains in the history of the world. “I said that the most -celebrated person who ever bore it was a buccaneer, whereupon she -informed me that her grandmother had told her that she was descended from -a famous pirate.” And he adds the suggestive commentary, “Very pleasant -party!” {176} - -One of the most interesting gatherings arranged for him, of course, was -the family dinner party at the old farmhouse of Tredinnick, where his -father was born. According to Berkeley, who was among the guests, nearly -all the Borrows of the district were present, and George was highly -excited, with his mind constantly running upon the father whom he had -worshipped. The circumstances of the feast and the memories it aroused -were too much for him; he ceased to be merry and talkative, and closed up -his store of song and story; instead of exerting himself to amuse his -friends, he sat with restless glance wandering around the rooms in which -old Captain Tom had spent his boyhood; his eyes were moist. Suddenly he -left the party and burst into the open air—meeting with an ugly tumble -over a low wall into the yard. “Well,” said he to Berkeley as they -parted for the night, “we have shared the old-fashioned hospitality of -old-fashioned people in an old-fashioned house.” He was overwrought to -an extraordinary extent, and the excitement, together with the shock of -his little accident, brought on an indisposition that kept him laid up -all next day. - -Having been a little more than a fortnight at Penquite, he began his -walking tour through Cornwall to the extreme west. At Mousehole, not far -from the Land’s End, lived one Burney, an officer of the coastguard, who -was a distant connection of the family. Taylor had given Borrow a letter -of introduction to him. “You can only see Cornwall or know anything -about it by walking through it,” he wrote to his wife. The secrets of -Cornwall, the conditions of its detachment, the spell of its romance, can -only be penetrated by the man who “the known track . . . deserts, and has -a by-way of his own.” He must explore its hills and combes, and its -remoter villages for their archæological treasures—whether of the -prehistoric races who have left their mark upon its sad grey stones, or -of the saints and heroes of the early Christian time, or of the authors -and the actors of its Mystery Plays—and he must know the simple folk of -its ancient blood to probe the riches of their lore. Even Borrow hardly -turned far enough aside from the beaten paths to get more than a very -general impression of the country; but he was a man who observed readily -and absorbed eagerly. - -Nicholas Borrow, his cousin, was his topographical mentor and guide on -many expeditions, and, now that he was leaving for the West, accompanied -him on horseback across country to set him in the main road. He saw -Tremewth, where his father’s comrade, Thomas Honey, lived on the top of -the hill, and the field near Redgate containing the grave of King Doniert -(or Dungerth), the lord of the Western Britons in the ninth century, with -its broken pillar and Latin inscription. Parting with his cousin, he -walked on to Lostwithiel, the end of his first day’s journey, took his -ease in the Talbot Inn, and feasted on roast fowl and bacon. The ancient -stannary town, with its shire hall dating from the thirteenth century, -and its memories of the Civil War—when Essex stabled his horses in the -church, and his troopers brought a horse to the font and with a mock -baptism sardonically gave it the name of Charles—produced mingled -emotions in Borrow’s mind, for, in spite of his militant Protestantism, -he was a staunch Tory and a Royalist. Turning aside to see the hoary -Castle of Restormel, which had been a ruin since the time of Edward the -Third, he recorded some vivid impressions of the neighbourhood as “the -most beautiful he ever saw.” - -They will not appear exaggerated to those who have approached it as -Borrow did through the wonderful Glyn Valley, by the road which follows -the river brawling down from its moorland birthplace towards the sea at -Fowey. The second day he covered twenty-four miles to Truro. The sight -of a cairn on a hill top “brought the Spirit of Old upon my mind.” -_Antiquis debetur reverentia_ was always a potent principle with Borrow; -nevertheless, the modern Protestant within him sometimes got the better -of the antiquary. On the previous day he had seen a cross, and examined -it. This monument “seemed to have been raised by some Puseyite. The -base contained a nonsensical inscription to the effect that it had been -erected on a place which had been devoted to ‘Druidic Idolatry.’ The -Druids were no idolaters, though the Papists are.” {179} It was -darkening to evening when he passed through Grampound, one of the minute -derelict boroughs of Cornwall, whose disfranchisement in 1821 was the one -and only result of Lord John Russell’s first agitation against electoral -corruption. The appearance of The Dolphin Inn, looking snug with its -lighted windows and air of warmth and comfort, was a strong invitation to -a tired wayfarer who had more often than most men - - “. . . by care oppressed - Found in an inn a place of rest.” - -He looked wistfully at it, but withstood the temptation (with the -assistance of Swayne Vonved), and pushed on through the rainy night to -Truro, and to dinner and bed at the Royal Hotel. - -In the morning he inspected the town, and visited the church—which no -longer exists save as a fragment built into the northern side of Benson’s -great cathedral—and then started again for the West. His walk extended -no farther than ten miles that day. On his arrival at Redruth, one of -the centres of the mining district, he was arrested by the great hill of -Carn Brea, to the north-west of the town. Its noble summit is one of the -most striking features of the landscape viewed from any part of West -Cornwall, and it is the haunt of many legends—mostly unauthentic and -nearly all ridiculous. The entertaining old Borlase, in his “Antiquities -of Cornwall,” invented a grotesque set of theories about the origin of -the curiously-shaped rocks that strew the long length of the hill’s -crest. Borlase saw Druids everywhere, and Druidical sculpture in every -freak Nature had played through countless centuries with the granite -which she found so pliable. It was inconceivable in his time that the -“basins” and channels in the rocks of Carn Brea could have been merely -the result of “weathering,” as the geologists inform us now they must -have been. “In yonder grave a Druid lies” was predicated by Borlase of -every mound he saw. One perceives that Borrow adopted all his theories -without modification. On Carn Brea he was not merely on a magnificent -precipitous hill, with a wide-stretching view away to the Atlantic on the -north; he was in the midst of a thousand memories of the past; the -“Spirit of Old” came upon him again; white-robed priests defiled along -the heather, and performed their sacrificial rites upon the granite -altars. The notes he made about Carn Brea were, says he, “written on the -top of the sacrificial rock. In the upper basin, the horrid place of -sacrifice, there are outlets for the blood to stream down. There seem to -be about eight basins in all.” William Borlase himself could have -accomplished nothing better than that. - -On January 12th he set off from Redruth towards Penzance in torrents of -rain. Just above Rosewarne he came across a gypsy caravan, and of -necessity must go to find its inhabitants and talk with them. A dark -woman addressed him; he asked her her name in Romany. She pretended at -first not to understand, but finally answered him. Presently her -husband, “a remarkably knavish-looking personage,” put out his head and -began to discourse with him. He told him that their name was Bosvile. -It will be remembered that the “Flaming Tinman” of Mumper’s Dingle was -called Bosvile. The Bosviles, or Boswells, as they were called in later -days, were, in fact, a well-known tribe of gypsies in the West of -England. Another family, real Cornish in all their associations, formed -a branch of the ubiquitous Smiths. In 1866 they departed from England -almost in a body for America, where most of the Stanleys and the Coopers -had already gone. - -While talking with Bosvile and his mort, Borrow heard the sound of -fiddles in an adjoining tent, and was invited to join the company, for -doubtless his perfect knowledge of the language and his unfailing -fascination over the gypsies had overcome all their first suspicions; but -he told them that he was “mokhado” (muddy and dirty), gave them a -four-penny piece, and departed. He went through Hayle, then, and now, -one of the Cornish homes of industry, which he contemptuously dismisses -as “a filthy place.” Reaching Penzance in the evening, he dined at the -Union Hotel, and held converse with a mining agent, whom he discovered to -be “a sensible man, full of Cornish patriotism.” - -On the 13th he turned up Mr. Burney at Mousehole, one of the quaintest -fishing villages among the hundred peppered round the Cornish coast, and -found him excellent company. There is just a glimpse in his memoranda of -the kind of miscellany Borrow might have given to the world if he had -ever written his book on Cornwall—a mixture of travel and religion, -legend and dialogue, philology and adventure. A page or two would -certainly have been occupied by the story which Burney told him the first -day they met of his doings on the West Coast of Africa—many naval -officers of the mid-century could relate good stories of slave-chasing in -those regions—and especially of the triumphant expedition to the town of -a native king, who at first resisted their demands, his capital being -fortified and defended by thirty guns of sorts. The essence of the tale -was that while the palaver was in progress Burney’s gunner went round and -drenched the touch-holes of all the thirty defending pieces. Borrow -returned to Penzance that night: again, had the book been written, we -should doubtless have been in possession of the full narrative of the -experiences of that mining agent who had been in Greenland; but he is -only just dotted down, a bare, unclothed lay figure in the surviving -Notes. For the rest of his time in West Penwith, Borrow was the guest of -Mr. Burney, exploring the country of Dolly Pentreath, who in the -eighteenth century had spoken the Cornish language, and examining the -traces there remaining of the Spanish expedition against the Cornish -coasts in 1595. On the Sunday he went to church at Paul (where Dolly -Pentreath was buried), and in the evening “read the Bible and prayers to -the family” of Burney. - -There was, of course, a trip to St. Michael’s Mount, the show-place of -those parts, that castle on an island in Mount’s Bay, which approaches in -singularity and beauty, if it does not quite reach the glory of, its -namesake Mont St. Michel on the coast of Normandy. Borrow went with -Burney by boat from Mousehole, and observed with curiosity the points of -greatest interest on the island and about the buildings—the bastion by -which the Parliamentarians were said to have entered when they attacked -the place during the Civil War, the chapel within the castle, and the -stone vault underneath it in which a skeleton was found. Full of his -scheme for the book on Cornwall, he made his memoranda as he went in -order that the impressions might be quite fresh. Just as he set down old -William Borlase’s superstitions “on the top of the sacrificial rock” at -Carn Brea, so he records that his notes on St. Michael’s Mount were -written in the vault. - -Borrow returned from the Mount on foot to Mousehole, and two days later -started upon an expedition to the most impressive part of the Cornish -coast—the Logan Rock and Tol-Pedn-Penwith, the spot where Charles Wesley -is reputed to have written his famous hymn: - - “Here on a narrow neck of land - ’Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.” - -The traveller, however, says very little about the magnificent scenery, -and a great deal about the companion of his travels. In “The Romany -Rye,” when Lavengro has succeeded in divorcing his old friend Murtagh -from the disreputable trade of a thimble-engro, it will be remembered -that, in order to elevate the Irish boy’s spirits, he induces him to tell -a story. - - “Cheer up, man,” said I, “and let’s have the story, and let it be - about Ma-Coul and the salmon and his thumb.” - -But the tale of the finding of Finn-Ma-Coul in Veintry Bay, his servitude -of Dermod David Odeen, his cooking of the salmon, the blister on his -skin, his discovery of all witchcraft by the sucking of his thumb, and -all the rest of it, was not related to Lavengro in the ’twenties by -Murtagh at Horncastle Fair. It was told to him on the Cornish cliff -paths by one Cronan, the Irish guide who was conducting him to the Logan -Rock, as the Notebook shows, and inserted after Borrow got back to -Norfolk to lend the colour of romance to the end of “The Romany Rye.” Of -Cronan’s fairy stories, one is cited at length—the tale of the Clog -Vreach, or the parti-coloured stone, under the heading, “An Irish Fairy -Tale, told on a Wild Road by a Wild Native.” {185} It is a tale of a -drunken blackguard and tyrannical landlord, who vowed that he would shoot -all the fairies to be found on the moor where the Clog Vreach stood. He -went there and fired off all his ammunition, but when he returned his -body was bent, his tongue was hanging out, and his servants, seeing that -he was next door to dead, put him to bed, and four people poured raw -brandy down his throat all night. After that it is not surprising to -learn that in twenty-four hours his body had turned black and life had -left him. Cronan did not attribute his death to this remarkable -prescription, but rather to the vengeance of the supernatural powers. -“And,” says he, “a very fitting end it was for a person who was a tyrant -and interfered with the fairies.” - -These things seem to have occupied Borrow on the journey to the exclusion -of all else. Before he left the district, however, he made some extracts -from the register of Paul Church, recording the death of a Keigwin killed -by the Spaniards in 1595, and the death of Dolly Pentreath (entered in -her married name of Dorothy Jeffery) in 1777. He had hunted up an old -man of eighty at Mousehole, who in his boyhood had seen and heard Dolly -Pentreath, and he had made a long list of Cornish words taken down from -the lips of aged persons in that village. No doubt the Cornish book was -intended to include a vocabulary of the old tongue. - -I do not know of any evidence that Borrow had made a study of the Cornish -language in previous years, but his command of Welsh, and in a less -degree his knowledge of the three variants of Gaelic, made almost the -whole of the Cornish words surviving, in names of places and people, and -in peculiarities of local dialect, easily understood of him. There is a -general resemblance between Cornish and Welsh about which, I am told, all -writers agree, though they differ as to its exact extent. But the truth -is probably not far from the statement of Sir John Dodridge, who in 1630 -said of the Cornish: “They have a particular language called Cornish -(although now much worn out of use), differing but little from the Welsh -and the language of the Britaines of France.” Mr. Henry Jenner, F.S.A., -in his admirable “Handbook of the Cornish Language,” states that Welsh, -Cornish, and Breton “may be said to be as near together as three separate -languages can well be, but to have drifted too far apart to be accounted -three dialects of the same language.” - -The principal differences between Cornish and Welsh can be stated very -briefly. The following points show the main divergences between the -Cornish of the later literary remains and the Welsh of the books and -newspapers of the present day:— - -(_a_) Certain grammatical differences, such as the occasional use of an -indefinite article, never employed in Welsh. - -(_b_) A number of variations in vocabulary, in which Cornish will often -be found to have used a word current in contemporary Breton in place of -one current in contemporary Welsh. This is not surprising, even if it be -not assumed that the language was taken into Brittany from England, for -the relations between the shipping ports of Cornwall and Brittany were -exceedingly close, especially those relations of contraband traffic so -dear to the hearts of the writers of romance. - -(_c_) Phonetic changes resembling corruptions, such as the substitution -of “j” or English “ch” for “d” or “t” in the bodies or the beginnings of -words, and of “s” or “z” for the same letters at the ends of words. {187} - -It will be seen that Borrow could have found such differences as these no -stumbling-block to his philological excursions. He would readily -recognise _Tywardreath_ as the equivalent of the Welsh, Tywardraeth, the -house on the sands, and would be assisted thereto by the sight of the -wide stretches of white sand fringing St. Austell Bay in the angle where -Tywardreath stands on its hill side. He would identify _Hendra_ as -Hendre, the old stead; _Chyandour_ as Tyrdwr, the house of the water; -_Egloskerry_ as Eglwyscerrig, the stone church; and such forms as _nance_ -for nant, a ravine, _pons_ for pont, a bridge, _plou_ for plwyf, a -parish, would offer no difficulty to one familiar with parallel changes -in other groups of languages. - - - - -CHAPTER X -THE BOOK THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN - - -BY January 26th, 1854, Borrow was back among his friends at Penquite, -bursting in upon them lyrically with: - - “Behold the man who’s been at Kinmel Dray, - Who passed by Kinmel Cres upon his way, - And who at Kinmel Worthey made a stay.” - -He and Mr. Taylor undertook a long moorland tramp by tor and bog that day -to Kilmar, a jagged and precipitous hill behind the Cheesewring, where is -the huge rock structure popularly known as “King Arthur’s Bed.” The -Arthurian mood, to be developed presently, was already coming upon him. -When, next day, he walked to Liskeard, to visit the ex-Mayor once more, -and met the worthy Town Clerk, the talk turned from “Jew houses” to King -Arthur’s court, and his imaginative vision darted off to the North and -the golden traditions of glorious Camelot. On these he brooded while he -walked, and while he sat by the roaring fire of hazel faggots in the -kitchen of Penquite. Not that he allowed these ethereal matters to -engross him entirely, for he was curious about the cost of hazel-wood as -fuel—remembering that he had burnt it at the shrine of Isopel, the “Queen -of the Dingle,” thirty years gone. So he notes: “Hazel faggots, 10s. a -hundred, at 30 lbs.” - -Going about among the natives, he disdained no unconsidered trifle of -lore and knowledge. Cornish phrases struck his fancy, such as “bread -baked in the clome”—in earthenware “kettles” on the open hearth, covered -with burning peat, bread of such a rare flavour and quality, indeed, as -twentieth-century man cannot conceive, even in St. Cleer, where the -“machine-baked” variety is now hawked by half a dozen enterprising bakers -from the neighbouring towns. There is another Cornish delicacy which -does persist; it is known as “thunder and lightning”—a _soupçon_ of sugar -syrup over the clotted cream of the country. “Poor old Philp,” he -records one of his relatives as narrating among the characteristics of a -local notoriety—“Poor old Philp used to like ‘triggle’ over cream.” - -One story given to him by Mr. Taylor was of an old man who built himself -a hovel of turf on Kilmar Tor. In the winter of 1814 there was a great -snow-storm, and the old man’s hut was buried in the drifts for two nights -and two days. When they dug him out they found that he had been in bed -all the time, and declared that it was “the longest night I ever knawed; -I thought t’d never end.” - -There was another dinner party at the old house of his forefathers. He -ploughed to Tredinnick through the drizzle of a “soft” Cornish day. -“Ben’t got wet, ha’ thee?” was the salutation of William Borrow, aged -seventy, welcoming him to the homestead. One of his few stumbling-blocks -was the Cornish dialect. “My relations are most excellent people,” he -wrote to his wife, “but I could not understand more than half of what -they said.” The simplicity of their mode of life was a surprise to him, -and probably a pleasant one; he found no affectation of gentility among -them. Wealth to the extent of £70,000 was reported to be in the united -hands of the family, but the head of it, Henry Borrow, “lives in a house -in which there is not a single grate—nothing but open chimneys.” - -Discussions about the character and attributes of the pixies were -constant. Henry could hardly tell him whether he believed in the pixies -or not; but he did believe in the Durdy Dogs, having himself heard them -giving tongue. If Henry had confessed to a faith in pixies, he need not -have been ashamed of his intellectual company. The belief was shared by -no smaller a person than the redoubtable Hawker of Morwenstow, who saw -and chased a pixy two years later as he rode through a gorge on the way -home from Wellcombe. He relates how he felt himself “flush and then grow -pale” when he saw a “brown, rough shape” start up among the furze bushes, -and how, “remembering St. Thomas’s word that every spirit must crouch to -the Sign,” he made the sign in the air before urging his horse towards -the creature—which, of course, escaped! - -Pixies, legends, and philology, however, all took a place in his keen -inquiries secondary to authentic recollections of his father’s youth. He -makes full notes of two anecdotes related to him. Henry Borrow’s account -of the Menheniot Fair affray, as the traveller pencilled it down, is full -of delicious filial exultation, which is repeated in another story, -narrated to him by Thomas Borrow, of Lamellion, and thus set forth: - - “My father.—At one time, at Bodmin Bridge, was a big, bony man six - foot high, the terror of everybody at Plymouth and Devonport. My - father fought him at Liskeard, just by a butcher’s shop. My father - struck him a blow which sent him staggering across the street into a - cooper’s shop. He got up and came on again, saying, ‘Where is - Borrow?’ ‘Here I am,’ said my father, and struck him another blow - which knocked him down, after staggering six yards. He was - dreadfully sick, and did not ask for Borrow again.” - -There is a pathetic as well as a humorous interest in these explorations -of Cornish memory for traces of the father who had died in so much doubt -as to the future of this son, and so much well-justified scepticism about -the prospect of his maintaining himself on his “Armenian or other -acquirements.” - -Borrow became increasingly anxious to see the wild country on the -rock-bound north coast before he left the Duchy for London. Letters from -Mrs. Pollard mention his desire to inspect “King Arthur’s Castle at -Tintagell.” On February 1st he left Penquite for Tredinnick, to spend a -last day and night with the Borrow family there, and to brood again over -the memories of his father which the little old house awoke. It was the -only night he had slept at Tredinnick; he had been previously “much -affected on being taken upstairs, at the remembrance of his father, and -shed tears.” After breakfast the next day he set off for a rough -cross-country ride, mounted on a horse named Triumph, and accompanied by -his cousin, Nicholas Borrow. By way of the road he had twice traversed -with Miss Taylor, past Doniert’s grave, by Redgate, and along the valley -of the lonely Dreynes river, they cantered to Bolventor and the Jamaica -Inn. The derelict village of Bolventor consists at the present time -mainly of a large building set in a square of grass-grown cobbles—the -erstwhile famous Jamaica Inn. Now deprived of a licence, and selling -mineral waters to casual and disconsolate wayfarers or thirsty cyclists, -this hostelry, at the time of Borrow’s visit, was a place of some -importance—a coaching house upon the main road between London and -Falmouth. Not many years before it had been busy day and night with -scenes such as those described in the account of the inn in “The Romany -Rye,” where Lavengro acted as hostler and clerk of the stables. The -coaches clattered over the cobble-stones, and the square echoed with the -cries of jarveys and postilions, and the rattle of harness, and the -champing of bits. It was already beginning to decline in 1854; for the -railway was building far to the south, and a new line of traffic was -being opened up. - -The two horsemen; now within sight of the greatest hills of Cornwall, -Brown Willy and Rough Tor, left the road and struck across the heath in -the direction of the mountainous northern horizon. “We then proceeded,” -wrote Borrow, “over moor and moss, till we came to a stream, which we -forded. It was rocky and dangerous.” If this was, as I suppose, Hanter -Gantick, the great ravine in which the Lanke river roars down between -banks composed of huge aggregations of granite boulders, the description -was not too bold. Even in his wildest adventure, he could hardly have -attempted to get a horse across a worse place. “We then ascended another -hill, on the top of which we saw at a distance an inhabited country.” -The eminence was probably Rough Tor moor, and the cultivated land the -undulating country to the north of the central wild. Whichever of the -cluster of hills it was, it could not have failed of interest for Borrow. -They provided him with hut circles, with a great Logan stone encrusted -with Druidical superstitions, the court or “hall” of King Arthur which he -had been discussing at Liskeard with Mr. Jago, and the remains of a -chapel to St. Michael, whose gate arch was removed some twenty years -before to make a doorway for the Britannia Inn, near Altarnun! Having -seen his cousin through the wilderness, and pointed out to him the Pisgah -sight of “an inhabited country,” Nicholas Borrow bade him an affectionate -farewell, and returned with the horses to Tredinnick, while George set -out on foot alone to reach Camelford. “I passed by a place called Carn -Long, and, striding forward, found myself at Camelford before I expected. -A wilder journey over moss and moor I never made.” The “moss,” by which -he betokens the bogs in the neighbourhood of Brown Willy, is a notorious -great hindrance to travellers who would otherwise ascend these hills in -much larger numbers. - -The extraordinary scenery and the romantic associations of the country -upon which he was now entering amply repaid him for the toils and pains -of his day’s scramble across the backbone of Cornwall. He was in King -Arthur’s land. At Camelford he trod a battlefield ten centuries old, for -here it was that Egbert the Saxon met the Britons of the West in 823. -Borrow did not linger in the quaint old town, but pushed on towards -Tintagel by way of Slaughter Bridge already mentioned, which inherited -its grisly name from that “last weird battle in the West,” where Mordred -fell and Arthur received his mortal hurt. Enthusiastic local -authorities, more confident than the general, are able to give the date -of the conflict as A.D. 543. “At last I reached Tintagel, about 6.30 -p.m., and went to an inn (the Wharncliffe Arms), kept by Symmonds,” to -whom he had been recommended from Penquite. After such a day he was glad -of its shelter and of the creature comforts it offered to a tired man on -a cold February night. - -The fascinations of Tintagel are many and oddly mingled. The very air -seems full of wraiths; the solid and substantial characters of mediæval -history have their ghosts hovering about these rugged hills, no less than -the more ethereal spectres of the heroes of Arthurian myth. Tintagel -Castle, on the heights to the west, to which Borrow turned next day, is -an ancient ruin standing on a wonderful site. It has been familiar to -most people for a long time as one of the wildest and most picturesque -scenes in England, and the impression may remain the same to-day in the -minds of those who are imaginative enough to be able to blot out of the -picture the incongruous achievements of the modern hotel-builder. But it -was not so well known to any but Cornishmen when Borrow visited it, for -that was long before the iron road had reached within thirty miles of it. -The fable of Arthur’s birth in the impregnable fortress, Dundagil, whose -remains now stand gaunt and silent on their rocky eminence, may be -dismissed by a date. The architecture of the original castle was Norman; -the rebuilding took place in the thirteenth century. There is now a -great gulch 200 feet wide between the cliff where the two principal -courts stood and the “island”; it was formerly much narrower, and is -reputed to have been spanned by a drawbridge. Yet it is pleasant to -dream, as Borrow did and as Tennyson did when he lived at Boscastle a -year or two later meditating his Idylls, that this was the veritable -scene where the blameless King held court, and the Knights of the Round -Table served him. Tennyson has shackled the Arthurian legend to Tintagel -with links that can never be broken. And it is also pleasant to recall -the more authentic and more historical connections of the place—that -twelfth century when the Castle was a great stronghold, when the little -chapel of St. Julitta was founded upon the height to the west of the -island; those days in the thirteenth century when Tintagel was in such -height of glory, when David Prince of Wales, seeking refuge in his -struggle with Henry the Third, received the hospitality of its Cornish -lord. It is not a far cry across the Bristol Channel, past Lundy, to the -coast of Wales, and as he looked northward over the grey sea, Borrow -could hardly have resisted the customary emotions that the thought of -Wales created in him, with his memories of the procession of the bards -from Ab Gwylim by Elis Wyn to Gronwy Owen. - -But this was rich ground for him, and he was fully employed in absorbing -impressions of men and events, past and present, which he briefly -recorded in the two notebooks that were afterwards meant to be expanded -into his work on Cornwall. There was the quaint harbour of Boscastle -near by; there was Forrabury minster, the “silent tower of Bottreux,” -with its bell-legend—the story of the peal of bells which an Earl of -Bottreux presented to Forrabury in order that its music might rival that -of Tintagel, the wreck of the ship which conveyed them from London just -off the shore while Tintagel was sounding the curfew, the warning rung -for mariners on that grim lee shore by the buried bells when a storm is -approaching from the Atlantic. There was the lovely waterfall of St. -Knighton’s Kieve. Borrow had a taste in waterfalls, and was eloquent in -describing them, though unscientific, as Dr. Russel Wallace has pointed -out. The venerable evolutionist, remarking on the progress of his -doctrine, illustrated it by the fact that so great a writer as George -Borrow could speak of a waterfall as being in all details as it was -“‘since the day of creation, and will probably remain to the day of -judgment.’” There were other associations—political in kind—which would -not have rejoiced him so exceedingly; he had no great love for -politicians, especially of the Whig sort who had controlled most of the -forty odd pocket boroughs of Cornwall. Bossiney was one of them, the -hamlet close to Tintagel, whose chief claim to utility after it ceased to -return two members to Parliament was that it contained a smithy. - -On the wild coast to the west, at that time almost inaccessible and -unknown—where now the tripper in his thousands hears the music of the -Atlantic on Trebarwith Strand—he spent three days, walking long distances -and reaching as far west as Pentire Point, which guards the Bay of -Padstow. On the return journey he took the inland road, through St. -Minver and Egloshayle (“the church by the stream”), where, to avoid the -evils of continual tidal bores, a pious fifteenth-century parson got up a -subscription to build the noble bridge of seventeen arches that spans the -River Camel. At Pengelly, close to the celebrated slate quarries of -Delabole, he made the last entry in his Cornish journal. He is sitting -in the little parlour of the old Delabole Arms, and sees two prints on -the wall with inscriptions in French: “Le Revd. Dr. Amour,” and “A -l’Amour il faut se rendre.” “In the latter print,” says he, “quite an -angelic _petit maître_. The March of Gentility has reached Pengelley!” - -Having packed up his things at Penquite and said good-bye to his Cornish -relations, he turned his face eastwards, and was in London on February -10th. - -To lovers of Borrow, even to mere admirers of his genius, it must always -be a cause of regret—vain enough, but none the less sorrowful—that among -his numerous failures was the failure to write the book on Cornwall -advertised when “The Romany Rye” was published. Perhaps a reason or two -may not be far to seek. It has already been seen that “Lavengro,” on -which he had expended the labour of years, was received with icy -indifference by the public and with torrid hostility by the critics. The -fate of his darling book did much to embitter several years of his life. -The visit to Cornwall broke into this grey period like a burst of -sunshine into a wintry day; it was warm and friendly there, redolent of -beautiful memories of the father he adored; the simple and hospitable -people he met were full of homely kindness, with just a piquant suspicion -of hero-worship; the country itself was full of charm. The whole -experience interested, even inspired him, and no one can doubt that while -he was in Cornwall, and for some time after he left it, he fully intended -that the promised book should be written. He had talked over the project -with the Taylors at Penquite; later he arranged the matter with John -Murray. - -Then came distractions. When he returned from the land of saints and -pixies to London and the east, it was to resume work upon that Appendix -in which he was pouring out the overflowing vials of his wrath upon his -critics, upon the army of his mortal enemies, upon the mythical myriads -of those whom he supposed to be placing obstacles in the path towards -official employment which he desired to tread. He filled his letters and -bored his friends with the mournful burden of his complaint against -Governments and authorities, lords and notabilities, who to his distorted -imagination seemed to be in league against the interests and prosperity -of George Henry Borrow. Amid these glooms the ray of sunshine faded. In -London he had none of the liveliness that possessed him in the West; -morose and melancholy moods alternated with savage outbursts against his -foes—even though he spent a considerable part of his time in so cheerful -a haunt as the library of the British Museum, looking for material with -which to confute and confound them. At last “The Romany Rye” came out. -It was as great a failure as “Lavengro.” Its reception disheartened him -for literary work, and the Cornish book receded farther into the -distance. Finally, his adventures in Wales intervened, and he chose -rather to write of them than of the smaller subject of which he might -have made a better book, fine as “Wild Wales” unquestionably is. - -There was so much good material in his Cornish tour, and in the lore and -gossip which he drank in so avidly, that the disjointed notes of his -impressions do only create a thirst for more. In his printed works there -are but few references to the Duchy in the West. There is the passage in -“Lavengro” where he speaks of his father’s Cornish descent, and quotes -the proverb, “In Cornwall are the best gentlemen.” And in “Wild Wales” -there is another adage which he had picked up in the West—the “proverb in -the Gerniweg . . . which was the language of my forefathers, saying, -‘Ne’er leave the old way for the new’”—the theme, by the way, of a -Cornish ballad given in Llhuyd’s _Archæologia Britannica_ and translated -by Borrow. That is all. The book he would have written on this land of -miracles and fairies, of Celtic legend, of the last struggles of the -British race in England against their Germanic conquerors, the land where -the language of the ancient people was spoken within the memory of -gossips with whom he conversed, where the very names of people and places -were fragrant of the old order, where - - “By Tre, Pol, and Pen, - You may know the Cornishmen,”— - -such a book would have been worth having. A Celt in mind and blood and -bone, he would have written it with sympathy, and he would have found it -a subject not nearly so keenly exploited as the Wales of which he -afterwards wrote, or the Manxland where he compiled similar journals in a -later year. - -Within the comparatively brief time he allowed himself, Borrow saw a -great deal that was characteristic of Cornwall. It is a county of many -characters, with industries and employments various if small. Its -patriotic toast is: “Fish, Copper, and Tin.” To this triple sentiment -agriculture might be appropriately added. Borrow saw them all. He saw -farming in the hills in his own family and among their friends. He -watched tin and copper mining in the Caradons, and saw how the -West-countrymen - - “. . . . From the bleak Cornubian shore - Dispense the mineral treasure which of old - Sidonian pilots sought,” - -as the imaginative Akenside has it. Mount’s Bay was encircled by legends -of the Phœnicians and their voyages to the “Cassiterides” for tin. At -Newlyn—long before it became the most bepainted village in three -kingdoms—and at Mousehole with his friend Burney, he saw the fishing -industry in full operation. We should have had from him many a burst of -the dialogue of which he was a consummate master—as with Henry Goodman, -the nonagenarian of Tremar, and with the old men he met in Dolly -Pentreath’s parish of Paul—and the Cornish language, once spoken -throughout the South of England, would have been discussed, if not in -sufficiently learned style to satisfy the expert, at any rate in a way -that would have made for the entertainment of mankind at large. - -We have read of his Cornish father’s prowess in “the art of -fisticuffery,” and might certainly have looked for a spirited account of -the affair at Bodmin Bridge when the terror of all Plymouth and Devonport -was vanquished, and another of the fracas at Menheniot Fair. But we -should probably also have had an essay upon an art which has always been -far more popular in Cornwall than boxing—that is, the art of wrestling. -We may be sure he would have expressed his patriotic preference for the -Cornish over the Devonshire style. He might have agreed with Touchstone -that “breaking ribs” was not sport for ladies, but he would have -regretted its decline because it was a vigorous and manly game, and he -would have fastened upon the career of the great wrestler Polkinghorne, -whose contest with the Devonshire hero Cann, on Tamar Green at Devonport -in 1826, was a Homeric battle worthy the pen of him who discoursed of -that great fight in which Thurtell was “lord of the concourse.” He would -have given us the true inwardness of “the Cornish hug” and the “Flying -Mare,” and might even have cited the ballad of Will Treffry and Little -Jan, whose untimely end left sorrowing the lady who was to have been his -bride that very day: - - “Then, with a desperate toss, - Will showed the Flying Hoss, - And Little Jan fell on the tan, - And never more he spake. - Oh, Little Jan, alack! - The ladies say, Oh, woe’s the day! - Oh, Little Jan, alack!” - -But most of all do I miss such a treatise as should have grown out of his -exploration of the Tintagel country, speculating in what degree he would -have adopted the Cornish theory of Arthur, what he would have made of the -mass of tradition and romance that has collected about that stretch of -coast. One may imagine how his mind would have followed the legend of -Arthur from its birthplace in the Far North down through his beloved -Wales to the spot on which he stood before the crumbling walls of -Dundagil, out of whose silent ruins Tennyson’s imagination was about to -construct his marvellous picture of the stately halls of Camelot. -Borrow’s would have been a vastly different story from Tennyson’s -idealisation of the mystery of Arthur’s life, and still more startling -would have been its contrast with the version of the master-mystic of -these parts, the immortal Vicar of Morwenstow. {205} This in spite of -the fact that, as Hawker said, he worked into his poem “The Record and -Rationale of Keltic Cornwall, the rock, barrow, moor, mountain all there, -with the spirit of our fathers rehearsing their intent”—for Hawker’s -Catholic theology would have been anathema to the Papist-hater, Borrow, -and the man who wrote supporting the Bull of Pius IX., promulgated that -very year, would inevitably have been placed on the Borrovian index. -Borrow would rather have harked back to Walter Mapes, and beyond him to -Malory, and beyond him to Geoffrey of Monmouth. His Arthur’s mother -would have been the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, and Uther would -have been his father. His Arthur would have wed the daughter of -Leodegraunce, King of Camelyard; the Table Round—the most valuable -accretion which Cornwall has given to the legend—would have been Arthur’s -wedding present from Leodegraunce, who would have received it from Uter -Pendragon, for whom it would have been made by Merlin, Prince of -Enchanters. Camelot would have been Camelford, and not Winchester, nor -Queen Camel in Somerset; and we might have had a discussion of the -question what Shakespeare meant when he made Kent in _King Lear_ say to -the Duke of Cornwall: - - “Goose, if I had you upon Sarum Plain, - I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot.” - -The argument in favour of Queen Camel is that on the moors in that -neighbourhood it is customary to breed geese; but then, geese are among -the common objects of the Cornish moors. - -We should not have lacked, either, some examination of the scanty -literature of Old Cornwall, of the _Pascon Agan Arluth_, the Passion of -Our Lord, of the trilogy of poems on The Beginning of the World, the -Passion, and the Resurrection. We should have heard of the Miracle -Plays, which continued to be performed in the amphitheatres or “rounds” -of Cornwall well into the seventeenth century—the ancient drama of -_Meriasek_, Duke of Brittany, and the corrupt sixteenth-century masque of -“The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood”; and we should have been -told with approval of these plays that, like those of Brittany, they were -far more reverent and more decent than the corresponding performances in -the English and French languages. - -Such a book, in Borrow’s inimitable prose, with the interludes and -dialogues whose supreme merit Ford was quick to perceive, would have been -invaluable. The subject is so luxuriant in interest and so novel that it -might well have had a far greater success than anything he had written -since “The Bible in Spain.” But its only place is on the long list of -the Unwritten Books of the world, a literary ellipsis deplored but never -to be filled. - - - - -CHAPTER XI -THE LAND OF ELIS WYN - - -IN these years of the fulness of his manhood, the wandering spirit -possessed and compelled Borrow. It dragged him all over the United -Kingdom in search of such adventure and distraction as he could find. He -allowed his work on “The Romany Rye” to be held up by the scheme of a -tour in Wales. With his wife and Miss Clarke he spent the summer and -autumn of 1854 in the land of the Cymry. This expedition was on -different lines from any he had ever undertaken before. He was far more -tractable than of old, far more “civilised” than when, in his youth, he -had roamed the highways and lived in the hedges and the inns. He was far -more comfortable, but also sadly less dramatic than while rummaging the -peninsula for gypsy lore. He went about these travels with a much less -romantic spirit than he had manifested in his Cornish journeys. - -Wales—its literature, its history, its language, and its bards—had been a -passion of his life. When he set about making its personal acquaintance, -the heat of the amour had cooled off, and he became a tourist rather than -a picaro. Some years later he published a full record of his travels and -experiences. At that time the world was far less interested in George -Borrow than it had been, and few people took the trouble to compare “Wild -Wales” with his other books. But a later generation, which has found a -new interest in him, has made many comparisons. One of the commonest -observations is that the new book differs from its predecessors in that -it is a mild and pleasant record of travel; idiosyncrasies and -angularities are there, it is true, but the book is not all fads and -angles. Many reasons have been given for this. One of the most -ingenious is that Borrow was accompanied by two ladies who knew exactly -what he was doing, and that he dared neither seek the vulgar adventures -that give colour to his other works, nor invent them in order to add -purple patches where they seemed necessary for artistic effect. One -declines to adopt this theory. Borrow may have been somewhat restrained -by the presence of his wife and her daughter while he lived with them at -Llangollen. But he was often away for considerable periods on walking -excursions, and, in the latter part of his tour, when he tramped through -Wales from north to south, he was entirely alone. There could have been -no restraint upon him then. He was at liberty to seek out the most -disreputable company he pleased, to consort with gypsies, or tinkers, or -the scum of the earth—if it can be admitted without treason that Wales -contains any scum. That Borrow was induced by the influence of his -womenkind to moderate the tone of his writing is a thing one cannot -believe: he returned at the end of the year to their company at Yarmouth, -to add some of the most vitriolic passages to “The Romany Rye.” - -Two sets of circumstances may more fitly account for the character of -“Wild Wales.” One is that Borrow had idealised Wales in his mind, and -that he went about it determined to see only what was good and noble in -the country and its people. His early enthusiasm for its language had -given birth to an extraordinary passion for its literature, and a -hero-worshipping devotion to its great ones. To him there were no -mountains like the Welsh mountains of which he had dreamed in his boyhood -among the fenlands of Norfolk. To him there were no princes to be -compared with the Welsh chieftains who resisted the tide of Saxon -aggression. He might pretend as stoutly as he pleased that the -Anglo-Saxon race was the flower of the earth, that there were no finer -fellows in the records of chivalry than the English prize-fighters, and -that there was no nectar to be mentioned with English ale. But when, as -in Cornwall and Wales, he was among the Celts from whom he sprang, all -this superficial structure of association tumbled down, and his true and -native soul breathed its proper atmosphere. Wales was all good to him. -His delight and admiration were unfeigned. They appear in the book, and -they appear equally in the notes unused in the book, which Dr. Knapp has -preserved. - -The second set of circumstances relates to the date at which the book was -published. It did not appear till 1862. By that time (he would have -been the last man to admit it) some home-truths had been forced upon -Borrow. He had discovered that the game he played with the public in -“Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” was not worth the candle. He wanted to -write a popular book, and to regain some of the ground he had lost. The -public did not like his anti-Popery screeds; he deliberately excised -anything that could offend them in that respect, as will be seen. The -public did not care twopence about his gypsies and would rather be -without them. He deliberately avoided any reference to the gypsies of -Wales, though they were perhaps the most interesting and the most -intelligent of the Romany tribes inhabiting the British Isles. - -During his Welsh wanderings Borrow was more than ever the philologist let -loose. His joy was unbounded in the discovery of persons who said to him -“Dim Saesneg,” signifying that they did not understand English, in the -exercise of his Welsh upon them, in their astonishment that there should -be one tall Englishman striding through Wales who could speak to them in -their own vernacular. His Welsh has been criticised with a certain -degree of justice. It was book-learnt. But it was a sufficiently good -working medium to enable him to get into closer touch with the people -than he could have done with English alone. When he was reciting Welsh -verses on the top of Snowdon, a native asked him whether he came from -Brittany. The variation which the Celtic language underwent in its -journey through Cornwall into Armorica is surprisingly slight. The -present writer was sailing once in a boat off the coast of Finistère with -two Breton fishermen, exploring certain grottoes inhabited by the -korrigans, which take the place of pixies in Brittany, and found some -difficulty in reconciling their French with any standard known to him. -But, they said, if against his next visit he would learn to speak -“Ouelsh,” some interesting and profitable discourse would be easy. And -they might have been, for all their appearance, two dark-eyed denizens of -Mevagissey or the Cardigan coast. - -If Borrow had only a literary acquaintance with the language, he had a -spiritual affinity with the land and the people. Welshmen admit that -“Wild Wales” is one of the finest books on their country ever produced, -either by Welsh or English writers. Indeed, it could hardly fall short -of that, being the work of a man fascinated by his subject, who -maintained a high pitch of enthusiasm for every phase of it, whether he -was escorting his ladies to see fine prospects in the neighbourhood of -Llangollen or making excursions with John Jones, the Methodist weaver, or -visiting simple cottages to drink milk and talk with their inhabitants of -the works of the Bards and Mystics over which he had pored long years ago -in the corporation library at Norwich, or entertaining rough miners with -ghost stories in mountain hostelries. - -While the best episodes of the tour are given in the book, the incidents -recorded in his diary and omitted from the published work possess one or -two features of interest. For instance, as Dr. Knapp points out, the -interview with the Irishman on the road between Cerrig y Drudion and -Cernioge Mawr would have been much improved in point of realism if Borrow -had included in it the words of the song, “Croppies, lie down!” and the -objurgations of the patriotic fiddler on each verse of this pæan of the -detested Orangemen. The scene appeared in this form in his original -draft. But there were reasons, already set out, why he did not want just -at this time to declaim to the public: - - “Whoop! Protestants, whoop! - And drink full of hope, - Bad luck to the Devil, Pretender, and Pope! - And down, down, Croppies, lie down!” - -That truculent song, which had been “the delight of the young gentlemen -of the Protestant Academy of that beautiful old town” of Clonmel, would -not have been the delight of the British people at large when “Wild -Wales” was issued from the press, and Borrow had learnt enough to know -that. The other principal omission from the book is the Ghost Story of -Lope de Vega. We may accept without regret the fact that he did not -print the account of the duel on Wimbledon Common between Colonel Lennox -and the Duke of York, which has nothing to do with anything in -particular. But the Ghost Story was originally set in a most suitable -framework, and would have read well. He always maintained that it was -_facile princeps_ among ghost stories, and, with due homage to the -Society for Psychical Research, one may admit that his judgment was not -far wrong. He got the tale from an English translation of the Romance, -_El Peregrino en su Patria_, published in London in 1738. He told it to -a company of miners assembled in the inn of Guter Vawr, with whom he had -some difficulty at first in getting upon terms of amity. Borrow may have -lacked colloquial knowledge of the Welsh language, but he had something -which was better: he appreciated with the keenest relish its musical -charm, and he admired it without stint. He understood the people and -their ways of thought, and could accommodate himself to their habits. He -idolised their heroes and poets. Thus he got outside himself more in -“Wild Wales” than he succeeded in doing in any other book, and the -observation has been very justly made upon it that it is an itinerary -rather than an autobiography. Nevertheless, it throws an interesting -light on some facets of his character, and is a book which his friends -must love because it displays him in happier moods and under warmer skies -than most of his writings. - -The clouds lowered again after the exaltation of the Welsh tour. He -returned from the mountains and the bards, from the rarefied atmosphere -of Snowdonia and the warmth of his welcome by a Celtic society, to sordid -disputes and wordy warfares about his new book, “The Romany Rye.” It was -exactly four years before that Murray had begun imploring him to “give -the new volumes the finishing touches.” He had been “touching” them with -a vengeance, and the finish was not at all to Murray’s taste. He -completed the task soon after his arrival in Yarmouth, and packed off the -manuscript to Albemarle Street. That respectable thoroughfare was next -door to being scandalised by the contents of the parcel. True, Murray -put his criticisms in a friendly way, but they were strong criticisms, -and they were backed by literary opinions of some weight. But Borrow had -experienced a surfeit of critics, and his anger was supreme. He told -Murray he had given him the manuscript on condition that it should not -pass out of his hands, and complained that it had been shown round among -several people. He declared that he was not anxious to publish it, a -statement from which the usual discount must be subtracted. He proceeded -to describe it as “one of the most learned works ever written” (this with -Mrs. Borrow as his mouthpiece, for decency’s sake), and his manifesto -then diffused itself in renewed attacks on the foes of “Lavengro,” -refusal to have anything to do with Murray’s suggestion for a book on -Russia, and a denunciation of England as an ingrate country. “It owed -much to him, and he owed nothing to it.” - -Borrow’s books not only took a long time to write, but had a bad habit of -hanging about after they had been written. Many things happened before -“The Romany Rye” appeared to a bewildered public, holding the critics “up -by their tails.” In the meantime, the Romany Rye himself had been -wandering again. He was, as De Quincey said of Descartes, “as restless -as a hyena.” In 1855 he took his wife and Miss Clarke to another -out-of-the-way corner of Celtic Britain—the Isle of Man. Making Douglas -his headquarters, he explored the country thoroughly, generally alone and -on foot. He was on the look-out for the material for another book, -which, as in the case of the Cornish volume, remained a project. He did -get as far as the title, “Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo: The Red Path and -the Black Valley,” and prepared an introduction for it. - -The Isle of Man was at that time, in the literary sense, an unoccupied -country, and Borrow would have worked over a fertile field of virgin soil -if he had carried out his purpose. There was no Manx Society; there was -no Manx _Miscellany_. The Runes were there for him to decipher and -describe; the poetry and the history of the island were at his disposal -to exploit. “In lone farmhouses and cottages situated in gills and -glens” were the “smoke-stained volumes” of “carvals” in manuscript, poems -of the people, which he diligently searched out while penetrating the -recesses of the island. The carvals—_Anglice_, carols—are mostly on -Biblical subjects and of no great antiquity. Borrow got possession of -two volumes and examined the contents of many. He had only a slight -acquaintance with the Manx language, but his general knowledge of Gaelic -stood him in good stead as he puzzled his way through the carval of -“Joseph,” or of “David and Goliath,” or of “The Evil Women,” of which -last he remarks that it is written in dispraise of the sex and recalls -the poem of Simonides on the same subject. It is the work of an -eighteenth-century smuggler named Moore, whose misogyny was displayed in -an original fashion—by picking out all the bad characters of the feminine -persuasion in the Holy Scriptures and relating their most wicked deeds. -Borrow says it “is a curious piece, and must certainly have found its way -abroad without clerical sanction.” He was not more interested in these -effusions than in the scanty printed literature of the island—such as the -ballads of “Brown William” and “Myle Charaine.” The former (“Ilian Dhu” -in the vernacular) commemorates one John William Christian, a Receiver of -the Isle of Man, who at the time of the Restoration was executed on -Hangoe Hill because he had surrendered to Cromwell. {218} Borrow -translated this poem, and also the ballad of “Myle Charaine,” the miser, -which he entitles “Mollie Charane.” His version was published in _Once a -Week_. He was fond enough of it to go hunting for the miser’s -descendants on a lonely curragh, much to the amazement of the good -people, who could not understand that the possession of an ancestor who -happened to have been mentioned in a poem was any good reason for the -invasion of their privacy. His keenest taste, however, took him much -farther back into the mists of the past than the balladists of the -eighteenth century. Was not the early history of the island a record of -the lives and deeds of his beloved Danes and Norsemen? Were not their -sepulchral monuments to be seen in the Runic stones? And, more distant -still, were there not the legends and the fragments of half-lost songs of -Finn, the Celtic hero whose exploits are celebrated in so many lands? He -had encountered Finn in Ireland. He had found him in Cornwall under the -wing of the Irish guide, Cronan. Here he met him again. Walking with -Borrow on Snaefell, a miner of Laxey, James Skillicorn (who was the donor -of one of his two volumes of carvals) recited a Manx tradition of Finn—“a -mighty man of valour and a swift runner.” - -There were two giants (so the tale ran) rejoicing in the name of Finn; of -these, Finn McCoul, a huge giant, was Scottish, and Finn McCoyle, a -lesser giant, was Manx. The Scots Finn, hearing rumours of the fame of -the Manx Finn, and feeling some jealousy, decided to visit him in order -that they might try their strength. So he waded across from the -southernmost point of Scotland to the northernmost point of the island. -Finn’s wife answered the door to him, and was at once stricken with -amazement and fear at his gigantic proportions. She saw that her -husband, who was inside lying on the bed, would be no match for him, and -therefore told him that McCoyle was not at home. - -“Who is the great fellow lying on the bed?” asked McCoul. - -“Only a little son of ours,” said the astute Mrs. McCoyle. - -The visiting giant then asked for something to eat, and she said she -would give him a cake such as they were in the habit of eating, and -presented him with an iron platter. - -McCoul crunched it to powder between his teeth, and swallowed it with the -utmost relish. - -Then McCoyle, assuming the part his wife had invented for him, and -pretending to be the son of a mighty father, offered to take McCoul out -to his father’s playing-ground and show him the ball with which he -played. Having reached the place, McCoyle directed the visitor’s -attention to a round crag of rock, weighing something more than a ton, -which he said was his father’s skittle-ball. “Can you do anything with -that?” he asked. - -McCoul seized it, threw it a mile high, and caught it again. - -“Well done!” cried the crafty McCoyle. “Let’s see you do it again.” - -And as he threw the rock up into the sky again, McCoyle went behind him -and gave him a push which sent him over the cliff, where he was dashed in -a thousand pieces. - -“Such an end,” says the tale, “may all those have who come over the water -expressly, as the Scottish giant did, to bully the decent people of Man.” - -In Cornwall Borrow found the ancient language dead; in the Isle of Man he -found it rapidly dying out of common use, and not much cultivated for -literary purposes. The Church services in Manx were being discontinued. -Deploring all this greatly, he still went on studying it. He was no -lover of Methodists—placing them in one of his comprehensive categories -with “Whigs, Muggletonians, and Latter-day Saints.” But his political -and religious prejudices did not interfere with his love of the Celtic -tongues or his devotion to poetry in any form, and when he had nothing -else to do he sat in his lodgings and read Killey’s translation into Manx -of the Methodist Hymn Book. Killey’s other chief work was the -translation of Parnell’s “Hermit.” Why anybody should want to translate -that highly overrated piece of Queen Annery into any language at all, it -is hard to say. His choice of subjects, however, did not deter Borrow -from paying homage to him and going to see his daughter, with whom he had -a discussion on the effects of Methodism in the island. It was summed up -in the best Borrovian oracular manner: “The Methodists have done much -good in Man,” he said to her, “but their doctrines and teaching have -contributed much to destroy the poetical traditions of the people.” This -dictum was very like that which R. S. Hawker proclaimed of the Methodists -in Cornwall. But Hawker did not allow that they had done any good at -all. Wesley, he said, caused the Cornish people to “_change_ their Sins -and called it conversion. . . . With my last Breath I protest that the -Man Wesley corrupted and depraved instead of improving the West of -England. . . . The Vices of the Body are not after all, bad as they are, -so hateful as the Sins of the Mind.” Borrow was nearer the truth than -Hawker. But it may be doubted whether the spread of Methodism had much, -if anything, to do with the evanishment of old poetic traditions; the -march of industrialism and the increasing fluidity of population were the -real culprits. - -Borrow trod the red path and explored the black glen—whose magnificence -he did not praise too highly—and inspected carvals, climbed walls to look -at carved stones, sketched with Henrietta, and generally enjoyed himself -for several weeks. It was the autumn of the fall of Sebastopol. The -news reached the island on September 10th, and provoked some of Borrow’s -most fiery denunciations of politicians and soldiers—the offence being -that the French had taken the Malakoff and the British had been repulsed -from the Redan. “The war might have been gloriously settled nearly a -year ago by the English, and they have got all the credit of the affair, -but for the inactivity and indecision of that miserable creature Raglan, -the aristocratical leader of the English and the secret friend of the -Russians. . . . Much shouting in Douglas and firing of guns in the -harbour, though for what reason it would be difficult to say.” - -Borrow’s patriotism was of a peculiar kind. He had the type of mind -which was generally “agin the Government,” and few of the operations of -British statesmanship, either at home or abroad, gave him any -satisfaction. Yet there never was a man who took more pride in the fact -that he was an Englishman. The sight of The Rock moved him to paroxysms -of patriotism. When he begins a paragraph, “O, England!” the experienced -reader knows what to expect, and all Radicals and other subversive -persons may “stand clear,” as they say at sea. But even they will -forgive him because the quality of his martial music is so high. - - “O England! long, long may it be before ere the sun of thy glory sink - beneath the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds - are now gathering rapidly round thee, still, still may it please the - Almighty to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in - duration and still brighter in renown than thy past! Or, if thy doom - be at hand, may that doom be a noble one and worthy of her who has - been styled the Old Queen of the Waters. May thou sink, if thou dost - sink, amid blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than - one nation to participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it - please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; - becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those selfsame foes - who now, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even - against their will, honour and respect thee.” - -Nor will the reader be shocked or surprised to learn that these somewhat -unpacific and heathen sentiments formed “part of a broken prayer for my -native land, which, after my usual thanksgiving, I breathed to the -Almighty ere retiring to rest that Sunday night at Gibraltar.” Like many -other Englishmen, he seemed to find more to admire in the institutions -and the character of his country when he was at a distance than when he -was at home. - -The principal authority for the Manx incidents is Dr. Knapp, who gives -fully the journals of the tour from which some extracts have been made. - - - - -CHAPTER XII -LONDON AGAIN - - -ON the return to Yarmouth, the trials of a crotchety temper were resumed. -Murray’s reception of “The Romany Rye” so inflamed Borrow’s anger that in -April, 1856, he recalled the precious manuscript in the curtest of curt -notes. Murray, nothing loth to rid himself of this wild book, with its -tigerish animadversions upon the literary world at large, packed it up -and sent it to Yarmouth, where it remained for another year. Its author, -in high dudgeon, kept his mind as far as possible off his grievances by -tramping about East Anglia and endeavouring to reawaken the sensations of -his youth upon the English roads. He rejoices in the sight of a coach, -which even then seemed a strange anachronism, so thoroughly had the -railway revolutionised the conditions of travel. He is carried back -thirty years to the days of Thurtell by a meeting with an old man who -remembered the mill between Painter and Oliver, and could call up visions -of the concourse of pilfering rascals assembled on that occasion, so that -the adjoining field was found next day to be strewn with empty -pocket-books! He sees a horse fall down and refuse to rise in a street -of King’s Lynn, and at once becomes the horse-doctor, advising the -administration of reviving ale according to one story, and according to -another administering it himself. - -Among the visits he paid during these excursions was one to Miss Anna -Gurney at North Repps; he took a speedy departure when she began to -propound to him questions in Arabic grammar, and consoled himself with a -dinner at “Tucker’s.” But this was the kind of life and experience -which, sending his memory back to his early exploits by grassy lane and -windy heath, was bound to turn his thoughts again to the manuscript -stowed away at Yarmouth in which so many of those adventures were -depicted. In the following February he withdrew it from its -hiding-place, read it over afresh with great relish, and decided that it -must be published. Such good stuff should be withheld from the public no -longer, Murray or no Murray. - -Thus an ultimatum was despatched to Albemarle Street. The eminent -publisher was informed that, if he did not bring out “The Romany Rye,” -some less eminent publisher would be applied to. The firm, always -excellent friends to Borrow, resolved to humour him, but in the letter in -which the bargain was clinched Mr. Murray could not resist a sly dig; he -said the work would be published “to oblige him.” Whereat Borrow told -him that he believed his intentions were good, but that “people with the -best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm.” “The Romany -Rye” appeared in May. - -If the reception of “Lavengro” disappointed its author, no less can be -said of the reception of its sequel. The majority of the critics did not -like it any better than Borrow liked them. Even his friend Whitwell -Elwin, who reviewed it for the _Quarterly_, reproved him vigorously for -the violence and vulgarity of the Appendix, and threw Bentley at him in -this wise: “No author was ever written down except by himself.” But -Elwin was fair, and more prescient than most of his contemporaries. He -admitted that “Lavengro” had not had its due, and said that it contained -“passages which, in their way, are not surpassed by anything in English -literature.” He spoke with warmth of the truth and vividness of the -descriptions of both scenes and persons, the purity, force, and -simplicity of the language, which “should confer immortality upon many of -its pages.” Elwin did not write without knowledge when he said that -“various parts 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. . . . There -can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work -is a narrative of actual occurrences.” - -The review which most correctly anticipated the verdict of a later -generation, a generation that knew not Borrow but was emancipated from -some of the prejudices of the ’fifties, was that of the _Saturday -Review_. The writer saw the charm of these books—their raciness, their -naturalistic humour, their spirit of romance. He penetrated the secret -of Borrow’s style when he spoke of his “almost affectedly simple -language.” He realised the permanent power of a writer who could make -such wonderfully strong impressions without actual categorical -description of scenery or persons. Otherwise, the treatment of the book -was cool and neglectful, or hostile—in either case highly unsatisfactory -to Borrow. Perhaps we, who can read “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” -together, and view them in a different atmosphere, are hardly able to -make sufficient allowance for the conduct of critics who had this sequel -to a half-forgotten book pitched on their tables after an interval of six -years, and found that its most vigorous passages consisted of terrific -denunciations of their harmless selves. - -The disappointed author went off alone in August to seek solace in a -second tour through the country which still held the warmest place in his -affections. He walked through the greater part of South Wales to the -very tip of the Pembrokeshire promontory, and then cut across to Hereford -and Shropshire. At Uppington and Donnington he sought out the tracks of -Gronwy Owen, and returned to London and Yarmouth once more full of his -Celtic bards and prophets. Occasionally antiquarian researches were -interrupted to give time for original vaticinations on public affairs. -He was a fierce opinionist, who contrived as a rule to find his opinions -on the side which was against the constituted authority, whatever it -might be. The conduct of Indian policy during the Mutiny pleased him no -better than the conduct of the Russian war. In a letter to Murray, after -defending the tone of “The Romany Rye” on the ground that it denounced -boldly the evils which were hurrying the country to destruction and had -kindled God’s anger against it, “namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty, -covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and, above all, that rage for -gentility which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and -honourable feeling,” he goes on to discuss affairs in the East. Some of -his choicest anathemas are reserved for “the miserable newspapers,” which -proclaimed a firm determination to put down the rebels in India, “but -forget to tell us how India is to be held without the sepoys.” The -international situation seemed to his hypochondriac mind to be full of -irremediable gloom, and he turned again, sighing, from these melancholy -reflections to his Welsh poets. His passionate desire was reawakened to -reveal the wonders of Cymric literature to a stiff-necked generation of -Englishmen. He had turned out once more his translation of the “Visions” -of Elis Wyn, which had been too strong for the stomach of the little -bookseller of Smithfield nearly thirty years before. He delivered it to -Murray on his way back from Wales. Borrow suggested that it would be -likely to sell if it could be adorned with three engravings by -Cruikshank—“the dance of the fairies in the first part; another the old -poet in Hades flinging a skull at the head of Elis Wyn in the second; and -the last, the personification of Sin in the third part at the very -conclusion.” But Murray was no more impressed with the saleable quality -of the Sleeping Bard than the bookseller of Smithfield had been; -Cruikshank continued to throw stones at the Bottle Imp instead of -flinging skulls at Elis Wyn, and the manuscript went back to Yarmouth. - -All literary enterprises were suddenly set aside in August, 1858, by a -family tragedy. No less a phrase can describe Borrow’s loss when his -mother died, for the bonds between them were exceedingly close. Her love -had a poignant quality which was sharpened by the anxiety, well-concealed -from him, with which his weaknesses filled her. His love for her was -more than filial. It had kept him in East Anglia for many years; it had -an important influence, which has been previously suggested, upon his -attitude towards the Catholic Church; he could never forget that it was -the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that drove his mother’s family out -of France. - -The death occurred rather suddenly. The severance had so extreme an -effect upon him that he was inconsolable during many weeks. At last, to -obtain distraction, he set off on a walking tour in the Highlands. He -devoted much of his time to roaming all over the island of Mull, which he -described as perhaps the wildest country in Europe. He noted that the -place-names of Mull strongly resembled those of the Isle of Man, and -wrote scraps of discourse on the Gaelic dialects. Leaving Mull, he -penetrated, principally on foot, into the farthest north, crossing to -Orkney and Shetland at the end of November. A quiet seven months at -Yarmouth followed, and in June, 1859, he paid a visit to Ireland. Mrs. -Borrow and Miss Clarke remained in Dublin while he plodded through the -country. He walked to the wilds of Connemara, pursuing his customary -line of inquiry into language and legend, and thence extended his tramp -to the Giants’ Causeway. In Dublin he studied with zest the records of -the associations which were exploring the ancient literature of the -country, and gloated over the stories of Finn and Ossian. He became a -member of the Ossianic Society soon after his arrival in the Irish -capital. Unfortunately, Borrow left no record of the tour or of his -studies in Dublin. - -Ireland was, indeed, soon forgotten after his return home in November. -At Yarmouth he came almost immediately under the magic spell of Wales -again. The unpublished manuscript of “The Sleeping Bard” could not be -allowed to slumber any longer, and he determined to issue the book at his -own expense. Murray made a graceful compromise; though he would not -undertake the publication, he allowed Borrow to use his valuable imprint, -so that 250 copies were turned out by Denew the printer of Yarmouth, with -the notification on the title-page that the book was published by John -Murray. Apparently Borrow came to the conclusion that if Elis Wyn was to -be reviewed adequately, he must do it himself. In the _Quarterly Review_ -for January, 1861, appeared an anonymous article on “The Welsh and their -Literature.” All the sprites which inhabited Borrow’s portfolios knew -that the main part of this article had been there for many years. It -appeared in the _Quarterly_, polished up, and interleaved with references -to the translation of the “Bardd Cwsg.” It was admired by those who were -interested in the subject, and they were at any rate sufficiently -numerous to buy up the whole edition of Elis Wyn in a month. The book -was held in very favourable opinion by Welshmen. This was the last -literary work of any sort he did in East Anglia, to which he was shortly -to bid farewell for fourteen years. - -Borrow and his wife departed from Yarmouth at the end of June, 1860, and -took lodgings at No. 21, Montagu Street, Portman Square. The special -reason for their residence in the East of England had vanished with the -death of his mother, and they had been discussing for some time the -project of taking a house in London. There he counted upon closer touch -with the literary world. In a sense, he obtained it, for he was in -constant companionship with a few choice friends; but for the purposes of -a biographer the removal to town was disastrous. After the first year or -two he made no conspicuous figure in literature, his correspondence -almost ceased, and the records of his movements first become scanty and -then vanish altogether. They are to be found in casual references among -the reminiscences of the limited circle of his associates—Frances Power -Cobbe, Charles Godfrey Leland, and Theodore Watts-Dunton. And, with the -last name excepted, it is no very prepossessing picture that we get of -him. Miss Clarke had been left at Oulton during the period of -house-hunting. She joined them after they had taken No. 22, Hereford -Square, Brompton, where they had Miss Cobbe for a near neighbour. - -Having installed his household gods there, Borrow began to occupy himself -with the most congenial employments he could discover. There was “Wild -Wales.” The beloved book was on the stocks; it was being worked up with -the affection he bestowed on no other subject. But he did not permit it -to absorb him. There were many things to be done in London by a lover of -common adventures and a student of social byways. There were rambles in -the streets and in the environs of London, where odd characters were far -more numerous than in East Anglia, or Wales, or Cornwall. There were -gypsies—degenerate gypsies who lived in houses, still more degenerate -gypsies who plied petty commerce in caravans, and the remnants of the -real blood who camped in the outskirts of the metropolis, and were not -unwilling to converse with “the London caloro” when he found his way -among them. There was an occasional race; there was an occasional fight. -A foot race at Brompton between “Deerfoot,” the Seneca Indian, and -Jackson, “the American deer,” in October, 1861, was the subject of a -lively description in his notebook. - -Borrow tried some of his friends a good deal, even now that he was -mellowing. But he had not lost the art of being jovial, and there are -records of festivities at which he very successfully entertained those -whom he might call his “pals.” Richmond was a favourite resort. One -dinner party at the Star and Garter, when Borrow was host, comprised John -Murray, his partner Cooke, and his brother-in-law, Dr. David Smith, of -Edinburgh. It was a gargantuan feast for that day; it cost Borrow £6 -3s., of which £4 1s. 6d. was for wine. His studies in the poetry of many -lands went on concurrently with his entertainments and his work on Wales. -The habit of translation was ingrained, and could not be conquered. He -continued turning poems and legends into English from the Celtic tongues, -from Danish, Turkish, and Russian. But no book came of all this -industry. The public were still callously indifferent to Borrow’s -poetical versions, as they had been in other years. They had put up with -some of Bowring’s anthologies, but had now tired even of his Magyars and -Serbs. The prevailing sentiment about this kind of literary ware was -represented by a ludicrous parody which appeared in _Fraser’s Magazine_: - - TE PIKKE MEGGE. THE PIOUS MAIDEN. - - Hogy, wogy, Pogy! Holy little Polly! - Xupumai trtzaaa bnikttm Love sought me, but I tricked - Pogy, wogy, hogy! him. - Bsduro plgvbz cttnsttm Polly little holy! - Wogy, hogy, Pogy! You thought of me, “I’ve - Mlèsrz vbquògp fvikttm. nicked him.” - Little holy Polly! - I’m not to be your victim. - -The utmost Borrow could do was to induce the editor of _Once a -Week_—which had just entertained a very different kind of angel unawares -in the person of George Meredith—to publish a series of ballads and -stories from the Manx, Russian, Danish, and old Norse. - -But in 1862 occurred a literary event whose importance was very slowly -realised. “Wild Wales” appeared. Its reception by the critics was -exceedingly curious. Most of the newspapers ignored it altogether; -others were unjust to the point of savagery. For concentrated malice, -the _Cornhill_ notice would be difficult to surpass. “Really,” wrote the -reviewer (obviously as closely in touch with Borrow and his subject as a -cat with the differential calculus), “it is too much to demand that we -should read the record of every glass of ale which Mr. Borrow -drank—usually with his criticism of its quality—or be patient under the -fatiguing triviality of, ‘I paid my bill and departed,’ which occurs -incessantly.” But, lest it should be imagined that Borrow was either -drinking beer or paying hotel bills all the time he was in Wales, the -reviewer went on grudgingly to admit that “snatches of commonplace -conversation and intensely prosaic translations of Welsh-poems swell out -this book and render it rather tiresome reading.” At least one notice -was both fair and complimentary, and foreshadowed the very high opinion -in which the book is held at the present day by Welshmen. That was the -article in the _Spectator_, which described it as “the first really -clever book we remember to have seen in which an honest attempt is made -to do justice to the Welsh literature. . . . In the course of his -wanderings Mr. Borrow caught very happily the salient points in the Welsh -character, and he has depicted them with those light, free touches which -none but George Borrow can hit off to such perfection.” True, the -_Spectator_ discovered “the fine Roman hand” of Mr. Borrow in some of the -speeches of his friends, but felt sure that the conversations were in -substance faithfully recorded. - -Borrow was in his sixtieth year when “Wild Wales” was published. In -spite of the extraordinary extent and variety of his activities, he was -by no means an old man. He retained his physical vigour; his mental -force was unimpaired. He was to have twenty years more of life in which -to accumulate new experiences and contract a rare friendship or two. Yet -he had certainly outgrown his vogue. The older public that had hailed -some of his writing with demonstrative joy had gone; he had not found—nor -was to find while he lived—the newer public that could enter into the -spirit in which he did his work. It is a little disconcerting, but not -really a matter for surprise, that after the publication of “Wild Wales” -Borrow gradually sank out of view. He buried himself still deeper in his -philological studies. At intervals he vanished from London to make tours -in various parts of the British Islands. Rough notes of these may be -consulted in Knapp; they were never polished into anything like literary -form. In 1865 came another severance: Miss Clarke, his step-daughter, -married Dr. William MacOubrey, and went to live at Belfast. The “old -Hen” of Borrow’s letters, the “Henrietta” of “Wild Wales,” had been a -member of his household ever since the golden days of sunny Seville, and -he had a very deep and sincere affection for her. He did not, of course, -feel the separation so acutely as did his wife, who had never parted from -her for more than a few weeks at a time during the forty-seven years -since she was born; and it was Mrs. Borrow who planned a visit to the -Orange capital in the following year. She was escorted to Belfast by her -husband, who left her there with Mrs. MacOubrey, while he went off to -Scotland. Crossing to Stranraer, he set out upon a lonely tramp in the -Lowlands and the Border Country. He visited Abbotsford, but, his rage -against Sir Walter Scott having subsided, his notes are as mild as a -guidebook. Pushing on to Edinburgh, he returned to Glasgow by rail, and -took the steamer to Belfast, spending the remaining weeks of the holiday -in Ulster, with pedestrian trips to Lisburn and Antrim. - -The journey through the Border was not without some literary fruit, as -will be seen. For some years Borrow had been absorbed in Welsh and -Danish poetry; but just now his attention was returning to the gypsy -friends of his youth. At Kirk Yetholm, a few miles south-east of Kelso, -dwelt Esther Blyth, the descendant of a famous gypsy king, herself -endowed with a royal title, “the Queen of the Nokkums.” Her majesty was -sought out and “interviewed,” and the notes of this encounter were worked -into a chapter of the last book Borrow ever wrote. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII -DEATH OF MRS. BORROW - - -DURING the visit to Belfast Mrs. Borrow had been unwell, and her -ill-health was her husband’s principal cause of anxiety for the following -three years. In 1867 they visited Bognor, where she was revivified by -the sea breezes, while he made tours through Hampshire and the New -Forest. The next year complications arose in the administration of the -Oulton estate, and they had to go into Norfolk to extricate the business. -On their return, Mrs. Borrow failed rapidly. Weakened by heart disease -and dropsy, and worried by the prospect of litigation with a neighbour, -her illness took a serious form, and threw Borrow into a state of -melancholy in which “the Horrors” attacked him, as we find by a reference -in Miss Cobbe’s autobiography. She speaks of having one night “cheered -him and sent him off quite brisk” after a bout of this kind, her method -being to engage him in theological argument “in a serious way”! He -“abounded in my sense of the nonexistence of Hell.” If the processes by -which they sought to remove Borrow’s megrims were original, the sympathy -and solicitude of Miss Cobbe and Miss Lloyd were unfailing. But none of -the cares of friendship, no effort on Borrow’s part, could avail to stave -off the disaster that approached. His wife grew worse, and on January -30th, 1869, succumbed to an aggregation of maladies, just in time to -obviate the necessity (foreshadowed by Dr. Playfair, who was called in at -the end) of sequestration because of mental affliction. - -Thus sadly closed the long partnership of thirty years so romantically -begun at Seville in “a dream of sunshine and shade, of falling water and -flowers.” Mrs. Borrow had reached the age of seventy-three, and was -seven years older than her husband. His grief was terrible. He had lost -her who had been in literal fact his better half, who had inspired his -courage and fought his “Horrors” for him, had organised his business, and -had been wife and friend, counsellor and physician, amanuensis and -private secretary rolled into one. “Poor old Borrow is in a sad state,” -wrote Miss Cobbe. In his distraught condition friendliness suffered. He -hesitated to “trouble anyone with his sorrows” and, when over-persuaded -to dine out, was melancholy, “so cross so _rude_,” as said Miss Cobbe on -one occasion. Her narrative of the attempts she made to drag him out of -himself is luminous with humour—conscious and unconscious. There was -much innocent malice in the fashion in which she set her superior -knowledge of Norse lore against his, parrying his Firbolgs with her -Keatinge, and his Tuatha-de-Danaan with her Hakon of Norway. But she did -not perceive that the most humorous thing of all was the fact that she -should attempt to raise a bereaved man out of his despair by touching him -in his most tender intellectual spots. - -For a year after the death of his wife Borrow buried himself in -books—out-of-the-way books, archaic books, as usual. Drake’s “Historia -Anglo-Scotica” figures in the list. He declared to Miss Cobbe that he -had read no modern writer since Scott. This was not literally accurate. -He had read and admired Dickens, for, in a letter to Luis de Usóz, he -spoke of him as “a second Fielding . . . who, in certain novels founded -on life in London and the provinces, as displayed in every grade of -society from the lowest to the highest, has evinced such talent, such -humour, variety and profound knowledge of character, that he charms his -readers—at least, those that have the capacity to comprehend him. . . . -Read, as soon as you can, all the writings of ‘Boz,’ and I am sure you -will thank me all your life for having disclosed to you a mine of such -delectable reading.” {241} His opinion of Scott had undergone -considerable modification since the days of the Appendix and -“Charlie-o’er-the-Waterism,” for he said that “Scott _was greater than -Homer_!” (The italics and the note of astonishment are Miss Cobbe’s.) - -Another sweeping dictum of his on the same occasion was that the Norse -stories were “far grander than the Greek.” But Borrow was addicted to -impulsive generalisations, and we need pay no more special attention to -these judgments promulgated in Hereford Square than to the declarations -made at various times that Gronwy Owen’s account of the toppling down of -the crag of Snowdon on the Judgment Day was better than anything in -Homer, that Horace and Martial were not superior to Ab Gwilym, and that -Huw Morris was the finest lyrical poet of the seventeenth century. - -Not long after these passages at arms with Miss Cobbe, he was suddenly -plunged again into the old romantic interest of gypsyism. Towards the -end of 1870 he received a letter from C. G. Leland, who had then been -about eighteen months in England, and was pursuing his studies of the -English gypsies on more scientific and more thorough lines than Borrow -had ever adopted. No two men were farther apart in literary -characteristics than Borrow and Leland. The author of the “Hans -Breitmann” ballads is far better known to the larger world as a writer of -comic verse than as a student of languages and folklore. “Hans -Breitmann’s Barty” and “Ping-Wing, the Pieman’s Son” are in everybody’s -mouth; “The English Gypsies and their Language” and his “Gypsy Sorcery” -are familiar mainly to the elect. The humour of Borrow and that of -Leland are of widely different character. Leland’s gay spirit lights a -lamp of jocund fancy; Borrow’s humour is elemental, and, when his art -adds quality to it, the quality is sardonic. Yet these two were attuned -in a remarkable way, and on the subject of gypsyism and philology their -tastes were in common. Borrow—leaving out of account a little natural -jealousy—could hardly fail to be attracted to the man who was to write so -vividly later of his intimacy with all “the lords and earls of Little -Egypt” in the south of England, and of those sojourns in the tents which -involved “a great deal of strangely picturesque rural life, night-scenes -by firelight, in forests and by river banks, and marvellously odd -reminiscences of other days.” And there were other interests held by -both—for Leland was a Celtic scholar; did he not “discover” Shelta, and -know all about the olden men, who - - “. . . sat with ghosts on a stormy shore - And spoke in a tongue men speak no more”? - -Leland told Borrow in his first letter that he was a lover of his books, -and had read them all five times, with the exception of “The Bible in -Spain” and “Wild Wales,” which he had only read once. He had been -seeking in vain for some mutual friend to introduce them, and now put -himself forward modestly as the author of “a collection of ballads -satirising Germany and the Germans, under the title of ‘Hans Breitmann.’” -Borrow wrote giving an invitation. Leland acknowledged it in a charming -letter, announcing that he had asked his publishers to send Borrow copies -of “Breitmann” and “The Music Lesson of Confucius.” The former was -offered as an oblation to the gypsy gods; it contained a ballad “written -by myself in the German Romany jib . . . which I would gladly learn from -yourself whether it be worth anything or not.” The second was a delicate -compliment to Borrow, for in it was a poem “suggested by a passage in -‘The Romany Rye,’ referring to the melancholy Sven Vonved, the Northern -Sphynx, who went about giving out riddles and gold rings.” Leland ran on -about gypsies and the Romany tongue, tinkers and rat-catchers, horses and -hunting, in his inimitable way, declaring, “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.” - -At the meeting which followed, Leland told Borrow that he was preparing a -work on the English gypsies, and it is fairly clear that this fact -induced Borrow to write his own last book, “The Romano Lavo-Lil,” or -Word-Book of the Gypsies. There have been found even Borrovians to -regret that this book was ever published. Most of the criticism lavished -upon it is no doubt justified. It is quite as unscientific, quite as -useless as a lexicon, as its assailants said. Its miscellaneous contents -are not to be compared for vigour and interest with his earlier work. -But the true lover of Borrow would not have it absent from the little -shelf which holds his books, even if it were only for the tale of Ryley -Bosvil, and the interview with Esther Blyth—a reminiscence of his visit -to Kirk Yetholm to see the “Queen of the Nokkums” during the Border tour. -“The Romano Lavo-Lil” did not appear, however, till 1874. In the -meantime, he edited a third edition of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” -in one volume each, for Murray (1872), and recast his translation of the -Gospel of Luke in the Calo. - -An acquaintance he formed during the late years of his London life was -that of Mr. William Mackay, who subsequently went to live at Oulton -Broad. Mr. Mackay has related one or two anecdotes spiced with a very -piquant frankness, for he is apparently no worshipper of Borrow, and has -taken pains to dispute the claims advanced by those who are. He speaks -of one occasion when they went together to a tavern on the edge of a -great common, where Borrow called for “swipes.” This was the beerhouse -title of the poorest kind of ale. Mr. Mackay says that Borrow affected -it because it was the drink of his Romany friends. When he “had taken a -pull at the pewter, he pointed out to me a yokel at the 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.’” It may not unreasonably -seem to dispassionate persons that Borrow took a pull not only at the -pewter, but at his friend’s leg as well. - -But Mr. Mackay is able to throw an interesting light on one or two facets -of his character—notably on his love of pugilism for its own sake. -Outside Borrow’s own books, I do not know any sketch that gives a more -living idea of his joy in combat than this. “It was a fine thing,” says -Mr. Mackay, “to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the -battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with quivering nostril. If -the nomad happened to be a gypsy, he was courteously addressed; but if he -were 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. But those who have seen -him ‘put his dukes up’ affirm that he gave an excellent account of -himself.” - -There is also a glimpse in these notes {245} of Borrow’s attitude towards -the great, though the story is not attested in any way and may be merely -_ben trovato_. When a member of the Russian Embassy called on him in -Hereford Square to request for his Imperial master a copy of “Targum,” -Borrow “rudely told the official to let his master fetch it himself!” - -The most pregnant friendship of the later days remains to be mentioned. -Two souls of close affinity discovered each other in 1872. In that year -Borrow encountered Mr. Theodore Watts. The fortunate fates threw these -two men together: Mr. Watts-Dunton, as we know him, has done more for the -true interpretation of Borrow than any other man. He brought to the -study of the Borrow books and the elucidation of the Borrow character an -intimate knowledge of the quaint things that Borrow loved. He brought an -extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the tortuous paths in which -Borrow roamed, whether they were literary, or philological, or merely -geographical. Nobody has so deeply penetrated the Borrovian psychology; -the pity of it is that his criticism and appreciation are scattered -through the inaccessible files of journals and reviews, or appear as -“introductions” to various editions of Borrow’s works, and have never -been collected. - -The story of their meeting on the common ground of friendship with Dr. -Gordon Hake is, of course, familiar to all Borrovians. It had results so -wide, however, that some account of it is due. For many years before the -date mentioned, Mr. Watts-Dunton, with his amour of _Natura benigna_, his -gypsyism, his cult of the open air, had naturally been strongly drawn -towards such a personality as Borrow’s, and had learnt to love his -strange books. He had seen the white-haired giant swimming in the sea -off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him till the day at Gordon Hake’s -house at Roehampton, when Borrow’s approach, “striding across the -common,” was announced. They got into touch with difficulty. Kindred -spirits as they were, Borrow’s whimsies, his strangely mingled egoism and -shyness, placed obstacles in the way of sympathy. - -Mr. Watts-Dunton’s account of the meeting is lit by a mischievously -flashing humour. It may be aptly compared with Boswell’s description of -his introduction to Johnson in the back parlour of Davies’s shop, but it -is far fuller of humorous intent. He knew something of Borrow’s -idiosyncrasies—his impatience of any learning that was not in his own -“line,” his touchiness about his own books, his objection to inquiries -into his relations with the gypsies. A way of approach was gradually -discovered in the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth century, in which -both were highly cultured. Bampfylde Moore Carew did not yield much, for -Borrow “evidently considered that every properly educated man ought to be -familiar with the story of Bampfylde Moore Carew in its every detail.” -Beer, bruising, gentility, languages were no more successful. “I tried -other subjects in the same direction, but with small success, till in a -lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a very -scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story 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 seized on the night in question with a violent -bleeding at the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes’ -walk in the sea breeze, when the pressgang captured him and carried him -off to sea, where he had been in service ever since. I introduced the -subject of Ambrose Gwinett, and Douglas Jerrold’s play upon it, and at -once the ice between us thawed, and we became friends.” - -We have to thank Ambrose Gwinett and the gypsies on Wimbledon Common for -many charming additions to the literature of Borrow. Hard upon this -conversation came the first of those walks in Richmond Park which Mr. -Watts-Dunton has described with so much felicity. It included that call -at the Bald-faced Stag in Kingston Vale, {248} in order that Borrow might -show his companion Jerry Abershaw’s sword. It was the occasion of the -rainbow whose “triumphal arch” filled the sky, when Borrow explained the -gypsy mystery of the trus’hul, how, by making a cross of two sticks, the -expert in occultism could wipe the rainbow out of the heavens. {249} Mr. -Watts-Dunton quaintly discusses the question whether Borrow was “a true -child of the open air,” and comes to the conclusion that the man who -stood looking at the deer and the herons in Richmond Park, what time he -carried under his arm a huge, bulging, green gamp, was not one of those -who, “owing to some exceptional power or some exceptional infirmity,” can -get closer to Nature than to brother, sister, wife, or friend. The -inquisitiveness of the man of science prevents this familiarity; so does -“sensivity to human contact,” as in the case of Emily Brontë; so does -subjection to the love passion. It was neither science nor passion that -prevented Borrow from matriculating in the University of the Open Air in -the sense that Thoreau did. It was Ambition. - - “His books show that he could never cleanse his stuffed bosom of the - perilous stuff of ambition. To become renowned, judging from many a - peroration in his books, was as great an incentive . . . to learn - languages as to Alexander Smith’s poet-hero it was an incentive to - write poetry. . . . But I soon found that if he was not a perfect - Child of the Open Air—he was something better: a man of that deep - sympathy with human kind which the Child of the Open Air must needs - lack.” - -There was much talk during that ramble of the herons of Whittlesea -Mere—which Mr. Watts-Dunton identified as the scene of some of the -adventures in the early part of “Lavengro”—of viper-taming, of the East -Anglian gypsies, of horses (and especially of the descendants of -“Shales”), of the quality of the sea-water off the east coast, and of -like matters dear to the heart of Borrow. The East Anglian in his new -companion completely conquered Borrow. They sang a duet in praise of the -glassy Ouse, which was the only river in England adequate to reflect the -rainbow, and of the wet sands of the Norfolk coast. The last passage of -the dialogue that Mr. Watts-Dunton has set down is an amusing example of -the complacency with which they agreed on the superiority of East Anglia -to any other spot under heaven: - - “It is on sand alone that the sea strikes its true music—Norfolk - sand; a rattle is not music.” - - “The best of the sea’s lutes,” I said, “is made by the sands of - Cromer.” - -Thus was the entente ratified. It endured till Borrow finally left -London to end his days not far from the sound of the sea’s best lute. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV -THE PASSING OF THE ROMANY RYE - - -WHEN “The Romano Lavo-Lil” came out at the beginning of 1874, the public -were already in possession of Leland’s great book, which finally “queered -the pitch” for Borrow. The two would not bear comparison as a study of -the Romany language, for Borrow had worked so hurriedly that his -vocabulary was much less complete than he might have made it. There are -a large number of gypsy words in various parts of “Lavengro” and “The -Romany Rye” which he failed to incorporate in the new book; and others -acquired at Yetholm were also omitted. But it was not only in comparison -with Leland’s that Borrow’s last words on the gypsies seemed feeble. -Many much more learned persons had been publishing monumental works on -the subject—Pott, Miklosich, Paspati, to mention only three. The new -philological spirit had been operating on the Romany; the gypsy tongue -had been treated with as much care and skill as though it were one of the -great literary languages; whereas, when “The Zincali” was offered to the -public, as Mr. Hindes Groome pointed out in _The Academy_, “there were -not two educated men in England who possessed the slightest knowledge of -Romany.” - -Mr. Groome was fair, even generous, in some of his acknowledgments. On -the other hand, _The Athenæum_ had no bowels of compassion for the -veteran; it did not temper justice with mercy. Though it had to confess -that not a few of those who had studied the gypsies and their language -“owed their first taste for the subject to the perusal of Mr. Borrow’s -books,” it could not “allow merely sentimental reasons to prevent us from -telling the honest truth,” but forthwith told it in terms of perfect -candour. - -Amidst this demonstration of the fact that he had outlived his age, -Borrow decided to leave London once and for all, and to return to his -home on the shores of Oulton Broad, where he was finally lost to the -sight of a world not patient of him. As he told Mr. Watts-Dunton, he was -going down into East Anglia to die. For many years before the -publication of his last book, he had been very little in the limelight. -The public which had hailed “The Bible in Spain” with almost delirious -delight had grown older. In the absence of regular literary appeals to -its attention by Borrow, it had imagined him already dead. Some American -celebrities at one of Mrs. Procter’s Sunday afternoons were discussing -Borrow and Latham with Mr. Watts-Dunton, who told them “an anecdote of a -whimsical meeting” between these two. Was it the computation of his -capacity for “bottles at a sitting” which Latham endeavoured to get out -of Borrow at Dr. Gordon Hake’s? “My anecdote,” adds Watts-Dunton, “was -fully appreciated and enjoyed by my auditors till I chanced to let fall -the fact that both heroes of the quaint adventure were still alive, that -they occasionally met at Putney, and that I had quite lately been seeking -for sundews on Wimbledon Common with the one and strolling through -Richmond Park with the other. Then the look that passed from face to -face showed how dangerous it is to indulge on all occasions in the -coxcombry of mere truth. And afterwards my brilliant hostess did not -fail to let me know how grievously my character for veracity had suffered -for having talked about two men as being alive who were well known to -have been dead years ago—‘talked of them as though I had just left them -at luncheon.’ And yet at this very time Latham and Borrow were, in the -eyes of a few of England’s most illustrious men, the important names they -had always been.” {253} - -Borrow’s leave-taking of London had its apotheosis from the same pen in a -brilliant and much-quoted passage: - - “The last time I ever saw George Borrow 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; for the London smoke was - flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, reddening - every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it - went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, - however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly - as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which struck - Borrow deeply. 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.” - -And Mr. Watts-Dunton paid tribute to Borrow of a sonnet melodising their -talk of the “Children of the Open Air,” and making contrast of the lot of -lovers of the sun and wind with the habitants of London: - - “. . . . Where men wither and choke, - Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies, - And love of woods and wild-wind prophecies— - Yea, every voice that to their father spoke; - And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke - Leave never a meadow, outside Paradise.” - -At the age of seventy-one there was not much left for the solitary spirit -to achieve. It was not easy to make new friendships, and even the old -ones were difficult to nurture at Oulton. He made one effort to get -Edward FitzGerald over from Woodbridge to see him. FitzGerald, twenty -years before, had been an ardent admirer of Borrow’s work. Sending him a -copy of his translation of Calderon’s plays, he remarked that he was a -man “who both did fine things in his own language and was deep read in -those of others.” Their correspondence was not extensive, but -FitzGerald’s letters are of considerable interest. For example, they -show that Borrow was in the secret of old Omar. FitzGerald wrote that -“Cowell, to whom I sent a copy, was naturally alarmed at it, he being a -very religious man; nor have I given any other copy but to George Borrow -. . . and to old Donne . . .” {255} This was a copy of the edition -printed in 1859 by Quaritch. But two years before the premature birth of -the great poem, FitzGerald had lent Borrow his manuscript of the -quatrains, and in asking for the return of it, he wrote: “I only want a -look at him. . . . 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 manuscript, which -has 500!—very many quite as good as those in the manuscript you have; but -very many in _both_ manuscripts are well omitted. . . .” FitzGerald had -been at Oulton about 1850. In 1856 he had visited Borrow again at -Yarmouth, and of that meeting he says expressively, “I enjoyed my -evening.” He did not fail, of course, to rub against some of Borrow’s -angles. According to Mr. Benson (“Edward FitzGerald,” in the “English -Men of Letters” series), he “found this strange pilgrim’s masterful -manners and irritable temper uncongenial,” but Mr. Benson admits that -FitzGerald said, long afterwards, “he was almost the only friend Borrow -had never quarrelled with.” The irritation could have been but slight, -if it could be called irritation at all: in one of his wayward moods -Borrow banged home the covers of the book just as his guest was about to -ask him to read some of the Northern Ballads. This incident is mentioned -without rancour by FitzGerald, in a letter in which he makes Borrow a -present of Redhouse’s “New Turkish Dictionary,” declares what a pleasant -evening he had spent at Yarmouth, and lets his friend into the secret of -his amazing marriage. - - “I must tell you. I am come up here” (he writes from London) “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.” - -The “dangerous experiment” turned out as we know. FitzGerald’s letter is -hardly that of a man who found Borrow “uncongenial.” He liked the Borrow -_ménage_, they had much in common in their literary tastes, and some few -common friends—Donne for one, and for another Kerrich, of Geldeston Hall, -FitzGerald’s brother-in-law. He liked Borrow’s books, too. They were -among the few modern works he read, though his fastidious palate was -offended by some of Borrow’s lapses in style. In addition to the -meetings at Oulton and Yarmouth, there were foregatherings at Donne’s -house in London, at FitzGerald’s own house in Great Portland Street, and -at Gorleston. - -But this was all twenty years old now; the FitzGerald who received -Borrow’s letter at Woodbridge was sixty-six and a close recluse, unable -to understand why any man who had reached his age or gone beyond it -should want any company but his own. His response is a curious -illustration of the hermit way of thought into which he had fallen. He -told Borrow that for the last fifteen years he had not visited any of his -oldest friends, except the daughters of George Crabbe—“my old parson -Crabbe,” vicar of Bredfield, whose “brave old white head” had “sunk into -the village churchsward” in 1857—and Donne, to whom he had given a -half-day. To have told why he had thus fallen from his company would -have been a tedious thing, he said, and all about himself, too—“whom, -Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person -talked about.” - - “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? . . . I like to think over my old friends. They - are there, 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. . . . - - “So shall things rest? I could not go to you, after refusing all - this while to go to older—if not better—friends. . . .” - -This letter, dated January 10th, 1875, is almost the final literary relic -of Borrow. It sings in a minor key, but with a fitting sombre melody, -the requiem of his career in the world of letters. Borrow himself, -however, did not renounce and abhor society in FitzGerald’s fashion. -Desolate Oulton, the haunt of so many wraiths of past joys and sorrows, -saddened the lonely old man, and in the late ’seventies he lived a good -deal in Norwich, where he had apartments in Lady Lane, seeking the -company of those who knew and liked him. His favourite resort was the -old Norfolk Hotel. There he had his special chair, whence he issued his -pronouncements _ex cathedra_ on ale and men and things. But to Oulton he -turned at the last, dismal as it was. The estate had been pitifully -neglected during his residence in London. The Nemesis that dogged his -steps as a landed proprietor had always been the litigious tenant. There -was one in possession of the Hall Farm in 1878, when Dr. and Mrs. -MacOubrey had left London to live at Oulton, in order to bear Borrow -company in his declining days. This tenant, calling at the Cottage to -deliver an ultimatum about the need for repairs, became rude to Borrow, -who fired up quite in his best style, and declared, “Sir, you came in by -that door; you can go out by it!” - -Borrow’s predilection for the alehouse is beyond question, whether it was -in Norwich, or in London, or in Wales. But it was probably not so -overpowering as sometimes has been represented. The misrepresentation is -doubtless his own fault in great measure, because of the literary -emphasis he laid upon the virtue of inns and their staple commodity. We -have observed how this affected one of the reviewers of “Wild Wales.” -Legends grew up around a certain inn at Oulton Broad, the Wherry Hotel. -They were inevitable. Because it was an inn and was near Borrow’s house, -gossip assumed that he was a frequent visitor and a bibulous. A sort of -myth arose that it was the scene of drinking bouts, where Borrow not only -gratified his own passion for quarrelling and fighting, but egged on -others to quarrel and fight. It has already been shown on good evidence -that he was personally temperate, if not abstemious, and the known facts -dispose of the idea that there was any excessive drinking. {259} But the -stories gave occasion for a correspondence in one of the London papers a -few years ago, when Mr. William Mackay was able to dismiss them by -proving that the Wherry Hotel was kept by one Mason during this period, -and that Mr. Mason averred that Borrow did not visit the house more than -twice, and that he had no recollection of the incidents so vividly -described. - -Mr. William A. Dutt has given us a graphic little picture {260} of Borrow -in the last years of his life in the country of the Broads, and of the -impression he made on his neighbours: - - “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. He - loved to be mysterious, and the village children used to hush their - voices and draw aside at his approach. They looked upon him with - fear and awe—for had they not seen him stop and talk with the - gypsies, who ran away with little children? But 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. . . . - - “Still, Borrow was not unpopular with the villagers, many of whom, - long after his death, remembered little acts of kindness on his part - by which they had benefited. To the sick and infirm he was always a - good friend, though his almost invariable remedy for all the ills - that flesh is heir to were wine and ale. He was exceedingly fond of - animals, and nothing aroused his wrath more than to see them badly - treated. . . . A favourite old cat that was ill crawled out of his - house to die in the garden hedge. Borrow no sooner missed the poor - creature than he went in search of it, and brought it indoors in his - arms. He then laid it down in a comfortable spot, and sat and - watched it till it was dead.” - -Most old people incline to exaggerate their age after they have passed -the common span of life, and are offended if the achievement of longevity -is not accounted a meritorious performance in them. Borrow was -unconventional in this as in all things. He resented references to his -age. The vicar of Lowestoft visited him at Oulton, and had a smooth and -delightful experience till he transgressed by asking the veteran how old -he was. “Sir,” said Borrow thunderously, “I tell my age to no man!” One -of his last bits of writing, in a tremulous hand, was a little -dissertation “On People’s Age,” beginning: “Never talk to people about -their age. . . . 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.” {262} - -The forcible sentiment was that of a man whose mind was stronger than his -physical frame. Within a few months the passing came. His death, by -some strange fate, was as secret as much of his life had been: he passed -to the hidden bourne unseen by any human eye; his last agony was even -more closely veiled than those years of his youth around which he had -diffused a mist as thick as the enchanted vapours raised by his favourite -magicians, the Firbolgs. - -On July 26th, 1881, Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey drove to Lowestoft on -business. Borrow was left alone in the house. When they returned he lay -dead. Censure passed upon his step-daughter and her husband in -connection with this incident is ungenerous. They had cared for him so -tenderly that it is impossible to accuse them of any lack of affection. -And who, viewing George Borrow’s life and character as a rounded whole, -would regard the circumstances of his death with disapproval? So, -seventy-eight years after the summer evening when, at the “beautiful -little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light,” -he entered into the Life Everlasting, not many miles away, alone in his -lonely house, with the fir trees whispering as his spirit departed, and -the quiet water shimmering by the little summer-house where that spirit -had communed with its choicest companions and accomplished its finest -work. The body lay silent there for several days: - - “That port which so majestic was and strong, - Loose, and deprived of vigour, stretched along: - All withered, all discoloured, pale and wan . . .” - -On August 4th it was conveyed to London, and laid with the body of his -wife in West Brompton Cemetery. - -Borrow dead was Borrow forgotten until the afflation of a new time -breathed upon him, and his resurrection came. The “strange pilgrim’s -masterful manner and irritable temper” took their proper place in the -background of the picture; the real value of his pilgrimage was seen. A -finnicking age which emphasised his “vulgarity” had ended, and another -age had opened which was competent to approve his realism and to appraise -his art. Borrow took his rightful niche among the immortals who have -illuminated the human comedy and sung the joys of earth. The inspiration -of Jasper Petulengro is the inspiration of the New Day: “There’s a wind -on the heath, brother. . . . Who would wish to die?” - - - - -CHAPTER XV -BORROW’S GYPSYISM - - -BORROW’S gypsyism was the most important part of his literary -stock-in-trade. What it was worth, apart from its literary value, is a -moot point. - -Any writer who is not a deep gypsiologist must approach such a question -with diffidence. The consensus of opinion is all that can be suggested. -It is that Borrow was unscientific both as a Romany linguist and as a -student of Romany history. His knowledge of this strange race, for whose -origin we go to the Hindu Kush and beyond, was empirical; so was his -acquaintance with the language they took with them all over the world and -preserved for so many years almost as inviolably secret as the Etruscan -mystery. He was an enthusiast, but not a learned enthusiast, and his -method did not lend itself to thoroughness—like that of Mr. Sampson, for -example, of whom a gypsy warned his friends that he would “cut the heart -out of your breast if he thought he’d find a new word in it.” Borrow’s -gypsy stories were not arranged on the elaborate plan of Mr. Sampson’s -excursions into the gypsy lore of Wales. Though he knew the “tinkler” -tribes intimately, it was left for Leland, long years afterwards, to -discover that they had a language of their own, which was not Romany, but -Shelta, subsequently identified with the secret medium of the ancient -bards of Ireland. Leland’s discovery and the investigations of Professor -Kuno Meyer and Mr. Sampson, which traced Shelta back to the Gaelic of ten -centuries ago, surely form one of the great romances of philology. -Leland himself was surprised that Borrow had not penetrated this mystery, -because he had “specially cultivated tinkers.” - -In a chapter on this subject intended to form part of a book on Shelta, -never completed, Leland wrote: - - “The first or second time I conversed with Borrow was in the British - Museum, where he was examining an old Irish manuscript, and made the - remark to me that he did not believe there was a man now living who - could really read such works. But this Nestor of the Romany ryes, - who was indeed a man of marvellous attainments and real genius, was - somewhat touched with the common weakness of the old school, that he - had mastered many subjects. Thus he positively declared in his - ‘Lavo-Lil’ that there are only twelve hundred Anglo-Romany words, - when in fact my own manuscript collection actually contains between - three and four thousand, all approved as authentic by the late - Professor E. H. Palmer. What Borrow would have said had he been told - that there were thousands of tinkers now living who spoke the secret - language of the bards—which was probably that of the Druids—passes - conjecture.” {265} - -We should certainly have had a tinker portrait as fine as that of -Murtagh, from whom Borrow learned the Irish Gaelic of ordinary commerce. -But it is idle to pursue the subject of Borrow’s empiricism. That is a -matter which concerns the experts of philology and not the wider world. -The important thing is the use which Borrow made of his gypsy knowledge -and the fascination he himself exercised over the Romany chalu gypsy men. - -While he often affected to approach the subject from the scientist’s -point of view, and to lay the Romany language on the dissecting table, -what in actual fact attracted him was the picturesque aspect of gypsy -life. That is what attracts his readers to-day. His books are fitting -companions of the pictures of David Cox and De Wint. Who, looking upon -that wonderful drawing by Cox of “Gypsies Crossing a Moor”—a drawing so -phenomenally realistic of the effect of wind that the spectator is almost -induced to turn up his coat collar—does not recall the description in -“The Zincali” of “the hurried march; the women and children, mounted on -lean but spirited asses, would scour along the plains fleeter than the -wind; ragged and savage-looking men, wielding the scourge and goad, would -scamper by their side or close behind . . .”? And there are a score of -scenes in “Lavengro” to match the sketches made by De Wint in his visits -to the Romany tans (tents)—his glowing yellows, his swarthy faces, and -his romantic rags. - -The point specially to be observed is that Borrow’s vision of the gypsy -race in the early part of the nineteenth century is practically the only -one in existence. It has the value of a record, in addition to the value -of a picture. Though there are great numbers of gypsies in the British -islands, the old order of society known to Borrow has largely broken up. -When he knew it, the organisation and status of that society had been -unaltered for centuries. Borrow’s gypsies were as esoteric as they had -been in 1550, when Andrew Borde, writing his “Fyrst Boke of the -Introduction of Knowledge,” “introduced” as a great discovery a few -sentences of Romany, which he described as “Egipt speche,” and drew an -uncomplimentary character sketch of the ’Gyptians, to whom he ascribed -origin in the land of Rameses: “The people of the country be swarte, and -doth go disgised in theyr apparel contrary to other nacions, they be -lyght fingerd and use pyking [picking pockets], they have litle manner, -and evyl looking, and yet be pleasant dansers.” {267} Even while -Borrow’s books were appearing, however, the old gypsy society was -disappearing. The enclosure of the English commons had made it hard for -them to survive in their original state; the arrival of the railway so -altered the whole atmosphere and outlook of the countryside that it -became intolerable to them, and vast numbers of the wealthier class, the -gryengroes or horse-dealers, with whom Borrow consorted, left for a newer -and more simply-organised country on the other side of the Atlantic. -Those who remained deteriorated. Gypsy traditions survive. So does the -language. But the racial purity has been to a great extent lost by -intermarriage among the gypsies, the “tinklers,” and the mumpers; and -many of the caravanners on the English roads to-day have very little -gypsy blood in their veins. How long any gypsyism at all will combat the -onslaughts of the law on the one hand and the motor on the other is a -doubtful point. There is a tendency in the one case to impose conditions -which make the nomadic life almost impracticable; {268} in the other -case, the caravan (in the gypsy sense) is seriously incommoded by the -speeding up of road traffic. - -Borrow wrote in his autobiography about gypsies as they were in the days -before education and petrol had combined against them, when their camps -were to be found in lonely lanes and obscure dells, and they rested in -the heat of noon by the green roadside. The substantial accuracy of his -picture has been amply confirmed. He recorded facts about their habits -and their habitat. For some reason he was able to read more deeply into -their character than many observers who are not open to the same charge -of being unscientific. What he tells us of gypsy pride, love of race, -exclusiveness, mutual honour, hostility to the gentiles, faithfulness to -their own standards amidst what seems to be degradation and squalor, is -perfectly true. It remains as true to-day, indeed, as it was when Borrow -wrote, wherever unadulterated gypsy blood is found. He extenuated -nothing. Complaint has been made that, on the contrary, he failed to do -justice to the better side of the gypsy woman’s character. Mr. -Watts-Dunton has pointed this out; and it cannot be denied that the -figures of Mrs. Herne and Leonora are horrible enough, grotesquely -villainous, and compelling mainly by reason of the baneful magnetism of -their unequivocal wickedness. The companion portrait of Ursula should -not, however, be overlooked, nor that section of “The Zincali” which he -devotes to the vindication of the gitanas’ chastity. - -The charm exercised by the gypsies upon Borrow was so strong that he said -he did not remember the time when the mere mention of the name failed to -awaken within him feelings hard to be described. He knew all the tribes -of the East of England from his boyhood—the Smiths, the Pinfolds, Grays, -Bosviles,—visited their camps, met them on Mousehold Heath, admired their -horse-craft, worshipped the pugilists among them, followed them to fairs -and studied their tricks and wiles, learnt their language, and found his -way into their confidence. It could only be done because he worked -spells upon them much as they worked their enchantment upon him. The -tall youth with the white hair and the piercing eyes, who seemed to be -more absorbed in their saying and their doing than in any other -employment of his life, became one of them whenever he pleased. They, -indeed, refused to believe that one so learned in their business was not -one of them. Remarking on the fact that in all his intercourse with the -tribes in various parts of the world he had never received the least -injury from men whose hatred and contempt of the “gorgios” (“gentiles,” -or non-gypsies) was inveterate, he said he was “not deceived as to the -motive of their forbearance: they thought him a Rom (_c.f._ page 277), -and on this supposition they hurt him not, their love of ‘the blood’ -being their most distinguishing characteristic.” This was the set of -circumstances which enabled Borrow to give us sketches of life and -character as fine as are to be found within any book-covers: the -masterly-limned portrait of Jasper Petulengro, quaintest and most -alluring of pagans, and the towering figure of Tawno Chikno, type of -gypsy beauty and chivalry. This vision of gypsydom in England is one of -Borrow’s finest bequests to his countrymen, if, indeed, its value is not -greater than that of anything else he accomplished. - -In Spain he pursued the same road. He would turn aside anywhere to talk -with a gitano (gypsy), and the gypsy episodes help to flush and enliven -the pages of “The Bible in Spain” in a very striking manner. The method -he adopted in compiling “The Zincali” has been remarked in an earlier -chapter. The reader who cares not at all for Sancho de Moncada will yet -find much in the book of curious incident and lively observation. He who -is bored to death with Quinones may yet be interested in such a dramatic -story as that of the Bookseller of Logrono, and in such a graphic -description as that of the forge in the woods, with its gypsy metaphor of -the sparks: “More than a hundred lovely daughters I see produced at one -time, fiery as roses; in one moment they expire, gracefully -circumvolving.” As he tells us in “Lavengro,” Borrow always saw poetry -in a forge. But just as he preferred Gronwy Owen to Homer, so he set the -vision of the gypsy smithy, under the trees of an English dingle or in a -Spanish forest, high above the more grandiose forges of the classic -shades in which - - “. . . the mighty family - Of one-eyed brothers hasten to the shore, - And gather round the bellowing Polypheme.” - -Indeed, he sometimes expressed downright contempt for Vulcan and his -minions, though he did not disdain the Cyclopean legend as a literary -element in the composition of the scene just mentioned. The traditional -trade of the smith is dying out among the gypsies, and the sale of cheap -tinpots is a much commoner occupation of their lives than the forging of -the petul (horseshoe). Certain aspects of gypsydom described in “The -Zincali,” however, are constant, and here it is proposed to notice more -particularly Borrow’s remarks bearing on the general and permanent -features of Romany character and customs, arts and manners. - -The attitude of the race towards questions of religion interested him -greatly. If their progenitors brought any religion with them from beyond -the frontier hills of India, they had lost all trace of it before Western -inquirers began to investigate their history and explore their minds. - -“Do you fear God, O Tuérta?” Borrow asked the one-eyed daughter of Pépa -the sybil in Madrid. - -“Brother, I fear nothing!” was Tuérta’s reply. - -He translated the Gospel of St. Luke into the gypsy language of Spain, -and remarks that the gitános purchased it freely; many of the men -understood it, and prized it highly, but they were induced “more by the -language than the doctrine.” The women, though generally unable to read, -“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 -which would preserve them from all danger and mischance.” Having -forgotten whatever gods they ever worshipped before they left their -country of origin, they were perfectly indifferent to the Christianity of -the Western world. There is a curiously interesting passage on this -subject in the introductory chapters of “The Zincali” dealing with the -English gypsies: - - “With respect to religion, they call themselves members of the - Established Church, and are generally anxious to have their children - baptised and to obtain a copy of the register. Some of their - baptismal papers, which they carry about with them, are highly - curious, going back for a period of upwards of two hundred years. - With respect to the essential points of religion, they are quite - careless and ignorant; if they believe in a future state, they dread - it not, and if they manifest when dying any anxiety, it is not for - the soul but for the body; a handsome coffin and a grave in a quiet - country churchyard are invariably the objects of their last thoughts, - and it is probable that, in their observance of the rite of baptism, - they are principally influenced by a desire to enjoy the privilege of - burial in consecrated ground.” - -This might hold as an accurate account of the gypsies of to-day. In -Eastern Europe, I believe, they are Christians or Mussulmans with the -greatest impartiality, and change from one religion to the other as -circumstances may require. In Great Britain they like the distinction -and the respectability which they suppose to be attached to marriages and -baptisms in the Established Church. The ceremony of baptism is a -favourite one. They do not mind how many times or in how many places -they submit their children to that rite: the sponsors usually give -presents. The German gypsies who were in Great Britain in 1906 had their -children baptised in Glasgow. The Catholic faith is professed by some -Welsh members of the race. But, in general, religion of any type has no -relation whatever to their lives; as a keen observer of the gypsies -remarked to the writer, “they know as much about it as a navvy does of -bimetallism.” They go to tea-meetings which may be organised for their -benefit, and behave themselves as to the manner born; but efforts to -evangelise them have been of little permanent effect. They have no -“religious sense” in our acceptation of the term. Respect for the dead, -however, is still an essential article of the gypsy code. - -When that rare old scoundrel Ryley Bosvil lay a-dying, as Borrow relates -in the “Lavo-Lil,” a Methodist visited him and asked him what was his -hope. “My hope is,” said he, “that when I am dead I shall be put into -the ground and my wife and children will weep over me.” They did. And -on the return from the grave they carried out the gypsy custom, brought -from India, of the funeral pyre. Instead of quarrelling over the -division of the property, like Christians, as Borrow sourly says, they -killed his pony and buried it, smashed his caravan and cart into -matchwood, and built a fire, on which they cast his clothes, blankets, -carpets, and curtains; they broke his mirrors and his crockery, and -battered up his hardware, and threw it all on the flames. That practice -is still occasionally carried out in England: the property of the dead -shall not be defiled by the living. And of the dead themselves they -speak only with bated breath. The relatives of a deceased gypsy will -sometimes give up his favourite food. “An old friend of mine . . . gave -up fish when her husband died, because it was the last thing they had -eaten together,” writes to me one who has an intimate knowledge of the -race. The old love for graves in quiet little churchyards survives in -Wales, but in England—at any rate in Lancashire—the gypsies now own -graves in the big cemeteries. This is also the case in France. In -Norway, it is said, nobody knows how they dispose of their dead. - - [Picture: Page of Borrow’s Draft of “The Zincali.” By permission of Mr. - Watts-Dunton] - -In “The Zincali” Borrow has a short disquisition on gypsy law, which he -analyses under three heads: (1) Separate not from the husbands; (2) Be -faithful to the husbands; (3) Pay your debts to the husbands—the husband -being the “Rom,” as distinct from the “gorgio,” or gentile. He contends -that, whatever may be the moral and legal relations between gypsydom and -the world at large, there is perfect honour amongst the members of the -race itself. He enlarges on the chastity of gypsy women, which is never -overcome, in whatever licentious scenes they may be involved. Experts in -the Romany language take exception to the use of the expression -“husbands” in Borrow’s sense. “Rom” is an obscure word, and “husband” is -only a secondary meaning. Its Indian origin is uncertain; there are in -Western Asia thousands of people who call themselves “Rom” and are not -gypsies. But Borrow’s rendering of the principles of gypsy law is -accurate. Clan attachment is all-powerful still. Mr. Scott-Macfie -informs me of the case of two brothers, friends of his, who quarrelled -and have not spoken for thirty years. Yet they always live in the same -camp, “and when there is a battle Kenza always comes and fights by Noah’s -side, returning to his tent after the struggle without having said a -word.” Their common cause is the concern of all: when a gypsy is in -trouble, money is always forthcoming for his defence and to pay his fine. -The chastity of the gypsy women is the fact to which is owing the -preservation of their race purity against tremendous odds. - -The occupations and customs of gypsies have not varied much all the world -over. The men have been jockeys and horse-dealers and the women -fortune-tellers. Borrow has given more than one account of _hokano -baro_, “the great trick,” practised on credulous women, who hide money or -valuables in the earth or elsewhere, deluded by the Romany chi’s (gypsy -woman’s) promise that it shall magically increase—and, of course, never -find it again. The three weeks generally prescribed as the term of its -gestation are quite long enough to put a sufficient number of miles -between the gypsy and her victim. The practice of _hokano baro_ is -becoming rarer, probably not because of any reluctance on the part of the -gypsies to perform it, but because of the gradual decline of the kind of -superstition which made it possible. There are relics of it in the West -of England and elsewhere. The village “witch” occasionally makes an -appearance in the police court, and not many years ago in Cornwall a chi -received imprisonment for a false pretence not less ingenious than the -_hokano baro_, and almost as elaborate as some recent conspiracies in -which no gypsies have been involved. The bait in this case was money “in -Chancery,” and three Cornish housewives were effectually swindled by a -cleverly constructed story in which witchcraft, the planets, phantom -lawyers, and hidden property all played their parts. - -To hoax the gentile is a meritorious thing in a gypsy, and there is -evidence that the Romany people themselves are not as a race -superstitious. Their success depended in Borrow’s time upon cold -calculation and rapid judgment of the characters of the people with whom -they had to deal. Pepita’s interview with Cristina in the palace, and -the trick of Aurora upon the wealthy widow lady {279} are evidence of -that. Their modern attitude is precisely the same, though I have been -told of one Welsh gypsy who believed she could work spells, had faith in -her own fortune-telling, and was believed in by other gypsies. A -well-known gryengro in the eastern counties, it is said, never concludes -any important horse-dealing transaction till his mother has “read the -stars” for him. Some gypsies credit the seventh daughter with the power -of true divination. But in the main their art of dukkering, bewitching, -or fortune-telling, is merely the art of gauging the personalities with -which they are dealing, and, as Borrow says, adapting their promises “to -the age and condition of the parties who seek for information”; the gypsy -holds the hand of her client, but her eyes are fixed upon the client’s -face. Readers of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” a much more numerous -company than those who have studied “The Zincali,” will recall references -in those books to _draving balos_. This was the pleasant custom of -administering to pigs and other comestible animals of the countryside a -certain poison, which infallibly deprived them of life but did not render -their flesh unfit for food. Having done this in secret, the gypsy would -go up to the farmer openly and offer some small price for the carcass, -and his offer would be accepted, since a porker supposed to have died of -disease was marketable in no other quarter. The custom does not linger -in England, but a recent traveller in Spain saw at Martos, in the -province of Jaen, a whole gypsy tribe feeding on the roasted body of a -poisoned pig. - -Among the Romany habits quaintly discussed in “The Zincali” {280} which -still survive in gypsydom is that of the _patteran_, or trail—the bunches -of twigs or handfuls of grass scattered at a cross-road to indicate to -stragglers the way which their companions have taken. It has been -remarked that the ranks of the gryengroes, or horse-dealers, of the class -described in Borrow’s books have been greatly depleted, particularly by -emigration to the Western continent; but there are representatives of -these, the gypsy aristocracy, still to be seen at the English horse-sales -and fairs, and very formidable judges of a horse they are, though I know -of none quite so expert as Jasper Petulengro. One of them not long ago -bought a piece of land near Lowestoft, in order that he and his friends -might camp undisturbed by the law and unvexed by the police. - -No account of Borrow’s gypsyism can neglect the wonderful scene or series -of scenes which, omitted from “The Zincali,” were included in “The Bible -in Spain,” picturing his journey from Badajoz towards Madrid in company -with Antonio Lopez. These passages, in the ninth and tenth chapters of -the book, convey an extraordinary impression of the gypsy character and -of gypsy habits. They contain sketches of persons and incidents vivid as -lightning flashes; they are full of Borrow’s best matter and in his most -characteristic manner. See the fierce gitano in his zamarra, or cloak of -sheepskin, and his high-peaked Andalusian hat, coming to interview the -London Caloro (gypsy) who has so strange a knowledge of their language -that the gypsies for whom he has written a gospel call him “brother.” -Antonio, bound on a journey on “the affairs of Egypt,” has bethought him -that the strange Caloro is going to Madrid. The country is very -disturbed; the gypsies are taking advantage of the uproar to plunder the -gentiles; and the Caloro may fall a victim to them. Antonio proposes, -therefore, to accompany him as far as the frontiers of Castile, so that -he may not run the risk of a mistake; while, as for perils from any other -quarter than the bands of gypsy brigands—does not Antonio carry in his -bosom the magic _bar lachi_, the lodestone, a talisman which renders him -immune from knife or bullet, and for him makes “the dark night the same -as the fair day, and the wild carrascal [forest] as the market-place?” -The _bar lachi_ occupies a prominent place in “The Zincali,” where a -strange story is told of the fascination exercised upon the gitanós by -the large piece of lodestone in the museum at Madrid, and the recipe is -given for a magic potion consisting of a little powder from the stone -dropped in a glass of the potent spirit aguardiente. Antonio had -fortified himself with such a draught before he came to make his proposal -that they should ride forth together, Borrow on the fleet horse which had -cost fifty dollars, and the gypsy on a mule. - -From the moment when Borrow’s love of adventure and desire to get insight -into Spanish gypsydom led him to accept this strange proposal instead of -going to Madrid in prosaic British fashion by the stage-coach, his pages -are lit by variegated lights—the blaze of straw fires roasting pig, the -eye of the sun in dusty village streets, or its rays percolating through -the maze of forest trees, or the brasero’s glow in the vast ruined house -in Merida, where the gypsy crone tells him her story of torrid adventure -in Morocco among the Corahai, her fortune-telling and her hokkawaring -(deceiving) among the desert tribes. They are overhung by the mystery of -the object of Antonio’s journey, which remains unsolved. They echo with -the weird converse of Antonio himself, with his guitar-strings vibrating -in the shadows of the great room lit by an earthen lamp on the floor, -with the patter of the gypsy girls’ feet as they dance. Nobody has ever -mixed ingredients like these into such a dish as Borrow served up—the -ancient gitana who knew “more crabbed things and crabbed words than all -the Erraté [gypsy folk] betwixt here and Catalonia,” the venal alguazils, -or excise officers, looking for contraband who were bribed by the present -of a cigar and frightened out of the house by the maledictions of the old -woman and her girls, the bivouac among the trees, the dialogues on solemn -questions with Pepindorio the pagan. - -The most interesting gypsy-hunt in which Borrow indulged in the later -part of his life was the search in the Cheviot Hills for relics of old -Will Faa, the gypsy “king,” smuggler, and innkeeper of Kirk Yetholm. -Faa, the bearer of a celebrated name in Scottish gypsydom, flourished in -the eighteenth century during those years when the nomads had recovered -from the effects of the early persecutions, and had not yet been assailed -by an organised rural police. This monarch in the Augustan age of the -Romanies had been a person of great consequence in Borderland, and it was -at the house he occupied in Kirk Yetholm—an inn which in ’64 had much of -the appearance of a ruined Spanish posada—that Borrow was gazing when a -woman accosted him on gypsy subjects, and told him that a granddaughter -of Will Faa was residing in the town. The incident, with his visit to -this celebrity, Esther Blyth, “the Queen of the Nokkums,” {284} provides -the material for the last and the best chapter of “The Romano Lavo-Lil.” -He describes his “deep discourse” with her “about matters Nokkum, about -the words they used and the famous ones among them in the older time.” - -There is a curious forecast here of Leland’s discovery of Shelta, and its -identification with the language of the ancient Gaelic bards, though -Borrow remained quite innocent of its significance. The Queen of the -Nokkums had not much Romany, but used a “poggado jib” (a broken jargon) -consisting partly of gypsy words, partly of Lowland Scots, and partly of -cant, “the allegorical jargon of thieves.” He remarks: “Then she called -a donkey _asal_, and a stone _cloch_, which words are neither cant nor -gypsy, but Irish or Gaelic. I incurred her vehement indignation by -saying they were Gaelic. She contradicted me flatly, and said that -whatever I might know” (and he had been astonishing her with his Romany -jib, as usual), “I was quite wrong there, for that neither she nor any -one of her people would condescend to speak anything so low as Gaelic, -or, indeed, if they possibly could avoid it, have anything to do with the -poverty-stricken creatures who used it.” Borrow goes on to moralise in -his own way on the effect built up in the minds of the public at large on -the subject of the Highlanders and their Gaelic by “the magic writings of -Walter Scott,” and to contrast it with the contempt in which both people -and language were held in Scott’s own land. - -The faltering hand of age is all too plainly seen in this Kirk Yetholm -sketch. It has a certain interest, but it lacks the wondrous witchery of -his earlier dialogues with gypsies in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye.” -Perhaps there was every bit as much of the picturesque and romantic in -his later intercourse with the swarthy people; but he was not the same -Borrow. He had not the old spirit, the vim, the elasticity, and he could -not invest his gypsy friends and their surroundings with the charm that -pervaded his former writing on the subject. He had lost zest. He knew -and mentioned that the Romany chals and chis whom he saw in dingy -metropolitan suburbs or slums were out for a great part of the year in -the green lanes and pleasant ways of Kent; but he gives us no pictures of -the patch of grass, so vividly described by Dickens about the same time, -“between the road-dust and the trees,” the place whose sweet temptations -“all the tramps with carts or caravans, the gypsy-tramp, the show-tramp, -the cheap-jack, find it impossible to resist,” where “all turn the horse -loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place! I love -the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched its grass!” Yet that -was just the picture that would have appealed to the younger Borrow. - -During his residence in London he paid many visits to the gypsy haunts in -the neighbourhood, such as the no-man’s-land at Wandsworth, where was to -be found a very Babel of gypsies, mumpers, and Irish vagrants, as unlike -a true gypsy encampment as anything on earth—a medley of caravans and -carts, horses and donkeys, basket-makers and clothes-peg carvers, -broken-down pugilists and the scum of the nether world. There were -sketches to be made of such characters as Mrs. Cooper, the deserted wife -of Jack Cooper, a famous gypsy prize-fighter. With her he would sit “in -her little tent after she had taken her cup of tea . . . and hear her -talk of old times and things: how Jack courted her ’neath the trees of -Loughton Forest, and how, when tired of courting, they would get up and -box.” There were suggestions to be offered of such personalities as the -“dark, mysterious, beautiful, terrible creature,” with a lovely gypsy -face, but an expression “evil—evil to a degree,” who was a puzzle to all -the inhabitants of the gypsery, now dukkering for servant girls or -bandying slang with butcher-boys, and anon “in a beautiful half -riding-dress, her hair fantastically plaited and adorned with pearls, -standing beside the carriage of a countess telling the fortune of her -ladyship with the voice and look of a pythoness.” There were stories to -be told of the encampment at Latimer’s Green in the north of London, and -of the rookery at “The Mount,” in the East End, and there was a biography -to be related of that tremendous fellow, Ryley Bosvil, the tinker who -wore gold pieces for coat-buttons, who had two wives, gave himself grand -airs, and composed Romany verses, of which the following ode to one of -his better halves is a spirited specimen—the translation is Borrow’s: - - “Beneath the bright sun there is none, there is none, - I love like my Yocky Shuri; - With the greatest delight in blood I would fight - To the knees for my Yocky Shuri!” - -But in all these literary excursions into gypsydom, the effervescence had -gone. It was left for other pens to transmute the gorgio’s impressions -of the Romany into real poetry. And even Borrow’s own adventures in -these later times are better described by another than by himself. - -Mr. Watts-Dunton relates one of the best gypsy stories ever told about -Borrow. It arose out of a discussion between them as to the probable -nature of the appeal, if any, which Matthew Arnold’s poem of “The Scholar -Gypsy” would make to a real Romany chi. Borrow had ventured the opinion -that whatever might be the poetical merits of Arnold’s work, it was clear -that he had no conception of the Romany temper, and that gypsies would be -unable either to understand its motive or to sympathise with it. Mr. -Watts-Dunton thought, on the contrary, that, however blind a gypsy might -be to the beauties of Arnold’s style, “the motive was so clearly -developed that the most illiterate person could understand it.” They -went off together to a gypsy camp to test the question, agreeing to read -the poem to the first intelligent gypsy woman they should find—for gypsy -men, said Borrow, were “too prosaic to furnish a fair test.” The -encounter with the Romanies came about through the discovery of a magpie -crouching in a hawthorn bush. The bird did not attempt to fly away as -they approached. Mr. Watts-Dunton exclaimed, “It is wounded, or else -dying—or is it a tame bird escaped from a cage?” - - “Hawk!” said Borrow laconically, and turned up his face and gazed - into the sky. “The magpie is waiting till the hawk has caught his - quarry and made his meal. I fancy he has himself been ‘chivvied’ by - the hawk, as the gypsies would say.” - - And there, sure enough, beneath one of the silver clouds that specked - the dazzling blue, a hawk—one of the kind which takes its prey in the - open rather than in the thick woodlands—was wheeling up and up, and - trying its best to get above a poor little lark in order to stoop at - and devour it. . . . - - As Borrow and his friend were gazing at the bird, a woman’s voice at - their elbows said: - - “It’s lucky to chivvy the hawk that chivvies a magpie. I shall stop - here till the hawk’s flew away.” - - They turned round, and there stood a magnificent gypsy woman, - carrying, gypsy fashion, a weakly child that, in spite of its sallow - and wasted cheek, proclaimed itself to be hers. By her side stood a - young gipsy girl of about seventeen years of age. She was - beautiful—quite remarkably so—but her beauty was not of the typical - Romany kind. It was, perhaps, more like the beauty of a Capri girl. - - She was bareheaded—there was not even a gypsy handkerchief on her - head—her hair was not plaited, and was not smooth and glossy like a - gypsy girl’s hair, but flowed thick and heavy and rippling down the - back of her neck and upon her shoulders. In the tumbled tresses - glittered certain objects, which at first sight seemed to be jewels. - They were small dead dragon-flies of the crimson kind called - “sylphs.” - -The woman was a well-known gypsy, Perpinia Boswell, with whom both -students were acquainted. Borrow expressed surprise at the condition of -the infant, and remarked that the “chavo” (baby) ought not to look like -that with such a mother. Perpinia agreed. It was a misery to her, -especially as her husband, Mike, was “such a daddy, too,” stronger for a -man than she was for a woman. A great black cutty protruded between the -woman’s teeth. - -“How many pipes of tobacco do you smoke in a day?” asked Mr. -Watts-Dunton. She could not say, but the girl ventured the calculation -that it was as many as she could afford to buy. Her husband did not like -her to smoke, and said it made her look “like an old Londra woman in -Common Garding Market.” - - “You must not smoke another pipe,” said Borrow’s friend to the - mother—“not another pipe till the child leaves the breast.” - - “What?” said Perpinia defiantly. “As if I could live without my - pipe!” - - “Fancy Pep a-livin’ without her baccy,” laughed the girl of the - dragon-flies. - - “Your child can’t live with it,” said Borrow’s friend to Perpinia. - “That pipe of yours is full of a poison called nicotine.” - - “Nick what?” said the girl, laughing. “That’s a new kind o’ Nick. - Why, you smoke yourself!” - - “Nicotine,” said Borrow’s friend; “and the first part of Pep’s body - that the poison gets into is her breast, and—” - - “Gets into my burk?” said Perpinia; “get along wi’ ye.” - - “Yes.” - - “Do it poison Pep’s milk?” said the girl. - - “Yes.” - - “That ain’t true,” said Perpinia; “can’t be true.” - - “It _is_ true,” said Borrow’s friend. “If you don’t give up that - pipe for a time the child will die, or else be a rickety thing all - his life. If you _do_ give it up, it will grow up to be as fine a - Romany chal as Mike himself.” - - “Chavo agin pipe, Pep,” said the girl. - - “Lend me your pipe, Perpinia,” said Borrow, in that - hail-fellow-well-met tone of his which he reserved for the Romanies—a - tone which no Romany could ever resist. And he took it gently from - the woman’s lips. “Don’t smoke any more till I come to the camp and - see the chavo again.” - - The woman looked very angry at first. - - “He be’s a good-friend to the Romanies,” said the girl in an - appeasing tone. - - “That’s true,” said the woman, “but he’s no business to take my pipe - out o’ my mouth for all that.” - -She made no further protest, but remained to keep guard over the magpie -which was to bring luck to her chavo, while Borrow walked away with the -pipe in his pocket, accompanied by his friend and the young girl. The -three sat down on a fallen tree to put Arnold’s poem through the crucible -of the gypsy mind. The girl was a beauty of the most entrancing type to -be found among her race, and her loveliness made a strong appeal even to -Borrow, whose taste—the subject of frequent remark—was not so much for -tawny women, however seductive, as for tall and stately fair girls, such -as Isopel Berners and the queens of the North. The gypsy’s complexion, -says Mr. Watts-Dunton, - - “though darker than an English girl’s, was rather lighter than any - ordinary gypsy’s. Her eyes were of an indescribable hue, but an - artist who has since then painted her portrait for Borrow’s friend - described it as a mingling of pansy-purple and dark tawny. The - pupils were so large that, being set in the somewhat almond-shaped - and long-eyelashed lids of her race, they were partly curtained both - above and below, and this had the effect of making the eyes seem - always a little contracted and just about to smile. The great size - and deep richness of the eyes made the straight little nose seem - smaller than it really was, they also lessened the apparent size of - the mouth, which, red as a rosebud, looked quite small until she - laughed, when the white teeth made quite a wide glitter.” - -The poem was interrupted, before three lines had been read, by a swarm of -dragon-flies which swam in the sunshine around the girl’s head, causing -her to exclaim that the “Devil’s needles” were come to sew up her eyes -for killing their brothers. “I dussn’t set here,” said she. “Us -Romanies call this ‘Dragon-fly brook.’ And that’s the king of the -dragon-flies; he lives here.” The insects presently disappeared, and she -sat down again to hear the lil (book). She was interested in the prose -story of Glanville, on which Arnold’s poem was founded, but the poem -itself bewildered her, except that “her eyes flashed now and then at the -lovely bits of description.” It was read a second time. “Can’t make out -what the lil’s all about—seems all about nothink! Seems to me that the -pretty sights what makes a Romany fit to jump out o’ her skin for joy -makes this ’ere gorgio want to cry. What a rum lot gorgios is sure_ly_!” - - And then she sprang up and ran off towards the camp with the agility - of a greyhound, turning round every few moments, pirouetting and - laughing aloud. - - “The beauty of that girl,” Borrow again murmured, “is quite—quite—” - - Again he did not finish his sentence, but after a while said: - - “That was all true about the nicotine?” - - “Partly, I think,” said his friend, “but not being a medical man I - must not be too emphatic. If it _is_ true it ought to be a criminal - offence for any woman to smoke in excess while she is suckling a - child.” - - “Say it ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all,” - growled Borrow. “Fancy kissing a woman’s mouth that smelt of stale - tobacco—pheugh!” - -Borrow did not forget the incident. Perpinia abstained from tobacco, and -in a fortnight, after several visits to the camp, he had the satisfaction -of knowing that the child was recovering from its illness. - - “Is not Perpinia very grateful to you and to me?” said the friend. - - “Yes,” said Borrow, with a twinkle in his eye. “She manages to feel - grateful to you and me for making her give up the pipe, and also to - believe at the same time that her child was saved by the good luck - that came to her because she guarded the magpie.” - - - - -CHAPTER XVI -BORROW’S BOOKS - - -STRONG was the appeal made to a very wide public by “The Bible in Spain.” -What was the nature of the appeal? It was unique; but it was not -inherently surprising. “I woke one morning and found myself famous,” -said Byron of the reception of “Childe Harold.” Borrow’s gigantic leap -from the shades of chilly neglect into the sunshine of popularity was -equally sudden and less obviously explicable. He had none of the social -advantages that helped to spread the notoriety of Byron’s achievement. -Comparatively few people knew anything about the obscure son of the -adjutant of the Norfolk Militia; and we have already seen that his -special type of genius made no special impression on that generation. -Yet “The Bible in Spain” went forth from Albemarle Street into “the -reading world” to make a triumphal progress amidst storms of applause. - -This furore was created not entirely by the real merits of the book, but -largely by adventitious circumstances. It has great merits. But there -is more work, there is better work, in “Lavengro”; the latter is a far -more representative Borrow book than its forerunner. It has more of -Borrow’s humour, more of his subtility; it is far more fascinating as a -human document. Yet “Lavengro” was still-born. It was received with no -applause. The critics disapproved of it, and the public did not buy it. -Whereas thirty-five thousand copies of “The Bible in Spain” were sold in -a year, it took the same time to get rid of a thousand copies of -“Lavengro.” Thus, the real reasons of the success of 1843 did not reside -primarily in the qualities for which we admire the book to-day. The -attributes that make it something more than a mere record of a -colporteur’s labours, its picaresque liveliness, its saturnine humour, -its vivid sketches of romantic rascality, keep it alive. The narrator -moves, like some new Gil Blas, through a series of scenes which give the -reader a savour of the atmosphere of Spain hardly excelled in English -literature. It is evident from the experience of “Lavengro” that these -were not the attributes that caused the book to sell in its thousands -when it was published. The cause of its huge circulation was that it -appealed to a public which would buy in large quantities a record of -missionary enterprise and religious adventure, and would not have bought -any book that Borrow could write if the religious interest had been -absent. No doubt, when they had bought and read, the quality of the work -as literature produced in them unaccustomed and pleasing sensations not -to be obtained from most books purchased for similar reasons. Borrow’s -evangelism attracted them and his art retained them. - -The bulk of “The Bible in Spain” consists of transcripts of letters -written to the Bible Society reporting upon his proceedings in the -Peninsula. Suppose the letters had never been written. Suppose Borrow -had merely described his travels and adventures in Spain in a -secular-fashion, is it possible to question that the book would have -shared the same fate, as “Lavengro”? Partly by design, partly by -accident, the contents were skilfully mixed and flavoured to a nicety. -True, it contained more than a _soupçon_ of gypsyism and scoundrelism. -True, its finest passages are devoted to gypsies and vagabonds and their -haunts and habits. Yet, the dominant elements are religious. It is not -proposed to suggest that any hypocrisy is involved. Borrow was, in his -peculiar fashion, a deeply religious man. His passionate Protestantism -was thoroughly sincere. When he declaimed against Romish superstitions, -and laid his vigorous flail upon Batuscha, “the paralytic,” he meant -every word he said. When, describing the ravishing scenery at Monte -Moro, he declares, “I sat down on a broken wall and remained gazing, and -listening, and shedding tears of rapture; for of all the pleasures which -a bountiful God permitteth His children to enjoy, none are so dear to -some hearts as the music of forests and streams . . . ” he is not canting -for the benefit of Earl Street, though in other circumstances the -sentiment might have been differently expressed. And the majority of his -readers perused this with the Bible Society in their minds. One -remembers having “The Bible in Spain” placed in one’s youthful hands, -with stress laid on the fact that this was the work of a man who had -encountered infinite perils and suffered amazing hardships in a pious -cause, and with injunctions to observe not the remarkable beauties of the -book but the benighted condition of the priest-ridden children of Spain, -to compare it with the blessings of unlimited Bible-reading which oneself -enjoyed. - -There is no need to labour this point. The perspective has cleared with -the passage of years. There is no less admiration for the fine work -which the Bible Society did and is doing, and a great deal more -perspicuous admiration of Borrow’s book. Literature owes much to the -Bible Society in many ways, and one of its debts lies here—that it found -Borrow employment at a time when he was in sore straits, and provided him -with the means of introducing to the public the fruits of his literary -labour. - -It has already been suggested that, in point of art, “The Bible in Spain” -does not bear comparison with “Lavengro.” For what it is worth, that is -a deliberate judgment. But it should be said that no such comparison -ought to be instituted. The two books are widely different in -inspiration, in purpose, in execution. The record of the Spanish -journeys has an interest of its own, and may stand on its own merits. As -a descriptive and narrative writer Borrow had few superiors in his time. -His style smacks of Defoe, smacks of the Bible, smacks of the archaic -poets and romancers he loved so well. But it is his own style—at once a -noble and spacious style and no style at all. There is no preciosity and -there is little elegance in it; but there is naturalism, virility, -grandeur. Only when he becomes didactic does his power decline. Then, -in spite of his tremendous vigour of invective, he rarely rises above the -level of the leader-writer, with his eye on the thing nearest to his fond -prejudices, searching for the most offensive word that happens to be -handy. - -There is probably less sermonising in “The Bible in Spain” than in -“Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye.” Borrow is in love with Spain as Spain. -He abounds in admiration of the country and its climate, the nobility of -its people and their “stern, heroic virtue.” He does not gloss over the -savagery and crime to be found among them, but he observes that there is -very little of low, vulgar vice in the great body of the Spanish nation. -His fulminations are reserved for the politicians and the warring -factions that distressed the land, and for the “atrocious projects of -malignant Rome.” He is generous in his approval of the valour and the -probity of the people as a whole. He moves among them with a freedom -that can only be attained by the man who knows the language—and not by -all men who know it. For Spaniards are sensitive about their noble -tongue, and do not like to hear it mutilated by those who are not to the -manner born. Borrow had no nervousness about his linguistic powers. He -gives some entertaining instructions to Englishmen who want to make -themselves understood in a foreign language: they should speak with much -noise and vociferation, opening their mouths wide. “Is it surprising,” -he asks, “that the English are in general the worst linguists in the -world, seeing that they pursue a system diametrically opposite? For -example, when they attempt to speak Spanish, the most sonorous tongue in -existence, they scarcely open their lips, and, putting their hands in -their pockets, fumble lazily instead of applying them to the -indispensable office of gesticulation.” He, at any, rate, succeeded in -vociferating and gesticulating his way through Spain to good purpose, and -his picture of the country is enriched by a wealth of intimacy that would -have been beyond the power of almost any other Englishman. - -It is astonishing that a man with so many insular prejudices as Borrow, a -person so dogmatic, and so utterly scornful of the religion that pervades -the very soil of Spain, should have been able to ingratiate himself with -its people as he did, while on an errand which most of them must have -considered damnably heretical. The secret is to be sought in his love of -the romantic and the quality of _simpatia_, which, in spite of all his -idiosyncrasies, he possessed in very high degree. - -“The Bible in Spain” is a piece of Borrow. That provides its principal -charm. It is not peppered with “dots and asterisks” in the same way as -“Lavengro,” and does not depend for any great part of its effect on -ellipsis. But it is still delightfully irresponsible and -inconsequential, full of quaint snatches of character, of rough sketches -of picturesque figures, of bits of adventure which lead nowhere, yet -carry the reader on from incident to incident with a fascination as -irresistible as the elusive attractions of Tristram Shandy. There are -solid values as well. There are the rugged, unpremeditated eloquence of -its descriptions, the vivid colouring of its persons in the piece, and, -the never-flagging gallop of its action. One would be hard pressed to -name a book of its kind in which stir and progression are more constant. - -On every page peep realistic portraits at which the reader has just time -to glance before he is hurried on. Who can ever forget the goatherd on -the mountain between Monte Moro and Elvas, who recalled to Borrow’s mind -Brute Carle in the ballad of Swayne Vonved? - - “A wild swine on his shoulders he kept, - And upon his bosom a black bear slept; - And about his fingers, with hair o’erhung, - The squirrel sported and weasel clung,—” - -that weird figure of a man, with the otter slung around his neck, who -could not read, but, when he was asked whether he knew aught of God or -Christ, “turned his countenance towards the sun, which was beginning to -sink in the west, nodded to it, and then again looked fixedly upon me. I -believe that I understood the mute reply, which probably was that it was -God who made that glorious light which illumes and gladdens all creation; -and gratified with that belief I left him. . . .” Who does not treasure -the cameo of the drunken driver of Evora, who, having wrecked his -carriage and killed his mule, exclaimed, “Paciencia! . . . It was God’s -will that she should die. What more can be said?” Or the portrait of -the Manchegan prophetess that aroused the wrath of Mr. Brandram; or of -the pig-merchant who sang the “Marseillaise” and brandished his -snick-and-snee in the inn at Badajoz? Or, in a different medium, the -picture of Mendizabal, the Jewish Prime Minister, who told Borrow it was -not Bibles they wanted in Spain, but guns and gunpowder with which to put -down the rebels? Or, on a different scale, the visions of the Jews of -Lisbon and the “children of Egypt” who tried to tempt him to a horse deal -at Duenas? - -Borrow was in Spain during some of the most exciting years of its modern -history. He tells us that he had no politics except those of the -gypsies—promising success to both sides, and ultimately joining the one -which won. That was perhaps a very proper attitude for a foreigner and a -person who had to rely on official favour in order to get his work of -Bible distribution done. Notwithstanding this, he does not conceal his -contempt for the Carlist cause. His posadero at Cordova was “an -egregious Carlist,” and though he expressly told his friend, the -correspondent of the _Morning Chronicle_ in Madrid, that he was not a -Liberal, his sympathies certainly lay away from the ultramontism of the -insurgents. Borrow’s Spanish politics, of course, are of little -importance; his sketches of political events, on the other hand, are not -only interesting but valuable. His record of the circumstances which led -up to the death of General Quesada is the account of an eye-witness, and -is adopted by Major Martin Hume in his “Story of Spain,” though doubt is -thrown upon the sensational tale of the Revolution of La Granja, where -the Queen is made to succumb to the desires of the Constitutionalists by -the threat of shooting her paramour, Muñoz, before her eyes. One of the -most characteristic bits of Borrow’s work is his portrait of Baltasar, -the “National,” and one of his unsurpassable touches of description is -given to the celebration, in the Café of the Calle d’Alcala, of Quesada’s -assassination, the huge bowl of coffee mixed for the blood-drunken -soldiery, and _el panuelo_, the blue kerchief whose ghastly contents were -used to stir the mixture. Those contents were the severed hand and -fingers of Quesada, the mutilated bones celebrated in the refrain which -resounded through the hall: - - “Que es lo que abaja - Por aquel cerro? - Ta ra ra ra ra! - Son los huesos de Quesada, - Que los trae un perro. . . .” - -Baltasar’s invitation to “Don Jorge” to drink of the cup on this -“pleasant day for Spain” relieves with a touch of humour a scene which -would otherwise be as revolting as the archaic ceremony of the vulpinised -wine after a fox-hunt. The variety and rapid movement of the scene are -remarkable, but not more so than those of fifty other scenes in the book; -and the waggish little assassin Baltasar is no quainter than fifty other -characters, from Borrow’s own Greek servant, Antonio, to Judah Lib, the -Jew of Galatia, or Benedict Moll, the Swiss. - -It is the essence of Spain that Borrow gives us in his inimitable, -erratic way, its hot love and burning hate, its high chivalry and its -profound roguery, the ineffable beauty of its women and the ugly rags of -its mendicants, the solemn dignity of its people and their saline wit, -contrasted with his own sententiousness and his peculiar, mordant humour. -The vitality of the book, the continuing effect of its best scenes, and -the never-failing interest of its adventures, are wonderful. - -Yet there is hardly a Borrovian who does not prefer “Lavengro” and “The -Romany Rye,” regarding them as one book, to anything else that Borrow -ever did. It is incomparably the finest and most fragrant efflorescence -of his genius. The fascination exercised by “Lavengro” over a -considerable part of the human race is difficult to explain: its secret -is as elusive as a great deal else in Borrow. But its existence cannot -be questioned. It has hypnotised men of vastly different temperaments, -causing this one to devote his life to the delightful, if unprofitable, -pursuit of the mysteries concealed behind Borrow’s “dots and asterisks” -and the filling up of his ellipses, and that one to become a student of -Romany and a “gypsiologist” who would otherwise have remained indifferent -to the history and character of the chals and chis. - -Many discussions have been held upon the nature of this secret. It still -avoids capture; it cannot be precipitated into words. Some explanation -of its effects may be offered, but even that can be but tentative. The -book appeals to primal instincts. It quivers with life. It stirs the -deepest emotions of those who have the sub-conscious love of Nature—the -instinct for Nature which manifests itself not in petty eulogies of the -fine things of the world, but in silent, ecstatic content with Earth. -Gypsies have it strongly developed; indeed, it explains gypsyism. The -book abounds in the unconventional strong man, in his joy of conflict, in -his curiosity about human villainy, and his admiration of all heroic -qualities. It is in the succession of Defoe, and in a less degree of -Fielding, and again in a less degree of Smollett, and it awakes nearly -all the sensations produced by them in turn, with the saving grace we -have noted—that it is never in the least salacious or even obscene. - -Another favourite theme of debate has been the autobiographical problem. -We have traced the history of the composition of “Lavengro,” and seen -that the book is truly an autobiography, though not a chronology. Borrow -invented little and recorded much. Most of the things that happen in -“Lavengro” happened in its author’s life, as Elwin said. He -unquestionably grouped figures and events for the sake of effect. Such a -concatenation as Borrow himself, Isopel Berners, the Petulengros, Tawno -Chikno, the Man in Black, and the Innkeeper in the immediate -neighbourhood of one Staffordshire dingle at the same time was, of -course, never known to history. Such dramatis personæ are far too -striking to have been collected by coincidence. The meeting of the -queenly Isopel, princess of roadside heroines, and Lavengro, crallis -(chief) of hedge philologists, and their method of intellectual commerce, -tax the credulity of the reader sufficiently. But the residuum of fact -is considerable; there is more essential truth than concrete fiction in -“Lavengro,” and it complies with the terms of Borrow’s own conception of -an autobiography. - -It has been shown that the world was unready for such a book. It was -busy about diverse affairs. It had passed out of the Byronic phase in -which Borrow attempted to detain it. The men of 1850 were unable to -appreciate his manner, and cared nothing about his matter. Now that he -made no definite appeal to the Bible Society public, and had removed -himself out of the atmosphere of Old Spain, shimmering with romance, he -found that there was no public left for him. What use had the world in -the climacterical year of the great, progressive nineteenth century for -the petty philosophy and the infinitesimal adventures of a tinker who was -not “inspired” in any sense of which it was cognisant? It was just about -to appoint Matthew Arnold as Inspector of Schools: that was more to the -purpose. It had crowned Alfred Tennyson as Poet Laureate; it was weeping -and roaring over “David Copperfield”; it was preparing to admit Thackeray -among the Immortals, for he was on the point of publishing “The History -of Henry Esmond, Esq.” If it wanted fierce controversy, was not Carlyle -thundering out his “Latter-day Pamphlets”? If it wanted picturesque -history, was not Macaulay sufficient—were not working men’s clubs in -Lancashire passing him votes of thanks for having made history -intelligible to the masses? If it wanted politics or economics, did it -not possess its John Bright and its Richard Cobden, and was there not -Mill’s “Principles of Political Economy,” fresh from the press, to be -read? It wanted Free Libraries, not free manners. Ruskin could satisfy -all its taste for archaism. It had rid itself of Chartism, and was -coquetting with Christian Socialism; “Alton Locke” was far more likely to -appeal to its sympathies than the innkeeper at Willenhall. - -One perceives how inevitable was the dismal fate of “Lavengro,” launched -at the head of a society fermenting, effervescing, seething with -progressive optimism, feverish in its eager industrial advance, filled -with sentiment, vibrating with hopeful emotions, its literary affections -fastened partly upon Macaulay, partly upon Carlyle, partly upon Tennyson. -The apparition of a book like “Lavengro” was ludicrous in its eyes, -dressed in the style of a dead century, and concerned with subjects as -dead as its habiliments. What had all this farrago of gypsies, -horse-witches, apple-women, green lanes, breezy heaths, and road-girls -(however magnificent) to do with any soul in 1850, with Manchesterism or -with Kingsleyism, with the buzz of commercial prosperity, or the growth -of social idealism or the development of political liberties, or with -current culture, or with the sentiment of the age? Nothing at all. The -frantically busy world went on building schools and inspecting them, -planning railways and running trains on them, raising mills and factories -and grinding and making, discussing problems and settling them; and it -passed Borrow by. It did not want a Romany Defoe, a modern Smollett, a -new and more truculent Bunyan, and it barely nodded to him as he -attempted to arrest its steps. It cared not a brass farthing about his -opinions, which did not matter at all; unfortunately, it cared as little -about his naturalism, which mattered a great deal. - -The only point of approach between Borrow and the public was the point of -anti-Popery. Borrow anticipated the storm of 1850, for the bulk of his -work had been written before that storm broke. His Man in Black was -modelled upon what he knew of the Catholic propagandists in England, but -the model was highly coloured; it was impossible for Borrow to view a -priest or a Catholic of any degree except through the medium of his own -ultra-Protestant spectacles. Further, the portrait is probably more -malicious than it would have been but for the state of public opinion on -the “Papal aggression” which was then being foreshadowed. The Man in -Black is a very complete picture of the Jesuitical sneak who probably -existed only in the imagination of ardent Evangelicals. But even this -accidentally topical character did not save from disaster a work which -was utterly out of tune with the times. Imagine Macaulay, or Kingsley, -or Ruskin falling on their readers in the manner of Borrow’s preface: - - “Pray, be not displeased, gentle reader, if perchance thou hast - imagined that I was about to conduct thee to distant lands, and hadst - promised thyself much instruction and entertainment from what I might - tell thee of them. I do assure thee that thou hast no reason to be - displeased, inasmuch as there are no countries in the world less - known by the British than these selfsame British islands, or where - more strange things are everyday occurring, whether in road or - street, house or dingle.” - -It was all very true, but the “gentle reader” did not want to hear about -those strange things, and his ear found Borrow’s “thees” and “thous” and -“hadsts” uncouth. “Charity and free and genial manners” in the Borrovian -sense were foreign to his desires. - -Borrow’s own favourite characters in “Lavengro,” he tells us, were the -brave old soldier and his wife (his parents), the ancient gentlewoman who -sold apples on London Bridge and conned the history of blessed Mary -Flanders, and the wandering Methodist and his wife Winifred. Filial -affection accounts for his first choice. The others are certainly -delightful vignettes; but it is strange that Borrow did not bring Jasper -Petulengro into his category of favourites, or Isopel Berners. Those two -are immortal, and it is to them that the mind flies when “Lavengro” is -mentioned. - -The book—still regarding “The Romany Rye” as part of it—divides itself -into two sections. The first and shorter section covers a period of some -twenty years; the other, his idyll of the roads, extending from the -fifty-eighth chapter of “Lavengro” to the end, deals with about a year of -his life. The subject of his rural wanderings grew upon him as he wrote, -and the episode of Belle Berners naturally required a spacious canvas; -the reasons why he introduced the postilion’s tale have already been -related. This amazing book defies analysis or classification. It is “a -thing of shreds and patches,” a hotch-potch of odds and ends of learning -and speculation, an uneven jumble of incidents; doubtless it is all the -critics of 1851 said it was. Yet it is a great book, a treasured book, a -book to read five times as Leland read it, to dip into and be tempted on -and on, chapter by chapter. It has all the faults that the purists allot -to it—much tiresome iteration, many split infinitives, gross errors of -taste, much fuliginous and turgid writing. Yet it is a great work of -literature, compelling, overpowering in many ways. It often rises in -eloquence to remarkable heights and glows with all the hues of poetry: -mark the dialogue on death, the midnight vigil in the Dingle. The force -of sheer description in the poison scene and in the fight with the -Flaming Tinman can hardly be surpassed. There are racy humour and -genuine humanity in the incident of the inn where he met Jack Slingsby -and his family depressed from the encounter with the Flaming Tinman, and -proved to them the “genial, gladdening power” of good ale, “the true and -proper drink of Englishmen.” All Borrow’s affectation of learning, all -his word-chasing, all his preaching, are forgiven in the intense joy of -such scenes as these. When Jack Slingsby said to him, “It’s a fine thing -to be a scholar,” he retorted, “Not half so fine as to be a tinker.” It -is the hedgesmith in Lavengro that gives his book its ineffable charm. -“There is something highly poetical about a forge,” and Borrow has caught -and transmitted its poetry to us. - -The fashion in which Borrow pounced upon his critics, detractors, -enemies, as he pictured them, clawed them and mangled them in the -notorious Appendix has been indicated in snatches. Printed sermons and -speeches can hardly be more deadly dull than a quarrel of this sort after -the lapse of half a century: that is, as a rule. In this case there is a -distinct survival of literary interest, for the Appendix is luminous -(albeit with a lurid incandescence), and in it glow some of the gems of -Borrow’s style. His critics inspired him to this _tour de force_, the -“quartering reviewers,” those arbitrary persons who, in the sententious -phrase of Hazlitt, “would be thought to have purchased a monopoly of wit, -learning, and wisdom— - - ‘Assume the rod, affect the god, - And seem to shake the spheres.’” - -As we have seen, they cauterised Borrow because he had not written the -book they expected him to write, just as their predecessors had “pulled -Pope to pieces” for not being Shakespeare or Milton. Borrow was odd and -singular, and had transgressed every canon of the taste of the time. But -he was fully conscious that he had written a fine book. Their abuse, -their satire, their indifference sent him into a fine frenzy, in which he -pretended to despise the whole tribe. “By God! ’tis good, and if you -lik’t you may.” But the affectation was ill-sustained by the -performance; he set about to bludgeon them in very good earnest, and -seized the opportunity of time, space, and inclination to wield his -weapon across the heads of a great many other offenders besides the -critics. - -The bludgeon is the only possible figure to use. In this amazing display -of whirling invective Borrow is like no other protagonist in literature. -For many reasons it were possible to wish that he had never written it; -for others it is precious. It neither pricks the enemy like Pope, nor -incises him like Swift, nor burns him like Gifford, nor lashes him like -Byron. It simply pounds him as the Flaming Tinman was pounded by -Borrow’s long right. It begins, innocently enough, with an exposition of -the principles on which “Lavengro” was written, the principles it upheld, -the morals it inculcated, and the author’s reasons for supposing that it -deserved well of the world. In this last particular the chapter is -curious. According to Borrow, the book is worthy because it demonstrates -how the hand of Providence constantly guides the destinies of the hero, -preventing him in all his doings from falling a prey either to vice or to -poverty. He admitted that Lavengro was not a remarkably religious person -up to the point where the book took leave of him, but it was very likely -that he would eventually become religious, though not precise or -straight-laced. He would retain with his scholarship “something of his -gypsyism, his predilection for the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some -inclination to put on certain gloves—not white kid—with any friend who -might be inclined for a little old-English diversion.” The absence of -any straight-lacedness from his character was also to be predicated in -the matter of ale. He did not believe that either fondness for -invigorating exercise or willingness to partake of any of the good things -provided by the Almighty (meaning especially ale with plenty of malt, not -too much hops, and at least two years old) would be any bar to his -entrance into heaven. - -One would not for worlds suggest that Borrow laid this stress upon the -moralities and the theology of his book what time his tongue was in his -cheek. But he could hardly have failed to see that it was his gypsyism -rather than his theology that would lend the work its permanent -importance. The second chapter of the Appendix is an anti-Popery tirade -which it would be tiresome to follow. He boasts of how in Spain he -“hewed right and left, making the priests fly before him and run away -squeaking that the Devil was after them.” Which is hardly an accurate -account of the matter, and is only introduced apparently in order that he -may belabour Bowring. The process is this: The Bible Society sent Borrow -to Spain to perform these deeds of derringdo; the Bible Society was not -supported by the Government, but rather frowned upon, so that any man -wearing its colours was excluded from the chance of serving his country, -while “a fellow who unites in himself the bankrupt trader, the broken -author, or rather book-maker, and the laughed-down single-speech spouter -of the House of Commons, may look forward, always supposing that he has -been a foaming Radical, to the Government of an important colony.” It -seems almost necessary to apologise, even at this distance of time, to -the descendants of Sir John Bowring, so virulent and unjust is Borrow in -his strictures. - -Borrow is accused of bigotry in his anti-Papist campaign. Bigotry! -There is no excuse for even a whisper of the word in anything that he has -done. Bigots yourselves, messieurs! A person may speak and write -against Rome without bigotry, but “it is impossible for anyone but a -bigot or a bad man to write or speak in her praise.” Which clears the -ground for an understanding of the outlook of our very paragon of all -tolerance. - -In the third chapter, “On Foreign Nonsense,” there speaks John Bull, the -patriotic Briton, the Germanophobe in a time when Teutophilism was the -fashion, who, in the heyday of the prophet Carlyle’s authority, declared -that “of German literature”—but words failed him to characterise German -literature, and he had to express himself by a note of exclamation and a -dash, and grudgingly admitted that there was _one_ fine poem in the -German language—“Oberon,” to wit. This from the disciple of William -Taylor was a little strong; but Borrow on the rampage trampled even on -Taylor, with a reservation of praise for his scholarship. The essay on -“gentility-nonsense” is decidedly the best of them all. These two -chapters are the most effective, the richest in the diction of wrath, and -they touch the highest point he reaches in criticism. Here, if anywhere, -is to be found the merit of the Appendix. - -It is this revolt against the finnicking conventions, this hard-hitting -at every self-sufficient snob’s head in a self-satisfied age, that gives -the work its air of modernity, and places it _en rapport_ with the -twentieth century. Once again there is no delicate satire, no fine -irony, no touch of the “Snob Papers,” in the “gentility-nonsense” -chapter. It is simply energetic quarter-staff play, with resounding -thwacks upon the head of any unlucky wight who happens to have charged -“vulgarity” upon Borrow because he had endeavoured to bring his -tatterdemalion crew of gypsies, mumpers, and tinkers into the decent and -respectable parlours of the English middle-classes. That was all very -well on the operatic stage. The gypsy villains in _The Bohemian Girl_ -were entertaining enough when they entered the marble halls and spoilt -the furniture and pilfered the wine behind the footlights, as they had -been doing any night for the last ten years; but this was serious -literature and a very different matter. Borrow laid about him with a -will, and defended smithery against jobbery, and tinkering against -philandering, and the dingle against the drawing-room with almost lyrical -eloquence. Was it not better for Lavengro to make the forge glow by the -roadside, and manufacture donkey-shoes for Isopel, than to borrow another -man’s money and go to Brighton, with the sister of Annette le Noir, -though that would have been an exceedingly genteel thing to do? Was not -the successor of Jack Slingsby more worthy of respect than Mr. Flamson, -the railway contractor? Had not the jockey at Horncastle, who offered -him a fair price for his horse, a better title to honour “than the -scoundrelly lord who attempts to cheat him of one-fourth of its value?” -There is great temptation to quote largely from these hectic chapters, -but one sample must suffice. “Millions,” he says, seem to think -otherwise on these questions, - - “by their servile adoration of people whom, without rank, wealth, and - fine clothes, they would consider infamous, but whom, possessed of - rank, wealth, and glittering habiliments, they seem to admire all the - more for their profligacy and crimes. Does not a blood-spot or a - lust-spot on the clothes of a blooming emperor give a kind of zest to - the genteel young god? Do not the pride, superciliousness, and - selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the more regarded by - its worshippers? and do not the clownish and gutter-blood admirers of - Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they are conscious that he - is a knave? If such is the case—and, alas! is it not the case?—they - cannot be too frequently told that fine clothes, wealth, and titles - adorn a person in proportion as he adorns them; that if worn by the - magnanimous and good they are ornaments indeed, but if by the vile - and profligate they are merely _san benitos_, and only serve to make - their infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy raiment and - tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness, and virtue, is entitled - to more respect from those to whom his virtues are manifested than - any cruel profligate emperor, selfish aristocrat, or knavish - millionaire in the world.” - -The appropriate sequel to this flaming fury against the worship of -material wealth and the idolatry of worldly success is his protest -against Sir Walter Scott’s Jacobitism, which he called “Scotch -gentility-nonsense” and “Charlie-o’er-the-Waterism.” With a full brush -and rapid strokes he paints a Hogarthian picture of the Stewarts, more -remarkable for the piquancy of its epithets than the accuracy of its -history. A disgraceful procession of abandoned reprobates hurries across -his pages: the “dirty, cowardly miscreant,” James I.; the “cruel, -revengeful tyrant,” Charles I.; the “lazy and sensual” Charles II.; the -“poor creature,” James II.; and the miserable Pretenders, especially -Charles Edward of that ilk, a “worthless, ignorant youth” and a -“profligate, illiterate old man.” All these lamentable persons, these -blotches on the face of history, according to Borrow, were dead and -happily buried out of the sight of decent people until Scott gave them -resurrection by his power of fine writing. It was Scott who summoned -Jacobitism and Laudism out of their graves; the wave of Popery now -passing so destructively over England came from Oxford, it was true; but -Scott sent it to Oxford. And Scott, accordingly, is scarified. His -secret is ruthlessly wrenched from him. Why did he revive Jacobitism? -It was because he worshipped gentility and adored the born-great. Scott -denounced Murat and heaped contumely upon him as the son of a pastrycook; -but was not the pedigree of the pastrycook better than that of the -Edinburgh pettifogger who was Scott’s progenitor? - -Working himself up to a foaming frenzy, Borrow attributes all Scott’s -mortal sufferings to the vengeance of an angry Deity for taking the part -of the wicked Jacobites against the righteous Williamites, “for lauding -up to the skies the miscreants and robbers, and calumniating the noble -spirts of Britain, the salt of England, and his own country!” Scott -became paralysed in body and mind, pitiable to others, and loathsome to -himself. “Ah!” exclaims Borrow, “God knows perfectly well how to -strike!” A modern audience gapes in amazement at the rodomontade, and -wonders whether the man who pumps it out page after page can be quite -sane, especially when he declares that he has been influenced “not by any -feeling of malice or ill-will, but simply by a regard for the truth.” -But Borrow saw red whenever he was out raiding the pastures of “Popery” -or seeking a joust with gentility, and the verdict against him may be -softened a little when the reader lights upon one or more of his fine -tributes to the genius of Scott, who “did for the sceptre of the wretched -Pretender what all the kings of Europe could not do for his body—placed -it on the throne of these realms; and for Popery what Popes and Cardinals -strove in vain to do for three centuries—brought back its mummeries and -nonsense into the temples of the British Isles.” - -The eighth chapter of the Appendix, “On Canting Nonsense,” need not -detain us; his outbreak against the teetotalers and anti-pugilists has -received sufficient notice. As for the “Pseudo-Critics,” every Borrow -lover wishes it had never been written, picturesque as is the apologue of -the eminent reviewers of the London Press in the character of vipers with -their fangs drawn, held up by their tails. Still more is it to be -regretted that Borrow’s temper in the dispute with Bowring led him to -perpetrate the last two chapters, full of rancour and spleen as they are, -their charges of perfidy against Sir John unsupported by any evidence, -and contradicted by the probabilities of the case. - -Borrow was clearly no competent critic of his own work. He concludes the -Appendix with a pronouncement on the merits and the purpose of -“Lavengro,” which, he says, was “written for the express purpose of -inculcating virtue, love of country, learning, manly pursuits, and -genuine religion—for example, that of the Church of England.” Not the -morals of “Lavengro,” not its “patriotism” (which is of a peculiar -brand), not its philology, not its theology, give the strange book life. -Its value lies in its poetry, its portraits, its atmosphere, its -self-revelation, its literary power, and, above all, in that ruling sense -of the joy of living which, in spite of all its errant morbidity, is the -inspiration of the book. “There’s a wind on the heath, brother. . . Who -would wish to die?” - -It is a difficult thing for one who is not a Welshman to approach such a -book as “Wild Wales” in any useful temper save humility. To attack the -subject in the spirit which animated Borrow when he invaded the country -would be to court disaster, and the disgrace inevitably attending such an -enterprise would be well merited. It is not given to many to carry a -charmed life as Borrow did—going into Wales and compelling the admiration -of those whom his prickly prejudices and his violent intolerance most -offended. - -The spell Wales casts over men’s minds, and the hold it has upon men’s -hearts, are elusive things. Having no tangible substance, they are yet -as real as a battleship. Many people feel them acutely, but are not -content to endure and enjoy them. There is a desire, in these definitive -days, to analyse, to dissect, to explain them, to label and classify -them; but at the slightest touch of the scalpel, at the vision of the -quill, they vanish. As with Cornwall, so with Wales—indeed, in many -respects they are one,—the charm they wield is a charm of atmosphere, of -vague overhanging mysteries and underdwelling romances. Those who feel -it are under the magic influence of the Celtic spirit, and it has been -well said that “to boast of the Celtic spirit is to confess you have it -not.” {320} - -I have endeavoured to show that Borrow, in spite of his pose of -Anglo-Saxonism, was a true Celt, a very wisp of the Celtic spirit itself. -The fact explains everything about his tour in Wales, his intercourse -with Welshmen, and his success in achieving a book which they are quite -willing to confess is one of the best books ever written about their -country. The spell was upon him, and he was content to let it work -without attempting to divide it, chemically or mechanically, into its -component elements. It worked through the scenery which he described -with his peculiar skill, whether of massive mountain and lonely lake, or -of sweet vale and tinkling cascade. It worked through the language, -which he admired for its wonderful soft music concealed under apparently -fortuitous concourses of crabbed consonants. It worked through the -character of the people for whom he had so strong an affinity hidden -behind all his affectation of downrightishness, John-Bullish egotism and -pride. He was completely successful in his tribute to Wales—one of the -finest in English literature. - -Perhaps this is the most amazing thing in all his amazing career. For -Borrow trampled—or appeared to trample—remorselessly on some of the most -delicate feelings of Welshmen. His hatred of Rome was hardly greater -than his hatred of nonconformity with the Church of England. This peeps -out of many a page of “Wild Wales.” Thousands of Welsh people must be -aroused to a point just short of fury by his satirical or abusive -allusions to Dissenters. But most of them are tempted past the -danger-spot by Borrow’s love of Wales and his power to enchant the reader -as he himself was enchanted. - -A militant Welshman once said to me that Borrow “allowed his hatred of -Nonconformity to colour all his descriptions of the people. His pictures -of Welsh Nonconformists are terribly exaggerated, and he damaged his book -by his want of sympathy with the then budding aspirations of Wales, which -have bloomed into the present political and ecclesiastical conditions -well known to you.” That may very likely be a true view of the work -through Cymric spectacles; yet the same person confessed that he knew no -book of the kind which he liked better than “Wild Wales.” The reason was -that, in spite of his contempt for the budding aspirations of the -Nationalists, Borrow contrived to do the Welsh nation a high literary -service by demonstrating its individuality, its distinction, its -difference from England, in every line he wrote about it. His -border-line is sharp and clear; passing into Wales, he passes into a more -ethereal air; passing through Wales he is in a land of enchantment—not -vague and misty, consisting of reminders of a distant past, but actual -and present, where, _pace_ Mr. Edward Thomas, “they talk of hero and poet -as if they had met them on the hills; and, as the poet has said, ‘Folly -would it be to say that Arthur has a grave.’” - -Borrow’s Welsh, so far as it can be judged from the book, is exceedingly -good, considering the circumstances in which it was acquired. His -knowledge of “the spoken word” was comparatively slight. His intercourse -had been far more intimate with Welsh books than with Welshmen. Indeed, -we do not hear of many colloquies between this Welsh scholar and Welsh -people until he arrives at the age of fifty. There are only two of any -importance mentioned in his works. First in point of date was the -episode of the Welsh groom whose acquaintance he gained when serving his -articles in Took’s Court. Next was that of the Welsh Methodist preacher, -Peter Williams, and his wife, described in “Lavengro.” For the rest, Ab -Gwilym and the bards were his Welsh mentors. In these conditions, His -knowledge of the language became quite remarkable. It was a working -medium for him in those parts of the Principality where the phrase “Dim -Saesneg” was most often heard. Welshmen tell me that a curious feature -of “Wild Wales” is that the Welsh in the first part of the book is more -correct than that in the second. As one remarks, it was “the romance of -the language which captivated him. He was more familiar with its rugged -mountains than with its tender parts. This it was that inspired his -passionate regard for Ab Gwilym and Elis Wyn above other Welsh writers.” - -Welsh estimates of the Welsh writers whom Borrow most affected are not -quite the same as his own. It is said that in a general way his -appreciations are just, but that he gives too high a place to Ab Gwilym, -who was by no means the chief of the Welsh poets read about 1850. Ab -Gwilym’s language is cumbrous, and his manner laborious. He had mastered -his art with difficulty, and his work therefore betrays an almost -complete lack of spontaneity. Yet his services to Welsh poetry were -considerable, for he began a new revival of the bardic art when it had -for a long time been under a cloud. He revelled, if with something of -grandiosity, in the majestic in Nature, and his Ode to the Thunder is -certainly impressive—the language producing a cumulative effect of -elemental noise which is exceedingly remarkable. It is hardly surprising -that Borrow was attracted to Ab Gwilym, whose satire and invective in the -treatment of his rival, Bwa Bach, are echoed in much of Borrow’s own -writing. Elis Wyn was a horse of a very different colour, and has a -reputation in Welsh literature which even Borrow does not exaggerate. -His mystic imaginings are daring in the extreme, and his style is vivid; -others than Borrow adjudge the _Bardd Cwsg_ to be equal in many parts to -Dante at his highest. - -“The Sleeping Bard; or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell; by Elis -Wyn, translated from the Cambrian British by George Borrow, author of,” -etc., etc., is a rare book now. The copy before me, in its flimsy -salmon-coloured paper cover, with its uncut edges and all its evidences -of country, job-printing (in spite of John Murray’s imprint), is priced -at two guineas. Somehow, its dress seems fitting, Borrovian. One would -rather this informality for the weird imaginings and the sulphuric -vaticinations of the Denbighshire mystic than any finer guise of print -and binding. The gusto with which Borrow attacked a task of this kind is -obvious from preface to epilogue. He traces the influence, of Quevedo’s -“Visions or Discourses” upon the matter, and the style of Elis Wyn, -especially with reference to the character of Rhywun, that symbolical -“Somebody,” who complains in the Vision of Death that so much of the -villainy and scandal in the world is attributed to him: Rhywun’s -forerunner is the Juan de la Encina of Quevedo’s work. He considers, -however, that the Welshman’s work is superior to that of the Spaniard. - -There can be little doubt that Elis Wyn was acquainted with Quevedo’s -“Visions,” either in the original or in the English translation published -in London about the beginning of the eighteenth century. The resemblance -between the Welsh “Vision of the World” and the Spanish “Interior of the -World Disclosed” is too close for any other verdict, the similarity of -Elis Wyn’s “Vision of Hell” to Quevedo’s “Sties of Pluto” too remarkable. -But Borrow seems to have overlooked or rejected—at any rate, he does not -mention—the much greater probability that the composition of this -allegory in Welsh was suggested by “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” which was -hardly half a century old when “The Sleeping Bard” appeared. A deeply -religious minister like Elis Wyn may reasonably be conceived to have been -fired with the desire to do for the Welsh people in the Welsh vernacular -what the inspired tinker had done in English for the common people of his -country. - -Judged by Borrow’s translation, the literary merits of “The Sleeping -Bard” come out very high. Whether they are as splendid as the plentiful -comparisons with classical writers would suggest can only be estimated by -those who are deeply versed in the Welsh literary medium. What more -immediately concerns us is the quality of Borrow’s rendering. His style -lent itself admirably to the interpretation of the ideas in the book, and -whatever the excellences or defects of his work as a translator, the -effect he produces, especially in the most lurid parts of the “Visions,” -is often superb. There is magnificent prose in the last section, the -“Vision of Hell”—notably in the dialogues between Lucifer and his hosts. -Lucifer’s address to the “potentates of Hell! princes of the black abodes -of Despair!” is a gigantic conception of the eternal warfare of Good and -Evil, couched in language of extraordinary power. Take the speech, in -which he urges his confederates to greater exertions against the -Omnipotent: - - “. . . although the Almighty Enemy sent his own son to die for the - beings of that world; yet I, by my baubles, obtain ten souls for - every one which he obtains by his crucified son. And although I have - not been able to reach him who sits in the high places and discharges - the invincible thunder-bolts, yet revenge of some kind is sweet. Let - us complete the destruction of the remnant of human beings still in - the favour of our destroyer. I remember the time when you caused - them to be burnt by multitudes and cities, and even the whole race of - the earth, by means of the flood, to be swept down to us in the fire. - But at present, though your strength and your natural cruelty are not - a whit diminished, yet you are become in some degree inactive; if - that had not been the case we might long since have destroyed the few - who are godly, and have caused the earth to be united with this our - vast empire. But know, ye black ministers of my displeasure, that - unless ye be more resolute and more diligent, and make the most of - the short-time that remains to you for doing evil, ye shall - experience the weight of my anger, in torments new and strange to the - whole of you. This I swear, by the deepest Hell, and the vast - eternal pit of darkness.” - -Moloch arises to protest against the censure, to declare, how he has -joyed in the sufferings of men, “the shrieks of infants perishing in the -fire as of old, when thousands of sucklings were sacrificed to me outside -of Jerusalem.” Lucifer laughs in the face of his “heartless legions,” -and announces his intention to go to the Earth in his own kingly person: -“Not one man, henceforth, shall be found on the earth to adore the -Almighty.” - - “Thereupon he gave a furious bound, attempting to set off in a - firmament of living fire; but, behold! the fist above his head shook - the terrific bolt till he trembled in the midst of his frenzy, and - before he could move far an invisible hand lugged the old fox back by - his chain in spite of his teeth. Whereupon he became seven times - more frantic; his eyes were more terrible than lightnings, black, - thick smoke burst from his nostrils, and dark green flames from his - mouth and entrails; he gnawed his chain in agony, and hissed forth - direful blasphemy and the most frightful curses.” - -“Myn Diawl!” as the little bookseller of Smithfield ejaculated. No -wonder he regarded Elis Wyn as a terrible fellow. While Borrow was -engaged in transferring these scenes into English, contrasting the -peaceful figure of the Bard asleep on the summit of Cader Idris with the -appalling spectacles of his dreams, delighting in the process of heaping -horror upon horror and crashing them against the “squeamish nonsense” of -his age, he did not fail to be effective. It was when he took to verse -that he failed: the metrical translations at the end of each section are -the weakest things in the book. Elis Wyn had a salty humour, and used it -well upon “the oddities and follies which men commit.” Several of -Borrow’s own pet aversions are held up to ridicule—gentility, coquetry, -tobacco, and so on. With what zest he relates the mockery in Hell of -“two honourable gentlemen, newly arrived, who were insisting on being -shown respect suitable to their gentility” may be imagined. The -condemnation of tobacco is worthy of slobbering James himself: “For what -is tobacco but one of my meanest instruments to carry bewilderment into -the brain?” asks Beelzebub. - -Borrow made good use of Elis Wyn, not only in this translation, but in -“Wild Wales.” The intensely humorous conversation with Bos the drover at -Pentraeth Coch will be remembered: - - “Pray excuse me,” said I, “but is not droving rather a low-lifed - occupation?” - - “Not half so much as pig-jobbing,” said Bos, “and that that’s your - trade, I’m certain, or you would never have gone to Llanfair.” - - “I am no pig-jobber,” said I, “and when I asked you that question - about droving, I merely did so because one Elis Wyn, in a book he - wrote, gives the drovers a very bad character, and puts them in Hell - for their malpractices.” - - “Oh, he does,” said Mr. Bos, “well, the next time I meet him at - Corwen I’ll crack his head for saying so. Malpractices—he had better - look at his own, for he is a pig-jobber, too. Written a book, has - he? Then I suppose he has been left a legacy, and gone to school - after middle-age, for when I last saw him, which is four years ago, - he could neither read nor write.” - - I was about to tell Mr. Bos that the Elis Wyn I meant was no more a - pig-jobber than myself, but a respectable clergyman who had been dead - considerably upwards of a hundred years, and that also, - notwithstanding my respect for Mr. Bos’s knowledge of history, I did - not believe that Owen Tudor was buried at Penmynnydd, when I was - prevented . . . - -And he made equally good use of the other bards and heroes of Wales, both -in his colloquies with comic persons like Mr. Bos or with the bard of -Anglesey, “the greatest Prydydd in the whole world,” who kept an inn at -L—, and believed “the awen or inspiration was quite as much at home in -the bar as in the barn, perhaps more”; and in his outbursts of -apostrophic eloquence—as when he stood on Holyhead: “‘Some king, giant, -or man of old renown lies buried beneath this cairn,’ said I. ‘Whoever -he may be I trust he will excuse me for mounting it, seeing that I do so -with no disrespectful spirit.’” A glowing vision follows of the scenes -which had passed beneath that grey promontory, from the times of the -Druids, “long-bearded men with white vestments, toiling up the rocks, -followed by fierce warriors with glittering helms and short, broad, -two-edged swords,” as the army of Suetonius pursued them; “I thought I -heard groans, cries of rage, and the dull, awful sound of bodies -precipitated down the rocks . . .” Borrow may not have sympathised with -the modern aspirations of Nationalist Wales, but he certainly succeeded -in demonstrating its nationality, in understanding its poetry, and in -visualising its romance. - -Borrow’s purely poetical works remain to be considered. The ballad -literature of many lands had overpowering fascination for him. This was -a perfectly natural affinity. In the ballads, if anywhere, is to be -found the “homely, plain writing” which Borrow admired. In them, too, -were enshrined the histories of the characters he loved or the heroes he -adored. If the public had afforded him more encouragement, we should -have had a series of transcripts and translations spreading over many -years. Fortunately, sheer force of circumstances pushed Borrow into -another literary channel and gave us his prose books. Borrow’s lyrical -genius is hardly a matter for discussion; it simply does not exist, in -spite of Allan Cunningham’s eulogies. Most of his verse is artificial, -stilted, and in the most violent contrast with the vigorous naturalism of -his prose. He seemed to have a lyrical sense, but no capacity for -recording its impressions. The result is a mass of doggerel, here and -there lightened and vivified by a stanza or two of real beauty, happening -simply where a concourse of chances gave him subject, imaginative idea, -and words which harmonised. These flashes of inspiration, however, are -rare. - - [Picture: Portion of page of Borrow’s MS. copy of the “Romantic Ballads” - with his MS. revision] - -The “Romantic Ballads” which he translated in his youth from the old -Danish and from Œhlenschlaeger are exceedingly interesting because of -their matter: the legends include some of the great ones of the Northern -world. But Borrow’s verse would provide a deep disappointment for any -reader who, having made acquaintance with his prose through “Lavengro,” -for example, had conceived high expectations of his poetry. The copy -which lies before me is an exceedingly interesting one. I am indebted -for its use to Mr. Francis Edwards, the bookseller in Marylebone; whose -property it is. The volume is in the original coloured boards as it was -issued from the press of S. Wilkin at Norwich in 1826. It was Borrow’s -own copy. In it he had erased many lines and stanzas, and written, -either in ink or pencil, others to take their place. There is no record -of the date at which this revision was undertaken—doubtless with a view -to a second edition which was never called for,—but the evidence of the -handwriting shows that it was done in his youth, during the “veiled -period,” and probably before 1830. The finnicking calligraphy—plain to -read, and full of character, but exceedingly fine and minute—is his early -style, the style of the letters to Bowring, and not that of the later -period when he rushed through his manuscripts in odd notebooks and on the -backs of old accounts or envelopes. - -The book illustrates the fact that at this time the Bowring influence was -strong on him, and that he and Bowring were on cordial terms. The -title-page is adorned by a quatrain of Bowring’s: - - “Through gloomy paths unknown, - Paths which untrodden be, - From rock to rock I roam - Along the dashing sea.” - -The opening pages are occupied by a poetical address to Borrow from Allan -Cunningham, whose encouragement and praise had prompted him to issue the -work. Cunningham apostrophises him in numbers like these: - - “Sing, sing, my friend! Breathe life again - Through Norway’s song and Denmark’s strain.” - -A few examples from among the many manuscript amendments made by -Borrow—which Mr. Edwards has courteously permitted me to give—will let -some light into the mental workshop of the versifier. In the ballad of -“The Death Raven” Dame Sigrid is lying on the deck of the ship watching -the setting of the sun: - - ORIGINAL. - - “Then all at once the smiling sky drew dark, - The breaker’s raved, and sinking seemed the bark; - The wild Death Raven, perched upon the mast, - Screamed ’mid the tumult and awoke the blast.” - - “The foam-clad billows to repose he brought, - And tamed the tempest with the speed of thought.” - - “Above her head its leaf the aspen shook, - Moist as her cheek and pallid as her look.” - - REVISION. - - “Deformed with breakers then the ocean grew, - The water spirted in the ship’s sides through; - Perched on the mast the wild Death Raven yells, - Whilst deep the vessel downward he impels.” - - “The billows clad with foam he tames with ease, - And at his glance the savage tempests cease.” - - “Above her head its boughs the aspen spread, - Like her it quaked, like her cold sweat it shed.” - -This ballad is a translation from Œhlenschlaeger, and produces an eerie -effect of magic forces acting in the natural world—the Death Raven as the -spirit of Evil bargaining with its victim and wreaking hideous woe and -bloody tragedy till it is finally overcome by the vengeance of a pure -maiden who calls to her aid the supernal powers against the infernal. -But Borrow is in literal difficulties all the time, and the story hitches -and tears on the irregularities and ugly angles of his verse. In the -ballad of “Aager and Eliza” (from the old Danish collection of Heroic -Romances edited by Vegel in 1591), it is hard to choose between the -banalities of his two versions: - - ORIGINAL. - - “Have ye heard of the bold Sir Aager, - How he rode to yonder isle? - There he saw the sweet Eliza - Who upon him deigned to smile.” - - REVISION. - - “’Twas the valiant knight, Sir Aager, - How he to the island hied. - There he wedded . . . {334} Else, - She of maidens was the pride.” - -The best thing in the book is the ballad of “Swayne [or Svend] Vonved,” -of which we have heard a good deal from Borrow, Leland, and others. This -is also from Vegel’s collection. Borrow quotes as a preface to it -Grimm’s account of the legend. Svend Vonved was a terrible fellow, -minstrel and warrior, sent out to avenge the death of his father, and the -poem relates his desperate deeds of valour and blood, his victories over -“knights of pride,” his short way with the female magicians, and his last -characteristic action—the destruction of the harp on which he had twanged -accompaniment to his songs, so that “no sweet sound shall in future -soothe his wild humour.” One manuscript alteration only in this ballad -is of interest; it occurs in the episode of the fight with the Brute -Carle: - - ORIGINAL. - - “They fought for a day, they fought for two, - And so on the third they were fain to do; - But, ere the fourth day reached the night, - The Brute Carle fell, and was slain outright— - Look out, look out, Svend Vonved!” - - REVISION. - - “They fought for a day, they fought for two, - And so on the third they were fain to do; - But, ere the fourth day the night had reached, - The Brute dead on the earth he stretched— - Look out, look out, Svend Vonved!” - -In a lighter vein there is the ballad of “The Deceived Merman,” which had -appeared with some of the other poems in the _Monthly Magazine_ while -Borrow was engaged with Phillips. In the _Magazine_ it began: - - “Fair Agnes left her mother’s door.” - -The first revision occurred prior to the collection of the ballads in -book-form, when it began: - - “Fair Agnes lone on the sea-shore stood, - Then rose a Merman from out the flood: - - “‘Now, Agnes, hear what I say to thee— - Wilt thou my leman consent to be?’ - - “‘O, freely that will I become - If thou but take me beneath the foam.’” - -The third couplet is altered in the manuscript revision to read thus: - - “‘Oh, yes, forsooth that will I be - If thou’lt take me to the bottom of the sea.’” - -The merman did, and there was a family. But Agnes, having obtained -permission to go back and visit her mother, came under religious -influences, stayed overlong, and was finally deaf to all the requests of -her amphibious spouse that she should return to her deserted family, -proving unmaternal enough even to disregard an appeal _ad misericordiam_ -on behalf of the youngest of the merbabies. {336} - -The “Ballads” have some interest, but, with the exception of “Svend -Vonved,” they have small merit, and it is not surprising that the public -took so little notice of them that the second edition was never required. -Borrow made much better play with his Danish legends and his heroes of -the North in his later prose books, where they take their proper place as -the material of soufflés or as flavouring in a tasty mélange. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII -CHARACTERISTICS - - -THERE is but one authentic portrait of Borrow, it is the painting in the -possession of Mr. John Murray, by whose kind permission it has been -reproduced for this work. An engraving from it was used as the -frontispiece to the first edition of “Lavengro,” and it has always been -known as “the ‘Lavengro’ portrait.” If there is anything in the theory -that a man reaches a certain climacteric when Nature, having done all she -can for him, designs that he shall sit for his portrait, Borrow seems to -have sat at the identical moment. It would be impossible to wish for a -better view of Don Jorge than this. - -The white hair, the swart complexion, the brilliant eyes, the almost -affectedly unconventional dress, give an impression of the man which -irresistibly recalls the romance of his youthful exploits and the weird -poetry of the most poetical part of his career. It was this striking -appearance of his, and his commanding height, combined with his -unorthodox outlook, which gave him his unquestionable influence with the -gypsies. It helped to make him, during the one blazing season of his -social celebrity, the lion of the London drawing-rooms. If he failed to -maintain his popularity, it was in spite of his appearance, which had -wonderful distinction. - -No Borrovian regrets that Borrow failed, that he did not remain the pet -of society, and that he was only for a brief space encouraged to Byronic -affectations and ambitions. In following his wayward sprites into all -the _bêtises_ he committed, in alienating himself from the fashionable -world and getting himself infinitely disliked by people who were ready to -idolise him if he would have subscribed to all their conventions, Borrow -wrought better than he knew. He would not have been Borrow, in fact, if, -after the publication of “The Bible in Spain,” he had submitted to the -influences of the great world and become a manufacturer of popular books. -He would have written a great deal more and a great deal worse; he would -have lost his piquancy to acquire gentility; he would have become suave, -smooth, complacent, and pious, instead of being rugged, rebellious, -boorish—and Borrow. - -Such speculations are needless. It was impossible for Borrow to be other -than Borrow was. The rudeness of his manner was no pose: this was an -elemental spirit that could not avoid being itself, whatever veneer it -eroded, whatever polish it dulled. The angularity, the abruptness, the -most fascinating and most irritating qualities of his work—these also -were no affectation. They arose naturally out of the qualities of the -man himself. There is no writer who has put more of his ego into his -work than Borrow. One looks at his portrait, contemplates his ancestry -and his training, and admits that if this man were to become a writer -there was no other kind of writer he could have become than the author of -“Lavengro.” It is possible to lay too much stress on Borrow’s -boorishness, and this is the very last place in which it should be done. -His strain of melancholia often verged upon madness: any measured -judgment of his life must take account of that fact, and it will explain -much that is otherwise difficult to understand. I have been informed -that he suffered in his youth from the “touching” mania, and that even if -on his travels described in “Lavengro” he did meet a gentleman who was -thus afflicted, the extraordinary vigour and vividness of the scenes in -which the malady is depicted are due to his own painful acquaintance with -it. Again, I have been told that the incident in “The Romany Rye,” where -the old man studies the Chinese language through the medium of the -legends inscribed on teapots, is drawn from his own experience, and that -he turned to pursuits of this kind in order to stave off the horrors of -melancholy which afflicted him in his moods of self-concentration. A man -of this extraordinary sensibility, passing his youth at the eye-piece of -a kaleidoscope, so to speak, afflated with poetry in boyhood, in narrow -circumstances, buffeted by ill-fortune for many years, chasing many a -Will-o’-the-wisp, could not help being “a queer chap,” as Ford said. He -was soured by circumstance in his early days. In middle life, when the -sunshine of success burst upon him for a time, he became more genial. -The picture of him one gets in his Cornish and Welsh tours is very -pleasant. But he became cold again in later years, and was a bitter man -after the death of his wife had broken the strongest link between him and -his fellows. - -His personal and his literary characteristics were, of course, deeply -intermingled. The impatience of pusillanimity which appears in many a -passage of his life was reflected in his works. He had an overpowering -admiration of courage and strength, either mental or physical. There is -a sentence or two in “The Bible in Spain,” describing the last day of -Quesada, which gives light upon Borrow’s idols: - - “No action of any conqueror or hero on record is to be compared with - this closing scene in the life of Quesada, for who, by his single - desperate courage and impetuosity, ever stopped a revolution in full - course? Quesada did; he stopped the revolution at Madrid for one - entire day, and brought back the uproarious and hostile mob of a huge - city to perfect order and quiet. His burst into the Puerta del Sol - was the most tremendous and successful piece of daring ever - witnessed. I admired so much the spirit of the brute bull that I - frequently during his wild onset shouted ‘Vive Quesada!’” - -And the same note of admiration is struck with reference to many a -pugilist and criminal in whose career it is difficult to find anything to -approve. - -Herein is to be found the secret of much of the power of what I have -called Borrow’s naturalism. The characters he depicts are all intensely -alive, and act without reference to any theory of action. When he was -compiling the “Celebrated Trials” he had an education in naturalism which -merely developed his own tendencies. When he introduced into “Lavengro” -David Haggart, the friend of his youth at Edinburgh, it was as a real -person, and not as a biographical lay-figure upon which to hang moral -speculations. Not one writer in a hundred would have treated the Haggart -incident as Borrow did, for, courageous as he was, David was an ingrained -rascal, whose villainies would probably have continued for another -half-century if the hangman had not got hold of him. Borrow did not -speculate on criminology, as the fashion is, and discuss the extent to -which environment was responsible for the career of his blackguards. He -just accepted them in their environment, and, with glowing admiration for -their bravery—Haggart was brave enough to run mortal risks for the crimes -of his associates—transferred them to his pages in their habit as they -lived. Professor Chandler, an American critic, has accomplished a -luminous comparison when he says that Borrow’s realism is of a different -quality from Thackeray’s—the former sympathetic and the latter satiric. -A hundred instances of the truth of this observation will occur to those -who review the regiments of rascals which march through the pages of the -two authors. - -It was the same influence which made Borrow’s gypsies so real that, in -spite of all the errors into which imperfect knowledge of the subject led -him, his pictures of the Romany race remain unapproached for truth of -line and naturalness of colour. Ainsworth drew gypsies; they were stage -figures; they are forgotten. Borrow’s gypsies are immortal. Other -authors of his own time visualised rascality in many forms; Dickens -especially created a marvellous gallery of rogues. But Dickens set up -his villains either in order to punish them in the interests of altruism -or to reform them in the interests of propaganda. Borrow regarded them -from a widely different point of view. They were studies in real life, -and not material for the administration of poetic justice. It is -interesting to contrast his view of a very popular book with that of a -contemporary writer. Charles Reade was an unequivocal admirer of “Uncle -Tom’s Cabin,” which he said was “great by theme and great by skill.” We -have seen what Borrow said about a lot of “Uncle Toms and Uncle -Tom-fools.” It is idle, perhaps, but not without charm, to guess what he -would have made of a character like Legree if he had been able to -persuade Isopel Berners to take him with her to America and had met with -a slave-driver in that continent. Parallel with this worship of strength -and courage may be placed his taste in literature. He had little sense -of the verbal niceties of style; his affection was reserved for the -robust and vigorous writing of authors like Defoe, and for the hefty, -rousing force of the narratives which he discovered among the biographies -and autobiographies of criminals in many an aged pamphlet and forgotten -broadsheet. It would, however, be easy to exaggerate this side of -Borrow’s character. He was not merely a non-moral literary berserker. -There was a softer, a more imaginative side to his nature—not -irreconcilable with the other, because it arose out of the same quality -of sympathy and the same acuteness of vision. This was manifested most -strongly, perhaps, in his later and more settled years, and perhaps more -plainly in his relations with children than in any others. - -Apart from those episodes of his life which form the staple of his books, -the most pleasant picture of the man is to be found in his days of -comparative leisure in East Anglia, when he divided his time between -study, literary work, visits to friends, the entertainment of friends, -and rambles about rural Norfolk and Suffolk. It was a red-letter day -when a gypsy tribe arrived in the neighbourhood of Oulton. His Romany -friends would be invited to camp in his grounds, to receive him and his -people by their camp-fires, to rokker (talk) Romany with him, and to -listen to his gypsy songs. When there were no gypsies, he would make -explorations into the character and the dialect of the Norfolk or Suffolk -natives, picking up any chance companion of the road. He generally -succeeded in eliciting a life history and in pursuing, as far as the -duration of the companionship would allow, a psychological study. Some -of his philological adventures on the country roads have been amusingly -related by Miss Harvey: - - “When they used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or Suffolk) - countrymen, he would say, ‘Why, that’s a Danish word.’ By and by the - man would use another peculiar expression: ‘Why, that’s Saxon!’ A - little later, another: ‘Why, that’s French! . . . 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.” - -His taste revolted against the use of foreign words or phrases in common -conversation, though he resorted to the practice very largely in his -books and correspondence. He would chaff his wife or Miss Clarke if -either of them introduced a French word into talk around the table, -crying, “What’s that? Trying to come over me with strange languages!” -The picture of his life at this time, apart from the petty distractions -of his disputes with neighbours and the controversies with his publisher, -is that of a quiet and pleasant domesticity, occasionally disturbed by -fits of “the Horrors.” When, nervously depressed into the depths of -gloom, he was unable to sleep, he would get up in the night and set off -on long walks, often stretching them over the twenty-five miles of road -to Norwich. He would return the next night invigorated by the exercise, -and freed from his enemy. While in good health his existence at the -Cottage was that of a quiet, studious man, spending his evenings with his -wife and her daughter, reading voraciously, entertaining his -acquaintances, and behaving in a tamely rational manner till his passion -was roused or his prejudices were assailed. His personal habits were -quite temperate. He ate little breakfast, a hearty dinner, and -subsequently took only a glass of cold water before going to bed. - -He did not drink nearly so much ale as his panegyrics of malt liquor -might lead the unwary to suppose. Miss Harvey spoke to him of a lady who -had a fondness for a certain gentleman. “Well,” said Borrow, “did he -make her an offer?” “No,” answered Miss Harvey. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “if -she had given him some good ale he would.” - -He appears never to have concerned himself about the character of the -food he ate so long as he had substantial fare. He amazed the landlady -of a Cromer hotel by replying to her inquiry what he would have for -dinner, “Give me a piece of flesh!” The landlady mentioned the strange -request to a lady staying in the hotel, and described the person who made -it. “Oh!” she laughed, “that’s Mr. Borrow. What he wants is a good rump -steak.” And a rump steak, being served, quite satisfied him, for it was -his favourite dish. He was exceedingly susceptible to music—we have seen -his comparison of Mrs. Berkeley’s piano to David’s harp—but he does not -appear to have possessed a highly cultured ear, for Miss Harvey tells us -that “one piece he seemed never to tire of hearing. It was a polka, ‘The -Redowa,’ I think, and when I had finished he used to say, ‘Play that -again, H—.’” - -Richard Ford summarises Borrow’s character in three sentences: “Borrow is -a queer chap. . . . I believe Borrow to be honest, albeit a gitano. His -biography will be passing strange if he tells the _whole_ truth.” {347} -There is one strange error in this. Borrow was not a gypsy, of course, -though the vagrant spirit was lively in him. But he was honest, even -when most mistaken. The most deplorable thing in his career was his -unfounded and grotesque libels upon Bowring, about which it can only be -suggested that he was beside himself with rage and disappointment when he -wrote them, having failed to obtain the mission from the Government which -was the _ignis fatuus_ of his life. There can be as little question that -Borrow believed himself to have been ill-treated by Bowring as there is -that Bowring was innocent of his charges. The subtle hint in Ford’s -phrase, “if he tells the _whole_ truth,” will be appreciated. Borrow did -not reveal everything in his books. It is unreasonable to expect any man -to do so; but in Borrow’s case, ellipsis was often used where statement -would have been preferable and more straight-forward. Yet the criticism -must fall when we cease to regard his works as purely personal documents -and consider them as works of art. In this respect, addition would not -improve them. Elimination might be tolerated in the interests of some of -the victims of his wrath; but the destruction of the Appendix, for -example, would deprive us of some of the most powerful vituperative -writing in English literature. The debt that literature owes to Borrow -is great, for he sustained into the nineteenth century the traditions of -the great narrative writers, and his successor is still to seek. - - * * * * * - - THE END - - - - -INDEX - - -A - - -“Aager and Eliza,” 331, 334 -Abraham, John, of Liskeard, 152 -_Academy_, _The_, 251 -Addington, Lord, Ford’s letters to, 113, 125, 346 (_note_) -Ainsworth, Harrison, 342 -Ale, Borrow’s fondness for, 20, 235, 244, 259, 309, 345 -Altarnun, Cornwall, 194 -Anglo-Saxonism, Borrow’s, 17, 18, 313 -Anstis, Bernard, 149, 152 -Arabic, Borrow’s knowledge of, 83 -“Army of Faith,” 72 -Arnold, Matthew, 287 _et seq._, 305, 336 (_note_) -Arthurian Legend, The, 161, 162, 189, 195 _et seq._, 204 _et seq._ -_Athenæum_, _The_, 8, 117, 130, 133, 252, 253 (_note_) -Avery (or Every), John, 175 - - - -B - - -Bailly, Juan Antonio, 99 (_note_), 110, 111 -Belfast, Borrow at, 237 -Belgians, Borrow on, 82, 83 -Benson, A. C, 255, 256 -Berkeley, Rev., Vicar of St. Cleer, 152 _et seq._ -Berners, Isopel, 7, 10, 55 _et seq._, 291, 304, 308, 342 -Bevan, Mrs., 139 -“Bible in Spain, The,” 11, 12, 22, 75 (_note_), 114 _et seq._, 207, 271, -293 _et seq._, 338 -Bible Society, The, 85 _et seq._, 98, 99, 104, 114, 115, 296 -Birrell, A., 22, 65 -_Blackwood_, 133 -Blyth, Esther (“Queen of the Nokkums”), 237, 244, 284 _et seq._ -Boconnoc Pillar, The, 179 (_note_) -Bolventor, Cornwall, 193 -Borde, Andrew, 267 -Borlase, William, 180 -Borrow, George, his birth, 25; at Huddersfield school, 27; at Edinburgh -High School, 28; at Norwich Grammar School, 29, 30; at Clonmel School, -29; articled to solicitors, 35; and Sir John Bowring, 40, 73, 132; starts -for London, 45; his literary-life in London, 46–54; his wanderings in -England, 54–69; in Paris in 1826, 70; his imprisonments, 72, 93; applies -for work at British Museum, 80; seeks post under Belgian Government, 82; -employed by Bible Society, 86; at St. Petersburg, 88; returns to London, -90; visits Portugal and Spain, 91–103; his marriage, 104; separates from -Bible Society, 104; at Oulton, 105–124, 125, 132, 137, 252, 258–262; -takes prolonged tour abroad, 124; in the East, 131; his view of -“Lavengro,” 135; and Dr. Hake, 138; at Yarmouth, 145, 224; his prowess as -a swimmer, 146; visits Cornwall, 147–199; returns to London, 199; tours -in Wales, 208–215, 227; visits Isle of Man, 216; tours in the Highlands, -230; visits Ireland, 230, 237; takes up residence in London, 232; tramps -in Lowlands and Border Country, 237; death of his wife, 238; and Mr. -Watts-Dunton, 246, 253; and Edward FitzGerald, 254; his last days in -Norwich, 258; his death, 262 -Borrow, Captain Thomas, 2, 22 _et seq._, 121, 147, 176, 192; marriage of, -25; death of, 45 -—, John, 2, 25, 50; death of, 90 -—, Mrs. Geo., 104, 106 _et seq._ 116, 120, 133, 145, 177, 208, 215; -illness and death of, 238 _et seq._ (_see also_ CLARKE, MRS.) -—, Mrs. Thomas, 2, 24, 25, 66, 67, 145; death of, 229 -Borrows, The Cornish, 147 _et seq._, 190 _et seq._ -Bosvil (Bosvile), Gypsy tribe, 55 -—, Ryley, 244, 275, 287 -Bowring, Sir John, 40, 41, 70, 73 _et seq._, 91, 129, 132, 133, 136, 234, -313, 332, 346 -—, L. B. and F. H., 73 (_note_) -—, Edgar, 84 -Brandram, J., Secretary of Bible Society, 94, 99, 104, 300 -British Museum (_see_ MUSEUM) -Brontë, Emily, 249 -Brook, Sir James, 31 -Brown Willy, Cornwall, 194 -Bryan, B. (“Ben Brain”), 24, 33, 121 -Buddhist Doctrines, Borrow on, 90 -Burney, of Mousehole, 177 _et seq._ -_Bury Post_, _The_, 146 -Byron, 6, 15, 16, 293 - - - -C - - -Camelford, Cornwall, 195 -Campbell, Thomas, 44 -“Canting Nonsense,” 34, 318 -Caradon Hills, The, Cornwall, 146, 151 _et seq._, 202 -Carew, Bampfylde Moore, 247 -Carlism, Borrow on, 301 -Carlyle, Thomas, 305, 313 -Carn Brea, Cornwall, 180 -“Celebrated Trials,” 49, 50, 52, 341 -Celtic strain in Borrow, 17, 19, 20, 150, 202, 210, 320 -Chandler, F. W., 341 -Children’s Bill, The, 268 (_note_) -Christian, John William (“Shan Dhu”), 217, 218 -Clarendon, Lord, 123, 124 -Clarke, Miss Henrietta, 97, 137; in Wales, 208 _et seq._, marriage of, -236 (_see also_ MACOUBREY, MRS.) -Clarke, Mrs. (Mrs. George Borrow), 85, 96, 97 _et seq._; marriage with -Borrow, 104 (_see also_ BORROW, MRS. GEORGE) -Clausel, and Bedouin campaign, 79, 83 -Clonmel, Borrow at school in, 29 -Cobbe, Frances Power, 232, 238, 239, 240 -Coldstream Guards, Thomas Borrow enlists in, 23, 24 -Coloma, Santa, the Carlist, 93 -Cooper, Mrs. (gypsy celebrity), 286 -Cordova, General, 103 -Cork, Borrow at, 29 -_Cornhill Magazine_, _The_, 235 -Cornish language, 174, 186 _et seq._, 203 -Cornwall, Borrow, family in, 17, 18, 21; Borrow’s visit to, 146 _et -seq._; Borrow leaves, 199; suggested book on, 199 _et seq._; gypsies in, -278 -Crofton, H. T., 267 (_note_) -Cronan, the guide, 185 -“Croppies, lie down!” 213 -Cruikshank, and Elis Wyn, 229 -Cunningham, Allan, 69, 332 -—, Rev. F., 85, 90 - - - -D - - -“Death Raven, The” 333 -Defoe, Borrow’s exemplar, 13, 14, 26, 134, 297, 303, 343 -Delabole, Cornwall, 199 -Denew, of Yarmouth, 231 -“Denmark, Songs of,” 75 -Denniss, Vicar of Oulton, 120 (_note_) -Dereham, East, 14, 24; Borrow born at, 25 -D’Éterville, Abbé, 31, 33, 35 -Dickens, Charles, Borrow and, 240, 285, 305, 342 -Dilke, Sir Charles, reviews “Lavengro,” 133 -Doniert, King of Cornwall, 178, 193 -Donne, W. B., 134, 139, 255, 256 -Dowden, Professor, 37, 38 -Dozmary Pool, 161 _et seq._ -Druids, Borrow and the, 179 -Dublin, Borrow in, 230 -Dutt, W. A., of Lowestoft, 260 - - - -E - - -East Anglia, Borrow and, 18, 222, 250, 343 -_Eastern Daily Press_, _The_, 146 (_note_) -Edey, Mrs., of Liskeard, 168, 169 -Edinburgh, Borrow in, 27 -_Edinburgh Review_, _The_, 117 -Edwards, Francis, 330 -“Egipt speche,” Borde’s, 267 -Elwin, Rev. Whitwell, 52, 141, 142, 226, 304 -Every (or Avery), John, 175 -Every, Miss, 175, 176 (_note_) -_Examiner_, _The_, 75 (_note_), 117 - - - -F - - -Faa, Will (Gypsy “King”), 283 -“Faustus,” Klinger’s, Borrow translates, 44, 52, 69 -Finn, Legends of, 185, 218 _et seq._ -FitzGerald, Edward, 107, 254 _et seq._; his letter to Borrow, 257 -Ford, Richard, 68, 72 (_note_), 112 _et seq._, 116, 117, 118, 123, 125, -126, 129, 340, 346 -Ford, Mrs., 113 (_note_), 126 (_note_) -_Foreign Quarterly_, _The_, 78, 82 -_Fraser’s Magazine_, 133, 234 - - - -G - - -Gaelic language (_see_ SHELTA) -Gayangos, Librarian of the “Nacional,” 99 -“Gentility Nonsense,” 20, 151, 152, 314 _et seq._ -German, Borrow’s knowledge of, 49; literature, 313 -Ghost story, Lope de Vega’s, 214 -Gifford, William, 48 -“Gil Blas,” 118, 294 -Gladstone, W. E., and “The Bible in Spain,” 128 -_Globe_, _The_, 245 -Grampound, Borrow at, 179 -Graydon, Lieutenant, 93, 94, 115 -Groome, Hindes, 251 -Grundtvig, Danish poet, 78 -“Guinevere,” Borrow’s suggestion, 157 -Gumb, Daniel, 159 -Gurney, Joseph, 35, 85 -—, Anna, 225 -Guter Vawr, 214 -Gwinett, Ambrose, 248 -Gypsies, Borrow and, 1–4, 17, 295, 303, 314, 342, 343; Spanish, 92, 99, -110; in London, 127, 233; songs and stories of, 151; in Cornwall, 181; in -Wales, 211; and C. G. Leland, 241 _et seq._; and Watts-Dunton, 248 _et -seq._; their language, 251, 264–292, 342, 343 -“Gypsies of Spain, The” (_see_ “ZINCALI”) -Gypsy Lore Society, 265 (_note_), 267 (_note_) - - - -H - - -Haggart, David, 28, 341 -Hake, Dr. Gordon, 8, 109 (_note_), 134, 137, 138 _et seq._, 145, 156, -169, 246, 249 (_note_), 253 -—, Mr. Egmont, 8 -—, Mr. Thomas, 143 -Hambly, Edmund, 19, 22 -“Handbook for Spain,” Ford’s, 126 (_note_), 128, 129 -Harford Bridge, 33 -Harvey, Miss Elizabeth, 108, 109, 116, 137, 146 (_note_), 344 _et seq._ -Hasfeldt, 88, 89, 117, 119, 124 -Hawker of Morwenstow, 191, 205; on Methodists, 221 -Haydon, Benjamin, 50, 51, 70 -Hayim Ben Attar, 103 -Hayle, Borrow at, 182 -Hazlitt, William, 310 -“Herne, Mrs.” 35, 270 -Highland Society of London, The, 80 -Homer, and Gronwy Owen, 240, 241, 272 -Horncastle Fair, 66, 69, 70 -“Horrors, The,” 51, 90, 155, 238, 239, 344 -Huddersfield, Borrow at school in, 27, 28 -Huguenots, Mrs. Thomas Borrow’s descent from, 19, 24 -Hume, Martin, 301 -Hurlers, The, 160 - - - -I - - -Imprisonments, Borrow’s, 72, 93 -“Ingeborg, Queen,” 10, 57 -Ireland, Borrow’s love for, 19; first visit to, 29; suggested service in, -83, 153; tour in, 230 - - - -J - - -Jago, James, of Liskeard, 149, 194 -Jenner, Henry, 187 -Jessopp, Dr., 33; on Borrow and children, 142 -“Jew of Fez, The,” 103 -John, S. R., 187 (_note_) -Johnson, the Pugilist, 24 -“Jones, John,” of Llangollen, 212 -“Joseph Sell,” 53, 54 - - - -K - - -Kerrison, Roger, 35, 45, 51 -Killey (Manx poet), 221 -Kingsley, Charles, 305 -King’s Lynn, 225 -Kirk Yetholm, 237, 244, 248 (_note_), 251, 283 _et seq._ -“Kjaempe Viser,” The, 69, 76 -Klinger (_see_ “FAUSTUS”) -Knapp, Professor W. I., LL.D., 32, 45, 51, 72, 97, 127 (_note_), 129, -154, 185, 211, 213, 240 (_note_), 262 (_note_) - - - -L - - -Languages, Borrow’s capacity for, 1, 30, 31 -Latham, Dr., 252, 253 -“Lavengro,” 4, 12, 22, 24, 26, 29, 46, 47, 53, 54 _et seq._, 73, 76, 121 -_et seq._, 125, 130, 151, 199, 244, 266, 293 _et seq._, 302 _et seq._, -339; publication of, 131; reviews of, 133, 226; Borrow’s view of, 135; -fascination exercised by, 303 -“— Portrait,” The, 337 -Leland, C. G., 232, 241 _et seq._, 265, 284, 309 -Le Sage, Borrow compared with, 12, 118, 294 -Lipotsof, translator, 87 -Liskeard, Cornwall, 21, 23; Borrow at, 147 _et seq._ -Lockhart, J. G., 52, 76, 128, 129, 142 -Lockyer, Sir Norman, 160 -Logan Rock, The, 184 -London, Borrow family in, 231 -Longstone, The, 161 -Lopez, Antonio, 92, 281 _et seq._ -Lostwithiel, Borrow at, 178 - - - -M - - -Macaulay, Lord, 305 -Mackay, William, of Oulton, 244 _et seq._, 249 (_note_), 260 -MacOubrey, Dr., 236, 237, 258, 262 -—, Mrs., 236, 237, 258, 262 (_see also_ CLARKE, MISS H.) -MacRitchie, D., 280 (_note_) -Malory’s Arthurian Legend, 162 -Man, Isle of, Borrow’s visit to, 216 _et seq._ -Manchu, The Scriptures in, 86 _et seq._ -Manx language, Borrow and the, 217 -Martineau family, The, 25, 90, 157 -—, Harriett, 38, 86 -—, James, 31, 32 -Mendizabal, Prime Minister of Spain, 300 -Menheniot Pair, 23, 24, 147, 203 -Meredith, George, 234 -“Merman, The Deceived,” 335 -Metaphysics, Phillips’s, 49 -Methodists, in Cornwall, 153; in Isle of Man, 220; and gypsies, 275 -Militia, West Norfolk, 24, 27, 28; Captain Thomas Borrow’s commission in, -25 -Miracle Plays, Cornish, 206 -_Monthly Magazine_, _The_, 44, 46 _et seq._, 335 -Moore (Manx poet), 217 -_Morning Chronicle_, _The_, 301 -Morshead, Captain W., 23 -Moscow, Borrow’s visit to, 89 -Mousehold Heath, Norwich, 1 -Mumber Lane (“Mumper’s Dingle”), 55, 309 -Murray, John, 51, 64, 75 (_note_), 110 _et seq._, 116, 121, 123, 129, -130, 133, 134, 200, 201, 215, 231, 233, 337; and “Romany Rye,” 224 _et -seq._ -“Murtagh,” Wild Irish boy, 29, 70, 184, 265 -Museum, British, and Borrow, 80, 130 -Mutiny, The Indian, 228 - - - -N - - -Napier, Colonel Elers, 95, 96, 102 -Naturalism, Borrow’s, 341 -_New Monthly_, _The_, 44 -“Nokkums, Queen of the” (_see_ BLYTH, ESTHER) -Nonconformity, Borrow on, 321 -Norman Cross, 2, 26, 27 -Norwich, 1, 4; West Norfolks’ return to, 29; Borrow’s home-coming, 66, -67, 72, 79; Borrow’s old age in, 258 -— Grammar School, 29, 30 - - - -O - - -Oehlenschläger, 78, 330 _et seq._ -Omar Khayyam, 255 -_Once a Week_, 218, 234 -Oulton, 69, 97; Borrow settles at, 105, 106, 116, 132; Borrow returns to, -252, 258; picture of Borrow’s last years at, 260; Richard Ford at, 125 -Owen, Gronwy, 197, 228 -_Oxford Review_, 47 - - - -P - - -Padstow, Cornwall, 199 -Palmerston, Lord, 124 -Parnell’s “Hermit,” 221 -Patriotism, Borrow’s, 222 -Pengelly, Cornwall, 199 -Penquite, Cornwall, 147, 151 _et seq._; Borrow leaves, 199 -Pentire Point, Cornwall, 199 -Pentreath, Dolly, 183, 186 -Penzance, Borrow at, 182 _et seq._ -Perfrement, Ann (_see_ BORROW, MRS. THOMAS) -“Perpinia,” Story of, 289 _et seq._ -Peto, Sir Morton, 121, 137 -“Petulengro, Jasper” (Ambrose Smith), 1, 4, 5, 6, 35, 53, 65, 263, 308 -Peyrecourt, 71 -Phillips, Sir Richard, publisher, 44, 45, 46 _et seq._, 69, 335 -Pixies, The Cornish, 166 _et seq._ -Playfair, Dr., 239 -Plymouth, 148 -_Plymouth Mail_, 147 -Poetry, Borrow’s, 234 -Pollards, The, of Woolston, 168 _et seq._ -Portugal, Borrow’s first visit to, 91 _et seq._ -Procter, Mrs., 252 -Protestantism, Borrow’s, 19, 211, 295, 307, 313; Berkeley’s, of St. -Cleer, 153 -Pugilism, Borrow’s admiration of, 1, 5, 8, 9, 12, 22, 24, 33, 34, 156, -203, 245, 259 -_Punch_ (quoted), 156 -Pushkin, on Borrow’s “Targum,” 90 - - - -Q - - -_Quarterly Review_, 52, 117, 128, 129, 130, 142, 226, 231 -Quesada, Spanish leader, 72; assassination of, 301, 340 -Quevedo, and Elis Wyn, 324 -Quiller-Couch, Thomas, 166 (quoted), 174 (_note_) -Quincey, De, 34 (quoted) - - - -R - - -“Rasselas” and “Joseph Sell,” 53 -Reade, Charles, 342 -Redruth, Borrow at, 180 -Religion, Gypsies and, 272 _et seq._ -Restormel Castle, 178 -Richmond, Borrow gives dinner at, 233 -Ritchie, Ewing, 140 -“Romano Lavo-Lil,” 243, 248 (_note_), 275, 284 _et seq._; its -publication, 251 -“Romantic Ballads,” The, 69, 74, 329 _et seq._ -Romany language, 264 _et seq._ -“Romany Rye,” The, 9, 11, 34, 60 _et seq._, 70, 125, 193, 199, 215, 302, -339; attack on Bowring in, 73, 75; Dr. Jessopp on, 142; its publication, -201, 224 _et seq._, 244 -Rough Tor, Cornwall, 194 - - - -S - - -St. Cleer, Cornwall, 21, 147 _et seq._ -St. Michael’s Mount, 183 -Salisbury Plain, 54 -Sampson, John, 264 -_Saturday Review_, 227 -“Scandinavia, Songs of, 74 -“Scholar Gypsy, The,” 287 -Scotland, Borrow’s tramp through, 230; tour of 1866, 237 -Scott, Sir W., 218 (_note_), 237, 240, 285, 316 _et seq._ -Scott-Macfie, R.A., 277 -Sebastopol, Pall of, 222 -Seccombe, Thomas (quoted), 13 -“Sell, Joseph,” 53, 54 -Seville, Borrow settles in, 95, 97 -“Shales, Marshland,” 72, 250 -Shaw, Thomas (Lord Advocate), 268 (_note_) -Shelta, the Tinkers’ Language, 242, 265 _et seq._ -“Sidi Habismilk,” 103, 116, 123, 125 -Simpson and Rackham, of Norwich, 4, 35 -Simpson, William, 35, 36, 43 -Skeppers, The, of Oulton, 85 -“Slingsby, Jack” (“Lavengro”), 55, 309 -Smith, Ambrose, 4, 68, 69 (see _also_ “PETULENGRO”) -—, the elder, 3, 4, 26 -“Snob Papers,” The, 139 -Southey, Taylor’s letter to, 39 -Spain, Borrow’s visits to, 92 _et seq._; his view of, 297 _et seq._ -_Spectator_, _The_, 235 -Sterne, Borrow compared with, 12, 13 -Stevenson, R. L., 13 -Stirling-Maxwell, Sir W., reviews “Lavengro,” 133 -Stonehenge, 54, 158 -Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, 157 -Strickland, Agnes, 139 -“Swayne Vonved,” 173, 180, 243, 299, 334 _et seq._ - - - -T - - -Tangier, Borrow’s visit to, 98 _et seq._ -“Targum,” Borrow’s, 90, 246 -Taylor, Baron, 71 -—, John, publisher, 69 -—, Miss Jane, of Penquite, 169 _et seq._ -—, Robert, of Penquite, 147 _et seq._ -—, William, of Norwich, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46, 73, 86, 121, 314 -Tennyson, Lord, 305; the Arthurian Legend, 162, 197 -Thackeray, W. M., 139, 305, 341 -Thomas, Edward, 320 (_note_) -Thurtell, John, 28, 33, 34, 125, 224 -Tinkers’ language (_see_ SHELTA) -Tintagel, Cornwall, 195 _et seq._ -Tol-pedn-Penwith, 184 -Tombland Fair, 72 -Tredinnick, Borrows of, 21 -Tregeagle, The legend of, 161 _et seq._ -Trethevy Stone, The, 158, 159 -“Tristram Shandy” and “Lavengro,” 12 -Truro, Borrow at, 180 -Turner, Dawson, of Yarmouth, 122 - - - -U - - -“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 157, 342 -_Universal Review_, 47, 52 -Usóz, Don Luis, 96, 99, 24 - - - -V - - -Valpy, Edward, 30, 32; flogs Borrow, 33 -“Veiled Period, The,” 68 _et seq._ -Vidocq, 71 -Villiers, Sir G., Minister at Madrid, 93 -“Vipers, King of the,” 3 -“Visions of Sleeping Bard,” Publication of, 231 - - - -W - - -Wales, Borrow’s love of, 19, 320; first visit to, 208 _et seq._; second -visit to, 227; gypsies in, 275, 279 -Wallace, A. R., 198 -Wandsworth, Gypsies at, 286 -War Office, Borrow and the, 83 -Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 54, 134 _et seq._, 138, 143, 232, 246 _et seq._, -252, 253, 270, 287 _et seq._ -Weare, William, Murder of, 34, 125 -Welsh language, Borrow learns, 36; criticism of Borrow’s knowledge of, -211 _et seq._, 322 -Wherry Hotel, The, 259 -Wilby, agent of the Bible Society, 91 -“Wild Wales,” 11, 208 _et seq._, 232, 236, 319 _et seq._; publication of, -234; reviews of, 235 -Williams, Peter and Winifred, 11, 55, 308 -Willow Lane, Norwich, 29, 68 -Wilson, Sir Archdale, 31 -Woodbridge, FitzGerald at, 257 -Woolston, Cornwall, 150 _et seq._ -Wrestling, 203, 204 -Wyn, Elis, 10, 79, 197, 208, 229 231, 323 _et seq._ - - - -Y - - -Yarmouth, Borrow lives at, 145, 146, 224 - - - -Z - - -“Zincali, The,” 11, 34, 35, 100, 103, 110 _et seq._, 124, 176, 251, 266, -271 _et seq._ - - * * * * * - - * * * * * - - PRINTED BY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD., LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C. - - - - -FOOTNOTES. - - -{3} _Bengui_, Romany word for “devil.” - -{6} Borrow loved the wind. There is no reason for discrediting Mr. -Petulengro’s affection for it, but it should be pointed out that gypsies -in general, like all tent-dwellers, regard it as their principal enemy -among the elemental forces. - -{34} Thurtell, of course, figures in De Quincey’s essay “On Murder as -One of the Fine Arts,” in which he guided the studies of his readers -“from Cain to Mr. Thurtell.” De Quincey whimsically declared that -Thurtell’s was an inferior performance; its style was “as harsh as Albert -Dürer and as coarse as Fuseli.” The case created as great a sensation as -any murder trial of the nineteenth century. The circumstances were -peculiarly gruesome, for it was affirmed that Thurtell and his -accomplices, after throwing the body into a pond, went away and sat down -to a supper of roast pork; but afterwards, fearing that the body might be -discovered where they had placed it, took it up and dropped it in another -pond. Thurtell’s arrest was a great surprise; his neighbours accounted -him a gentleman. This led to the celebrated definition, given at the -trial by one of the witnesses, who was asked, “What do you mean by a -gentleman?” and answered, “Well, a person who drives a gig.” - -{45} The letter may be consulted in Dr. Knapp. - -{72} Opinions have differed acutely about Quesada. Richard Ford’s -letters show that he held the general of the Army of the Faith in -considerable respect. Borrow himself devoted one of the most fascinating -chapters of “The Bible in Spain” to a sketch of Quesada. - -{73} Through the kind exertions of Sir John Bowring’s sons, Mr. Lewin -Bowring, of Torquay, and Mr. F. H. Bowring, of Hampstead. - -{75} It will be useful to print this letter in full:— - - “OULTON, LOWESTOFT, SUFFOLK. - June 14, 1842. - - “MY DEAR SIR,—Pray excuse my troubling you with a line. I wish you - would send me as many of the papers and manuscripts, which I left at - yours some twelve years ago, as you can find. Amongst others, there - is an essay on Welsh Poetry, a translation of the Death of Balder, - etc. If I am spared to the beginning of next year I intend to bring - out a volume called ‘Songs of Denmark,’ consisting of some selections - from the K. Viser, and specimens from Evald, Gruntvig, - Oehlenschläger, etc. I suppose that I must give a few notices of - those people. Have you any history of Danish literature from which I - could glean a few hints? I think you have a book in two volumes - containing specimens of Danish poetry. It would be useful to me, as - I want to translate Ingemann’s ‘Dannebrog,’ and one or two other - pieces. I shall preface all with an essay on the Danish language. - It is possible that a book of this description may take, as Denmark - is quite an untrodden field. - - “Could you lend me for a short time a Polish and French or Polish and - German dictionary? I am going carefully through Mukiewitz, about - whom I intend to write an _article_. - - “‘The Bible in Spain’ is in the Press, and, with God’s permission, - will appear about November, in three volumes. I shall tell Murray to - send a copy to my oldest, I may say my _only_, friend. Pray let me - know how you are getting on. I every now and then see your name in - the _Examiner_, the only paper I read. Should you send the papers - and the books, it must be by the Yarmouth coach, which starts from - Tottenham. Address—George Borrow, Crown Inn, Lowestoft, Suffolk. - With kindest remembrances to Mrs. B., Miss B., and family, - - “I remain, dear Sir, - - “Ever yours, - - “GEORGE BORROW. - - “Doctor Bowring.” - -{91} Borrow contemplated carrying out a plan of his own for the teaching -of the Gospel. On December 27th, 1835, he wrote from Evora in the -Alemtejo to Dr. Bowring as follows:— - - “For the last six weeks I have been wandering amongst the wilds of - the Alemtejo, and have introduced myself to its rustics, banditti, - etc., and become very popular amongst them; but 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 of Portugal. I - likewise want a letter from the Foreign Office to Lord 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 - foundation of something similar in Spain.” - -{99a} Juan Antonio Bailly. _See_ chap, vi., p. 110. - -{99b} Don Luis de Usóz y Rio was one of Borrow’s staunchest friends in -Spain, and looked after his affairs in Madrid while he was on his -provincial journeys. Usóz was largely responsible for the great -collection in twenty volumes of the works of Spanish Reformers of the -Sixteenth Century. - -{99c} Librarian of the “National.” - -{103} “The Bible in Spain,” chap. lv. - -{104} Dr. Knapp, vol. i., p. 341. - -{109} _Eastern Daily Press_, October 1st, 1892. Miss Harvey and her -sister Susan were two of the closest friends of the Borrows. Their -father had been articled to the law at the same time as Borrow, and had -similar tastes in sport, and their association was long and genial. The -intercourse between these two families led to an important -acquaintanceship for Borrow, that of Gordon Hake. _See_ p. 137. - -{112} Richard Ford was almost as interesting a person as Borrow himself, -though a much more amenable. The discoverer of Velazquez was, at the -time of their acquaintance, living in Heavitree mainly because his -brother James had a prebendal stall in Exeter Cathedral. There he had -built himself a house, in which he had expressed his own taste in -architecture and decoration. His long series of articles in the -_Quarterly Review_ began with an architectural subject, the “cob-walls” -of Devonshire—a mixture of “mud” and straw, said to be the warmest, and -among the most durable of all walls. Many examples of this form of -building remain in the neighbourhood of Exeter. Ford traced a connection -between the mud walls of Devon and the concrete used by the Moors and -Phœnicians. Ford visited Borrow, at Oulton, in 1844. He was thrice -married, the last time in 1851, to Mary, only daughter of Sir A. -Molesworth, the head of the distinguished Cornish family of that name. -Mrs. Ford still survives, and the author has the privilege of -acknowledging her kindly interest and valuable assistance in his -inquiries into the relations between Borrow and her husband. - -{118} This was no case of like to like. Borrow had no great admiration -for Le Sage, and supported the absurd theory that “Gil Blas” was “a -piratical compilation from the works of old Spanish novelists.” - -{126a} I am indebted to the courtesy of Mrs. Ford for permission to -reproduce this letter. - -{126b} Referring to the review of the _Handbook for Spain_. - -{132} Lady Bowring’s “Memoir,” prefixed to “Matins and Vespers.” - -{140} In his “East Anglian Reminiscences.” - -{142} _Daily Chronicle_, April 30th, 1900. - -{143} Quoted by Mr. Watts-Dunton in his introduction to “The Romany -Rye”—“In Defence of Borrow” (Minerva Library). - -{146} Miss Harvey related (in the _Eastern Daily Press_) a story of -Borrow’s prowess as a swimmer and diver. He was bathing with a friend, -and after he had plunged under water, nothing was seen of him for so long -a time that his companion began to be alarmed. Presently, Borrow’s voice -was heard from afar off, crying: “There! If that had been written in one -of my books, they would have said it was a lie, wouldn’t they?” - -{154} Borrow’s admiration of Irish women was comprehensive. He notes -that on one of his visits to the vicarage, Berkeley’s aunt was present: -“Fine old Irish lady; received me in most kind and hospitable manner.” -Later, when Berkeley spent an evening at Penquite, they discussed and -compared Irish and Cornish women with many illustrations of points of -resemblance in vivacity and difference in character. - -{166} Related by Mr. Thomas Quiller-Couch to W. C. Hazlitt. - -{168} Mr. William Pollard, of Woolston, Mr. Robert Pollard, and Mrs. -Edey, of Liskeard, and Mrs. Toll, of Pensilva (1908). - -{174a} This is the characteristic Cornish version of the rhyme, as cited -by Mr. Couch in “Folklore in a Cornish Village.” The natural rhyme (and -the common version) substitutes “birth” for “death.” - -{174b} He records a visit at Tremar to Henry Goodman, ninety years old, -who in his boyhood had heard the Cornish language spoken. If this was -true, the old tongue must have lingered in these hills after the death of -Dolly Pentreath, who in the Far West was said to be the last person who -spoke it. And, with regard to the dialect then current, he remarks that -he “hardly understood” old Goodman. “Miss Taylor and his daughter, Ann -Honeychurch, interpreted.” - -{176} Miss Every’s companion on this visit was a Miss Hambly—name of ill -omen! Mr. William Pollard gave me an amusing addition to Borrow’s -observations. “At the beginning of last century,” said he, “things were -very different from what they are now. We had no police or anything of -the kind, except parish constables. Miss Hambly was a descendant of -Edmund Hambly, the parish constable of Menheniot, whom George Borrow’s -father fought at Menheniot Fair. He detested the name, and was as near -being rude to Miss Hambly as he could be. He neglected her all the -evening, while Miss Every was in great feather with him. This is her -book.” It was an old edition of “The Gypsies of Spain,” in Murray’s Home -and Colonial Library, with the signature “M. Every” in a fine-pointed -handwriting and faded ink; the book had been kept with care; here and -there it was interleaved with neat little cuttings of sentimental verses, -slit from casual newspapers. It should have lain beside a Victorian jar -of rose-leaves. - -{179} This was the locally celebrated Pillar at Boconnoc, on “Druid’s -Hill.” It is an unquestionably ancient round-headed cross, raised to its -present position by modern piety. - -{185} See Dr. Knapp’s transcript. - -{187} I am much indebted for the marshalling of these points of -comparison to Mr. S. R. John, the editor of _Celtia_. - -{205} R. S. Hawker: “The Quest of the Sangraal.” - -{218} See Sir Walter Scott: Introduction to “Peveril of the Peak.” -Resentment against the alleged injustice of this execution lingered long -in some Celtic districts, even those which were most Royalist in -tendency. This was the case, at any rate, wherever there were -descendants of Christian. So far from the island as Penzance and so far -from the date of the event as the ’eighties reference was made to it in -tones of indignation at the gathering of a learned society. There was a -lineal descendant of Brown William, residing in the town. - -{241} This letter was written in Spanish, and is translated by Dr. -Knapp. - -{245} _The Globe_, July 21st, 1896. - -{248} This was one of Borrow’s favourite hostelries. Another was the -Bald-faced Hind, on the hill above Fairlop the “trysting-place” of the -gypsies: “There they musters from all parts of England, and there they -whoops, dances, and plays; keeping some order nevertheless because the -Rye of all the Romans is in the house, seated behind the door” (“Romano -Lavo-Lil,” “Kirk Yetholm”). - -{249} It would have been about the same period that, Borrow being at Dr. -Gordon Hake’s house at Coombe End, an encampment of gypsies was formed -near by on Wimbledon Common. According to Mr. Mackay, Borrow got Hake to -give the gypsies permission to take water from his well. “They came and -helped themselves to the water, and to everything else to which they -became attracted. Hake represented the circumstances to Borrow. Borrow -eloquently resented the aspersions cast on his friends, and left Coombe -End in high dudgeon—to return, however, at a subsequent date.” - -{253} _The Athenæum_, March 17th, 1888. - -{255} Letter to W. H. Thompson. - -{259} They certainly do not confirm the impression of one who informed -me that a friend of Borrow in his last days in East Anglia told him that -the old man was frequently “well-oiled” (!), and that when in a condition -of perfect lubrication he was “a terrible fellow indeed.” - -{260} “George Borrow in East Anglia” (1896). - -{262} This was written in 1880. A facsimile of a portion of the first -draft is given by Dr. Knapp. - -{265} _Journal_ of the Gypsy Lore Society, July, 1907, p. 81. - -{267} _See_ Mr. H. T. Crofton’s article in the Gypsy Lore Society’s -_Journal_, October, 1907, p. 157. Borrow, by the way, knew his Andrew -Borde, but had apparently failed to identify the “Egipt speche” as -Romany. - -{268} There was a curious reference in the debate on the Second Reading -of the Children’s Bill (House of Commons, March 24th, 1908) to Borrow and -his gypsies. Mr. Thomas Shaw, the Lord Advocate, was describing the -measures proposed by the Bill for dealing with tramp or wandering -children, and “reminded the House that the most beautiful parts of the -United Kingdom were often infested by such children, going about under -the charge, not of any regular type of gypsy, but of mere wandering -vagabonds. These children went from parish to parish, and no local -authority got hold of them. What the Bill did was to say that, if they -had no settled home, or if they were with a guardian who was unfit to -take care of them, they should be subject to seizure. Not begging alone, -but the mere fact of living in a wandering state and not receiving the -education which they would otherwise receive, would bring them within the -range of the provisions of the Bill. They could be taken before the -magistrates and committed to an industrial school. George Borrow never -did a worse service to his country than by writing ‘Lavengro,’ in which -he praised this tramping and wandering life till even the most -well-disposed citizens came to think that there might be something -beautiful in it. The life of children brought up in this way was a life -of squalor, and sometimes of very little else but immorality, and it was -high time the State saw that they were rescued from it” (_The Times_, -March 25th). One does not propose to criticise the provisions of the -Children’s Bill, but it is strange that a Minister should quote -“Lavengro” in this way. Borrow was always insisting upon the very facts -that Mr. Shaw cites about the squalor and misery of the mumpers, -“pikers,” “Abrahamites,” and the other vagrom denizens of the roads, and -his praise was reserved (in so far as it was praise at all) for the life -of the “regular type of gypsy.” - -{279} “The Zincali,” part 11, chap. vi. No rule lacks exceptions. We -have noted the gypsy belief in the New Testament as a talisman, and their -faith in the occult powers of the loadstone will fall for consideration -presently. - -{280} It is to be observed that “The Zincali” is still referred to as an -authority on Spanish gypsydom. Pott used it in his great work. Mr. -MacRitchie adopts its accounts of the Spanish gypsy nobles (Gypsy Lore -Society’s _Journal_, New Series, No. 2, pp. 98–99). - -{284} “Nokkum?” said I; “the root of _nokkum_ must be _nok_, which -signifieth a nose . . . and I have no doubt that your people call -themselves _Nokkum_ because they are in the habit of _nosing_ the -gorgios.”—_Romano Lavo-Lil_, “Kirk Yetholm.” - -{320} Mr. Edward Thomas: “Beautiful Wales.” - -{334} Words undecipherable. - -{336} This is perhaps the most striking illustration of Borrow’s lack of -the genius of verse. Compare Matthew Arnold’s poem, “The Forsaken -Merman,” based on the same legend. - -{347} Letter to Addington, February 27th, 1843. - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE BORROW*** - - -******* This file should be named 63880-0.txt or 63880-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/8/8/63880 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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