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GEORGE BORROW
AND HIS CIRCLE
WHEREIN MAY BE FOUND MANY HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF BORROW AND HIS
FRIENDS
BY
CLEMENT KING SHORTER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1913
TO
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
A FRIEND OF LONG YEARS AND A TRUE
LOVER OF GEORGE BORROW
C. K. S.
Transcriber's Notes: Minor typos have been corrected. A letter with a
macron over it has been designated with a [=], for example [=a] is an a
with a macron over it. There is Persian and Russian writing in this
book, which have been marked as [Persian] or as [Russian]. V^{m}
signifies that the m is a superscript.
PREFACE
I have to express my indebtedness first of all to the executors of
Henrietta MacOubrey, George Borrow's stepdaughter, who kindly placed
Borrow's letters and manuscripts at my disposal. To the survivor of
these executors, a lady who resides in an English provincial town, I
would particularly wish to render fullest acknowledgment did she not
desire to escape all publicity and forbid me to give her name in print.
I am indebted to Sir William Robertson Nicoll without whose kindly and
active intervention I should never have taken active steps to obtain the
material to which this biography owes its principal value. I am under
great obligations to Mr. Herbert Jenkins, the publisher, in that,
although the author of a successful biography of Borrow, he has, with
rare kindliness, brought me into communication with Mr. Wilfrid J.
Bowring, the grandson of Sir John Bowring. To Mr. Wilfrid Bowring I am
indebted in that he has handed to me the whole of Borrow's letters to
his grandfather. I have to thank Mr. James Hooper of Norwich for the
untiring zeal with which he has unearthed for me a valuable series of
notes including certain interesting letters concerning Borrow. Mr.
Hooper has generously placed his collection, with which he at one time
contemplated writing a biography of Borrow, in my hands. I thank Dr.
Aldis Wright for reading my chapter on Edward FitzGerald; also Mr. W.H.
Peet, Mr. Aleck Abrahams, and Mr. Joseph Shaylor for assistance in the
little known field of Sir Richard Phillips's life. I have further to
thank my friends, Edward Clodd and Thomas J. Wise, for reading my
proof-sheets. To Theodore Watts-Dunton, an untiring friend of thirty
years, I have also to acknowledge abundant obligations.
C. K. S.
CONTENTS
PREFACE, v
INTRODUCTION, xv
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA, 1
CHAPTER II
BORROW'S MOTHER, 12
CHAPTER III
JOHN THOMAS BORROW, 18
CHAPTER IV
A WANDERING CHILDHOOD, 36
CHAPTER V
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GURNEYS, 54
CHAPTER VI
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE TAYLORS, 63
CHAPTER VII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, 70
CHAPTER VIII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE LAWYER'S OFFICE, 79
CHAPTER IX
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS, 87
CHAPTER X
'FAUSTUS' AND 'ROMANTIC BALLADS,' 101
CHAPTER XI
'CELEBRATED TRIALS' AND JOHN THURTELL, 112
CHAPTER XII
BORROW AND THE FANCY, 126
CHAPTER XIII
EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE, 133
CHAPTER XIV
SIR JOHN BOWRING, 138
CHAPTER XV
BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY, 153
CHAPTER XVI
ST. PETERSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD, 162
CHAPTER XVII
THE MANCHU BIBLE--'TARGUM'--'THE TALISMAN,' 169
CHAPTER XVII
THREE VISITS TO SPAIN, 179
CHAPTER XIX
BORROW'S SPANISH CIRCLE, 201
CHAPTER XX
MARY BORROW, 215
CHAPTER XXI
'THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR,' 226
CHAPTER XXII
'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN,' 237
CHAPTER XXIII
RICHARD FORD, 248
CHAPTER XXIV
IN EASTERN EUROPE, 260
CHAPTER XXV
'LAVENGRO,' 275
CHAPTER XXVI
A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN, 289
CHAPTER XXVII
IN THE ISLE OF MAN, 296
CHAPTER XXVIII
OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH, 304
CHAPTER XXIX
IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND, 320
CHAPTER XXX
'THE ROMANY RYE,' 341
CHAPTER XXXI
EDWARD FITZGERALD, 350
CHAPTER XXXII
'WILD WALES,' 364
CHAPTER XXXIII
LIFE IN LONDON, 379
CHAPTER XXXIV
FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS, 389
CHAPTER XXXV
BORROW'S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS, 401
CHAPTER XXXVI
HENRIETTA CLARKE, 413
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE AFTERMATH, 434
INDEX, 438
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL-PAGE PLATES
GEORGE BORROW, _Frontispiece_
_A photogravure portrait from the painting by Henry Wyndham
Phillips._
PAGE
THE BORROW HOUSE, NORWICH, 16
ROBERT HAWKES, MAYOR OF NORWICH IN 1824, 24
_From the painting by Benjamin Haydon in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich._
GEORGE BORROW, 32
_From a portrait by his brother, John Thomas Borrow, in the
National Portrait Gallery, London._
THE ERPINGHAM GATE AND THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, NORWICH 72
WILLIAM SIMPSON, 80
_From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A., in the Black Friars
Hall, Norwich._
FRIENDS OF BORROW'S EARLY YEARS--
SIR JOHN BOWRING IN 1826, 96
JOHN P. HASFELD IN 1835, 96
WILLIAM TAYLOR, 96
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS, 96
THE FAMILY OF JASPER PETULENGRO, 128
WHERE BORROW LIVED IN MADRID, 192
THE CALLE DEL PRINCIPE, MADRID, 192
A HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF GEORGE BORROW, 304
_Taken in the garden of Mrs. Simms Reeve of Norwich in 1848._
OULTON COTTAGE FROM THE BROAD, 352
THE SUMMER-HOUSE, OULTON, AS IT IS TO-DAY, 352
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
GEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREEN, 35
_From a Drawing by Fortunino Matania._
TITLE-PAGES OF 'TARGUM' AND 'THE TALISMAN,' 178
PORTION OF A LETTER FROM GEORGE BORROW TO THE REV.
SAMUEL BRANDRAM, 187
_Written From Madrid, 13th May 1838._
FACSIMILE OF AN ACCOUNT OF GEORGE BORROW'S EXPENSES IN
SPAIN MADE OUT BY THE BIBLE SOCIETY, 190
A LETTER FROM SIR GEORGE VILLIERS, AFTERWARDS EARL OF
CLARENDON, BRITISH MINISTER TO SPAIN, TO GEORGE
BORROW, 211
MRS. BORROW'S COPY OF HER MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE, 222
AN APPLICATION FOR A BOOK IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, WITH
BORROW'S SIGNATURE, 230
A SHEKEL, 244
TITLE-PAGE OF BASQUE TRANSLATION BY OTEIZA OF THE GOSPEL
OF ST. LUKE, 247
TITLE-PAGE OF FIRST EDITION OF ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE
GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 247
TWO PAGES FROM BORROW'S CORRECTED PROOF SHEETS OF
ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 247
INSCRIPTIONS IN BORROW'S HANDWRITING ON HIS WIFE'S COPIES
OF 'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN' AND 'LAVENGRO,' 275
THE ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE OF 'LAVENGRO,' 280
_From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George
Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF 'LAVENGRO,' 282
_From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George
Borrow and his Circle.'_
RUNIC STONE FROM THE ISLE OF MAN, 302
FACSIMILE OF A COMMUNICATION FROM CHARLES DARWIN TO
GEORGE BORROW, 318
FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF 'THE ROMANY
RYE,' 346
_From the Borrow Papers in the possession of the Author of
'George Borrow and his Circle._'
'WILD WALES' IN ITS BEGINNINGS, 365
_Two pages from one of George Borrow's Pocket-books with pencilled
notes made on his journey through Wales._
FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF 'WILD WALES,' 368
_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of
'George Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF 'WILD WALES,' 370
_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of
'George Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF A POEM FROM 'TARGUM,' 403
_A Translation from the French by George Borrow._
BORROW AS A PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES--AN ADVERTISEMENT, 409
A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF BORROW'S 'SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA'--AN
UNPUBLISHED WORK, 411
A LETTER FROM BORROW TO HIS WIFE WRITTEN FROM ROME IN
HIS CONTINENTAL JOURNEY OF 1844, 418
INTRODUCTION
It is now exactly seventeen years ago since I published a volume not
dissimilar in form to this under the title of _Charlotte Bronte and her
Circle_. The title had then an element of novelty, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti's _Dante and his Circle_, at the time the only book of this
particular character, having quite another aim. There are now some
twenty or more biographies based upon a similar plan.[1] The method has
its convenience where there are earlier lives of a given writer, as one
can in this way differentiate the book from previous efforts by making
one's hero stand out among his friends. Some such apology, I feel, is
necessary, because, in these days of the multiplication of books, every
book, at least other than a work of imagination, requires ample apology.
In _Charlotte Bronte and her Circle_ I was able to claim that, even
though following in the footsteps of Mrs. Gaskell, I had added some four
hundred new letters by Charlotte Bronte to the world's knowledge of that
interesting woman, and still more considerably enlarged our knowledge of
her sister Emily. This achievement has been generously acknowledged, and
I am most proud of the testimony of the most accomplished of living
biographers, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, who once rendered me the
following quite spontaneous tribute:
We have lately read _aloud_ for the second time your Bronte
book; let alone private readings. It is unique in plan and
excellence, and I am greatly obliged to you for it. Apart from
the pleasure of the book, the form of it has always interested
me as a professional biographer. It certainly is novel; and in
this case I am pretty sure that it is right.
With such a testimony before me I cannot hesitate to present my second
biography in similar form. In the case of George Borrow, however, I am
not in a position to supplement one transcendent biography, as in the
case of Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Gaskell. I have before me no less than
four biographies of Borrow, every one of them of distinctive merit.
These are:
_Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow._ Derived
from Official and other Authentic Sources. By William I. Knapp,
Ph.D., LL.D. 2 vols. John Murray, 1899.
_George Borrow: The Man and his Work._ By R. A. J. Walling.
Cassell, 1908.
_The Life of George Borrow._ Compiled from Unpublished Official
Documents. His Works, Correspondence, etc. By Herbert Jenkins.
John Murray, 1912.
_George Borrow: The Man and his Books._ By Edward Thomas.
Chapman and Hall, 1912.
All of these books have contributed something of value and importance to
the subject. Dr. Knapp's work it is easiest to praise because he is
dead.[2] His biography of Borrow was the effort of a lifetime. A scholar
with great linguistic qualifications for writing the biography of an
author whose knowledge of languages was one of his titles to fame, Dr.
Knapp spared neither time nor money to achieve his purpose. Starting
with an article in _The Chautauquan Magazine_ in 1887, which was
reprinted in pamphlet form, Dr. Knapp came to England--to Norwich--and
there settled down to write a _Life_ of Borrow, which promised at one
time to develop into several volumes. As well it might, for Dr. Knapp
reached Norfolk at a happy moment for his purpose. Mrs. MacOubrey,
Borrow's stepdaughter, was in the humour to sell her father's
manuscripts and books. They were offered to the city of Norwich; there
was some talk of Mr. Jeremiah Coleman, M.P., whose influence and wealth
were overpowering in Norwich at the time, buying them. Finally, a very
considerable portion of the collection came into the hands of Mr.
Webber, a bookseller of Ipswich, who later became associated with the
firm of Jarrold of Norwich. From Webber Dr. Knapp purchased the larger
portion, and, as his bibliography indicates (_Life_, vol. ii. pp.
355-88), he became possessed of sundry notebooks which furnish a record
of certain of Borrow's holiday tours, about a hundred letters from and
to Borrow, and a considerable number of other documents. The result, as
I have indicated, was a book that abounded in new facts and is rich in
new material. It was not, however, a book for popular reading. You must
love the subject before you turn to this book with any zest. It is a
book for your true Borrovian, who is thankful for any information about
the word-master, not for the casual reader, who might indeed be
alienated from the subject by this copious memoir. The result was
somewhat discouraging. There were not enough of true Borrovians in those
years, and the book was not received too generously. The two volumes
have gone out of print and have not reached a second edition. Time
however, will do them justice. As it is, your good Borrow lover has
always appreciated their merits. Take Lionel Johnson for example, a good
critic and a master of style. After saying that these 'lengthy and rich
volumes are a monument of love's labour, but not of literary art or
biographical skill,' he adds: 'Of his over eight hundred pages there is
not one for which I am not grateful' and every new biographer of Borrow
is bound to re-echo that sentiment. Dr. Knapp did the spade work and
other biographers have but entered into his inheritance. Dr. Knapp's
fine collection of Borrow books and manuscripts was handed over by his
widow to the American nation--to the Hispanic Society of New York. Dr.
Knapp's biography was followed nine years later by a small volume by Mr.
R. A. J. Walling, whose little book adds considerably to our knowledge
of Borrow's Cornish relatives, and is in every way a valuable monograph
on the author of _Lavengro_. Mr. Herbert Jenkins's book is more
ambitious. Within four hundred closely printed pages he has compressed
every incident in Borrow's career, and we would not quarrel with him nor
his publisher for calling his life a 'definitive biography' if one did
not know that there is not and cannot be anything 'definitive' about a
biography except in the case of a Master. Boswell, Lockhart, Mrs.
Gaskell are authors who had the advantage of knowing personally the
subjects of their biographies. Any biographer who has not met his hero
face to face and is dependent solely on documents is crippled in his
undertaking. Moreover, such a biographer is always liable to be in a
manner superseded or at least supplemented by the appearance of still
more documents. However, Mr. Jenkins's excellent biography has the
advantage of many new documents from Mr. John Murray's archives and from
the Record Office Manuscripts. His work was the first to make use of the
letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, which the Rev. T. H.
Darlow has published as a book under that title, a book to which I owe
him an acknowledgment for such use of it as I have made, as also for
permission to reproduce the title-page of Borrow's Basque version of St.
Luke's gospel. There only remains for me to say a word in praise of Mr.
Edward Thomas's fine critical study of Borrow which was published under
the title of _George Borrow: The Man and his Books_. Mr. Thomas makes no
claim to the possession of new documents. This brings me to such excuse
as I can make for perpetrating a fifth biography. When Mrs. MacOubrey,
Borrow's stepdaughter, the 'Hen.' of _Wild Wales_ and the affectionate
companion of his later years, sold her father's books and
manuscripts--and she always to her dying day declared that she had no
intention of parting with the manuscripts, which were, she said, taken
away under a misapprehension--she did not, of course, part with any of
his more private documents. All the more intimate letters of Borrow were
retained. At her death these passed to her executors, from whom I have
purchased all legal rights in the publication of Borrow's hitherto
unpublished manuscripts and letters. I trust that even to those who may
disapprove of the discursive method with which--solely for my own
pleasure--I have written this book, will at least find a certain
biographical value in the many new letters by and to George Borrow that
are to be found in its pages. The book has taken me ten years to write,
and has been a labour of love.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As for example, _Garrick and his Circle_; _Johnson and his Circle_;
_Reynolds and his Circle_; and even _The Empress Eugenie and her
Circle_.
[2] William Ireland Knapp died in Paris in June 1908, aged seventy-four.
He was an American, and had held for many years the Chair of Modern
Languages at Vassar College. After eleven years in Spain he returned to
occupy the Chair of Modern Languages at Yale, and later held a
Professorship at Chicago. After his _Life of Borrow_ was published he
resided in Paris until his death.
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA
George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling Green near East Dereham,
Norfolk, on the 5th of July 1803. It pleased him to state on many an
occasion that he was born at East Dereham.
On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D----, a
beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I
first saw the light,
he writes in the opening lines of _Lavengro_, using almost the identical
phraseology that we find in the opening lines of Goethe's _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_. Here is a later memory of Dereham from _Lavengro_:
What it is at present I know not, for thirty years and more
have elapsed since I last trod its streets. It will scarcely
have improved, for how could it be better than it was? I love
to think on thee, pretty, quiet D----, thou pattern of an
English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets
branching out from thy modest market-place, with their
old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable
thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided
the Lady Bountiful--she, the generous and kind, who loved to
visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, while the
sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind.
Pretty, quiet D----, with thy venerable church, in which
moulder the mortal remains of England's sweetest and most pious
bard.
Then follows an exquisite eulogy of the poet Cowper, which readers of
_Lavengro_ know full well. Three years before Borrow was born William
Cowper died in this very town, leaving behind him so rich a legacy of
poetry and of prose, and moreover so fragrant a memory of a life in
which humour and pathos played an equal part. It was no small thing for
a youth who aspired to any kind of renown to be born in the
neighbourhood of the last resting-place of the author of _The Task_.
Yet Borrow was not actually born in East Dereham, but a mile and a half
away, at the little hamlet of Dumpling Green, in what was then a
glorious wilderness of common and furze bush, but is now a quiet
landscape of fields and hedges. You will find the home in which the
author of _Lavengro_ first saw the light without much difficulty. It is
a fair-sized farm-house, with a long low frontage separated from the
road by a considerable strip of garden. It suggests a prosperous yeoman
class, and I have known farm-houses in East Anglia not one whit larger
dignified by the name of 'hall.' Nearly opposite is a pond. The trim
hedges are a delight to us to-day, but you must cast your mind back to a
century ago when they were entirely absent. The house belonged to George
Borrow's maternal grandfather, Samuel Perfrement, who farmed the
adjacent land at this time. Samuel and Mary Perfrement had eight
children, the third of whom, Ann, was born in 1772.
In February 1793 Ann Perfrement, aged twenty-one, married Thomas Borrow,
aged thirty-five, in the Parish Church of East Dereham, and of the two
children that were born to them George Henry Borrow was the younger.
Thomas Borrow was the son of one John Borrow of St. Cleer in Cornwall,
who died before this child was born, and is described by his
grandson[3] as the scion 'of an ancient but reduced Cornish family,
tracing descent from the de Burghs, and entitled to carry their arms.'
This claim, of which I am thoroughly sceptical, is endorsed by Dr.
Knapp,[4] who, however, could find no trace of the family earlier than
1678, the old parish registers having been destroyed. When Thomas Borrow
was born the family were in any case nothing more than small farmers,
and Thomas Borrow and his brothers were working on the land in the
intervals of attending the parish school. At the age of eighteen Thomas
was apprenticed to a maltster at Liskeard, and about this time he joined
the local Militia. Tradition has it that his career as a maltster was
cut short by his knocking his master down in a scrimmage. The victor
fled from the scene of his prowess, and enlisted as a private soldier in
the Coldstream Guards. This was in 1783, and in 1792 he was transferred
to the West Norfolk Militia; hence his appearance at East Dereham,
where, now a serjeant, his occupations for many a year were recruiting
and drilling.[5] It is recorded that at a theatrical performance at East
Dereham he first saw, presumably on the stage of the county-hall, his
future wife--Ann Perfrement. She was, it seems, engaged in a minor part
in a travelling company, not, we may assume, altogether with the
sanction of her father, who, in spite of his inheritance of French
blood, doubtless shared the then very strong English prejudice against
the stage. However, Ann was one of eight children, and had, as we shall
find in after years, no inconsiderable strength of character, and so may
well at twenty years of age have decided upon a career for herself. In
any case we need not press too hard the Cornish and French origin of
George Borrow to explain his wandering tendencies, nor need we wonder at
the suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that he was 'supposed to be of
gypsy descent by the mother's side.' You have only to think of the
father, whose work carried him from time to time to every corner of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the mother with her reminiscence
of life in a travelling theatrical company, to explain in no small
measure the glorious vagabondage of George Borrow.
Behold then Thomas Borrow and Ann Perfrement as man and wife, he being
thirty-five years of age, she twenty-one. A roving, restless life was in
front of the pair for many a day, the West Norfolk Militia being
stationed in some eight or nine separate towns within the interval of
ten years between Thomas Borrow's marriage and his second son's birth.
The first child, John Thomas Borrow, was born on the 15th April 1801.[6]
The second son, George Henry Borrow, the subject of this memoir, was
born in his grandfather's house at Dumpling Green, East Dereham, his
mother having found a natural refuge with her father while her husband
was busily recruiting in Norfolk. The two children passed with their
parents from place to place, and in 1809 we find them once again in
East Dereham. From his son's two books, _Lavengro_ and _Wild Wales_, we
can trace the father's later wanderings until his final retirement to
Norwich on a pension. In 1810 the family were at Norman Cross in
Huntingdonshire, when Captain Borrow had to assist in guarding the
French prisoners of war; for it was the stirring epoch of the Napoleonic
conflict, and within the temporary prison 'six thousand French and other
foreigners, followers of the Grand Corsican, were now immured.'
What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their
blank blind walls, without windows or grating, and their
slanting roofs, out of which, through orifices where the tiles
had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads,
feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country
unfolded from that airy height. Ah! there was much misery in
those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful
look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the
poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the
disgrace of England be it said--of England, in general so kind
and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I
have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy
entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless
and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes.
But here we have only to do with Thomas Borrow, of whom we get many a
quaint glimpse in _Lavengro_, our first and our last being concerned
with him in the one quality that his son seems to have inherited, as the
associate of a prize-fighter--Big Ben Brain. Borrow records in his
opening chapter that Ben Brain and his father met in Hyde Park probably
in 1790, and that after an hour's conflict 'the champions shook hands
and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other's
prowess.' Borrow further relates that four months afterwards Brain 'died
in the arms of my father, who read to him the Bible in his last
moments.' Dr. Knapp finds Borrow in one of his many inaccuracies or
rather 'imaginings' here, as Brain did not die until 1794. More than
once in his after years the old soldier seems to have had a shy pride in
that early conflict, although the piety which seems to have come to him
with the responsibilities of wife and children led him to count any
recalling of the episode as a 'temptation.' When Borrow was about
thirteen years of age, he overheard his father and mother discussing
their two boys, the elder being the father's favourite and George the
mother's:
'I will hear nothing against my first-born,' said my father,
'even in the way of insinuation: he is my joy and pride; the
very image of myself in my youthful days, long before I fought
Big Ben, though perhaps not quite so tall or strong built. As
for the other, God bless the child! I love him, I'm sure; but I
must be blind not to see the difference between him and his
brother. Why, he has neither my hair nor my eyes; and then his
countenance! why, 'tis absolutely swarthy, God forgive me! I
had almost said like that of a gypsy, but I have nothing to say
against that; the boy is not to be blamed for the colour of his
face, nor for his hair and eyes; but, then, his ways and
manners!--I confess I do not like them, and that they give me
no little uneasiness.'[7]
Borrow throughout his narrative refers to his father as 'a man of
excellent common sense,' and he quotes the opinion of William Taylor,
who had rather a bad reputation as a 'freethinker' with all the
church-going citizens of Norwich, with no little pride. Borrow is of
course the 'young man' of the dialogue. He was then eighteen years of
age:
'Not so, not so,' said the young man eagerly; 'before I knew
you I knew nothing, and am still very ignorant; but of late my
father's health has been very much broken, and he requires
attention; his spirits also have become low, which, to tell you
the truth, he attributes to my misconduct. He says that I have
imbibed all kinds of strange notions and doctrines, which will,
in all probability, prove my ruin, both here and hereafter;
which--which----'
'Ah! I understand,' said the elder, with another calm whiff. 'I
have always had a kind of respect for your father, for there is
something remarkable in his appearance, something heroic, and I
would fain have cultivated his acquaintance; the feeling,
however, has not been reciprocated. I met him the other day, up
the road, with his cane and dog, and saluted him; he did not
return my salutation.'
'He has certain opinions of his own,' said the youth, 'which
are widely different from those which he has heard that you
profess.'
'I respect a man for entertaining an opinion of his own,' said
the elderly individual. 'I hold certain opinions; but I should
not respect an individual the more for adopting them. All I
wish for is tolerance, which I myself endeavour to practise. I
have always loved the truth, and sought it; if I have not found
it, the greater my misfortune.'[8]
When Borrow is twenty years of age we have another glimpse of father and
son, the father in his last illness, the son eager as usual to draw out
his parent upon the one subject that appeals to his adventurous spirit,
'I should like to know something about Big Ben,' he says:
'You are a strange lad,' said my father; 'and though of late I
have begun to entertain a more favourable opinion than
heretofore, there is still much about you that I do not
understand. Why do you bring up that name? Don't you know that
it is one of my temptations? You wish to know something about
him? Well, I will oblige you this once, and then farewell to
such vanities--something about him. I will tell you--his--skin
when he flung off his clothes--and he had a particular knack in
doing so--his skin, when he bared his mighty chest and back
for combat; and when he fought he stood, so--if I remember
right--his skin, I say, was brown and dusky as that of a toad.
Oh me! I wish my elder son was here!'
Concerning the career of Borrow's father there seem to be no documents
other than one contained in _Lavengro_, yet no _Life of Borrow_ can
possibly he complete that does not draw boldly upon the son's priceless
tributes. And so we come now to the last scene in the career of the
elder Borrow--his death-bed--which is also the last page of the first
volume of _Lavengro_. George Borrow's brother has arrived from abroad.
The little house in Willow Lane, Norwich, contained the mother and her
two sons sorrowfully awaiting the end, which came on 28th February 1824.
At the dead hour of night--it might be about two--I was
awakened from sleep by a cry which sounded from the room
immediately below that in which I slept. I knew the cry--it was
the cry of my mother; and I also knew its import, yet I made no
effort to rise, for I was for the moment paralysed. Again the
cry sounded, yet still I lay motionless--the stupidity of
horror was upon me. A third time, and it was then that, by a
violent effort, bursting the spell which appeared to bind me, I
sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs. My mother was
running wildly about the room; she had awoke and found my
father senseless in the bed by her side. I essayed to raise
him, and after a few efforts supported him in the bed in a
sitting posture. My brother now rushed in, and, snatching up a
light that was burning, he held it to my father's face. 'The
surgeon! the surgeon!' he cried; then, dropping the light, he
ran out of the room, followed by my mother; I remained alone,
supporting the senseless form of my father; the light had been
extinguished by the fall, and an almost total darkness reigned
in the room. The form pressed heavily against my bosom; at last
methought it moved. Yes, I was right; there was a heaving of
the breast, and then a gasping. Were those words which I heard?
Yes, they were words, low and indistinct at first, and then
audible. The mind of the dying man was reverting to former
scenes. I heard him mention names which I had often heard him
mention before. It was an awful moment; I felt stupefied, but I
still contrived to support my dying father. There was a pause;
again my father spoke: I heard him speak of Minden, and of
Meredith, the old Minden Serjeant, and then he uttered another
name, which at one period of his life was much on his lips, the
name of ----; but this is a solemn moment! There was a deep
gasp: I shook, and thought all was over; but I was mistaken--my
father moved, and revived for a moment; he supported himself in
bed without my assistance. I make no doubt that for a moment he
was perfectly sensible, and it was then that, clasping his
hands, he uttered another name clearly, distinctly--it was the
name of Christ. With that name upon his lips the brave old
soldier sank back upon my bosom, and, with his hands still
clasped, yielded up his soul.
Did Borrow's father ever really fight Big Ben Brain or Bryan in Hyde
Park, or is it all a fantasy of the artist's imagining? We shall never
know. Borrow called his _Lavengro_ 'An Autobiography' at one stage of
its inception, although he wished to repudiate the autobiographical
nature of his story at another. Dr. Knapp in his anxiety to prove that
Borrow wrote his own memoirs in _Lavengro_ and _Romany Rye_ tells us
that he had no creative faculty--an absurd proposition. But I think we
may accept the contest between Ben Brain and Thomas Borrow, and what a
revelation of heredity that impressive death-bed scene may be counted.
Borrow on one occasion in later life declared that his favourite hooks
were the Bible and the Newgate Calendar. We know that he specialised on
the Bible and Prize-Fighting in no ordinary fashion--and here we see his
father on his death-bed struggling between the religious sentiments of
his maturity and the one great worldly escapade of his early manhood.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] In the year 1870 Borrow was asked for material for a biography by
the editor of _Men of the Time_, a publication which many years later
was incorporated in the present _Who's Who_. He drew up two drafts in
his own handwriting, which are so interesting, and yet vary so much in
certain particulars, that we are tempted to print both here, or at least
that part of the second draft that differs from the first. The
concluding passages of both drafts are alike. The biography as it stands
in the 1871 edition of _Men of the Time_ appears to have been compiled
from the earlier of these drafts. It must have been another copy of
Draft No. 1 that was forwarded to the editor:
DRAFT I.--George Henry Borrow, born at East Dereham in the county of
Norfolk in the early part of the present century. His father was a
military officer, with whom he travelled about most parts of the United
Kingdom. He was at some of the best schools in England, and also for
about two years at the High School at Edinburgh. In 1818 he was articled
to an eminent solicitor at Norwich, with whom he continued five years.
He did not, however, devote himself much to his profession, his mind
being much engrossed by philology, for which at a very early period he
had shown a decided inclination, having when in Ireland acquired the
Irish language. At the age of twenty he knew little of the law, but was
well versed in languages, being not only a good classical scholar but
acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic
dialects, and also with the peculiar language of the English Romany
Chals or Gypsies. This speech, which, though broken and scanty, exhibits
evident signs of high antiquity, he had picked up amongst the wandering
tribes with whom he had formed acquaintance on a wild heath near
Norwich, where they were in the habit of encamping. At the expiration of
his clerkship, which occurred shortly after the death of his father, he
betook himself to London, and endeavoured to get a livelihood by
literature. For some time he was a hack author. His health failing he
left London, and for a considerable time lived a life of roving
adventure. In the year 1833 he entered the service of he British and
Foreign Bible Society, and being sent to Russia edited at Saint
Petersburg the New Testament in the Manchu or Chinese Tartar. Whilst at
Saint Petersburg he published a book called _Targum_, consisting of
metrical translations from thirty languages. He was subsequently for
some years agent of the Bible Society in Spain, where he was twice
imprisoned for endeavouring to circulate the Gospel. In Spain he mingled
much with the Calore or Zincali, called by the Spaniards Gitanos or
Gypsies, whose language he found to be much the same as that of the
English Romany. At Madrid he edited the New Testament in Spanish, and
translated the Gospel of Saint Luke into the language of the Zincali.
Leaving the service of the Bible Society he returned to England in 1839,
and shortly afterwards married a Suffolk lady. In 1841 he published _The
Zincali_, or an account of the Gypsies of Spain, with a vocabulary of
their language, which he proved to be closely connected with the
Sanskrit. This work obtained almost immediately a European celebrity,
and was the cause of many learned works being published on the continent
on the subject of the Gypsies. In 1842 he gave to the world _The Bible
in Spain_, or an account of an attempt to circulate the Gospel in the
peninsula, a work which received a warm and eloquent eulogium from Sir
Robert Peel in the House of Commons. In 1844 he was wandering amongst
the Gypsies of Hungary, Walachia, and Turkey, gathering up the words of
their respective dialects of the Romany, and making a collection of
their songs. In 1851 he published _Lavengro_, in which he gives an
account of his early life, and in 1857 _The Romany Rye_, a sequel to the
same. His latest publication is _Wild Wales_. He has written many other
works, some of which are not yet published. He has an estate in Suffolk,
but spends the greater part of his time in wandering on foot through
various countries.
* * * * *
DRAFT II.--George Henry Borrow was born at East Dereham in the county of
Norfolk on the 5th July 1803. His father, Thomas Borrow, who died
captain and adjutant of the West Norfolk Militia, was of an ancient but
reduced Cornish family, tracing descent from the de Burghs, and entitled
to carry their arms. His mother, Ann Perfrement, was a native of
Norfolk, and descended from a family of French Protestants banished from
France on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He was the youngest of
two sons. His brother, John Thomas, who was endowed with various and
very remarkable talents, died at an early age in Mexico. Both the
brothers had the advantage of being at some of the first schools in
Britain. The last at which they were placed was the Grammar School at
Norwich, to which town their father came to reside at the termination of
the French war. In the year 1818 George Borrow was articled to an
eminent solicitor in Norwich, with whom he continued five years. He did
not devote himself much to his profession, his mind being engrossed by
another and very different subject--namely philology, for which at a
very early period he had shown a decided inclination, having when in
Ireland with his father acquired the Irish language. At the expiration
of his clerkship he knew little of the law, but was well versed in
languages, being not only a good Greek and Latin scholar, but acquainted
with French, Italian, and Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic dialects,
and likewise with the peculiar language of the English Romany Chals or
Gypsies. This speech or jargon, amounting to about eleven hundred and
twenty-seven words, he had picked up amongst the wandering tribes with
whom he had formed acquaintance on Mousehold, a wild heath near Norwich,
where they were in the habit of encamping. By the time his clerkship was
expired his father was dead, and he had little to depend upon but the
exercise of his abilities such as they were. In 1823 he betook himself
to London, and endeavoured to obtain a livelihood by literature. For
some time he was a hack author, doing common work for booksellers. For
one in particular he prepared an edition of the Newgate Calendar, from
the careful study of which he has often been heard to say that he first
learned to write genuine English. His health failed, he left London, and
for a considerable time he lived a life of roving adventure.
[4] Knapp's _Life of Borrow_, vol. i. p. 6.
[5] The writer recalls at his own school at Downham Market in Norfolk an
old Crimean Veteran--Serjeant Canham--drilling the boys each week, thus
supplementing his income precisely in the same manner as did Serjeant
Borrow.
[6] The date has always hitherto been wrongly given. I find it in one of
Ann Borrow's notebooks, but although every vicar of every parish in
Chelmsford and Colchester has searched the registers for me, with
agreeable courtesy, I cannot discover a record of John's birthplace, and
am compelled to the belief that Dr. Knapp was wrong in suggesting one or
other of these towns.
[7] _Lavengro_, ch. xiv.
[8] _Lavengro_, ch. xxiii.
CHAPTER II
BORROW'S MOTHER
Throughout his whole life George Borrow adored his mother, who seems to
have developed into a woman of great strength of character far remote
from the pretty play-actor who won the heart of a young soldier at East
Dereham in the last years of the eighteenth century. We would gladly
know something of the early years of Ann Perfrement. Her father was a
farmer, whose farm at Dumpling Green we have already described. He did
not, however, 'farm his own little estate' as Borrow declared. The
grandfather--a French Protestant--came, if we are to believe Borrow,
from Caen in Normandy after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but
there is no documentary evidence to support the contention. However, the
story of the Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound up with
Norwich and the adjacent district. And so we may well take the name of
'Perfrement' as conclusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as
utterly untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
that Borrow's mother was 'of gypsy descent.'[9] She was one of the eight
children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have
devoted their lives to East Anglia.[10] We owe to Dr. Knapp's edition of
_Lavengro_ one exquisite glimpse of Ann's girlhood that is not in any
other issue of the book. Ann's elder sister, curious to know if she was
ever to be married, falls in with the current superstition that she must
wash her linen and 'watch' it drying before the fire between eleven and
twelve at night. Ann Perfrement was ten years old at the time. The two
girls walked over to East Dereham, purchased the necessary garment,
washed it in the pool near the house that may still be seen, and watched
and watched. Suddenly when the clock struck twelve they heard, or
thought they heard, a footstep on the path, the wind howled, and the
elder sister sprang to the door, locked and bolted it, and then fell in
convulsions on the floor. The superstition, which Borrow seems to have
told his mother had a Danish origin, is common enough in Ireland and in
Celtic lands. It could scarcely have been thus rehearsed by two Norfolk
children had they not had the blood of a more imaginative race in their
veins. In addition to this we find more than one effective glimpse of
Borrow's mother in _Lavengro_. We have already noted the episode in
which she takes the side of her younger boy against her husband, with
whom John was the favourite. We meet her again in the following
dialogue, with its pathetic allusions to Dante and to the complaint--a
kind of nervous exhaustion which he called 'the horrors'--that was to
trouble Borrow all his days:
'What ails you, my child?' said a mother to her son, as he lay
on a couch under the influence of the dreadful one; 'what ails
you? you seem afraid!'
_Boy._ And so I am; a dreadful fear is upon me.
_Mother._ But of what? there is no one can harm you; of what
are you apprehensive?
_Boy._ Of nothing that I can express. I know not what I am
afraid of, but afraid I am.
_Mother._ Perhaps you see sights and visions. I knew a lady
once who was continually thinking that she saw an armed man
threaten her, but it was only an imagination, a phantom of the
brain.
_Boy._ No armed man threatens me; and 'tis not a thing like
that would cause me any fear. Did an armed man threaten me I
would get up and fight him; weak as I am, I would wish for
nothing better, for then, perhaps, I should lose this fear;
mine is a dread of I know not what, and there the horror lies.
_Mother._ Your forehead is cool, and your speech collected. Do
you know where you are?
_Boy._ I know where I am, and I see things just as they are;
you are beside me, and upon the table there is a book which was
written by a Florentine; all this I see, and that there is no
ground for being afraid. I am, moreover, quite cool, and feel
no pain--but, but----
And then there was a burst of 'gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.'
Alas, alas, poor child of clay! as the sparks fly upward, so
wast thou born to sorrow--Onward![11]
Our next glimpse of Mrs. Borrow is when after his father's death George
had shouldered his knapsack and made his way to London to seek his
fortune by literature. His elder brother had remained at home,
determined upon being a painter, but joined George in London, leaving
the widowed mother momentarily alone in Norwich.
'And how are things going on at home?' said I to my brother,
after we had kissed and embraced. 'How is my mother, and how is
the dog?'
'My mother, thank God, is tolerably well,' said my brother,
'but very much given to fits of crying. As for the dog, he is
not so well; but we will talk more of these matters anon,' said
my brother, again glancing at the breakfast things. 'I am very
hungry, as you may suppose, after having travelled all night.'
Thereupon I exerted myself to the best of my ability to perform
the duties of hospitality, and I made my brother welcome--I may
say more than welcome; and when the rage of my brother's hunger
was somewhat abated, we recommenced talking about the matters
of our little family, and my brother told me much about my
mother; he spoke of her fits of crying, but said that of late
the said fits of crying had much diminished, and she appeared
to be taking comfort; and, if I am not much mistaken, my
brother told me that my mother had of late the prayer-book
frequently in her hand, and yet oftener the Bible.[12]
Ann Borrow lived in Willow Lane, Norwich, for thirty-three years. That
Borrow was a devoted husband these pages will show. He was also a
devoted son. When he had made a prosperous marriage he tried hard to
persuade his mother to live with him at Oulton, but all in vain. She had
the wisdom to see that such an arrangement is rarely conducive to a
son's domestic happiness. She continued to live in the little cottage
made sacred by many associations until almost the end of her days. Here
she had lived in earlier years with her husband and her two ambitious
boys, and in Norwich, doubtless, she had made her own friendships,
although of these no record remains. The cottage still stands in its
modest court, but is at the moment untenanted. There is a letter extant
from Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, who wrote _The Life of Mrs. Opie_, to Mary
Borrow at Oulton, when Mrs. Borrow the elder had gone to live there,
which records the fact that in 1851, two years after Mrs. Borrow had
left the cottage in Willow Lane, it had already changed its appearance.
Mrs. Brightwell writes:
Give my kind love to dear mother. Tell her I went past her
house to-day and looked up the court. It is quite changed: all
the trees and the ivy taken away.
The house was the property of Thomas King, a carpenter. You enter from
Willow Lane through a covered passage into what was then known as King's
Court. Here the little house faces you, and you meet it with a
peculiarly agreeable sensation, recalling more than one incident in
_Lavengro_ that transpired there. In 1897 the then mayor made the one
attempt of his city of a whole half century to honour Borrow by calling
this court Borrow's Court--thereby conferring a ridiculously small
distinction upon Borrow,[13] and removing a landmark connected with one
of its own worthy citizens. For Thomas King, the carpenter, was in
direct descent in the maternal line from the family of Parker, which
gave to Norwich one of its most distinguished sons in the famous
Archbishop of Queen Elizabeth's day. He extended his business as
carpenter sufficiently to die a prosperous builder. Of his two sons one,
also named Thomas, became physician to Prince Talleyrand, and married a
sister of John Stuart Mill.[14] All this by the way, but there is little
more to record of Borrow's mother apart from the letters addressed to
her by her son, which occur in their due place in these records. Yet one
little memorandum among my papers which bears Mrs. Borrow's signature
may well find place here:
In the year 1797 I was at Canterbury. One night at about one
o'clock Sir Robert Laurie and Captain Treve came to our
lodgings and tapped at our bedroom door, and told my husband to
get up, and get the men under arms without beat of drum as soon
as possible, for that there was a mutiny at the Nore. My
husband did so, and in less than two hours they had marched out
of town towards Sheerness without making any noise. They had to
break open the store-house in order to get provender, because
the Quartermaster, Serjeant Rowe, was out of the way. The
Dragoon Guards at that time at Canterbury were in a state of
mutiny.
ANN BORROW.
[Illustration: THE BORROW HOUSE, NORWICH
The house is situated in Borrow's Court, formerly King's Court, Willow
Lane, St. Giles's, Norwich, and here Borrow lived at intervals from 1816
to his marriage in 1839. His mother lived here for thirty-three years
until 1849; his father died here, and is buried in the neighbouring
churchyard of St. Giles's.]
FOOTNOTES:
[9] 24th May 1856. Dining at Mr. Rathbone's one evening last week (21st
May), it was mentioned that Borrow, author of _The Bible in Spain_, is
supposed to be of gypsy descent by the mother's side. Hereupon Mr.
Martineau mentioned that he had been a schoolfellow of Borrow, and
though he had never heard of his gypsy blood, he thought it probable,
from Borrow's traits of character. He said that Borrow had once run away
from school, and carried with him a party of other boys, meaning to lead
a wandering life (_The English Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne_, vol.
ii. 1858).
[10] Samuel and Maria Perfrement were married in 1766, the latter to
John Burcham. Two of her brothers survived Ann Borrow, Samuel Perfrement
dying in 1864 and Philip in 1867.
[11] _Lavengro_, ch. xviii.
[12] _Lavengro_, ch. xxxvii.
[13] In May 1913 the Lord Mayor of Norwich (Mr. A. M. Samuel) purchased
the Borrow house in Willow Lane for L375, and gave it to the city for
the purpose of a Borrow Museum.
[14] This Thomas King was a cousin of my mother; his father built the
Borrow House in Norwich in 1812. The only allusion to him I have ever
seen in print is contained in a letter on _Lavengro_ contributed by
Thomas Burcham to _The Britannia_ newspaper of June 26, 1851:--'With
your criticism on _Lavengro_ I cordially agree, and if you were
disappointed in the long promised work, what must I have been? A
schoolfellow of Borrow, who, in the autobiography, expected to find much
interesting matter, not only relating to himself, but also to
schoolfellows and friends--the associates of his youth, who, in
after-life, gained no slight notoriety--amongst them may be named Sir
James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak; poor Stoddard, who was murdered at
Bokhara, and who, as a boy, displayed that noble bearing and high
sensitiveness of honour which partly induced that fatal result; and
Thomas King, one of Borrow's early friends, who, the son of a carpenter
at Norwich, the landlord of Lavengro's father, after working in his
father's shop till nearly sixteen, went to Paris, entered himself as a
student at one of the hospitals, and through his energy and intellect
became internal surgeon of L'Hotel Dieu and private physician to Prince
Talleyrand.' Thomas Borrow Burcham was Magistrate of Southwark Police
Court from 1856 till his death in 1869. He was the son of Maria
Perfrement, Borrow's aunt.
CHAPTER III
JOHN THOMAS BORROW
John Thomas Borrow was born two years before his younger brother, that
is, on the 15th April 1801. His father, then Serjeant Borrow, was
wandering from town to town, and it is not known where his elder son
first saw the light. John Borrow's nature was cast in a somewhat
different mould from that of his brother. He was his father's pride.
Serjeant Borrow could not understand George with his extraordinary taste
for the society of queer people--the wild Irish and the ragged Romanies.
John had far more of the normal in his being. Borrow gives us in
_Lavengro_ our earliest glimpse of his brother:
He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally seen in
England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes,
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon
countenance, in which, by the by, there is generally a cast of
loutishness and stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of
the Celtic character, particularly in the fire and vivacity
which illumined it; his face was the mirror of his mind;
perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever found amongst the
children of Adam, united, however, with no inconsiderable
portion of high and dauntless spirit. So great was his beauty
in infancy, that people, especially those of the poorer
classes, would follow the nurse who carried him about in order
to look at and bless his lovely face. At the age of three
months an attempt was made to snatch him from his mother's arms
in the streets of London, at the moment she was about to enter
a coach; indeed, his appearance seemed to operate so powerfully
upon every person who beheld him, that my parents were under
continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was
perhaps surpassed by the quickness of his parts. He mastered
his letters in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher
the names of people on the doors of houses and over the
shop-windows.
John received his early education at the Norwich Grammar School, while
the younger brother was kept under the paternal wing. Father and mother,
with their younger boy George, were always on the move, passing from
county to county and from country to country, as Serjeant Borrow, soon
to be Captain, attended to his duties of drilling and recruiting, now in
England, now in Scotland, now in Ireland. We are given a fascinating
glimpse of John Borrow in _Lavengro_ by way of a conversation between
Mr. and Mrs. Borrow over the education of their children. It was agreed
that while the family were in Edinburgh the boys should be sent to the
High School, and so at the historic school that Sir Walter Scott had
attended a generation before the two boys were placed, John being
removed from the Norwich Grammar School for the purpose. Among his many
prejudices of after years Borrow's dislike of Scott was perhaps the most
regrettable, otherwise he would have gloried in the fact that their
childhood had had one remarkable point in common. Each boy took part in
the feuds between the Old Town and the New Town. Exactly as Scott
records his prowess at 'the manning of the Cowgate Port,' and the
combats maintained with great vigour, 'with stones, and sticks, and
fisticuffs,' as set forth in the first volume of Lockhart, so we have
not dissimilar feats set down in _Lavengro_. Side by side also with the
story of 'Green-Breeks,' which stands out in Scott's narrative of his
school combats, we have the more lurid account by Borrow of David
Haggart. Literary biography is made more interesting by such episodes of
likeness and of contrast.
We next find John Borrow in Ireland with his father, mother, and
brother. George is still a child, but he is precocious enough to be
learning the language, and thus laying the foundation of his interest in
little-known tongues. John is now an ensign in his father's regiment.
'Ah! he was a sweet being, that boy soldier, a plant of early promise,
bidding fair to become in after time all that is great, good, and
admirable.' Ensign John tells his little brother how pleased he is to
find himself, although not yet sixteen years old, 'a person in authority
with many Englishmen under me. Oh! these last six weeks have passed like
hours in heaven.' That was in 1816, and we do not meet John again until
five years later, when we hear of him rushing into the water to save a
drowning man, while twenty others were bathing who might have rendered
assistance. Borrow records once again his father's satisfaction:
'My boy, my own boy, you are the very image of myself, the day
I took off my coat in the park to fight Big Ben,' said my
father, on meeting his son, wet and dripping, immediately after
his bold feat. And who cannot excuse the honest pride of the
old man--the stout old man?
In the interval the war had ended, and Napoleon had departed for St.
Helena. Peace had led to the pensioning of militia officers, or reducing
to half-pay of the juniors. The elder Borrow had settled in Norwich.
George was set to study at the Grammar School there, while his brother
worked in Old Crome's studio, for here was a moment when Norwich had its
interesting Renaissance, and John Borrow was bent on being an artist. He
had worked with Crome once before--during the brief interval that
Napoleon was at Elba--but now he set to in real earnest, and we have
evidence of a score of pictures by him that were catalogued In the
exhibitions of the Norwich Society of Artists between the years 1817 and
1824. They include one portrait of the artist's father, and two of his
brother George.[15] Old Crome died in 1821, and then John went to London
to study under Haydon. Borrow declares that his brother had real taste
for painting, and that 'if circumstances had not eventually diverted his
mind from the pursuit, he would have attained excellence, and left
behind him some enduring monument of his powers,' 'He lacked, however,'
he tells us, 'one thing, the want of which is but too often fatal to the
sons of genius, and without which genius is little more than a splendid
toy in the hands of the possessor--perseverance, dogged perseverance.'
It is when he is thus commenting on his brother's characteristics that
Borrow gives his own fine if narrow eulogy of Old Crome. John Borrow
seems to have continued his studies in London under Haydon for a year,
and then to have gone to Paris to copy pictures at the Louvre. He
mentions a particular copy that he made of a celebrated picture by one
of the Italian masters, for which a Hungarian nobleman paid him well.
His three years' absence was brought to an abrupt termination by news of
his father's illness. He returned to Norwich in time to stand by that
father's bedside when he died. The elder Borrow died, as we have seen,
in February 1824. The little home in King's Court was kept on for the
mother, and as John was making money by his pictures it was understood
that he should stay with her. On the 1st April, however, George started
for London, carrying the manuscript of _Romantic Ballads from the
Danish_ to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher. On the 29th of the same
month he was joined by his brother John. John had come to London at his
own expense, but in the interests of the Norwich Town Council. The
council wanted a portrait of one of its mayors for St. Andrew's
Hall--that Valhalla of Norwich municipal worthies which still strikes
the stranger as well-nigh unique in the city life of England. The
municipality would fain have encouraged a fellow-citizen, and John
Borrow had been invited to paint the portrait. 'Why,' it was asked,
'should the money go into a stranger's pocket and be spent in London?'
John, however, felt diffident of his ability and declined, and this in
spite of the fact that the L100 offered for the portrait must have been
very tempting. 'What a pity it was,' he said, 'that Crome was dead.'
'Crome,' said the orator of the deputation that had called on John
Borrow,
'Crome; yes, he was a clever man, a very clever man, in his
way; he was good at painting landscapes and farm-houses, but he
would not do in the present instance, were he alive. He had no
conception of the heroic, sir. We want some person capable of
representing our mayor standing under the Norman arch of the
cathedral.'[16]
At the mention of the heroic John bethought himself of Haydon, and
suggested his name; hence his visit to London, and his proposed
interview with Haydon. The two brothers went together to call upon the
'painter of the heroic' at his studio in Connaught Terrace, Hyde Park.
There was some difficulty about their admission, and it turned out
afterwards that Haydon thought they might be duns, as he was very hard
up at the time. His eyes glistened at the mention of the L100. 'I am not
very fond of painting portraits,' he said, 'but a mayor is a mayor, and
there is something grand in that idea of the Norman arch.' And thus
Mayor Hawkes came to be painted by Benjamin Haydon, and his portrait may
be found, not without diligent search, among the many municipal worthies
that figure on the walls of that most picturesque old Hall in Norwich.
Here is Borrow's description of the painting:
The original mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull's
head, black hair, body like that of a dray horse, and legs and
thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his
bull's head, black hair, and body the painter had done justice;
there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not
correspond with the original--the legs were disproportionably
short, the painter having substituted his own legs for those of
the mayor.
John Borrow described Robert Hawkes to his brother as a person of many
qualifications:
--big and portly, with a voice like Boanerges; a religious man,
the possessor of an immense pew; loyal, so much so that I once
heard him say that he would at any time go three miles to hear
any one sing 'God save the King'; moreover, a giver of
excellent dinners. Such is our present mayor, who, owing to
his loyalty, his religion, and a little, perhaps, to his
dinners, is a mighty favourite.
Haydon, who makes no mention of the Borrows in his _Correspondence_ or
_Autobiography_, although there is one letter of George Borrow's to him
in the latter work, had been in jail for debt three years prior to the
visit of the Borrows. He was then at work on his greatest success in
'the heroic'--_The Raising of Lazarus_, a canvas nineteen feet long by
fifteen high. The debt was one to house decorators, for the artist had
ever large ideas. The bailiff, he tells us,[17] was so agitated at the
sight of the painting of Lazarus in the studio that he cried out, 'Oh,
my God! Sir, I won't arrest you. Give me your word to meet me at twelve
at the attorney's, and I'll take it.' In 1821 Haydon married, and a
little later we find him again 'without a single shilling in the
world--with a large picture before me not half done.' In April 1822 he
is arrested at the instance of his colourman, 'with whom I had dealt for
fifteen years,' and in November of the same year he is arrested again at
the instance of 'a miserable apothecary.' In April 1823 we find him in
the King's Bench Prison, from which he was released in July. _The
Raising of Lazarus_ meanwhile had gone to pay his upholsterer L300, and
his _Christ's Entry into Jerusalem_ had been sold for L240, although it
had brought him L3000 in receipts at exhibitions. Clearly heroic
pictures did not pay, and Haydon here took up 'the torment of
portrait-painting' as he called it.
[Illustration: ROBERT HAWKES, MAYOR OF NORWICH IN 1824
From the painting by Benjamin Haydon in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich. This
portrait has its association with Borrow in that his brother John was
sent to London to request Haydon to paint it, and Borrow describes the
picture in _Lavengro_.]
'Can you wonder,' he wrote in July 1825, 'that I nauseate
portraits, except portraits of clever people. I feel quite
convinced that every portrait-painter, if there be purgatory,
will leap at once to heaven, without this previous
purification.'
Perhaps it was Mayor Hawkes who helped to inspire this feeling.[18] Yet
the hundred pounds that John Borrow was able to procure must have been a
godsend, for shortly before this we find him writing in his diary of the
desperation that caused him to sell his books. 'Books that had cost me
L20 I got only L3 for. But it was better than starvation.' Indeed it was
in April of this year that the very baker was 'insolent,' and so in May
1824, as we learn from Tom Taylor's _Life_, he produced 'a full-length
portrait of Mr. Hawkes, a late Mayor of Norwich, painted for St.
Andrew's Hall in that city.' But I must leave Haydon's troubled career,
which closes so far as the two brothers are concerned with a letter from
George to Haydon written the following year from 26 Bryanston Street,
Portman Square:
DEAR SIR,--I should feel extremely obliged if you would allow
me to sit to you as soon as possible. I am going to the south
of France in little better than a fortnight, and I would sooner
lose a thousand pounds than not have the honour of appearing in
the picture.--Yours sincerely,
GEORGE BORROW.[19]
As Borrow was at the time in a most impoverished condition, it is not
easy to believe that he would have wished to be taken at his word. He
certainly had not a thousand pounds to lose. But he did undoubtedly, as
we shall see, take that journey on foot through the south of France,
after the manner of an earlier vagabond of literature--Oliver Goldsmith.
Haydon was to be far too much taken up with his own troubles during the
coming months to think any more about the Borrows when he had once
completed the portrait of the mayor, which he had done by July of this
year. Borrow's letter to him is, however, an obvious outcome of a remark
dropped by the painter on the occasion of his one visit to his studio
when the following conversation took place:
'I'll stick to the heroic,' said the painter; 'I now and then
dabble in the comic, but what I do gives me no pleasure, the
comic is so low; there is nothing like the heroic. I am engaged
here on a heroic picture,' said he, pointing to the canvas;
'the subject is "Pharaoh dismissing Moses from Egypt," after
the last plague--the death of the first-born,--it is not far
advanced--that finished figure is Moses': they both looked at
the canvas, and I, standing behind, took a modest peep. The
picture, as the painter said, was not far advanced, the Pharaoh
was merely in outline; my eye was, of course, attracted by the
finished figure, or rather what the painter had called the
finished figure; but, as I gazed upon it, it appeared to me
that there was something defective--something unsatisfactory in
the figure. I concluded, however, that the painter,
notwithstanding what he had said, had omitted to give it the
finishing touch. 'I intend this to be my best picture,' said
the painter; 'what I want now is a face for Pharaoh; I have
long been meditating on a face for Pharaoh.' Here, chancing to
cast his eye upon my countenance, of whom he had scarcely taken
any manner of notice, he remained with his mouth open for some
time, 'Who is this?' said he at last. 'Oh, this is my brother,
I forgot to introduce him----.'
We wish that the acquaintance had extended further, but this was not to
be. Borrow was soon to commence the wanderings which were to give him
much unsatisfactory fame, and the pair never met again. Let us, however,
return to John Borrow, who accompanied Haydon to Norwich, leaving his
brother for some time longer to the tender mercies of Sir Richard
Phillips. John, we judge, seems to have had plenty of shrewdness, and
was not without a sense of his own limitations. A chance came to him of
commercial success in a distant land, and he seized that chance. A
Norwich friend, Allday Kerrison, had gone out to Mexico, and writing
from Zacatecas in 1825 asked John to join him. John accepted. His salary
in the service of the Real del Monte Company was to be L300 per annum.
He sailed for Mexico in 1826, having obtained from his Colonel, Lord
Orford, leave of absence for a year, it being understood that renewals
of that leave of absence might be granted. He was entitled to half-pay
as a Lieutenant of the West Norfolk Militia, and this he settled upon
his mother during his absence. His career in Mexico was a failure. There
are many of his letters to his mother and brother extant which tell of
the difficulties of his situation. He was in three Mexican companies in
succession, and was about to be sent to Columbia to take charge of a
mine when he was stricken with a fever, and died at Guanajuato on 22nd
November 1838. He had far exceeded any leave that his Colonel could in
fairness grant, and before his death his name had been taken off the
army rolls. The question of his pay produced a long correspondence,
which can be found in the archives of the Rolls Office. I have the
original drafts of these letters in Borrow's handwriting. The first
letter by Borrow is dated 8th September 1831; it is better to give the
correspondence in its order.[20] The letters speak for themselves, and
require no comment.
I
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _September 8, 1831._
SIR,--I take the liberty of troubling you with these lines for
the purpose of enquiring whether there is any objection to the
issuing of the disembodied allowance of my brother Lieut. John
Borrow of the Welsh Norfolk Militia, who is at present abroad.
I do this by the advice of the Army Pay Office, a power of
Attorney having been granted to me by Lieut. Borrow to receive
the said allowance for him. I beg leave to add that my brother
was present at the last training of his regiment, that he went
abroad with the leave of his Commanding Officer, which leave of
absence has never been recalled, that he has sent home the
necessary affidavits, and that there is no clause in the Pay
and Clothing Act to authorize the stoppage of his allowance. I
have the honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble
servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
II
To the Right Hon. The Secretary at War
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _17th Septr. 1831._
SIR,--I have to acknowledge the receipt of No. 33,063, dated
16th inst., from the War Office, in which I am informed that
the Office does not feel authorized to give instructions for
the issue of the arrears of disembodied allowance claimed by my
brother Lieut. Borrow of the West Norfolk, until he attend the
next training of his regiment, and I now beg leave to ask the
following question, and to request that I may receive an
answer with all convenient speed. What farther right to his
_present_ arrears of disembodied allowance will Lieut. Borrow's
appearance at the _next training_ of his regiment confer upon
him, and provided there is no authority at present for ordering
the payment of those arrears, by what authority will the War
Office issue instructions for the payment of the same, after
his arrival in this country and attendance at the training?
Sir, provided Lieut. Borrow is not entitled to his arrears of
disembodied allowance at the present moment, he will be
entitled to them at no future period, and I was to the last
degree surprised at the receipt of an answer which tends to
involve the office in an inextricable dilemma, for it is in
fact a full acknowledgment of the justice of Lieutenant
Borrow's claims, and a refusal to satisfy them until a certain
time, which instantly brings on the question, 'By what
authority does the War Office seek to detain the disembodied
allowance of an officer, to which he is entitled by Act of
Parliament, a moment after it has become due and is legally
demanded?' If it be objected that it is not legally demanded, I
reply that the affidavits filled up in the required form are in
the possession of the Pay Office, and also a power of Attorney
in the Spanish language, together with a Notarial translation,
which power of Attorney has been declared by the Solicitor of
the Treasury to be legal and sufficient. To that part of the
Official letter relating to my brother's appearance at the next
training I have to reply, that I believe he is at present lying
sick in the Mountains above Vera Cruz, the pest-house of the
New World, and that the last time I heard from him I was
informed that it would be certain death for him to descend into
the level country, even were he capable of the exertion, for
the fever was then raging there. Full six months have elapsed
since he prepared to return to his native country, having
received information that there was a probability that his
regiment would be embodied, (but) the hand of God overtook him
on his route. He is the son, Sir, of an Officer who served his
King abroad and at home for upwards of half a century; he had
intended his disembodied allowance for the use of his widowed
and infirm mother, but it must now be transmitted to him for
his own support until he can arrive in England. But, Sir, I do
not wish to excite compassion in his behalf, all I request is
that he may have justice done him, and if it be, I shall be
informed in the next letter, that the necessary order has been
given to the Pay Office for the issue of his arrears. I have
the honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
III
To the Right Hon. The Secretary at War
NORWICH, _Novr. 24, 1831._
SIR,--Not having been favoured with an answer to the letter
which I last addressed to you concerning the arrears of
disembodied allowance due to Lieut. John Borrow of the West
Norfolk Militia, I again take the liberty of submitting this
matter to your consideration. More than six months have elapsed
since by virtue of a power of attorney granted to me by Lieut.
Borrow, I made demand at the army Pay Office for a portion of
those arrears, being the amount of two affidavits which were
produced, but owing to the much unnecessary demur which ensued,
chiefly with respect to the power of Attorney, since declared
to be valid, that demand has not hitherto been satisfied. I
therefore am compelled to beg that an order may be issued to
the Pay Office for the payment to me of the sums specified in
the said affidavits, that the amount may be remitted to Lieut.
Borrow, he being at present in great need thereof. If it be
answered that Lieut. Borrow was absent at the last training of
his regiment, and that he is not entitled to any arrears of
pay, I must beg leave to observe that the demand was legally
made many months previous to the said training, and cannot now
be set aside by his non-appearance, which arose from
unavoidable necessity; he having for the last year been lying
sick in one of the provinces of New Spain. And now, Sir, I will
make bold to inquire whether Lieut. Borrow, the son of an
Officer, who served his country abroad and at home, for upwards
of fifty years, is to lose his commission for being incapable,
from a natural visitation, of attending at the training; if it
be replied in the affirmative, I have only to add that his case
will be a cruelly hard one. But I hope and trust, Sir, that
taking all these circumstances into consideration you will not
_yet_ cause his name to be stricken off the list, and that you
will permit him to retain his commission in the event of his
arriving in England with all the speed which his health of body
will permit, and that to enable him so to do his arrears[21]
you will forthwith give an order for the payment of his
arrears. I have the honor to be, Sir, your very humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
IV
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War
NORWICH, _Decr. 13, 1831._
SIR,--I have just received a letter from my brother Lieutenant
J. Borrow, from which it appears he has had leave of absence
from his Colonel, the Earl of Orford, up to the present year.
He says 'in a letter dated Wolterton, 21st June 1828, Lord
Orford writes: "should you want a further leave I will not
object to it." 20th May 1829 says: "I am much obliged to you
for a letter of the 18th March, and shall be glad to allow you
leave of absence for a twelvemonth." I enclose his last letter
from Brussels, August 6, 1829. At the end it gives very evident
proof that my remaining in Mexico _was not only by his
Lordship's permission, but even by his advice_. Sir, if you
should require it I will transmit this last letter of the Earl
of Orford's, which my brother has sent to me, but beg leave to
observe that no blame can be attached to his Lordship in this
case, he having from a multiplicity of important business
doubtless forgotten these minor matters. I hope now, Sir, that
you will have no further objection to issue an order for the
payment of that portion of my brother's arrears specified in
the two affidavits in the possession of the Paymaster General.
By the unnecessary obstacles which have been flung in my
brother's way in obtaining his arrears he has been subjected to
great inconvenience and distress. An early answer on this point
will much oblige, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
V
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _May 24, 1833._
SIR,--I take the liberty of addressing you for the purpose of
requesting that an order be given to the Paymaster General for
the issue of the arrears of pay of my brother Lieutenant John
Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia, whose agent I am by virtue
of certain powers of Attorney, and also for the continuance of
the payment of his disembodied allowance. Lieutenant Borrow was
not present at the last training of his Regiment, being in
Mexico at the time, and knowing nothing of the matter. I beg
leave to observe that no official nor other letter was
dispatched to him by the adjutant to give him notice of the
event, nor was I, his agent, informed of it, he therefore
cannot have forfeited his arrears and disembodied allowance. He
was moreover for twelve months previous to the training, and
still is, so much indisposed from the effects of an attack of
the yellow fever, that his return would be attended with great
danger, which can be proved by the certificate of a Medical
Gentleman practising in Norwich, who was consulted from Mexico.
Lieutenants Harper and Williams, of the same Regiment, have
recovered their pay and arrears, although absent at the last
training, therefore it is clear and manifest that no objection
can be made to Lieut. Borrow's claim, who went abroad with his
Commanding Officer's permission, which those Gentlemen did not.
In conclusion I have to add that I have stated nothing which I
cannot substantiate, and that I court the most minute scrutiny
into the matter. I have the honor to be, Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
[Illustration: GEORGE BORROW
From a portrait by his brother John Thomas Borrow taken in early youth
when his hair was black. This portrait is now in the National Portrait
Gallery, London.]
The last of these letters is in another handwriting than that of Borrow,
who by this time had started for St. Petersburg for the Bible Society.
The officials were adamant. To one letter the War Office replied that
they could not consider any claims until Lieutenant Borrow of the West
Norfolk Militia should have arrived in England to attend the training of
his regiment. These five letters are, as we have said, in the Rolls
Office, although the indefatigable Professor Knapp seems to have dropped
across only two of them there. Their chief interest is in that they are
the earliest in order of date of the hitherto known letters of Borrow.
There is one further letter on the subject written somewhat later by old
Mrs. Borrow. She also appeals to the War Office for her son's
allowance.[22] It would seem clear that the arrears were never paid.
To the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Orford
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _26 May 1834._
MY LORD,--I a few days since received the distressing
intelligence of the death of my dear son John, a lieutenant in
your Lordship's West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, after the
sufferings of a protracted and painful illness; the melancholy
event took place on the 22nd November last at Guanajuato in
Mexico. Having on the former irreparable loss of my dear
husband experienced your Lordship's kindness, I am induced to
trespass on your goodness in a like case of heavy affliction,
by requesting that you will be pleased to make the necessary
application to the Secretary at War to authorise me to receive
the arrears of pay due to my late son, viz.: ten months to the
period of the training, and from that time to the day of his
decease, for which I am informed it is requisite to have your
Lordship's certificate of leave of absence from the said
training. The amount is a matter of great importance to me in
my very limited circumstances, having been at considerable
expense in fitting him out, which, though at the time it
occasioned me much pecuniary inconvenience, I thought it my
duty to exert all my means to accomplish, my present distress
of mind is the greater having to struggle with my feelings
without the consolation and advice of my son George, who is at
this time at St. Petersburg. Your Lordship will, I trust,
pardon the liberty I am taking, and the trouble I am giving,
and allow for the feelings of an afflicted mother. I have the
honor to be your Lordship's most obedient servant,
ANN BORROW.
I have said that there are letters of John Borrow's extant. Fragments of
these will be found in Dr. Knapp's book. These show a keen intelligence,
great practicality, and common sense. George--in 1829--had asked his
brother as to joining him in Mexico. 'If the country is soon settled I
shall say "yes,"' John answers. With equal wisdom he says to his
brother, 'Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec.' In this same year,
1829, John writes to ask whether his mother and brother are 'still
living in that windy house of old King's; it gives me the rheumatism to
think of it.' In 1830 he writes to his mother that he wishes his brother
were making money. 'Neither he nor I have any luck, he works hard and
remains poor.' In February of 1831 John writes to George suggesting that
he should endeavour to procure a commission in the regiment, and in July
of the same year to try the law again:
I am convinced that your want of success in life is more owing
to your being unlike other people than to any other cause.
John, as we have seen, died in Mexico of fever. George was at St.
Petersburg working for the Bible Society when his mother writes from
Norwich to tell him the news. John had died on 22nd November 1833. 'You
are now my only hope,' she writes, '... do not grieve, my dear George.
I trust we shall all meet in heaven. Put a crape on your hat for some
time.' Had George Borrow's brother lived it might have meant very much
in his life. There might have been nephews and nieces to soften the
asperity of his later years. Who can say? Meanwhile, _Lavengro_ contains
no happier pages than those concerned with this dearly loved brother.
[Illustration: GEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREEN
_From a drawing by Fortunino Matania_]
FOOTNOTES:
[15] I am not able to trace more than three of John Borrow's pictures:
firstly, a portrait of George Borrow, reproduced in this book, which was
long in the possession of Mr. William Jarrold, the well-known publisher
of Norwich, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London,
having been purchased by the Director in 1912; secondly, the portrait of
Borrow's father in the possession of a lady at Leamington; and thirdly,
_The Judgment of Solomon_, which for a long time hung as an overmantel
in the Borrow Home in Willow Lane, Norwich. Dr. Knapp also saw in
Norwich 'A Portrait of a Gentleman,' by John Borrow. A second portrait
of George Borrow by his brother was taken by the latter to Mexico, and
has not since been heard of.
[16] _Lavengro_, ch. xxv.
[17] _Life of B. R. Haydon_, by Tom Taylor, 1853, vol. ii. p. 21.
[18] Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in
1824 (_Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk_, 2 vols.,
1876):
'I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters! Mamma
_remembering_ herself a beauty; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a
matron. They say, "Oh! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that
fits mamma's time of life!" But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally,
and Eliza, and Patty want "mamma"! Mamma wants herself as she looked
when she was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am
distracted to death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard
like Salvator, and say, "That's _my_ idea of a fit accompaniment."'
[19] _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk_, with a
Memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, vol. i. pp. 360-61.
[20] From what are called the 'War Office Weeded Papers, Old Series, No.
33,063/17,' and succeeding numbers.
[21] ('his arrears' are ruled out.) Note by War Office.
[22] This letter is from the original among the Borrow Papers in my
possession.
CHAPTER IV
A WANDERING CHILDHOOD
We do not need to inquire too deeply as to Borrow's possible gypsy
origin in order to account for his vagabond propensities. The lives of
his parents before his birth, and the story of his own boyhood,
sufficiently account for the dominant tendency in Borrow. His father and
mother were married in 1793. Almost every year they changed their
domicile. In 1801 a son was born to them--they still continued to change
their domicile. Captain Borrow followed his regiment from place to
place, and his family accompanied him on these journeys. Dover,
Colchester, Sandgate, Canterbury, Chelmsford--these are some of the
towns where the Borrows sojourned. It was the merest accident--the Peace
of Amiens, to be explicit--that led them back to East Dereham in 1803,
so that the second son was born in his grandfather's house. George was
only a month old when he was carried off to Colchester; in 1804 he was
in the barracks of Kent, in 1805 of Sussex, in 1806 at Hastings, in 1807
at Canterbury, and so on. The indefatigable Dr. Knapp has recorded every
detail for all who love the minute, the meticulous, in biography. The
whole of the first thirteen years of Borrow's life is filled up in this
way, until in 1816 he and his parents found a home of some permanence in
Norwich. In 1809-10 they were at East Dereham, in 1810-11 at Norman
Cross, in 1812 wandering from Harwich to Sheffield, and in 1813
wandering from Sheffield to Edinburgh; in 1814 they were in Norwich, and
in 1815-16 in Ireland. In this last year they returned to Norwich, the
father to retire on full pay, and to live in Willow Lane until his
death. How could a boy, whose first twelve years of life had been made
up of such continual wandering, have been other than a restless,
nomad-loving man, envious of the free life of the gypsies, for whom
alone in later life he seemed to have kindliness? Those twelve years are
to most boys merely the making of a moral foundation for good or ill; to
Borrow they were everything, and at least four personalities captured
his imagination during that short span, as we see if we follow his
juvenile wanderings more in detail to Dereham, Norman Cross, Edinburgh,
and Clonmel, and the personalities are Lady Fenn, Ambrose Smith, David
Haggart, and Murtagh. Let us deal with each in turn:
A. EAST DEREHAM AND LADY FENN.--In our opening chapter we referred to
the lines in _Lavengro_, where Borrow recalls his early impressions of
his native town, or at least the town in the neighbourhood of the hamlet
in which he was born. Borrow, we may be sure, would have repudiated
'Dumpling Green' if he could. The name had a humorous suggestion. To
this day they call boys from Norfolk 'Norfolk Dumplings' in the
neighbouring shires. But East Dereham was something to be proud of. In
it had died the writer who, through the greater part of Borrow's life,
remained the favourite poet of that half of England which professed the
Evangelical creed in which Borrow was brought up. Cowper was buried here
by the side of Mary Unwin, and every Sunday little George would see his
tomb just as Henry Kingsley was wont to see the tombs in Chelsea Old
Church. The fervour of devotion to Cowper's memory that obtained in
those early days must have been a stimulus to the boy, who from the
first had ambitions far beyond anything that he was to achieve. Here was
his first lesson. The second came from Lady Fenn--a more vivid
impression for the child. Twenty years before Borrow was born Cowper had
sung her merits in his verse. She and her golden-headed cane are
commemorated in _Lavengro_. Dame Eleanor Fenn had made a reputation in
her time. As 'Mrs. Teachwell' and 'Mrs. Lovechild' she had published
books for the young of a most improving character, _The Child's
Grammar_, _The Mother's Grammar_, _A Short History of Insects_, and
_Cobwebs to Catch Flies_ being of the number. The forty-fourth edition
of _The Child's Grammar_ by Mrs. Lovechild appeared in 1851, and the
twenty-second edition of _The Mother's Grammar_ in 1849. But it is her
husband that her name most recalls to us. Sir John Fenn gave us the
delightful Paston Letters--of which Horace Walpole said that 'they make
all other letters not worth reading.' Walpole described 'Mr. Fenn of
East Dereham in Norfolk' as 'a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good
sort of man.' Fenn, who held the original documents of the Letters, sent
his first two volumes, when published, to Buckingham Palace, and the
King acknowledged the gifts by knighting the editor, who, however, died
in 1794, before George Borrow was born. His widow survived until 1813,
and Borrow was in his seventh or eighth year when he caught these
notable glimpses of his 'Lady Bountiful,' who lived in 'the
half-aristocratic mansion' of the town. But we know next to nothing of
Borrow in East Dereham, from which indeed he departed in his eighth
year. There are, however, interesting references to his memories of the
place in _Lavengro_. The first is where he recalls to his author friend,
who had offered him comet wine of 1811, his recollection of gazing at
the comet from the market-place of 'pretty D----' in 1811.[23] The
second reference is when he goes to church with the gypsies and dreams
of an incident in his childhood:
It appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old
church of pretty Dereham. I had occasionally done so when a
child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, surely, I had been asleep
and had woke up; but no! if I had been asleep I had been waking
in my sleep, struggling, striving, learning and unlearning in
my sleep. Years had rolled away whilst I had been asleep--ripe
fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst I had been
asleep--how circumstances had altered, and above all myself
whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in the old
church! I was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of black
leather in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but
in a strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer
those of days of yore. I was no longer with my respectable
father and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral
and his wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky
people. And what was I myself? No longer an innocent child but
a moody man, bearing in my face, as I knew well, the marks of
my strivings and strugglings; of what I had learnt and
unlearnt.
But Borrow, as I have said, left Dereham in his eighth year, and the
author of a _History of East Dereham_ thus accounts for several
inaccuracies in his memory, both as to persons and things.
B. NORMAN CROSS AND AMBROSE SMITH.--In _Lavengro_ Borrow recalls
childish memories of Canterbury and of Hythe, at which latter place he
saw the church vault filled with ancient skulls as we may see it there
to-day. And after that the book which impressed itself most vividly upon
his memory was _Robinson Crusoe_. How much he came to revere Defoe the
pages of _Lavengro_ most eloquently reveal to us. 'Hail to thee, spirit
of Defoe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee?' In 1810-11 his
father was in the barracks at Norman Cross in Huntingdonshire. Here the
Government had bought a large tract of land, and built upon it a huge
wooden prison, and overlooking this a substantial barrack also of wood,
the only brick building on the land being the house of the Commandant.
The great building was destined for the soldiers taken prisoners in the
French wars. The place was constructed to hold 5000 prisoners, and 500
men were employed by the War Office in 1808 upon its construction. The
first batch of prisoners were the victims of the battle of Vimeiro in
that year. Borrow's description of the hardships of the prisoners has
been called in question by a later writer, Arthur Brown,[24] who denies
the story of bad food and 'straw-plait hunts,' and charges Borrow with
recklessness of statement. 'What could have been the matter with the man
to write such stuff as this?' asks Brown in reference to Borrow's story
of bad meat and bad bread: which was not treating a great author with
quite sufficient reverence. Borrow was but recalling memories of
childhood, a period when one swallow does make a summer. He had
doubtless seen examples of what he described, although it may not have
been the normal condition of things. Brown's own description of the
Norman Cross prison was interwoven with a love romance, in which a
French officer fell in love with a girl of the neighbouring village of
Yaxley, and after Waterloo returned to England and married her. When he
wrote his story a very old man was still living at Yaxley, who
remembered, as a boy, having often seen the prisoners on the road, some
very well dressed, some in tatters, a few in uniform. The milestone is
still pointed out which marked the limit beyond which the
officer-prisoners might not walk. The buildings were destroyed in 1814,
when all the prisoners were sent home, and the house of the Commandant,
now a private residence, alone remains to recall this episode in our
history. But Borrow's most vivid memory of Norman Cross was connected
with the viper given to him by an old man, who had rendered it harmless
by removing the fangs. It was the possession of this tame viper that
enabled the child of eight--this was Borrow's age at the time--to
impress the gypsies that he met soon afterwards, and particularly the
boy Ambrose Smith, whom Borrow introduced to the world in _Lavengro_ as
Jasper Petulengro. Borrow's frequent meetings with Petulengro[25] are no
doubt many of them mythical. He was an imaginative writer, and Dr.
Knapp's worst banality is to suggest that he 'invented nothing.' But
Petulengro was a very real person, who lived the usual roving gypsy
life. There is no reason to assume otherwise than that Borrow did
actually meet him at Norman Cross when he was eight years old, and
Ambrose a year younger, and not thirteen as Borrow states. In the
original manuscript of _Lavengro_ in my possession, as in the copy of it
in Mrs. Borrow's handwriting that came into the possession of Dr. Knapp,
'Ambrose' is given instead of 'Jasper,' and the name was altered as an
afterthought. It is of course possible that Borrow did not actually meet
Jasper until his arrival in Norwich, for in the first half of the
nineteenth century various gypsy families were in the habit of
assembling their carts and staking their tents on the heights above
Norwich, known as Mousehold Heath, that glorious tract of country that
has been rendered memorable in history by the tragic life of Kett the
tanner, and has been immortalised in painting by Turner and Crome. Here
were assembled the Smiths and Hernes and Boswells, names familiar to
every student of gypsy lore. Jasper Petulengro, as Borrow calls him, or
Ambrose Smith, to give him his real name, was the son of F[=a]den Smith,
and his name of Ambrose was derived from his uncle, Ambrose Smith, who
was transported for stealing harness. Ambrose was twice married, and it
was his second wife, Sanspirella Herne, who comes into the Borrow story.
He had families by both his wives. Ambrose had an extraordinary varied
career. It will be remembered by readers of the _Zincali_ that when he
visited Borrow at Oulton in 1842 he complained that 'There is no living
for the poor people, brother, the chokengres (police) pursue us from
place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly
that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and
ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon.' After a time Ambrose
left the eastern counties and crossed to Ireland. In 1868 he went to
Scotland, and there seems to have revived his fortunes. In 1878 he and
his family were encamped at Knockenhair Park, about a mile from Dunbar.
Here Queen Victoria, who was staying at Broxmouth Park near by with the
Dowager Duchess of Roxburghe, became interested in the gypsies, and paid
them a visit.[26] This was in the summer of 1878. Ambrose was then a
very old man. He died in the following October. His wife, Sanspi or
Sanspirella, received a message of sympathy from the Queen. Very shortly
after Ambrose's death, however, most of the family went off to America,
where doubtless they are now scattered, many of them, it may be, leading
successful lives, utterly oblivious of the association of one of their
ancestors with Borrow and his great book. Ambrose Smith was buried in
Dunbar cemetery, the Christian service being read over his grave, and
his friends erected a stone to him which bears the following
inscription, the hymn not being very accurately rendered:
In Memory of
AMBROSE SMITH, who died 22nd
October 1878, aged 74 years.
Also
THOMAS, his son,
who died 28th May 1879, aged 48 years.
'Nearer my Father's House,
Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the Great White Throne,
Nearer the Jasper Sea.
'Nearer the bound of life
Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the Cross,
Nearer gaining the Crown.
'Feel thee near me when my feet
Are slipping over the brink;
For it may be I'm nearer home,
Nearer now than I think.'[27]
In December 1912 a London newspaper contained an account of a gypsy
meeting at which Jasper Petulengro was present. Not only was this
obviously impossible, but no relative of Ambrose Smith is apparently
alive in England who could by any chance have justified the imposition.
I have said that it is probable that Borrow did not meet Jasper or
Ambrose until later days in Norwich. I assume this as possible because
Borrow misstates the age of his boy friend in _Lavengro_. Ambrose was
actually a year younger than Borrow, whereas when George was eight years
of age he represents Ambrose as 'a lad of some twelve or thirteen
years,' and he keeps up this illusion on more than one later occasion.
However, we may take it as almost certain that Borrow received his first
impression of the gypsies in these early days at Norman Cross.
C. EDINBURGH AND DAVID HAGGART.--Three years separated the sojourn of
the Borrow family at Norman Cross from their sojourn in Edinburgh--three
years of continuous wandering. The West Norfolk Militia were watching
the French prisoners at Norman Cross for fifteen months. After that we
have glimpses of them at Colchester, at East Dereham again, at Harwich,
at Leicester, at Huddersfield, concerning which place Borrow
incidentally in _Wild Wales_ writes of having been at school, in
Sheffield, in Berwick-on-Tweed, and finally the family are in Edinburgh,
where they arrive on 6th April 1813. We have already referred to
Borrow's presence at the High School of Edinburgh, the school sanctified
by association with Walter Scott and so many of his illustrious
fellow-countrymen. He and his brother were at the High School for a
single session, that is, for the winter session of 1813-14, although
with the licence of a maker of fiction he claimed, in _Lavengro_, to
have been there for two years. But it is not in this brief period of
schooling of a boy of ten that we find the strongest influence that
Edinburgh gave to Borrow. Rather may we seek it in the acquaintanceship
with the once too notorious David Haggart. Seven years later than this
all the peoples of the three kingdoms were discussing David Haggart, the
Scots Jack Sheppard, the clever young prison-breaker, who was hanged at
Edinburgh in 1821 for killing his jailer in Dumfries prison. How much
David Haggart filled the imagination of every one who could read in the
early years of last century is demonstrated by a reference to the
Library Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find pamphlet after
pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, treating of the adventures,
trial, and execution of this youthful jailbird. Even George Combe, the
phrenologist, most famous in his day, sat in judgment upon the young man
while he was in prison, and published a pamphlet which made a great
impression upon prison reformers. Combe submitted his observations to
Haggart in jail, and told the prisoner indeed that he had a greater
development of the organs of benevolence and justice than he had
anticipated. There cannot be a doubt but that Combe started in a
measure, through his treatment of this case, the theory that many of our
methods of punishment led to the making of habitual criminals.[28] But
by far the most valuable publication with regard to Haggart is one that
Borrow must have read in his youth. This was a life of Haggart written
by himself,[29] a little book that had a wide circulation, and
containing a preface by George Robertson, Writer to the Signet, dated
Edinburgh, 20th July 1821. Mr. Robertson tells us that a portion of the
story was written by Haggart, and the remainder taken down from his
dictation. The profits of this book, Haggart arranged, were to go in
part to the school of the jail in which he was confined, and part to be
devoted to the welfare of his younger brothers and sister. From this
little biography we learn that Haggart was born in Golden Acre, near
Canon-Mills, in the county of Edinburgh in 1801, his father, John
Haggart, being a gamekeeper, and in later years a dog-trainer. The boy
was at school under Mr. Robin Gibson at Canon-Mills for two years. He
left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution
seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. He tells us that
before he was eleven years old he had stolen a bantam cock from a woman
belonging to the New Town of Edinburgh. He went with another boy to
Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a pony, but this was
afterwards returned. When but twelve years of age he attended Leith
races, and it was here that he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia, then
stationed in Edinburgh Castle. This may very well have brought him into
contact with Borrow in the way described in _Lavengro_. He was only,
however, in the regiment for a year, for when it was sent back to
England the Colonel in command of it obtained young Haggart's discharge.
These dates coincide with Borrow's presence in Edinburgh. Haggart's
history for the next five or six years was in truth merely that of a
wandering pickpocket, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and
finally he became a notorious burglar. Incidentally he refers to a girl
with whom he was in love. Her name was Mary Hill She belonged to
Ecclefechan, which Haggart more than once visited. He must therefore
have known Carlyle, who had not then left his native village. In 1820 we
find him in Edinburgh, carrying on the same sort of depredations both
there and at Leith--now he steals a silk plaid, now a greatcoat, and now
a silver teapot. These thefts, of course, landed him in jail, out of
which he breaks rather dramatically, fleeing with a companion to Kelso.
He had, indeed, more than one experience of jail. Finally, we find him
in the prison of Dumfries destined to stand his trial for 'one act of
house-breaking, eleven cases of theft, and one of prison-breaking.'
While in prison at Dumfries he planned another escape, and in the
attempt to hit a jailer named Morrin on the head with a stone he
unexpectedly killed him. His escape from Dumfries jail after this
murder, and his later wanderings, are the most dramatic part of his
book. He fled through Carlisle to Newcastle, and then thought that he
would be safer if he returned to Scotland, where he found the rewards
that were offered for his arrest faced him wherever he went. He turned
up again in Edinburgh, where he seems to have gone about freely,
although reading everywhere the notices that a reward of seventy guineas
was offered for his apprehension. Then he fled to Ireland, where he
thought that his safety was assured. At Dromore he was arrested and
brought before the magistrate, but he spoke with an Irish brogue, and
declared that his name was John McColgan, and that he came from Armagh.
He escaped from Dromore jail by jumping through a window, and actually
went so far as to pay three pound ten shillings for his passage to
America, but he was afraid of the sea, and changed his mind, and lost
his passage money at the last moment. After this he made a tour right
through Ireland, in spite of the fact that the Dublin _Hue and Cry_ had
a description of his person which he read more than once. His assurance
was such that in Tullamore he made a pig-driver apologise before the
magistrate for charging him with theft, although he had been living on
nothing else all the time he was in Ireland. Finally, he was captured,
being recognised by a policeman from Edinburgh. He was brought from
Ireland to Dumfries, landed in Calton jail, Edinburgh, and was tried and
executed. In addition to composing this biography Haggart wrote while in
Edinburgh jail a rather long set of verses, of which I give the
following two as specimens (the original autograph is in Lord Cockburn's
copy in the British Museum):
Able and willing, you all will find
Though bound in chains, still free in mind,
For with these things I'll ne'er be grieved
Although of freedom I'm bereaved.
Now for the crime that I'm condemn'd,
The same I never did intend,
Only my liberty to take,
As I thought my life did lie at stake.
D. IRELAND AND MURTAGH.--We may pass over the brief sojourn in Norwich
that was Borrow's lot in 1814, when the West Norfolk Militia left
Scotland. When Napoleon escaped from Elba the West Norfolk Regiment was
despatched to Ireland, and Captain Borrow again took his family with
him. We find the boy with his family at Clonmel from May to December of
1815. Here Borrow's elder brother, now a boy of fifteen, was promoted
from Ensign to Lieutenant, gaining in a year, as Dr. Knapp reminds us, a
position that it had taken his father twelve years to attain. In
January 1816 the Borrows moved to Templemore, returning to England in
May of that year. Borrow, we see, was less than a year in Ireland, and
he was only thirteen years of age when he left the country. But it seems
to have been the greatest influence that guided his career. Three of the
most fascinating chapters in _Lavengro_ were one outcome of that brief
sojourn, a thirst for the acquirement of languages was another, and
perhaps a taste for romancing a third. Borrow never came to have the
least sympathy with the Irish race, or its national aspirations. As the
son of a half-educated soldier he did not come in contact with any but
the vagabond element of Ireland, exactly as his father had done before
him.[30] Captain Borrow was asked on one occasion what language is being
spoken:
'Irish,' said my father with a loud voice, 'and a bad language
it is.... There's one part of London where all the Irish
live--at least the worst of them--and there they hatch their
villainies to speak this tongue.'
And Borrow followed his father's prejudices throughout his life,
although in the one happy year in which he wrote _The Bible in Spain_ he
was able to do justice to the country that had inspired so much of his
work:
Honour to Ireland and her 'hundred thousand welcomes'! Her
fields have long been the greenest in the world; her daughters
the fairest; her sons the bravest and most eloquent. May they
never cease to be so.[31]
In later years Orangemen were to him the only attractive element in the
life of Ireland, and we may be sure that he was not displeased when his
stepdaughter married one of them. Yet the creator of literature works
more wisely than he knows, and Borrow's books have won the wise and
benign appreciation of many an Irish and Roman Catholic reader, whose
nationality and religion Borrow would have anathematised. Irishmen may
forgive Borrow much, because he was one of the first of modern English
writers to take their language seriously.[32] It is true that he had but
the most superficial knowledge of it. He admits--in _Wild Wales_--that
he only knew it 'by ear.' The abundant Irish literature that has been so
diligently studied during the last quarter of a century was a closed
book to Borrow, whose few translations from the Irish have but little
value. Yet the very appreciation of Irish as a language to be seriously
studied in days before Dr. Sigerson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, and Dr. Kuno
Meyer had waxed enthusiastic and practical kindles our gratitude. Then
what a character is Murtagh. We are sure there was a Murtagh, although,
unlike Borrow's other boyish and vagabond friend Haggart, we know
nothing about him but what Borrow has to tell. Yet what a picture is
this where Murtagh wants a pack of cards:
'I say, Murtagh!'
'Yes, Shorsha dear!'
'I have a pack of cards.'
'You don't say so, Shorsha ma vourneen?--you don't say that you
have cards fifty-two?'
'I do, though; and they are quite new--never been once used.'
'And you'll be lending them to me, I warrant?'
'Don't think it!--But I'll sell them to you, joy, if you like.'
'Hanam mon Dioul! am I not after telling you that I have no
money at all?'
'But you have as good as money, to me, at least; and I'll take
it in exchange.'
'What's that, Shorsha dear?'
'Irish!'
'Irish?'
'Yes, you speak Irish; I heard you talking it the other day to
the cripple. You shall teach me Irish.'
'And is it a language-master you'd be making of me?'
'To be sure!--what better can you do?--it would help you to
pass your time at school. You can't learn Greek, so you must
teach Irish!'
Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother
Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken
Irish.[33]
With what distrust as we learn again and again in _Lavengro_ did Captain
Borrow follow his son's inclination towards languages, and especially
the Irish language, in his early years, although seeing that he was well
grounded in Latin. Little did the worthy Captain dream that this, and
this alone, was to carry down his name through the ages:
Ah, that Irish! How frequently do circumstances, at first sight
the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and
permanent influence on our habits and pursuits!--how frequently
is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little
rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn! On a wild
road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time;
and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition
of which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other
languages. I had previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but
neither Latin nor Lilly made me a philologist.
Borrow was never a philologist, but this first inclination was to lead
him to Spanish, to Welsh, and above all to Romany, and to make of him
the most beloved traveller and the strangest vagabond in all English
literature.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] This episode, rescued from the manuscript that came into Dr.
Knapp's possession, is only to be found in his _Life of Borrow_. He does
not include it in his edition of _Lavengro_. That Borrow revisited East
Dereham in later manhood we learn from Mr. S. H. Baldrey. See p. 420.
[24] _The French Prisoners of Norman Cross: A Tale_, by the Rev. Arthur
Brown, Rector of Catfield, Norfolk. London: Hodder Brothers, 18 New
Bridge Street, E.C., 1895. Mr. Brown remarks that there were sixteen
casernes, whereas Borrow says in _Lavengro_ that there were five or six.
'They looked,' he says, 'from outside exactly like a vast congeries of
large, high carpenter's shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and
surrounded by wooden palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength.'
[25] The _Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_ teaches me that the name
should be spelt Petulengro.
[26] See _In Gipsy Tents_ by Francis Hindes Groome, p. 17. The late
Queen herself writes (_More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the
Highlands_, Smith, Elder and Co., 1884, p. 370), under the date Monday,
August 26th: 'At half-past three started with Beatrice, Leopold, and the
Duchess in the landau and four, the Duke, Lady Ely, General Ponsonby,
and Mr. Yorke going in the second carriage, and Lord Haddington riding
the whole way. We drove through the west part of Dunbar, which was very
full, and where we were literally pelted with small nosegays, till the
carriage was full of them; then for some distance past the village of
Belhaven, Knockindale Hill (Knockenhair Park), where were stationed in
their best attire the queen of the gypsies, an oldish woman with a
yellow handkerchief on her head, and a youngish, very dark, and truly
gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl, and another woman. The queen
is a thorough gypsy, with a scarlet cloak and a yellow handkerchief
around her head. Men in red hunting-coats, all very dark, and all
standing on a platform here, bowed and waved their handkerchiefs. George
Smith told Mr. Myers that "the queen" was Sanspirella, that the
"gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl" was Bidi, and the other
woman Delaia. The men were Ambrose, Tommy, and Alfred.'
[27] I am indebted to an admirable article by Thomas William Thompson in
the _Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_, New Series, vol. iii, No, 3,
January 1910, for information concerning the later life of Jasper
Petulengro.
[28] _Phrenological Observations on the Cerebral Development of David
Haggart, who was lately executed at Edinburgh for murder, and whose life
has since been published._ By George Combe, Esq. Edinburgh: W. and C.
Tait, 1821.
[29] _The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alias John Morison,
alias Barney McCone, alias John McColgan, alias Daniel O'Brien, alias
The Switcher_, written by himself while under sentence of death.
Edinburgh: Printed for W. and C. Tait by James Ballantyne and Co., 1821.
In the British Museum Library there is a copy with an autograph note by
Lord Cockburn on the fly-leaf, which runs as follows:
'This youngster was my client when he was tried and convicted. He was a
great villain. His life is almost all lies, and its chief curiosity
consists in the strange spirit of lying, the indulgence of which formed
his chief pleasure to the very last. The manuscript poem and picture of
himself (bound up at the end of the _Life_) were truly composed and
written by him. Being an enormous miscreant the phrenologists got hold
of him, and made the notorious facts of his character into evidence of
the truth of their system. He affected some decent poetry just before he
was hanged, and therefore the Saints took up his memory and wrote
monodies on him. His piety and the composition of the lies in this book
broke out at the same time. H. C.'
[30] Although Captain Borrow was never as ignorant as one or two of
Borrow's biographers, who call the Irish language 'Erse.'
[31] _The Bible in Spain_, ch. xx.
[32] Dr. Johnson was the first as Borrow was the second to earn this
distinction. Johnson, as reported by Boswell, says:
'_I have long wished that the Irish literature were cultivated. Ireland
is known by tradition to have been once the seat of piety and learning,
and surely it would be very acceptable to all those who are curious on
the origin of nations or the affinities of languages to be further
informed of the evolution of a people so ancient and once so
illustrious. I hope that you will continue to cultivate this kind of
learning which has too long been neglected, and which, if it be suffered
to remain in oblivion for another century, may perhaps never be
retrieved._'
[33] _Lavengro._
CHAPTER V
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GURNEYS
Norwich may claim to be one of the most fascinating cities in the
kingdom. To-day it is known to the wide world by its canaries and its
mustard, although its most important industry is the boot trade, in
which it employs some eight thousand persons. To the visitor it has many
attractions. The lovely cathedral with its fine Norman arches, the
Erpingham Gate so splendidly Gothic, the noble Castle Keep so imposingly
placed with the cattle-market below--these are all as Borrow saw them
nearly a century ago. So also is the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where
Sir Thomas Browne lies buried. And to the picturesque Mousehold Heath
you may still climb and recall one of the first struggles for liberty
and progress that past ages have seen, the Norfolk rising under Robert
Kett which has only not been glorified in song and in picture, because--
Treason doth never prosper--what's the reason?
Why if it prosper none dare call it treason.
And Kett's so-called rebellion was destined to failure, and its leader
to cruel martyrdom. Mousehold Heath has been made the subject of
paintings by Turner and Crome, and of fine word pictures by George
Borrow. When Borrow and his parents lighted upon Norwich in 1814 and
1816 the city had inspiring literary associations. Before the invention
of railways it seemed not uncommon for a fine intellectual life to
emanate from this or that cathedral city. Such an intellectual life was
associated with Lichfield when the Darwins and the Edgeworths gathered
at the Bishop's Palace around Dr. Seward and his accomplished daughters.
Norwich has more than once been such a centre. The first occasion was in
the period of which we write, when the Taylors and the Gurneys
flourished in a region of ideas; the second was during the years from
1837 to 1849, when Edward Stanley held the bishopric. This later period
does not come into our story, as by that time Borrow had all but left
Norwich. But of the earlier period, the period of Borrow's more or less
fitful residence in Norwich--1814 to 1833--we are tempted to write at
some length. There were three separate literary and social forces in
Norwich in the first decades of the nineteenth century--the Gurneys of
Earlham, the Taylor-Austin group, and William Taylor, who was in no way
related to Mrs. John Taylor and her daughter, Sarah Austin. The Gurneys
were truly a remarkable family, destined to leave their impress upon
Norwich and upon a wider world. At the time of his marriage in 1773 to
Catherine Bell, John Gurney, wool-stapler of Norwich, took his young
wife, whose face has been preserved in a canvas by Gainsborough, to live
in the old Court House in Magdalen Street, which had been the home of
two generations of the Gurney family. In 1786 John Gurney went with his
continually growing family to live at Earlham Hall, some two or three
miles out of Norwich on the Earlham Road. Here that family of eleven
children--one boy had died in infancy--grew up. Not one but has an
interesting history, which is recorded by Mr. Augustus Hare and other
writers.[34] Elizabeth, the fourth daughter, married Joseph Fry, and as
Elizabeth Fry attained to a world-wide fame as a prison reformer. Hannah
married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton of Slave Trade Abolition; Richenda, the
Rev. Francis Cunningham, who sent George Borrow upon his career; while
Louisa married Samuel Hoare of Hampstead. Of her Joseph John Gurney said
at her death in 1836 that she was 'superior in point of talent to any
other of my father's eleven children.' It is with the eleventh child,
however, that we have mainly to do, for this son, Joseph John Gurney,
alone appears in Borrow's pages. The picture of these eleven Quaker
children growing up to their various destinies under the roof of Earlham
Hall is an attractive one. Men and women of all creeds accepted the
catholic Quaker's hospitality. Mrs. Opie and a long list of worthies of
the past come before us, and when Mr. Gurney, in 1802, took his six
unmarried daughters to the Lakes Old Crome accompanied them as
drawing-master. There is, however, one picture in the story of
unforgettable charm, the episode of the courtship of Elizabeth Gurney by
Joseph Fry, and this I must quote from Mr. Augustus Hare's pleasant
book:
Mr. Fry had no intention of exposing himself to the possibility
of a refusal. He bought a very handsome gold watch and chain,
and laid it down upon a white seat--the white seat which still
exists--in the garden at Earlham. 'If Betsy takes up that
watch,' he said, 'it is a sign that she accepts me: if she does
not take it up by a particular hour, it will show that I must
leave Earlham.'
The six sisters concealed themselves in six laurel-bushes in
different parts of the grounds to watch. One can imagine their
intense curiosity and anxiety. At last the tall, graceful
Betsy, her flaxen hair now hidden under a Quaker cap, shyly
emerged upon the gravel walk. She seemed scarcely conscious of
her surroundings, as if, 'on the wings of prayer, she was being
wafted into the unseen.' But she reached the garden seat, and
there, in the sunshine, lay the glittering new watch. The sight
of it recalled her to earth. She could not, could not, take it,
and fled swiftly back to the house. But the six sisters
remained in their laurel-bushes. They felt sure she would
revoke, and they did not watch in vain. An hour elapsed, in
which her father urged her, and in which conscience seemed to
drag her forwards. Once again did the anxious sisters see Betsy
emerge from the house, with more faltering steps this time, but
still inwardly praying, and slowly, tremblingly, they saw her
take up the watch, and the deed was done. She never afterwards
regretted it, though it was a bitter pang to her when she
collected her eighty-six children in the garden at Earlham and
bade them farewell, and though she wrote in her journal as a
bride, 'I cried heartily on leaving Norwich; the very stones in
the street were dear to me.'
In 1803--the year of Borrow's birth--John Gurney became a partner in the
great London Bank of Overend and Gurney, and his son, Joseph John, in
that same year went up to Oxford. In 1809 Joseph returned to take his
place in the bank, and to preside over the family of unmarried sisters
at Earlham, father and mother being dead, and many members of the family
distributed. Incidentally, we are told by Mr. Hare that the Gurneys of
Earlham at this time drove out with four black horses, and that when
Bishop Bathurst, Stanley's predecessor, required horses for State
occasions to drive him to the cathedral, he borrowed these, and the more
modest episcopal horses took the Quaker family to their meeting-house.
It does not come within the scope of this book, discursive as I choose
to make it, to trace the fortunes of these eleven remarkable Gurney
children, or even of Borrow's momentary acquaintance, Joseph John
Gurney. His residence at Earlham, and his life of philanthropy, are a
romance in a way, although one wonders whether if the name of Gurney had
not been associated with so much of virtue and goodness the crash that
came long after Joseph John Gurney's death would have been quite so full
of affliction for a vast multitude. Joseph John Gurney died in 1847, in
his fifty-ninth year; his sister, Mrs. Fry, had died two years earlier.
The younger brother and twelfth child--Joseph John being the
eleventh--Daniel Gurney, the last of the twelve children, lived till
1880, aged eighty-nine. He had outlived by many years the catastrophe to
the great banking firm with which the name of Gurney is associated. This
great firm of Overend and Gurney, of which yet another brother, Samuel,
was the moving spirit, was organised nine years after his death--in
1865--into a joint-stock company, which failed to the amount of eleven
millions in 1866. At the time of the failure, which affected all
England, much as did the Liberator smash a generation later, the only
Gurney in the directorate was Daniel Gurney, to whom his sister, Lady
Buxton, allowed a pension of L2000 a year. This is a long story to tell
by way of introduction to one episode in _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp places
this episode in the year 1817, when Borrow was but fourteen years of age
and Gurney was twenty-nine. I need not apologise at this point for a
very lengthy quotation from a familiar book:
At some distance from the city, behind a range of hilly ground
which rises towards the south-west, is a small river, the
waters of which, after many meanderings, eventually enter the
principal river of the district, and assist to swell the tide
which it rolls down to the ocean. It is a sweet rivulet, and
pleasant it is to trace its course from its spring-head, high
up in the remote regions of Eastern Anglia, till it arrives in
the valley behind yon rising ground; and pleasant is that
valley, truly a good spot, but most lovely where yonder bridge
crosses the little stream. Beneath its arch the waters rush
garrulously into a blue pool, and are there stilled for a time,
for the pool is deep, and they appear to have sunk to sleep.
Farther on, however, you hear their voice again, where they
ripple gaily over yon gravelly shallow. On the left the hill
slopes gently down to the margin of the stream. On the right is
a green level, a smiling meadow, grass of the richest decks the
side of the slope; mighty trees also adorn it, giant elms, the
nearest of which, when the sun is nigh its meridian, fling a
broad shadow upon the face of the pool; through yon vista you
catch a glimpse of the ancient brick of an old English hall. It
has a stately look, that old building, indistinctly seen, as it
is, among those umbrageous trees; you might almost suppose it
an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood
an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some
Sigurd, or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled
down in the grey old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods,
and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called
the Earl's Home, though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more,
and the bones of the old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have
been mouldering for a thousand years in some neighbouring
knoll; perhaps yonder, where those tall Norwegian pines shoot
up so boldly into the air. It is said that the old earl's
galley was once moored where is now that blue pool, for the
waters of that valley were not always sweet; yon valley was
once an arm of the sea, a salt lagoon, to which the war-barks
of 'Sigurd, in search of a home,' found their way.
I was in the habit of spending many an hour on the banks of
that rivulet with my rod in my hand, and, when tired with
angling, would stretch myself on the grass, and gaze upon the
waters as they glided past, and not unfrequently, divesting
myself of my dress, I would plunge into the deep pool which I
have already mentioned, for I had long since learned to swim.
And it came to pass, that on one hot summer's day, after
bathing in the pool, I passed along the meadow till I came to a
shallow part, and, wading over to the opposite side, I adjusted
my dress, and commenced fishing in another pool, beside which
was a small clump of hazels.
And there I sat upon the bank, at the bottom of the hill which
slopes down from 'the Earl's Home'; my float was on the waters,
and my back was towards the old hall. I drew up many fish,
small and great, which I took from off the hook mechanically,
and flung upon the bank, for I was almost unconscious of what I
was about, for my mind was not with my fish. I was thinking of
my earlier years--of the Scottish crags and the heaths of
Ireland--and sometimes my mind would dwell on my studies--on
the sonorous stanzas of Dante, rising and falling like the
waves of the sea--or would strive to remember a couplet or two
of poor Monsieur Boileau.
'Canst thou answer to thy conscience for pulling all those fish
out of the water and leaving them to gasp in the sun?' said a
voice, clear and sonorous as a bell.
I started, and looked round. Close behind me stood the tall
figure of a man, dressed in raiment of quaint and singular
fashion, but of goodly materials. He was in the prime and
vigour of manhood; his features handsome and noble, but full of
calmness and benevolence; at least I thought so, though they
were somewhat shaded by a hat of finest beaver, with broad
drooping eaves.
'Surely that is a very cruel diversion in which thou indulgest,
my young friend?' he continued.
'I am sorry for it, if it be, sir,' said I, rising; 'but I do
not think it cruel to fish.'
'What are thy reasons for thinking so?'
'Fishing is mentioned frequently in Scripture. Simon Peter was
a fisherman.'
'True; and Andrew his brother. But thou forgettest; they did
not follow fishing as a diversion, as I fear thou doest.--Thou
readest the Scriptures?'
'Sometimes.'
'Sometimes?--not daily?--that is to be regretted. What
profession dost thou make?--I mean to what religious
denomination dost thou belong, my young friend?'
'Church.'
'It is a very good profession--there is much of Scripture
contained in its liturgy. Dost thou read aught beside the
Scriptures?'
'Sometimes.'
'What dost thou read besides?'
'Greek, and Dante.'
'Indeed! then thou hast the advantage over myself; I can only
read the former. Well, I am rejoiced to find that thou hast
other pursuits beside thy fishing. Dost thou know Hebrew?'
'No.'
'Thou shouldest study it. Why dost thou not undertake the
study?'
'I have no books.'
'I will lend thee books, if thou wish to undertake the study. I
live yonder at the hall, as perhaps thou knowest. I have a
library there, in which are many curious books, both in Greek
and Hebrew, which I will show to thee, whenever thou mayest
find it convenient to come and see me. Farewell! I am glad to
find that thou hast pursuits more satisfactory than thy cruel
fishing.'
And the man of peace departed, and left me on the bank of the
stream. Whether from the effect of his words or from want of
inclination to the sport, I know not, but from that day I
became less and less a practitioner of that 'cruel fishing.' I
rarely flung line and angle into the water, but I not
unfrequently wandered by the banks of the pleasant rivulet. It
seems singular to me, on reflection, that I never availed
myself of his kind invitation. I say singular, for the
extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight
interest for me: and I had discernment enough to perceive that
yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not
from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long
been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I
might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those
calm, quiet lips, and my after-course might have been widely
different. As it was, I fell in with other queer companions,
from whom I received widely different impressions than those I
might have derived from him. When many years had rolled on,
long after I had attained manhood, and had seen and suffered
much, and when our first interview had long been effaced from
the mind of the man of peace, I visited him in his venerable
hall, and partook of the hospitality of his hearth. And there
I saw his gentle partner and his fair children, and on the
morrow he showed me the books of which he had spoken years
before by the side of the stream. In the low quiet chamber,
whose one window, shaded by a gigantic elm, looks down the
slope towards the pleasant stream, he took from the shelf his
learned books, Zohar and Mishna, Toldoth Jesu and Abarbenel.
'I am fond of these studies,' said he, 'which, perhaps, is not
to be wondered at, seeing that our people have been compared to
the Jews. In one respect I confess we are similar to them: we
are fond of getting money. I do not like this last author, this
Abarbenel, the worse for having been a money-changer. I am a
banker myself, as thou knowest.'
And would there were many like him, amidst the money-changers
of princes! The hall of many an earl lacks the bounty, the
palace of many a prelate the piety and learning, which adorn
the quiet Quaker's home!
It is doubtful if Borrow met Joseph John Gurney more than on the one
further occasion to which he refers above. At the commencement of his
engagement with the Bible Society he writes to its secretary, Mr. Jowett
(March 18, 1833), to say that he must procure from Mr. Cunningham 'a
letter of introduction from him to John Gurney,' and this second and
last interview must have taken place at Earlham before his departure for
Russia.
But if Borrow was to come very little under the influence of Joseph John
Gurney, his destiny was to be considerably moulded by the action of
Gurney's brother-in-law, Cunningham, who first put him in touch with the
Bible Society. Joseph John Gurney and his sisters were the very life of
the Bible Society in those years.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] See _The Gurneys of Earlham_ by Augustus J. C. Hare, 2 vols., 1895;
_Memoirs of Joseph Gurney; with Selections from his Journal and
Correspondence_, edited by Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, 2 vols., 1834.
CHAPTER VI
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE TAYLORS
With the famous 'Taylors of Norwich' Borrow seems to have had no
acquaintance, although he went to school with a connection of that
family, James Martineau. These socially important Taylors were in no way
related to William Taylor of that city, who knew German literature, and
scandalised the more virtuous citizens by that, and perhaps more by his
fondness for wine and also for good English beer--a drink over which his
friend Borrow was to become lyrical. When people speak of the Norwich
Taylors they refer to the family of Dr. John Taylor, who in 1783 was
elected to the charge of the Presbyterian congregation in Norwich. His
eldest son, Richard, married Margaret, the daughter of a mayor of
Norwich of the name of Meadows; and Sarah, another daughter of that same
worshipful mayor, married David Martineau, grandson of Gaston Martineau,
who fled from France at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes.[35] Harriet and James Martineau were grandchildren of this
David. The second son of Richard and Margaret Taylor was John, who
married Susannah Cook. Susannah is the clever Mrs. John Taylor of this
story, and her daughter of even greater ability was Sarah Austin, the
wife of the famous jurist. Their daughter married Sir Alexander
Duff-Gordon. She was the author of _Letters from Egypt_, a book to which
George Meredith wrote an 'Introduction,' so much did he love the writer.
Lady Duff-Gordon's daughter, Janet Ross, wrote the biography of her
mother, her grandmother, and Mrs. John Taylor, in _Three Generations of
Englishwomen_. A niece, Lena Duff-Gordon (Mrs. Waterfield), has written
pleasant books of travel, and so, for five generations, this family has
produced clever women-folk. But here we are only concerned with Mrs.
John Taylor, called by her friends the 'Madame Roland of Norwich.' Lucy
Aikin describes how she 'darned her boy's grey worsted stockings while
holding her own with Southey, Brougham, or Mackintosh.' One of her
daughters married Henry Reeve, and, as I have said, another married John
Austin. Borrow was twenty years of age and living in Norwich when Mrs.
Taylor died. It is to be regretted that in the early impressionable
years his position as a lawyer's clerk did not allow of his coming into
a circle in which he might have gained certain qualities of _savoir
faire_ and _joie de vivre_, which he was all his days to lack. Of the
Taylor family the Duke of Sussex said that they reversed the ordinary
saying that it takes nine tailors to make a man. The witticism has been
attributed to Sydney Smith, but Mrs. Ross gives evidence that it was the
Duke's--the youngest son of George III. In his _Life of Sir James
Mackintosh_ Basil Montagu, referring to Mrs. John Taylor, says:
Norwich was always a haven of rest to us, from the literary
society with which that city abounded. Dr. Sayers we used to
visit, and the high-minded and intelligent William Taylor; but
our chief delight was in the society of Mrs. John Taylor, a
most intelligent and excellent woman, mild and unassuming,
quiet and meek, sitting amidst her large family, occupied with
her needle and domestic occupations, but always assisting, by
her great knowledge, the advancement of kind and dignified
sentiment and conduct.
We note here the reference to 'the high-minded and intelligent William
Taylor,' because William Taylor, whose influence upon Borrow's destiny
was so pronounced, has been revealed to many by the slanders of Harriet
Martineau, that extraordinary compound of meanness and generosity, of
poverty-stricken intelligence and rich endowment. In her
_Autobiography_, published in 1877, thirty-four years after Robberds's
_Memoir of William Taylor_, she dwells upon the drinking propensities of
William Taylor, who was a schoolfellow of her father's. She admits,
indeed, that Taylor was an ideal son, whose 'exemplary filial duty was a
fine spectacle to the whole city,' and she continues:
His virtues as a son were before our eyes when we witnessed his
endurance of his father's brutality of temper and manners, and
his watchfulness in ministering to the old man's comfort in his
infirmities. When we saw, on a Sunday morning, William Taylor
guiding his blind mother to chapel ... we could forgive
anything that had shocked or disgusted us at the dinner-table.
Well, Harriet Martineau is not much to be trusted as to Taylor's virtues
or his vices, for her early recollections are frequently far from the
mark. Thus she refers under the date 1833 to the fact that:
The great days of the Gurneys were not come yet. The remarkable
family from which issued Mrs. Fry and Joseph John Gurney were
then a set of dashing young people, dressed in gay riding
habits and scarlet boots, and riding about the country to balls
and gaieties of all sorts.
As a matter of fact, in this year, 1833, Mrs. Fry was the mother of
fifteen children, and had nine grandchildren, and Joseph John Gurney had
been twice a widower. Both brother and sister were zealous
philanthropists at this date. And so we may take with some measure of
qualification Harriet Martineau's many strictures upon Taylor's drinking
habits, which were, no doubt, those of his century and epoch; although
perhaps beyond the acceptable standard of Norwich, where the Gurneys
were strong teetotallers, and the Bishop once invited Father Mathew,
then in the glory of his temperance crusade, to discourse in his
diocese. Indeed, Robberds, his biographer, tells us explicitly that
these charges of intemperance were 'grossly and unjustly exaggerated.'
William Taylor's life is pleasantly interlinked with Scott and Southey.
Lucy Aikin records that she heard Sir Walter Scott declare to Mrs.
Barbauld that Taylor had laid the foundations of his literary
career--had started him upon the path of glory through romantic verse to
romantic prose, from _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ to _Waverley_. It
was the reading of Taylor's translation of Buerger's _Lenore_ that did
all this. 'This, madam,' said Scott, 'was what made me a poet. I had
several times attempted the more regular kinds of poetry without
success, but here was something that I thought I could do.' Southey
assuredly loved Taylor, and each threw at the feet of the other the
abundant literary learning that both possessed. This we find in a
correspondence which, reading more than a century after it was written,
still has its charm.[36] The son of a wealthy manufacturer of Norwich,
Taylor was born in that city in 1765. He was in early years a pupil of
Mrs. Barbauld. At fourteen he was placed in his father's counting-house,
and soon afterwards was sent abroad, in the company of one of the
partners, to acquire languages. He learnt German thoroughly at a time
when few Englishmen had acquaintance with its literature. To Goethe's
genius he never did justice, having been offended by that great man's
failure to acknowledge a book that Taylor sent to him, exactly as
Carlyle and Borrow alike were afterwards offended by similar
delinquencies on the part of Walter Scott. When he settled again in
Norwich he commenced to write for the magazines, among others for Sir
Richard Phillips's _Monthly Magazine_, and to correspond with Southey.
At the time Southey was a poor man, thinking of abandoning literature
for the law, and hopeful of practising in Calcutta. The Norwich
Liberals, however, aspired to a newspaper to be called _The Iris_.
Taylor asked Southey to come to Norwich and to become its editor.
Southey declined and Taylor took up the task. The _Norwich Iris_ lasted
for two years. Southey never threw over his friendship for Taylor,
although their views ultimately came to be far apart. Writing to Taylor
in 1803 he says:
Your theology does nothing but mischief; it serves only to thin
the miserable ranks of Unitarianism. The regular troops of
infidelity do little harm; and their trumpeters, such as
Voltaire and Paine, not much more. But it is such pioneers as
Middleton, and you and your German friends, that work
underground and sap the very citadel. That _Monthly Magazine_
is read by all the Dissenters--I call it the Dissenters'
Obituary--and here are you eternally mining, mining, under the
shallow faith of their half-learned, half-witted, half-paid,
half-starved pastors.
But the correspondence went on apace, indeed it occupies the larger part
of Robberds's two substantial volumes. It is in the very last letter
from Taylor to Southey that we find an oft-quoted reference to Borrow.
The letter is dated 12th March 1821:
A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller's _Wilhelm
Tell_ with the view of translating it for the Press. His name
is George Henry Borrow, and he has learnt German with
extraordinary rapidity; indeed, he has the gift of tongues,
and, though not yet eighteen, understands twelve
languages--English, Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German,
Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; he would like
to get into the Office for Foreign Affairs, but does not know
how.
Although this was the last letter to Southey that is published in the
memoir, Taylor visited Southey at Keswick in 1826. Taylor's three
volumes of the _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ appeared in 1828,
1829, and 1830. Sir Walter Scott, in the last year of his life, wrote
from Abbotsford on 23rd April 1832 to Taylor to protest against an
allusion to 'William Scott of Edinburgh' being the author of a
translation of _Goetz von Berlichingen_. Scott explained that he (Walter
Scott) was that author, and also made allusion to the fact that he had
borrowed with acknowledgment two lines from Taylor's _Lenore_ for his
own--
Tramp, tramp along the land,
Splash, splash across the sea.
adding that his recollection of the obligation was infinitely stronger
than of the mistake. It would seem, however, that the name 'William' was
actually on the title-page of the London edition of 1799 of _Goetz von
Berlichingen_. When Southey heard of the death of Taylor in 1836 he
wrote:
I was not aware of my old friend's illness, or I should
certainly have written to him, to express that unabated regard
which I have felt for him eight-and-thirty years, and that hope
which I shall ever feel, that we may meet in the higher state
of existence. I have known very few who equalled him in
talents--none who had a kinder heart; and there never lived a
more dutiful son, or a sincerer friend.
Taylor's many books are now all forgotten. His translation of Buerger's
_Lenore_ one now only recalls by its effect upon Scott; his translation
of Lessing's _Nathan the Wise_ has been superseded. His voluminous
_Historic Survey of German Poetry_ only lives through Carlyle's severe
review in the _Edinburgh Review_[37] against the many strictures in
which Taylor's biographer attempts to defend him. Taylor had none of
Carlyle's inspiration. Not a line of his work survives in print in our
day, but it was no small thing to have been the friend and correspondent
of Southey, whose figure in literary history looms larger now than it
did when Emerson asked contemptuously, 'Who's Southey?'; and to have
been the wise mentor of George Borrow is in itself to be no small thing
in the record of letters. There is a considerable correspondence between
Taylor and Sir Richard Phillips in Robberds's _Memoir_, and Phillips
seemed always anxious to secure articles from Taylor for the _Monthly_,
and even books for his publishing-house. Hence the introduction from
Taylor that Borrow carried to London might have been most effective if
Phillips had had any use for poor and impracticable would-be authors.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] _Three Generations of Englishwomen_, by Janet Ross, vol. i, p. 3.
[36] _A Memoir of the Life and Writings of William Taylor of Norwich:
Containing his Correspondence of many years with the late Robert
Southey, Esquire, and Original Letters from Sir Walter Scott and other
Eminent Literary Men_. Compiled and edited by J. W. Robberds of Norwich,
2 vols. London: John Murray, 1843.
[37] Reprinted in Carlyle's _Miscellanies_.
CHAPTER VII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL
When George Borrow first entered Norwich after the long journey from
Edinburgh, Joseph John Gurney, born 1788, was twenty-six years of age,
and William Taylor, born 1765, was forty-nine. Borrow was eleven years
of age. Captain Borrow took temporary lodgings at the Crown and Angel
Inn in St. Stephen's Street, George was sent to the Grammar School, and
his elder brother started to learn drawing and painting with John Crome
('Old Crome') of many a fine landscape. But the wanderings of the family
were not yet over. Napoleon escaped from Elba, and the West Norfolk
Militia were again put on the march. This time it was Ireland to which
they were destined, and we have already shadowed forth, with the help of
_Lavengro_, that momentous episode. The victory of Waterloo gave Europe
peace, and in 1816 the Borrow family returned to Norwich, there to pass
many quiet years. In 1819 Captain Borrow was pensioned--eight shillings
a day. From 1816 till his father's death in 1824 Borrow lived in Norwich
with his family. Their home was in King's Court, Willow Lane, a modest
one-storey house in a _cul de sac_, which we have already described. In
King's Court, Willow Lane, Borrow lived at intervals until his marriage
in 1840, and his mother continued to live in the house until, in 1849,
she agreed to join her son and daughter-in-law at Oulton. Yet the house
comes little into the story of Borrow's life, as do the early houses of
many great men of letters, nor do subsequent houses come into his story;
the house at Oulton and the house at Hereford Square are equally barren
of association; the broad highway and the windy heath were Borrow's
natural home. He was never a 'civilised' being; he never shone in
drawing-rooms. Let us, however, return to Borrow's schooldays, of which
the records are all too scanty, and not in the least invigorating. The
Norwich Grammar School has an interesting tradition. We pass to the
cathedral through the beautiful Erpingham Gate built about 1420 by Sir
Thomas Erpingham, and we find the school on the left. It was originally
a chapel, and the porch is at least five hundred years old. The
schoolroom is sufficiently old-world-looking for us to imagine the
schoolboys of past generations sitting at the various desks. The school
was founded in 1547, but the registers have been lost, and so we know
little of its famous pupils of earlier days. Lord Nelson and Rajah
Brooke are the two names of men of action that stand out most honourably
in modern times among the scholars[38]. In literature Borrow had but one
schoolfellow, who afterwards came to distinction--James Martineau.
Borrow's headmaster was the Reverend Edward Valpy, who held the office
from 1810 to 1829, and to whom is credited the destruction of the
school archives. Borrow's two years of the Grammar School were not
happy ones. Borrow, as we have shown, was not of the stuff of which
happy schoolboys are made. He had been a wanderer--Scotland, Ireland,
and many parts of England had assisted in a fragmentary education; he
was now thirteen years of age, and already a vagabond at heart. But let
us hear Dr. Augustus Jessopp, who was headmaster of the same Grammar
School from 1859 to 1879. Writing of a meeting of old Norvicensians to
greet the Rajah, Sir James Brooke, in 1858, when there was a great
'whip' of the 'old boys,' Dr. Jessopp tells us that Borrow, then living
at Yarmouth, did not put in an appearance among his schoolfellows:
My belief is that he never was popular among them, that he
never attained a high place in the school, and he was a 'free
boy.' In those days there were a certain number of day boys at
Norwich school, who were nominated by members of the
Corporation, and who paid no tuition fees; they had to submit
to a certain amount of snubbing at the hands of the boarders,
who for the most part were the sons of the county gentry. Of
course, such a proud boy as George Borrow would resent this,
and it seems to have rankled with him all through his life....
To talk of Borrow as a 'scholar' is absurd. 'A picker-up of
learning's crumbs' he was, but he was absolutely without any of
the training or the instincts of a scholar. He had had little
education till he came to Norwich, and was at the Grammar
School little more than two years. It is pretty certain that he
knew no Greek when he entered there, and he never seems to have
acquired more than the elements of that language.[39]
[Illustration: THE ERPINGHAM GATE AND THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, NORWICH
We pass through the Erpingham Gate direct to the Cathedral, the Grammar
School being on our left. Here it is on our right. Facing the school is
a statue of Lord Nelson, who was at school here about 1768-70. Borrow
was at school here 1816-18.]
Yet the only real influence that Borrow carried away from the Grammar
School was concerned with foreign languages. He did take to the French
master and exiled priest, Thomas d'Eterville, a native of Caen, who had
emigrated to Norwich in 1793. D'Eterville taught French, Italian, and
apparently, to Borrow, a little Spanish; and Borrow, with his wonderful
memory, must have been his favourite pupil. In his edition of _Lavengro_
Dr. Knapp publishes a brief dialogue between master and pupil, which
gives us an amusing glimpse of the worthy d'Eterville, whom the boys
called 'poor old Detterville.' In the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters
of _Lavengro_ he is pleasantly described by his pupil, who adds, with
characteristic 'bluff,' that d'Eterville said 'on our arrival at the
conclusion of Dante's _Hell_, "vous serez un jour un grand philologue,
mon cher."'
Borrow's biographers have dwelt at length upon one episode of his
schooldays--the flogging he received from Valpy for playing truant with
three other boys. One, by name John Dalrymple, faltered on the way, the
two faithful followers of George in his escapade being two brothers
named Theodosius and Francis Purland, whose father kept a chemist's shop
in Norwich. The three boys wandered away as far as Acle, eleven miles
from Norwich, whence they were ignomimously brought back and birched.
John Dalrymple's brother Arthur, son of a distinguished Norwich surgeon,
who became Clerk of the Peace at Norwich in 1854, and died in 1868, has
left a memorandum concerning Borrow, from which I take the following
extract[40]:
'I was at school with Borrow at the Free School, Norwich, under
the Rev. E. Valpy. He was an odd, wild boy, and always wanting
to turn Robinson Crusoe or Buccaneer. My brother John was about
Borrow's age, and on one occasion Borrow, John, and another,
whose name I forget, determined to run away and turn pirates.
John carried an old horse pistol and some potatoes as his
contribution to the general stock, but his zeal was soon
exhausted, he turned back at Thorpe Lunatic Asylum; but Borrow
went off to Yarmouth, and lived on the Caister Denes for a few
days. I don't remember hearing of any exploits. He had a
wonderful facility for learning languages, which, however, he
never appears to have turned to account.
James Martineau, afterwards a popular preacher and a distinguished
theologian of the Unitarian creed, here comes into the story. He was a
contemporary with Borrow at the Norwich Grammar School as already
stated, but the two boys had little in common. There was nothing of the
vagabond about James Martineau, and concerning Borrow--if on no other
subject--he would probably have agreed with his sister Harriet, whose
views we shall quote in a later chapter. In Martineau's _Memoirs_,
voluminous and dull, there is only one reference to Borrow;[41] but a
correspondent once ventured to approach the eminent divine concerning
the rumour as to Martineau's part in the birching of the author of _The
Bible in Spain_, and received the following letter:
35 GORDON SQUARE, LONDON, W.C., _December 6, 1895._
DEAR SIR,--Two or three years ago Mr. Egmont Hake (author, I
think, of a life of Gordon) sought an interview with me, as
reputed to be Borrow's sole surviving schoolfellow, in order to
gather information or test traditions about his schooldays.
This was with a view to a memoir which he was compiling, he
said, out of the literary remains which had been committed to
him by his executors. I communicated to him such recollections
as I could clearly depend upon and leave at his disposal for
publication or for suppression as he might think fit. Under
these circumstances I feel that they are rightfully his, and
that I am restrained from placing them at disposal elsewhere
unless and until he renounces his claim upon them. But though I
cannot repeat them at length for public use, I am not precluded
from correcting inaccuracies in stories already in circulation,
and may therefore say that Mr. Arthur Dalrymple's version of
the Yarmouth escapade is wrong in making his brother John a
partner in the transaction. John had quite too much sense for
that; the only victims of Borrow's romance were two or three
silly boys--mere lackeys of Borrow's commanding will--who
helped him to make up a kit for the common knapsack by
pilferings out of their fathers' shops.
The Norwich gentleman who fell in with the boys lying in the
hedgerow near the half-way inn knew one of them, and wormed out
of him the drift of their enterprise, and engaging a postchaise
packed them all into it, and in his gig saw them safe home.
It is true that I had to _hoist_ (not 'horse') Borrow for his
flogging, but not that there was anything exceptional or
capable of leaving permanent scars in the infliction. Mr. Valpy
was not given to excess of that kind.
I have never read _Lavengro_, and cannot give any opinion about
the correct spelling of the 'Exul sacerdos' name.
Borrow's romance and William Taylor's love of paradox would
doubtless often run together, like a pair of well-matched
steeds, and carry them away in the same direction. But there
was a strong--almost wild--_religious_ sentiment in Borrow, of
which only faint traces appear in W. T. In Borrow it had always
a tendency to pass from a sympathetic to an antipathetic form.
He used to gather about him three or four favourite
schoolfellows, after they had learned their class lesson and
before the class was called up, and with a sheet of paper and
book on his knee, invent and tell a story, making rapid little
pictures of each _dramatis persona_ that came upon the stage.
The plot was woven and spread out with much ingenuity, and the
characters were various and well discriminated. But two of
them were sure to turn up in every tale, the Devil and the
Pope, and the working of the drama invariably had the same
issue--the utter ruin and disgrace of these two potentates. I
had often thought that there was a presage here of the mission
which produced _The Bible in Spain_.--I am, dear sir, very
truly yours,
JAMES MARTINEAU.[42]
Yet it is amusing to trace the story through various phases. Dr.
Martineau's letter was the outcome of his attention being called to a
statement made in a letter written by a lady in Hampstead to a friend in
Norwich, which runs as follows:
_11th Nov. 1893._
Dr. Martineau, to amuse some boys at a school treat, told us
about George Borrow, his schoolfellow: he was always reading
adventures of smugglers and pirates, etc., and at last, to
carry out his ideas, got a set of his schoolfellows to promise
to join him in an expedition to Yarmouth, where he had heard of
a ship that he thought would take them. The boys saved all the
food they could from their meals, and what money they had, and
one morning started very early to walk to Yarmouth. They got
half-way--to Blofield, I think--when they were so tired they
had to rest by the roadside, and eat their lunch. While they
were resting, a gentleman, whose son was at the Free School,
passed in his gig. He thought it was very odd so many boys,
some of whom he had seen, should be waiting about, so he drove
back and asked them if they would come to dine with him at the
inn. Of course they were only too glad, poor boys: but as soon
as he had got them all in he sent his servant with a letter to
Mr. Valpy, who sent a coach and brought them all back. You know
what a cruel man that Dr. V. was. He made Dr. Martineau take
poor Borrow on his back, 'horse him,' I think he called it, and
flogged him so that Dr. M. said he would carry the marks for
the rest of his life, and he had to keep his bed for a
fortnight. The other boys got off with lighter punishment, but
Borrow was the ring-leader. Those were the 'good old times'! I
have heard Dr. M. say that not for another life would he go
through the misery he suffered as 'town boy' at that school.
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who lived next door to Borrow in Hereford
Square, Brompton, in the 'sixties, as we shall see later, has a word to
say on the point:
Dr. Martineau once told me that he and Borrow had been
schoolfellows at Norwich some sixty years before. Borrow had
persuaded several of his other companions to rob their fathers'
tills, and then the party set forth to join some smugglers on
the coast. By degrees the truants all fell out of line and were
picked up, tired and hungry, along the road, and brought back
to Norwich School, where condign chastisement awaited them.
George Borrow, it seems, received his large share _horsed_ on
James Martineau's back! The early connection between the two
old men, as I knew them, was irresistibly comic to my mind.
Somehow when I asked Mr. Borrow once to come and meet some
friends at our house he accepted our invitation as usual, but,
on finding that Dr. Martineau was to be of the party, hastily
withdrew his acceptance on a transparent excuse; nor did he
ever after attend our little assemblies without first
ascertaining that Dr. Martineau was not to be present.[43]
James Martineau died in 1900, but the last of Borrow's schoolfellows to
die was, I think, Mr. William Edmund Image, a Justice of the Peace and
Deputy Lieutenant for Suffolk. He resided at Herringswell House, near
Mildenhall, where he died in 1903, aged 96 years.
Mr. Valpy of the Norwich Grammar School is scarcely to be blamed that he
was not able to make separate rules for a quite abnormal boy. Yet, if
he could have known, Borrow was better employed playing truant and
living up to his life-work as a glorified vagabond than in studying in
the ordinary school routine. George Borrow belonged to a type of
boy--there are many such--who learn much more out of school than in its
bounds; and the boy Borrow, picking up brother vagabonds in Tombland
Fair, and already beginning, in his own peculiar way, his language
craze, was laying the foundations that made _Lavengro_ possible.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] In earlier times we have the names of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury; Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice; John Caius, the founder of
Caius College, Cambridge; and Samuel Clarke, divine and metaphysician;
and, indeed, a very considerable list of England's worthies.
[39] 'Lights on Borrow,' by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D. D., Hon. Canon
of Norwich Cathedral, in _The Daily Chronicle_, 30th April 1900.
[40] The whole memorandum on a sheet of notepaper, signed A. D., is in
the possession of Mrs. James Stuart of Carrow Abbey, Norwich, who has
kindly lent it to me.
[41] This is a contemptuous reference in Martineau's own words to
'George Borrow, the writer and actor of romance,' in the allusion to
Martineau's schoolfellows under Edward Valpy. Martineau was at the
Norwich Grammar School for four years--from 1815 to 1819. See _Life and
Letters_, by James Drummond and C. B. Upton, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.
[42] Reprint from an article by W. A. Dutt on 'George Borrow and James
Martineau' in _The Sphere_ for 30th August 1902. The letter was written
to Mr. James Hooper, of Norwich.
[43] _Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by Herself_, ch. xvii.
CHAPTER VIII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE LAWYER'S OFFICE
Doubts were very frequently expressed in Borrow's lifetime as to his
having really been articled to a solicitor, but the indefatigable Dr.
Knapp set that point at rest by reference to the Record Office. Borrow
was articled to Simpson and Rackham of Tuck's Court, St. Giles's,
Norwich, 'for the term of five years'--from March 1819 to March
1824--and these five years were spent in and about Norwich, and were
full of adventure of a kind with which the law had nothing to do. If
Borrow had had the makings of a lawyer he could not have entered the
profession under happier auspices. The firm was an old established one
even in his day. It had been established in Tuck's Court as Simpson and
Rackham, then it became Rackham and Morse, Rackham, Cooke and Rackham,
and Rackham and Cooke; finally, Tom Rackham, a famous Norwich man in his
day, moved to another office, and the firm of lawyers who occupy the
original offices in our day is called Leathes Prior and Sons. Borrow has
told us frankly what a poor lawyer's clerk he made--he was always
thinking of things remote from that profession, of gypsies, of
prize-fighters, and of word-makers. Yet he loved the head of the firm,
William Simpson, who must have been a kind and tolerant guide to the
curious youth. Simpson was for a time Town Clerk of Norwich, and his
portrait hangs in the Blackfriars Hall. Borrow went to live with Mr.
Simpson in the Upper Close near the Grammar School. Archdeacon Groome
recalled having seen Borrow 'reserved and solitary' haunting the
precincts of the playground; another schoolboy, William Drake,
remembered him as 'tall, spare, dark-complexioned.'[44] Here is Borrow's
account of his master and of his work:
A more respectable-looking individual was never seen; he really
looked what he was, a gentleman of the law--there was nothing
of the pettifogger about him: somewhat under the middle size,
and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a full
suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. His
face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most
remarkable thing about him was the crown of his head, which was
bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white,
smooth, and lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false
calves, probably because his black silk stockings never
exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he
waddled, because his boots creaked; for these last, which were
always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a
different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly. I cannot
say that I ever saw him walk fast.
He had a handsome practice, and might have died a very rich
man, much richer than he did, had he not been in the habit of
giving rather expensive dinners to certain great people, who
gave him nothing in return, except their company; I could never
discover his reasons for doing so, as he always appeared to me
a remarkably quiet man, by nature averse to noise and bustle;
but in all dispositions there are anomalies. I have already
said that he lived in a handsome house, and I may as well here
add that he had a very handsome wife, who both dressed and
talked exceedingly well.
So I sat behind the deal desk, engaged in copying documents of
various kinds; and in the apartment in which I sat, and in the
adjoining ones, there were others, some of whom likewise copied
documents, while some were engaged in the yet more difficult
task of drawing them up; and some of these, sons of nobody,
were paid for the work they did, whilst others, like myself,
sons of somebody, paid for being permitted to work, which, as
our principal observed, was but reasonable, forasmuch as we not
unfrequently utterly spoiled the greater part of the work
intrusted to our hands.[45]
[Illustration: WILLIAM SIMPSON
From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A.
Mr. Simpson was Chamberlain of the city of Norwich and Treasurer of the
county of Norfolk. He was Town-Clerk of Norwich in 1826, and has an
interest in connection with George Borrow in that Borrow was articled to
him as a lawyer's clerk and describes him in _Wild Wales_ as 'the
greatest solicitor in East Anglia--indeed I may say the prince of all
English solicitors.'
The portrait hangs in the Black Friars Hall, Norwich.]
And he goes on to tell us that he studied the Welsh language and later
the Danish; his master said that his inattention would assuredly make
him a bankrupt, and his father sighed over his eccentric and
impracticable son. The passion for languages had indeed caught hold of
Borrow. Among my Borrow papers I find a memorandum in the handwriting of
his stepdaughter in which she says:
I have often heard his mother say, that when a mere child of
eight or nine years, all his pocket-money was spent in
purchasing foreign Dictionaries and Grammars; he formed an
acquaintance with an old woman who kept a bookstall in the
market-place of Norwich, whose son went voyages to Holland with
cattle, and brought home Dutch books, which were eagerly bought
by little George. One day the old woman was crying, and told
him that her son was in prison. 'For doing what?' asked the
child. 'For taking a silk handkerchief out of a gentleman's
pocket.' 'Then,' said the boy, 'your son stole the pocket
handkerchief?' 'No dear, no, my son did not steal,--he only
glyfaked.'
We have no difficulty in recognising here the heroine of the Moll
Flanders episode in _Lavengro_. But it was not from casual meetings with
Welsh grooms and Danes and Dutchmen that Borrow acquired even such
command of various languages as was undoubtedly his. We have it on the
authority of an old fellow-pupil at the Grammar School, Burcham,
afterwards a London police-magistrate, that William Taylor gave him
lessons in German,[46] but he acquired most of his varied knowledge in
these impressionable years in the Corporation Library of Norwich. Dr.
Knapp found, in his most laudable examination of some of the books,
Borrow's neat pencil notes, the making of which was not laudable on the
part of his hero. One book here marked was on ancient Danish literature,
the author of which, Olaus Wormius, gave him the hint for calling
himself Olaus Borrow for a time--a signature that we find in some of
Borrow's published translations. Borrow at this time had aspirations of
a literary kind, and Thomas Campbell accepted a translation of
Schiller's _Diver_, which was signed 'O. B.' There were also
translations from the German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish, in the
_Monthly Magazine_. Clearly Borrow was becoming a formidable linguist,
if not a very exact master of words. Still he remained a vagabond, and
loved to wander over Mousehold Heath, to the gypsy encampment, and to
make friends with the Romany folk; he loved also to haunt the horse
fairs for which Norwich was so celebrated; and he was not averse from
the companionship of wilder spirits who loved pugilism, if we may trust
_Lavengro_, and if we may assume, as we justly may, that he many times
cast youthful, sympathetic eyes on John Thurtell in these years, the
to-be murderer of Weare, then actually living with his father in a house
on the Ipswich Road, Thurtell, the father, being in no mean position in
the city--an alderman, and a sheriff in 1815. Yes, there was plenty to
do and to see in Norwich, and Borrow's memories of it were nearly always
kindly:
A fine old city, truly, is that, view it from whatever side you
will; but it shows best from the east, where ground, bold and
elevated, overlooks the fair and fertile valley in which it
stands. Gazing from those heights, the eye beholds a scene
which cannot fail to awaken, even in the least sensitive bosom,
feelings of pleasure and admiration. At the foot of the heights
flows a narrow and deep river, with an antique bridge
communicating with a long and narrow suburb, flanked on either
side by rich meadows of the brightest green, beyond which
spreads the city; the fine old city, perhaps the most curious
specimen at present extant of the genuine old English town.
Yes, there it spreads from north to south, with its venerable
houses, its numerous gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its
mighty mound, which, if tradition speaks true, was raised by
human hands to serve as the grave-heap of an old heathen king,
who sits deep within it, with his sword in his hand, and his
gold and silver treasures about him. There is a grey old castle
upon the top of that mighty mound; and yonder, rising three
hundred feet above the soil, from among those noble forest
trees, behold that old Norman master-work, that cloud-encircled
cathedral spire, around which a garrulous army of rooks and
choughs continually wheel their flight. Now, who can wonder
that the children of that fine old city are proud of her, and
offer up prayers for her prosperity? I myself, who was not born
within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, that
want may never visit her cottages, vice her palaces, and that
the abomination of idolatry may never pollute her temples.
But at the very centre of Borrow's Norwich life was William Taylor,
concerning whom we have already written much. It was a Jew named Mousha,
a quack it appears, who pretended to know German and Hebrew, and had but
a smattering of either language, who first introduced Borrow to Taylor,
and there is a fine dialogue between the two in _Lavengro_, of which
this is the closing fragment:
'Are you happy?' said the young man.
'Why, no! And, between ourselves, it is that which induces me
to doubt sometimes the truth of my opinions. My life, upon the
whole, I consider a failure; on which account, I would not
counsel you, or anyone, to follow my example too closely. It
is getting late, and you had better be going, especially as
your father, you say, is anxious about you. But, as we may
never meet again, I think there are three things which I may
safely venture to press upon you. The first is, that the
decencies and gentlenesses should never be lost sight of, as
the practice of the decencies and gentlenesses is at all times
compatible with independence of thought and action. The second
thing which I would wish to impress upon you is, that there is
always some eye upon us; and that it is impossible to keep
anything we do from the world, as it will assuredly be divulged
by somebody as soon as it is his interest to do so. The third
thing which I would wish to press upon you----'
'Yes,' said the youth, eagerly bending forward.
'Is'--and here the elderly individual laid down his pipe upon
the table--'that it will be as well to go on improving yourself
in German!'
Taylor it was who, when Borrow determined to try his fortunes in London
with those bundles of unsaleable manuscripts, gave him introductions to
Sir Richard Phillips and to Thomas Campbell. It was in the agnostic
spirit that he had learned from Taylor that he wrote during this period
to his one friend in London, Roger Kerrison. Kerrison was grandson of
Sir Roger Kerrison, Mayor of Norwich in 1778, as his son Thomas was
after him in 1806. Roger was articled, as was Borrow, to the firm of
Simpson and Rackham, while his brother Allday was in a drapery store in
Norwich, but with mind bent on commercial life in Mexico. George was
teaching him Spanish in these years as a preparation for his great
adventure. Roger had gone to London to continue his professional
experience. He finally became a Norwich solicitor and died in 1882.
Allday went to Zacatecas, Mexico, and acquired riches. John Borrow
followed him there and met with an early death, as we have seen. Borrow
and Roger Kerrison were great friends at this time; but when _Lavengro_
was written they had ceased to be this, and Roger is described merely as
an 'acquaintance' who had found lodgings for him on his first visit to
London. As a matter of fact that trip to London was made easy for Borrow
by the opportunity given to him of sharing lodgings with Roger Kerrison
at Milman Street, Bedford Row, where Borrow put in an appearance on 1st
April 1824, some two months after the following letter was written:
To Mr. Roger Kerrison, 18 Milman Street, Bedford Row.
NORWICH, _Jany. 20, 1824._
DEAREST ROGER,--I did not imagine when we separated in the
street, on the day of your departure from Norwich, that we
should not have met again: I had intended to have come and seen
you off, but happening to dine at W. Barron's I got into
discourse, and the hour slipt past me unawares.
I have been again for the last fortnight laid up with that
detestable complaint which destroys my strength, impairs my
understanding, and will in all probability send me to the
grave, for I am now much worse than when you saw me last. But
_nil desperandum est_, if ever my health mends, and possibly it
may by the time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live in
London, write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get
myself prosecuted, for I would not for an ocean of gold remain
any longer than I am forced in this dull and gloomy town.
I have no news to regale you with, for there is none abroad,
but I live in the expectation of shortly hearing from you, and
being informed of your plans and projects; fear not to be
prolix, for the slightest particular cannot fail of being
interesting to one who loves you far better than parent or
relation, or even than the God whom bigots would teach him to
adore, and who subscribes himself, Yours unalterably,
GEORGE BORROW.[47]
Borrow might improve his German--not sufficiently as we shall see in our
next chapter--but he would certainly never make a lawyer. Long years
afterwards, when, as an old man, he was frequently in Norwich, he not
seldom called at that office in Tuck's Court, where five strange years
of his life had been spent. A clerk in Rackham's office in these later
years recalls him waiting for the principal as he in his youth had
watched others waiting.[48]
FOOTNOTES:
[44] _Norvicensian_, 1888, p. 177.
[45] _Lavengro_, ch. xix.
[46] The _Britannia_ newspaper, 26th June 1851.
[47] This letter is in the possession of Mr. J. C. Gould, Trap Hill
House, Loughton, Essex.
[48] Mr. C. F. Martelli of Staple Inn, London, who has so generously
placed this information at my disposal. Mr. Martelli writes:
'Old memories brought him to our office for professional advice, and
there I saw something of him, and a very striking personality he was,
and a rather difficult client to do business with. One peculiarity I
remember was that he believed himself to be plagued by autograph
hunters, and was reluctant to trust our firm with his signature in any
shape or form, and that we in consequence had some trouble in inducing
him to sign his will. I have seen him sitting over my fire in my room at
that office for hours, half asleep, and crooning out Romany songs while
waiting for my chief.'
CHAPTER IX
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS
_'That's a strange man!' said I to myself, after I had left the
house, 'he is evidently very clever; but I cannot say that I
like him much with his Oxford Reviews and Dairyman's
Daughters.'_--LAVENGRO.
Borrow lost his father on the 28th February 1824. He reached London on
the 2nd April of the same year, and this was the beginning of his many
wanderings. He was armed with introductions from William Taylor, and
with some translations in manuscript from Danish and Welsh poetry. The
principal introduction was to Sir Richard Phillips, a person of some
importance in his day, who has so far received but inadequate treatment
in our own.[49] Phillips was active in the cause of reform at a certain
period in his life, and would seem to have had many sterling qualities
before he was spoiled by success. He was born in the neighbourhood of
Leicester, and his father was 'in the farming line,' and wanted him to
work on the farm, but he determined to seek his fortune in London. After
a short absence, during which he clearly proved to himself that he was
not at present qualified to capture London, young Phillips returned to
the farm. Borrow refers to his patron's vegetarianism, and on this point
we have an amusing story from his own pen! He had been, when previously
on the farm, in the habit of attending to a favourite heifer:
During his sojournment in London this animal had been killed;
and on the very day of his return to his father's house, he
partook of part of his favourite at dinner, without his being
made acquainted with the circumstance of its having been
slaughtered during his absence. On learning this, however, he
experienced a sudden indisposition; and declared that so great
an effect had the idea of his having eaten part of his
slaughtered favourite upon him, that he would never again taste
animal food; a vow to which he has hitherto firmly adhered.[50]
Farming not being congenial, Phillips hired a small room in Leicester,
and opened a school for instruction in the three R's, a large blue flag
on a pole being his 'sign' or signal to the inhabitants of Leicester,
who seem to have sent their children in considerable numbers to the
young schoolmaster. But little money was to be made out of schooling,
and a year later Phillips was, by the kindness of friends, started in a
small hosiery shop in Leicester. Throwing himself into politics on the
side of reform, Phillips now started the _Leicester Herald_, to which
Dr. Priestley became a contributor. The first number was issued gratis
in May 1792. His _Memoir_ informs us that it was an article in this
newspaper that secured for its proprietor and editor eighteen months
imprisonment in Leicester gaol, but he was really charged with selling
Paine's _Rights of Man_. The worthy knight had probably grown ashamed of
_The Rights of Man_ in the intervening years, and hence the reticence of
the memoir. Phillips's gaoler was the once famous Daniel Lambert, the
notorious 'fat man' of his day. In gaol Phillips was visited by Lord
Moira and the Duke of Norfolk. It was this Lord Moira who said in the
House of Lords in 1797 that 'he had seen in Ireland the most absurd, as
well as the most disgusting tyranny that any nation ever groaned under.'
Moira became Governor-General of Bengal and Commander-in-Chief of the
Army in India. The Duke of Norfolk, a stanch Whig, distinguished himself
in 1798 by a famous toast at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Arundel
Street, Strand:--'Our sovereign's health--the majesty of the people!'
which greatly offended George III., who removed Norfolk from his
lord-lieutenancy. Phillips seems to have had a very lax imprisonment, as
he conducted the _Herald_ from gaol, contributing in particular a weekly
letter. Soon after his release he disposed of the _Herald_, or permitted
it to die. It was revived a few years later as an organ of Toryism. He
had started in gaol another journal, _The Museum_, and he combined this
with his hosiery business for some time longer, when an opportune fire
relieved him of an apparently uncongenial burden, and with the insurance
money in his pocket he set out for London once more. Here he started as
a hosier in St. Paul's Churchyard, lodging meantime in the house of a
milliner, where he fell in love with one of the apprentices, Miss
Griffiths, 'a native of Wales.' His affections were won, we are naively
informed in the _Memoir_, by the young woman's talent in the preparation
of a vegetable pie. This is our first glimpse of Lady Phillips--'a
quiet, respectable woman,' whom Borrow was to meet at dinner long years
afterwards. Inspired, it would seem, by the kindly exhortation of Dr.
Priestley, he now transformed his hosiery business in St. Paul's
Churchyard into a 'literary repository,' and started a singularly
successful career as a publisher. There he produced his long-lived
periodical, _The Monthly Magazine_, which attained to so considerable a
fame. Dr. Aikin, a friend of Priestley's, was its editor, but with him
Phillips had a quarrel--the first of his many literary quarrels--and
they separated. This Dr. Aikin was the father of the better-known Lucy
Aikin, and was a Nonconformist who suffered for his opinions in these
closing years of the eighteenth century, even as Priestley did. He was
the author of many works, including the once famous _Evenings at Home_,
written in conjunction with his sister, Mrs. Barbauld;[51] and after his
quarrel with Phillips he founded a new publication issued by the house
of Longman, and entitled _The Athenaeum_. Hereupon he and Phillips
quarrelled again, because Dr. Aikin described himself in advertisements
of _The Athenaeum_ as 'J. Aikin, M.D., late editor of _The Monthly
Magazine_.' Aikin's contributors to _The Monthly_ included Capell Lofft,
of whom we know too little, and Dr. Wolcot, of whom we know too much.
Meanwhile Phillips's publishing business grew apace, and he removed to
larger premises in Bridge Street, Blackfriars, an address which we find
upon many famous publications of his period. A catalogue of his books
lies before me dated 'January 1805.' It includes many works still upon
our shelves. Almon's _Memoirs and Correspondence of John Wilkes_, Samuel
Richardson's _Life and Correspondence_, for example, several of the
works of Maria Edgeworth, including her _Moral Tales_, many of the works
of William Godwin, including _Caleb Williams_, and the earlier books of
that still interesting woman and once popular novelist, Lady Morgan,
whose _Poems_ as Sydney Owenson bears Phillips's name on its title-page,
as does also her first successful novel _The Wild Irish Girl_, and other
of her stories. My own interest in Phillips commenced when I met him in
the pages of Lady Morgan's _Memoirs_.[52] Thomas Moore, Lady Morgan
tells us,
had come back to Dublin from London, where he had been 'the
guest of princes, the friend of peers, the translator of
Anacreon!' From royal palaces and noble manors, he had returned
to his family seat--a grocer's shop at the corner of Little
Longford Street, Angier Street.
Here, in a little room over the shop, Sydney heard him sing two of his
songs, and was inspired thereby to write her first novels, _St. Clair_
and _The Novice of St. Dominick_. The first was published in Dublin;
over the second she corresponded with Phillips, and his letters to her
commence with one dated from Bridge Street, 6th April 1805, in which he
wishes her to send the manuscript of _The Novice_ to him as one 'often
(undeservedly) complimented as the most liberal of my trade!' She
determined, fresh from a governess situation, to bring the manuscript
herself. Phillips was charmed with his new author, and really seems to
have treated her very liberally. He insisted, however, on having _The
Novice_ cut down from six volumes to four, and she was wont to say that
nothing but regard for her feelings prevented him from reducing it to
three.[53] _The Novice of St. Dominick_ was a favourite book with the
younger Pitt, who read it over again in his last illness. Then
followed--in 1806--Sydney Owenson's new novel, _The Wild Irish Girl_,
and it led to an amusing correspondence with its author on the part of
Phillips on the one side, and Johnson, who, it will be remembered, was
Cowper's publisher, on the other. Phillips was indignant that, having
first brought Sydney into fame, she should dare to ask more money on
that account. As is the case with every novelist to-day who scores one
success, Miss Owenson had formed a good idea of her value, and there is
a letter to Johnson in which she admitted that Phillips's offer was a
generous one. Johnson had offered her L300 for the copyright of _The
Wild Irish Girl_. Phillips had offered only L200 down and L50 each for
the second and third editions. When Phillips heard that Johnson had
outbidden him, he described the offer as 'monstrous,' and that it was
'inspired by a spirit of revenge.' He would not, he declared, increase
his offer, but a little later he writes from Bridge Street to Sydney
Owenson as his 'dear, bewitching, and deluding Syren,' and promises the
L300. A few months later he gave her a hundred pounds for a slight
volume of poems, which certainly never paid for its publication,
although Scott and Moore and many another were making much money out of
poetry in those days. In any case Phillips did not accept Miss Owenson's
next story with alacrity, in spite of the undoubted success of _The Wild
Irish Girl_. She no doubt asked too much for _Ida of Athens_. Phillips
probably thought, after reading the first volume in type, that it was
very inferior work, as indeed it was. Athens was described without the
author ever having seen the city. After much wrangling, in which the
lady said that her 'prince of publishers,' as she had once called him,
had 'treated her barbarously,' the novel went into the hands of the
Longmans, who published it, not without some remonstrance as to certain
of its sentiments. The successful Lady Morgan afterwards described _Ida_
as a bad book, so perhaps here, as usually, Phillips was not far wrong
in his judgment. A similar quarrel seems to have taken place over the
next novel, _The Missionary_. Here Phillips again received the
manuscript, discussed terms with its author, and returned it. The firm
of Stockdale and Miller were his successful rivals. Later and more
prosperous novels, _O'Donnel_ in particular, were issued by Henry
Colburn, and Phillips now disappears from Lady Morgan's life. I have
told the story of Phillips's relation with Lady Morgan at length because
at no other point do we come into so near a contact with him. In Fell's
_Memoir_ Phillips is described--in 1808--as 'certainly now the first
publisher in London,' but while he may have been this in the volume of
his trade--and school-books made an important part of it--he was not in
mere 'names.' Most of his successful writers--Sydney Owenson, Thomas
Skinner Surr, Dr. Gregory, and the rest--have now fallen into oblivion.
The school-books that he issued have lasted even to our own day, notably
Dr. Mavor's _Spelling Book_. Dr. Mavor was a Scotsman from Aberdeen, who
came to London and became Phillips's chief hack. There are no less than
twenty of Mavor's school-books in the catalogue before me. They include
Mavor's _History of England_, Mavor's _Universal History_, and Mavor's
_History of Greece_. In the _Memoir_ of 1808 it is claimed that 'Mavor'
is but a pseudonym for Phillips, and the claim is also made, quite
wrongfully, by John Timbs, who, before he became acting editor of the
_Illustrated London News_ under Herbert Ingram, and an indefatigable
author, was Phillips's private secretary.[54] It seems clear, however,
that in the case of Blair's _Catechism_ and Goldsmith's _Geography_, and
many another book for schools, Phillips was 'Blair' and 'Goldsmith' and
many another imaginary person, for the books in question numbered about
two hundred in all. For these books there must have been quite an army
of literary hacks employed during the twenty years prior to the
appearance of George Borrow in that great army. On 9th November 1807,
the Lord Mayor's procession through London included Richard Phillips
among its sheriffs, and he was knighted by George III. in the following
year. During his period of office he effected many reforms in the City
prisons. John Timbs, in his _Walks and Talks about London_, tells us
that Phillips's colleague in the shrievalty was one Smith, who
afterwards became Lord Mayor:
The _personnel_ of the two sheriffs presented a sharp contrast.
Smith loved aldermanic cheer, but was pale and cadaverous in
complexion; whilst Phillips, who never ate animal food, was
rosy and healthful in appearance. One day, when the sheriffs
were in full state, the procession was stopped by an
obstruction in the street traffic; when droll were the mistakes
of the mob: to Smith they cried, 'Here's Old Water-gruel!' to
Phillips, 'Here's Roast Beef! something like an Englishman!'
Two volumes before me show Phillips as the precursor of many of the
publishers of one-volume books of reference so plentiful in our day. _A
Million of Facts_ is one of them, and _A Chronology of Public Events
Within the Last Fifty Years from 1771 to 1821_ is another, while one of
the earliest and most refreshing guides to London and its neighbourhood
is afforded us in _A Morning Walk from London to Kew_, which first
appeared in _The Monthly Magazine_, but was reprinted in 1817 with the
name 'Sir Richard Phillips' as author on the title-page. Phillips was
now no longer a publisher. Here we have some pleasant glimpses of a
bygone era, many trite reflections, but not enough topography to make
the book one of permanent interest. It would not, in fact, be worth
reprinting.[55]
This, then, was the man to whom George Borrow presented himself in 1824.
Phillips was fifty-seven years of age. He had made a moderate fortune
and lost it, and was now enjoying another perhaps less satisfying; it
included the profits of _The Monthly Review_, repurchased after his
bankruptcy, and some rights in many of the school-books. But the great
publishing establishment in Bridge Street had long been broken up.
Borrow would have found Taylor's introduction to Phillips quite useless
had the worthy knight not at the moment been keen on a new magazine and
seen the importance of a fresh 'hack' to help to run it. Moreover, had
he not written a great book which only the Germans could appreciate,
_Twelve Essays on the Phenomena of Nature_? Here, he thought, was the
very man to produce this book in a German dress. Taylor was a thorough
German scholar, and he had vouched for the excellent German of his pupil
and friend. Hence a certain cordiality which did not win Borrow's
regard, but was probably greater than many a young man would receive
to-day from a publisher-prince upon whom he might call laden only with a
bundle of translations from the Danish and the Welsh. Here--in
_Lavengro_--is the interview between publisher and poet, with the
editor's factotum Bartlett, whom Borrow calls Taggart, as witness:
'Well, sir, what is your pleasure?' said the big man, in a
rough tone, as I stood there, looking at him wistfully--as well
I might--for upon that man, at the time of which I am speaking,
my principal, I may say my only hopes, rested.
'Sir,' said I, 'my name is So-and-so, and I am the bearer of a
letter to you from Mr. So-and-so, an old friend and
correspondent of yours.'
The countenance of the big man instantly lost the suspicious
and lowering expression which it had hitherto exhibited; he
strode forward and, seizing me by the hand, gave me a violent
squeeze.
'My dear sir,' said he, 'I am rejoiced to see you in London. I
have been long anxious for the pleasure--we are old friends,
though we have never before met. Taggart,' said he to the man
who sat at the desk, 'this is our excellent correspondent, the
friend and pupil of our excellent correspondent.'
[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOWRING in 1826
From a portrait by John King now in the National Portrait Gallery.]
[Illustration: JOHN P. HASFELD IN 1835
From a portrait by an Unknown Artist formerly belonging to George
Borrow]
[Illustration: WILLIAM TAYLOR
From a portrait by J. Thomson, printed in the year 1821, and engraved in
Robberds's _Life of Taylor_.]
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS
From a portrait by James Saxon, painted in 1828, now in the National
Portrait Gallery.]
[Illustration: FRIENDS OF BORROW'S EARLY YEARS] [Transcriber's Note:
This is the caption for the page of four portraits, each portrait's
caption is shown above.]
Phillips explains that he has given up publishing, except 'under the
rose,' had only _The Monthly Magazine_, here[56] called _The Magazine_,
but contemplated yet another monthly, _The Universal Review_, here
called _The Oxford_. He gave Borrow much the same sound advice that a
publisher would have given him to-day--that poetry is not a marketable
commodity, and that if you want to succeed in prose you must, as a rule,
write trash--the most acceptable trash of that day being _The Dairyman's
Daughter_,[57] which has sold in hundreds of thousands, and is still
much prized by the Evangelical folk who buy the publications of the
Religious Tract Society. Phillips, moreover, asked him to dine to meet
his wife, his son, and his son's wife,[58] and we know what an amusing
account of that dinner Borrow gives in _Lavengro_. Moreover, he set
Borrow upon his first piece of hack-work, the _Celebrated Trials_, and
gave him something to do upon _The Universal Review_ and also upon _The
Monthly_. _The Universal_ lasted only for six numbers, dying in January
1825. In that year appeared the six volumes of the _Celebrated Trials_,
of which we have something to say in our next chapter. Borrow found
Phillips most exacting, always suggesting the names of new criminals,
and leaving it to the much sweated author to find the books from which
to extract the necessary material:
In the compilation of my Lives and Trials I was exposed to
incredible mortification, and ceaseless trouble, from this same
rage for interference.... This was not all; when about a moiety
of the first volume had been printed, he materially altered the
plan of the work; it was no longer to be a collection of mere
Newgate lives and trials, but of lives and trials of criminals
in general, foreign as well as domestic.... 'Where is Brandt
and Struensee?' cried the publisher. 'I am sure I don't know,'
I replied; whereupon the publisher falls to squealing like one
of Joey's rats. 'Find me up Brandt and Struensee by next
morning, or--' 'Have you found Brandt and Struensee?' cried the
publisher, on my appearing before him next morning. 'No,' I
reply, 'I can hear nothing about them'; whereupon the publisher
falls to bellowing like Joey's bull. By dint of incredible
diligence, I at length discover the dingy volume containing the
lives and trials of the celebrated two who had brooded treason
dangerous to the state of Denmark. I purchase the dingy volume,
and bring it in triumph to the publisher, the perspiration
running down my brow. The publisher takes the dingy volume in
his hand, he examines it attentively, then puts it down; his
countenance is calm for a moment, almost benign. Another moment
and there is a gleam in the publisher's sinister eye; he
snatches up the paper containing the names of the worthies
which I have intended shall figure in the forthcoming
volumes--he glances rapidly over it, and his countenance once
more assumes a terrific expression. 'How is this?' he exclaims;
'I can scarcely believe my eyes--the most important life and
trial omitted to be found in the whole criminal record--what
gross, what utter negligence! Where's the life of Farmer Patch?
where's the trial of Yeoman Patch?'
'What a life! what a dog's life!' I would frequently exclaim,
after escaping from the presence of the publisher.[59]
Then came the final catastrophe. Borrow could not translate Phillips's
great masterpiece, _Twelve Essays on the Proximate Causes_, into German
with any real effectiveness although the testimonial of the enthusiastic
Taylor had led Phillips to assume that he could. Borrow, as we shall
see, knew many languages, and knew them well colloquially, but he was
not a grammarian, and he could not write accurately in any one of his
numerous tongues. His wonderful memory gave him the words, but not
always any thoroughness of construction. He could make a good
translation of a poem by Schiller, because he brought his own poetic
fancy to the venture, but he had no interest in Phillips's philosophy,
and so he doubtless made a very bad translation, as German friends were
soon able to assure Phillips, who had at last to go to a German for a
translation, and the book appeared at Stuttgart in 1826.[60] Meanwhile,
Phillips's new magazine, _The Universal Review_, went on its course. It
lasted only for a few numbers, as we have said--from March 1824 to
January 1825--and it was entirely devoted to reviews, many of them
written by Borrow, but without any distinction calling for comment
to-day. Dr. Knapp thought that Gifford was the editor, with Phillips's
son and George Borrow assisting. Gifford translated _Juvenal_, and it
was for a long time assumed that Borrow wished merely to disguise
Gifford's identity when he referred to his editor as the translator of
_Quintilian_. But Sir Leslie Stephen has pointed out in _Literature_
that John Carey (1756-1826), who actually edited _Quintilian_ in 1822,
was Phillips's editor, 'All the poetry which I reviewed,' Borrow tells
us, 'appeared to be published at the expense of the authors. All the
publications which fell under my notice I treated in a gentlemanly ...
manner--no personalities, no vituperation, no shabby insinuations;
decorum, decorum was the order of the day.' And one feels that Borrow
was not very much at home. But he went on with his _Newgate Lives and
Trials_, which, however, were to be published with another imprint,
although at the instance of Phillips. By that time he and that worthy
publisher had parted company. Probably Phillips had set out for
Brighton, which was to be his home for the remainder of his life.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] The few lines awarded to him in Mumby's _Romance of Bookselling_
are an illustration of this.
[50] _Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Sir Richard Phillips,
King's High Sheriff for the City of London and the County of Middlesex,
by a Citizen of London and Assistants_. London, 1808. This _Memoir_ was
published in 1808, many years before the death of Phillips, and was
clearly inspired and partly written by him, although an autograph letter
before me from one Ralph Fell shows that the worthy Fell actually
received L12 from Phillips for 'compiling' the book. A portion of the
_Memoir_ may have been written by another literary hack named Pinkerton,
but all of it was compiled under the direction of Phillips.
[51] Mr. Arthur Aikin Brodribb in his memoir of Aikin in the _Dictionary
of National Biography_ makes the interesting but astonishing statement
that Aikin's _Life of Howard_ 'has been adopted, without acknowledgment,
by a modern writer.' Mr. Brodribb apparently knew nothing of Dr. Aikin's
association with the _Monthly Magazine_ or with the first _Athenaeum_.
[52] I have no less than four memoirs of Lady Morgan on my
shelves:--_Passages from my Autobiography_, by Sydney, Lady Morgan
(Richard Bentley, 1859); _The Friends, Foes, and Adventures of Lady
Morgan_, by William John Fitzpatrick (W. B. Kelly: Dublin, 1859); _Lady
Morgan; Her Career, Literary and Personal, with a Glimpse of her
Friends, and A Word to her Calumniators_, by William John Fitzpatrick
(London: Charles J. Skeet, 1860); _Lady Morgan's Memoirs: Autobiography,
Diaries and Correspondence_. Two vols. (London: W. H. Allen, 1863).
[53] _Memoirs of Lady Morgan_, edited by W. Hepworth Dixon.
[54] See Timbs's article on Phillips in his _Walks and Talks about
London_, 1865. Timbs was wont to recall, as the late W. L. Thomas of the
_Graphic_ informed me, that while at the _Illustrated London News_ he
got so exasperated with Herbert Ingram, the founder and proprietor, that
he would frequently write and post a letter of resignation, but would
take care to reach the office before Ingram in the morning in order to
withdraw it.
[55] Another London book before me, which bears the imprint 'Richard
Phillips, Bridge Street,' is entitled _The Picture of London for 1811_.
Mine is the twelfth edition of this remarkable little volume.
[56] In _Lavengro_.
[57] Legh Richmond (1772-1827), the author of _The Dairyman's Daughter_
and _The Young Cottager_, which had an extraordinary vogue in their day.
A few years earlier than this Princess Sophia Metstchersky translated
the former into the Russian language, and Borrow must have seen copies
when he visited St. Petersburg. Richmond was the first clerical
secretary of the Religious Tract Society, with which _The Dairyman's
Daughter_ has always been one of the most popular of tracts.
[58] Phillips at his death in 1840 left a widow, three sons, and four
daughters. One son was Vicar of Kilburn.
[59] _Lavengro_, ch. xxxix.
[60] _Ueber die naechsten Ursachen der materiellen Erscheinungen des
Universums_, von Sir Richard Phillips, nach dem Englischen bearbeitet
von General von Theobald und Prof. Dr. Lebret. Stuttgart, 1826.
CHAPTER X
_FAUSTUS_ AND _ROMANTIC BALLADS_
In the early pages of _Lavengro_ Borrow tells us nearly all we are ever
likely to know of his sojourn in London in the years 1824 and 1825,
during which time he had those interviews with Sir Richard Phillips
which are recorded in our last chapter. Dr. Knapp, indeed, prints a
little note from him to his friend Kerrison, in which he begs his friend
to come to him as he believes he is dying. Roger Kerrison, it would
seem, had been so frightened by Borrow's depression and threats of
suicide that he had left the lodgings at 16 Milman Street, Bedford Row,
and removed himself elsewhere, and so Borrow was left friendless to
fight what he called his 'horrors' alone. The depression was not
unnatural. From his own vivid narrative we learn of Borrow's bitter
failure as an author. No one wanted his translations from the Welsh and
the Danish, and Phillips clearly had no further use for him after he had
compiled his _Newgate Lives and Trials_ (Borrow's name in _Lavengro_ for
_Celebrated Trials_), and was doubtless inclined to look upon him as an
impostor for professing, with William Taylor's sanction, a mastery of
the German language which had been demonstrated to be false with regard
to his own book. No 'spirited publisher' had come forward to give
reality to his dream thus set down:
I had still an idea that, provided I could persuade any
spirited publisher to give these translations to the world, I
should acquire both considerable fame and profit; not, perhaps,
a world-embracing fame such as Byron's; but a fame not to be
sneered at, which would last me a considerable time, and would
keep my heart from breaking;--profit, not equal to that which
Scott had made by his wondrous novels, but which would prevent
me from starving, and enable me to achieve some other literary
enterprise. I read and re-read my ballads, and the more I read
them the more I was convinced that the public, in the event of
their being published, would freely purchase, and hail them
with the merited applause.
He has a tale to tell us in _Lavengro_ of a certain _Life and Adventures
of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller_, the purchase of which from him by
a publisher at the last moment saved him from starvation and enabled him
to take to the road, there to meet the many adventures that have become
immortal in the pages of _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea
that _Joseph Sell_ was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very
title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In
Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an
imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the
credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no _Joseph Sell_, and it
is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of
Klinger's _Faustus_ that gave him the much needed money at this crisis.
Dr. Knapp pictures Borrow as carrying the manuscript of his translation
of _Faustus_ with him to London. There is not the slightest evidence of
this. It may be reasonably assumed that Borrow made the translation from
Klinger's novel during his sojourn in London. It is true the preface is
dated 'Norwich, April 1825,' but Borrow did not leave London until the
end of May 1825, that is to say, until after he had negotiated with 'W.
Simpkin and R. Marshall,' now the well-known firm of Simpkin and
Marshall, for the publication of the little volume. That firm,
unfortunately, has no record of the transaction. My impression is that
Borrow in his wandering after old volumes on crime for his great
compilation, _Celebrated Trials_, came across the French translation of
Klinger's novel published at Amsterdam. From that translation he
acknowledges that he borrowed the plate which serves as frontispiece--a
plate entitled 'The Corporation Feast.' It represents the corporation of
Frankfort at a banquet turned by the devil into various animals. It has
been erroneously assumed that Borrow had had something to do with the
designing of this plate, and that he had introduced the corporation of
Norwich in vivid portraiture into the picture. Borrow does, indeed,
interpolate a reference to Norwich into his translation of a not too
complimentary character, for at that time he had no very amiable
feelings towards his native city. Of the inhabitants of Frankfort he
says:
They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly
a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features, that the
devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the
inhabitants of an English town called Norwich, when dressed in
their Sunday's best.[61]
In the original German version of 1791 we have the town of Nuremberg
thus satirised. But Borrow was not the first translator to seize the
opportunity of adapting the reference for personal ends. In the French
translation of 1798, published at Amsterdam, and entitled _Les Aventures
du Docteur Faust_, the translator has substituted Auxerre for
Nuremberg. What makes me think that Borrow used only the French version
in his translation is the fact that in his preface he refers to the
engravings of that version, one of which he reproduced; whereas the
engravings are in the German version as well.
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger (1752-1831), who was responsible for
Borrow's 'first book,' was responsible for much else of an epoch-making
character. It was he who by one of his many plays, _Sturm und Drang_,
gave a name to an important period of German Literature. In 1780 von
Klinger entered the service of Russia, and in 1790 married a natural
daughter of the Empress Catherine. Thus his novel, _Faust's Leben,
Thaten und Hoellenfahrt_, was actually first published at St. Petersburg
in 1791. This was seventeen years before Goethe published his first part
of _Faust_, a book which by its exquisite poetry was to extinguish for
all self-respecting Germans Klinger's turgid prose. Borrow, like the
translator of Rousseau's _Confessions_ and of many another classic,
takes refuge more than once in the asterisk. Klinger's _Faustus_, with
much that was bad and even bestial, has merits. The devil throughout
shows his victim a succession of examples of 'man's inhumanity to man.'
Borrow's translation of Klinger's novel was reprinted in 1864 without
any acknowledgment of the name of the translator, and only a few stray
words being altered.[62] Borrow nowhere mentions Klinger's name in his
latter volume, of which the title-page runs:
Faustus: His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell. Translated
from the German. London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825.
I doubt very much if he really knew who was the author, as the book in
both the German editions I have seen as well as in the French version
bears no author's name on its title-page. A letter of Borrow's in the
possession of an American collector indicates that he was back in
Norwich in September 1825, after, we may assume, three months' wandering
among gypsies and tinkers. It is written from Willow Lane, and is
apparently to the publishers of _Faustus_:
As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to
take thirty copies of _Faustus_ instead of the money. The book
has been _burnt_ in both the libraries here, and, as it has
been talked about, I may perhaps be able to dispose of some in
the course of a year or so.
This letter clearly demonstrates that the guileless Simpkin and the
equally guileless Marshall had paid Borrow for the right to publish
_Faustus_, and even though part of the payment was met by a bill, I
think we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity there may be
in the Joseph Sell episode. 'Let me know how you sold your manuscript,'
writes Borrow's brother to him so late as the year 1829. And this was
doubtless _Faustus_. The action of the Norwich libraries in burning the
book would clearly have had the sympathy of one of its few reviewers had
he been informed of the circumstance. It is thus that the _Literary
Gazette_ for 16th July 1825 refers to Borrow's little book:
This is another work to which no respectable publisher ought to
have allowed his name to be put. The political allusions and
metaphysics, which may have made it popular among a low class
in Germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and
coarse descriptions for British palates. We have occasionally
publications for the fireside--these are only fit for the fire.
Borrow returned then to Norwich in the autumn of 1825 a disappointed man
so far as concerned the giving of his poetical translations to the
world, from which he had hoped so much. No 'spirited publisher' had been
forthcoming, although Dr. Knapp's researches have unearthed a 'note' in
_The Monthly Magazine_, which, after the fashion of the anticipatory
literary gossip of our day, announced that Olaus Borrow was about to
issue _Legends and Popular Superstitions of the North_, 'in two elegant
volumes.' But this never appeared. Quite a number of Borrow's
translations from divers languages had appeared from time to time,
beginning with a version of Schiller's 'Diver' in _The New Monthly
Magazine_ for 1823, continuing with Stolberg's 'Ode to a Mountain
Torrent' in _The Monthly Magazine_, and including the 'Deceived Merman.'
These he collected into book form and, not to be deterred by the
coldness of heartless London publishers, issued them by subscription.
Three copies of the slim octavo book lie before me, with separate
title-pages:
(1) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. Norwich: Printed and
Published by S. Wilkin, Upper Haymarket, 1826.
(2) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. London: Published by
John Taylor, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 1826.
(3) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow. London: Published by
Wightman and Cramp, 24 Paternoster Row, 1826.[63]
The book contains an introduction in verse by Allan Cunningham, whose
acquaintance Borrow seems to have made in London. It commences:
Sing, sing, my friend, breathe life again
Through Norway's song and Denmark's strain:
On flowing Thames and Forth, in flood,
Pour Haco's war-song, fierce and rude.
Cunningham had not himself climbed very far up the literary ladder in
1825, although he was forty-one years of age. At one time a stonemason
in a Scots village, he had entered Chantrey's studio, and was
'superintendent of the works' to that eminent sculptor at the time when
Borrow called upon him in London, and made an acquaintance which never
seems to have extended beyond this courtesy to the younger man's _Danish
Ballads_. The point of sympathy of course was that in the year 1825
Cunningham had published _The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern_.
But Allan Cunningham, whose _Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters_
is his best remembered book to-day, scarcely comes into this story.
There are four letters from Cunningham to Borrow in Dr. Knapp's _Life_,
and two from Borrow to Cunningham. The latter gave his young friend much
good advice. He told him, for example, to send copies of his book to the
newspapers--to the _Literary Gazette_ in particular, and 'Walter Scott
must not be forgotten.' Dr. Knapp thinks that the newspapers were
forgotten, and that Borrow neglected to send to them. In any case not a
single review appeared. But it is not exactly true that Borrow ignored
the usual practice of authors so entirely as Dr. Knapp supposes. There
is a letter to Borrow among my Borrow Papers from Francis Palgrave the
historian, who became Sir Francis Palgrave seven years later, which
throws some light upon the subject:
To George Borrow
PARLIAMENT ST., _17 June 1826._
MY DEAR SIR,--I am very much obliged to you for the opportunity
that you have afforded me of perusing your spirited and
faithful translating of the Danish ballads. Mr. Allan
Cunningham, who, as you will know, is an ancient minstrel
himself, says that they are more true to the originals and more
truly poetical than any that he has yet seen. I have delivered
one copy to Mr. Lockhart, the new editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, and I hope he will notice it as it deserves. Murray
would probably be inclined to publish your translations.--I
remain, dear sir, your obedient and faithful servant,
FRANCIS PALGRAVE.
It is probable that he did also send a copy to Scott, and it is Dr.
Knapp's theory that 'that busy writer forgot to acknowledge the
courtesy.' It may be that this is so. It has been the source of many a
literary prejudice. Carlyle had a bitterness in his heart against Scott
for much the same cause. Rarely indeed can the struggling author endure
to be ignored by the radiantly successful one. It must have been the
more galling in that a few years earlier Scott had been lifted by the
ballad from obscurity to fame. Borrow did not in any case lack
encouragement from Allan Cunningham: 'I like your Danish ballads much,'
he writes. 'Get out of bed, George Borrow, and be sick or sleepy no
longer. A fellow who can give us such exquisite Danish ballads has no
right to repose.'[64] Borrow, on his side, thanks Cunningham for his
'noble lines,' and tells him that he has got 'half of his _Songs of
Scotland_ by heart.'
Five hundred copies of the _Romantic Ballads_ were printed in Norwich by
S. Wilkin, about two hundred being subscribed for, mainly in that city,
the other three hundred being dispatched to London--to Taylor, whose
name appears on the London title-page, although he seems to have passed
on the book very quickly to Wightman and Cramp, for what reason we are
not informed. Borrow tells us that the two hundred subscriptions of half
a guinea 'amply paid expenses,' but he must have been cruelly
disappointed, as he was doomed to be more than once in his career, by
the lack of public appreciation outside of Norwich. Yet there were many
reasons for this. If Scott had made the ballad popular, he had also
destroyed it for a century--perhaps for ever--by substituting the novel
as the favourite medium for the storyteller. Great ballads we were to
have in every decade from that day to this, but never another 'best
seller' like _Marmion_ or _The Lady of the Lake_. Our _popular_ poets
had to express themselves in other ways. Then Borrow, although his verse
has been underrated by those who have not seen it at its best, or who
are incompetent to appraise poetry, was not very effective here,
notwithstanding that the stories in verse in _Romantic Ballads_ are all
entirely interesting. This fact is most in evidence in a case where a
real poet, not of the greatest, has told the same story. We owe a
rendering of 'The Deceived Merman' to both George Borrow and Matthew
Arnold, but how widely different the treatment! The story is of a merman
who rose out of the water and enticed a mortal--fair Agnes or
Margaret--under the waves; she becomes his wife, bears him children, and
then asks to return to earth. Arriving there she refuses to go back when
the merman comes disconsolately to the churchdoor for her. Here are a
few lines from the two versions, which demonstrate that here at least
Borrow was no poet and that Arnold was a very fine one:
GEORGE BORROW
'Now, Agnes, Agnes list to me,
Thy babes are longing so after thee.'
'I cannot come yet, here must I stay
Until the priest shall have said his say,'
And when the priest had said his say,
She thought with her mother at home she'd stay.
'O Agnes, Agnes list to me,
Thy babes are sorrowing after thee,'
'Let them sorrow and sorrow their fill,
But back to them never return I will.'
MATTHEW ARNOLD
We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisles through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
'Margaret, hist! come quick we are here!
Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long-alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan,'
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were sealed on the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!
It says much for the literary proclivities of Norwich at this period
that Borrow should have had so kindly a reception for his book as the
subscription list implies. At the end of each of Wilkin's two hundred
copies a 'list of subscribers' is given. It opens with the name of the
Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bathurst; it includes the equally familiar names
of the Gurdons, Gurneys, Harveys, Rackhams, Hares (then as now of Stow
Hall), Woodhouses--all good Norfolk or Norwich names that have come down
to our time. Mayor Hawkes, who is made famous in _Lavengro_ by Haydon's
portrait, is there also. Among London names we find 'F. Arden,' which
recalls his friend 'Francis Ardry' in _Lavengro_, John Bowring, Borrow's
new friend, and later to be counted an enemy, Thomas Campbell, Benjamin
Haydon, and John Timbs, But the name that most strikes the eye is that
of 'Thurtell.' Three of the family are among the subscribers, including
Mr. George Thurtell of Eaton, near Norwich, brother of the murderer;
there also is the name of John Thurtell, executed for murder exactly a
year before. This would seem to imply that Borrow had been a long time
collecting these names and subscriptions, and doubtless before the
all-too-famous crime of the previous year he had made Thurtell promise
to become a subscriber, and, let us hope, had secured his half-guinea.
That may account, with so sensitive and impressionable a man as our
author, for the kindly place that Weare's unhappy murderer always had in
his memory. Borrow, in any case, was now, for a few years, to become
more than ever a vagabond. Not a single further appeal did he make to an
unsympathetic literary public for a period of five years at least.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] _Life and Death of Faustus_, p. 59.
[62] _Faustus: His Life, Death, and Doom: a Romance in Prose, translated
from the German_. London: W. Kent and Co., Paternoster Row, 1864,
Borrow's _Life and Death of Faustus_ was reprinted in 1840, again with
Simpkin's imprint. Collating Borrow's translation with the issue of
1864, I find that, with a few trivial verbal alterations, they are
identical--that is to say, the translator of the book of 1864 did not
translate at all, but copied from Borrow's version of _Faustus_, copying
even his errors in translation. There is no reason to suppose that the
individual, whoever he may have been, who prepared the 1864 edition of
_Faustus_ for the Press, had ever seen either the German original or the
French translation of Klinger's book. It is clear that he 'conveyed'
Borrow's translation almost in its entirety.
[63] Allan Cunningham, in a letter to Borrow, says, 'Taylor will
undertake to publish.' But there must have been a change afterwards, for
some of the London copies bear the imprint Wightman and Cramp. In 1913
Jarrold and Sons of Norwich issued a reprint of _Romantic Ballads_
limited to 300 copies, with facsimiles of the manuscript from my Borrow
Papers.
[64] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i 117.
CHAPTER XI
_CELEBRATED TRIALS_ AND JOHN THURTELL
Borrow's first book was _Faustus_, and his second was _Romantic
Ballads_, the one being published, as we have seen, in 1825, the other
in 1826. This chronology has the appearance of ignoring the _Celebrated
Trials_, but then it is scarcely possible to count _Celebrated
Trials_[65] as one of Borrow's books at all. It is largely a
compilation, exactly as the _Newgate Calendar_ and Howell's _State
Trials_ are compilations. In his preface to the work Borrow tells us
that he has differentiated the book from the _Newgate Calendar_[66] and
the _State Trials_[67] by the fact that he had made considerable
compression. This was so, and in fact in many cases he has used the blue
pencil rather than the pen--at least in the earlier volumes. But Borrow
attempted something much more comprehensive than the _Newgate Calendar_
and the _State Trials_ in his book. In the former work the trials range
from 1700 to 1802; in the latter from the trial of Becket in 1163 to
the trial of Thistlewood in 1820. Both works are concerned solely with
this country. Borrow went all over Europe, and the trials of Joan of
Arc, Count Struensee, Major Andre, Count Cagliostro, Queen Marie
Antoinette, the Duc d'Enghien, and Marshal Ney, are included in his
volumes. Moreover, while what may be called state trials are numerous,
including many of the cases in _Howell_, the greater number are of a
domestic nature, including nearly all that are given in the _Newgate
Calendar_. In the first two volumes he has naturally mainly state trials
to record; the later volumes record sordid everyday crimes, and here
Borrow is more at home. His style when he rewrites the trials is more
vigorous, and his narrative more interesting. It is to be hoped that the
exigent publisher, who he assures us made him buy the books for his
compilation out of the L50 that he paid for it, was able to present him
with a set of the _State Trials_, if only in one of the earlier and
cheaper issues of the work than the one that now has a place in every
lawyer's library.[68]
The third volume of _Celebrated Trials_, although it opens with the
trial of Algernon Sidney, is made up largely of crime of the more
ordinary type, and this sordid note continues through the three final
volumes. I have said that _Faustus_ is an allegory of 'man's inhumanity
to man.' That is emphatically, in more realistic form, the
distinguishing feature of _Celebrated Trials_. Amid these records of
savagery, it is a positive relief to come across such a trial as that of
poor Joseph Baretti. Baretti, it will be remembered, was brought to
trial because, when some roughs set upon him in the street, he drew a
dagger, which he usually carried 'to carve fruit and sweetmeats,' and
killed his assailant. In that age, when our law courts were a veritable
shambles, how cheerful it is to find that the jury returned a verdict of
'self-defence.' But then Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Dr. Johnson,
and David Garrick gave evidence to character, representing Baretti as 'a
man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning.' This trial is an
oasis of mercy in a desert of drastic punishment. Borrow carries on his
'trials' to the very year before the date of publication, and the last
trial in the book is that of 'Henry Fauntleroy, Esquire,' for forgery.
Fauntleroy was a quite respectable banker of unimpeachable character, to
whom had fallen at a very early age the charge of a banking business
that was fundamentally unsound. It is clear that he had honestly
endeavoured to put things on a better footing, that he lived simply, and
had no gambling or other vices. At a crisis, however, he forged a
document, in other words signed a transfer of stock which he had no
right to do, the 'subscribing witness' to his power of attorney being
Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and father of the
distinguished poet.[69] Well, Fauntleroy was sentenced to be hanged--and
he was duly hanged at Newgate on 30th October 1824, only thirteen years
before Queen Victoria came to the throne!
Borrow has affirmed that from a study of the _Newgate Calendar_ and the
compilation of his _Celebrated Trials_ he first learned to write genuine
English, and it is a fact that there are some remarkably dramatic
effects in these volumes, although one here withholds from Borrow the
title of 'author' because so much is 'scissors and paste,' and the
purple passages are only occasional. All the same I am astonished that
no one has thought it worth while to make a volume of these dramatic
episodes, which are clearly the work of Borrow, and owe nothing to the
innumerable pamphlets and chap-books that he brought into use. Take such
an episode as that of Schening and Harlin, two young German women, one
of whom pretended to have murdered her infant in the presence of the
other because she madly supposed that this would secure them bread--and
they were starving. The trial, the scene at the execution, the
confession on the scaffold of the misguided but innocent girl, the
respite, and then the execution--these make up as thrilling a narrative
as is contained in the pages of fiction. Assuredly Borrow did not spare
himself in that race round the bookstalls of London to find the material
which the grasping Sir Richard Phillips required from him. He found, for
example, Sir Herbert Croft's volume, _Love and Madness_, the supposed
correspondence of Parson Hackman and Martha Reay, whom he murdered. That
correspondence is now known to be an invention of Croft's. Borrow
accepted it as genuine, and incorporated the whole of it in his story of
the Hackman trial.
But after all, the trial which we read with greatest interest in these
six volumes is that of John Thurtell, because Borrow had known Thurtell
in his youth, and gives us more than one glimpse of him in _Lavengro_
and _The Romany Rye_. We recall, for example, Lavengro's interview with
the magistrate when a visitor is announced:
'In what can I oblige you, sir?' said the magistrate.
'Well, sir; the soul of wit is brevity; we want a place for an
approaching combat between my friend here and a brave from
town. Passing by your broad acres this fine morning we saw a
pightle, which we deemed would suit. Lend us that pightle, and
receive our thanks; 'twould be a favour, though not much to
grant: we neither ask for Stonehenge nor for Tempe.'
My friend looked somewhat perplexed; after a moment, however,
he said, with a firm but gentlemanly air, 'Sir, I am sorry that
I cannot comply with your request.'
'Not comply!' said the man, his brow becoming dark as midnight;
and with a hoarse and savage tone, 'Not comply! why not?'
'It is impossible, sir--utterly impossible!'
'Why so?'
'I am not compelled to give my reasons to you, sir, nor to any
man.'
'Let me beg of you to alter your decision,' said the man, in a
tone of profound respect.
'Utterly impossible, sir; I am a magistrate.'
'Magistrate! then fare-ye-well, for a green-coated buffer and a
Harmanbeck.'
'Sir,' said the magistrate, springing up with a face fiery with
wrath.
But, with a surly nod to me, the man left the apartment; and in
a moment more the heavy footsteps of himself and his companion
were heard descending the staircase.
'Who is that man?' said my friend, turning towards me.
'A sporting gentleman, well known in the place from which I
come.'
'He appeared to know you.'
'I have occasionally put on the gloves with him.'
'What is his name?'
In the original manuscript in my possession the name 'John Thurtell' is
given as the answer to that inquiry. In the printed book the chapter
ends more abruptly as we see. The second reference is even more
dramatic. It occurs when Lavengro has a conversation with his friend the
gypsy Petulengro in a thunderstorm--when all are hurrying to the
prize-fight. Here let Borrow tell his story:
'Look up there, brother!'
I looked up. Connected with this tempest there was one feature
to which I have already alluded--the wonderful colours of the
clouds. Some were of vivid green, others of the brightest
orange, others as black as pitch. The gypsy's finger was
pointed to a particular part of the sky.
'What do you see there, brother?'
'A strange kind of cloud.'
'What does it look like, brother?'
'Something like a stream of blood.'
'That cloud foreshoweth a bloody dukkeripen.'
'A bloody fortune!' said I. 'And whom may it betide?'
'Who knows?' said the gypsy.
Down the way, dashing and splashing, and scattering man, horse,
and cart to the left and right, came an open barouche, drawn by
four smoking steeds, with postillions in scarlet jackets and
leather skull-caps. Two forms were conspicuous in it--that of
the successful bruiser, and of his friend and backer, the
sporting gentleman of my acquaintance.
'His!' said the gypsy, pointing to the latter, whose stern
features wore a smile of triumph, as, probably recognising me
in the crowd, he nodded in the direction of where I stood, as
the barouche hurried by.
There went the barouche, dashing through the rain-gushes, and
in it one whose boast it was that he was equal to 'either
fortune.' Many have heard of that man--many may be desirous of
knowing yet more of him. I have nothing to do with that man's
after life--he fulfilled his dukkeripen. 'A bad, violent man!'
Softly, friend; when thou wouldst speak harshly of the dead,
remember that thou hast not yet fulfilled thy own dukkeripen!
There is yet another reference by Borrow to Thurtell in _The Gypsies of
Spain_, which runs as follows:
When a boy of fourteen I was present at a prize-fight; why
should I hide the truth? It took place on a green meadow,
beside a running stream, close by the old church of E----, and
within a league of the ancient town of N----, the capital of
one of the eastern counties. The terrible Thurtell was present,
lord of the concourse; for wherever he moved he was master, and
whenever he spoke, even when in chains, every other voice was
silent. He stood on the mead, grim and pale as usual, with his
bruisers around. He it was, indeed, who _got up_ the fight, as
he had previously done twenty others; it being his frequent
boast that he had first introduced bruising and bloodshed
amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town
into a den of Jews and metropolitan thieves.
Rarely in our criminal jurisprudence has a murder trial excited more
interest than that of John Thurtell for the murder of Weare--the Gill's
Hill Murder, as it was called. Certainly no murder of modern times has
had so many indirect literary associations. Borrow, Carlyle, Hazlitt,
Walter Scott, and Thackeray are among those who have given it lasting
fame by comment of one kind or another; and the lines ascribed to
Theodore Hook are perhaps as well known as any other memory of the
tragedy:
They cut his throat from ear to ear,
His brain they battered in,
His name was Mr. William Weare,
He dwelt in Lyon's Inn.
Carlyle's division of human beings of the upper classes into 'noblemen,
gentlemen, and gigmen,' which occurs in his essay on Richter, and a
later reference to gig-manhood which occurs in his essay on Goethe's
Works, had their inspiration in an episode in the trial of Thurtell,
when the question being asked, 'What sort of a person was Mr. Weare?'
brought the answer, 'He was always a respectable person.' 'What do you
mean by respectable?' the witness was asked. 'He kept a gig,' was the
reply, which brought the word 'gigmanity' into our language.[70]
I have said that John Thurtell and two members of his family became
subscribers for Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_,[71] and it is certain that
Borrow must often have met Thurtell, that is to say looked at him from a
distance, in some of the scenes of prize-fighting which both affected,
Borrow merely as a youthful spectator, Thurtell as a reckless backer of
one or other combatant. Thurtell's father was an alderman of Norwich
living in a good house on the Ipswich Road when the son's name rang
through England as that of a murderer. The father was born in 1765 and
died in 1846. Four years after his son John was hanged he was elected
Mayor of Norwich, in recognition of his violent ultra-Whig or blue and
white political opinions. He had been nominated as mayor both in 1818
and 1820, but it was perhaps the extraordinary 'advertisement' of his
son's shameful death that gave the citizens of Norwich the necessary
enthusiasm to elect Alderman Thurtell as mayor in 1828. It was in those
oligarchical days a not unnatural fashion to be against the Government.
The feast at the Guildhall on this occasion was attended by four hundred
and sixty guests. A year before John Thurtell was hanged, in 1823, his
father moved a violent political resolution in Norwich, but was
out-Heroded by Cobbett, who moved a much more extreme one over his head
and carried it by an immense majority. It was a brutal time, and there
cannot be a doubt but that Alderman Thurtell, while busy setting the
world straight, failed to bring up his family very well. John, as we
shall see, was hanged; Thomas, another brother, was associated with him
in many disgraceful transactions; while a third brother, George, also a
subscriber, by the way, to Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_, who was a
landscape gardener at Eaton, died in prison in 1848 under sentence for
theft. Apart from a rather riotous and bad bringing up, which may be
pleaded in extenuation, it is not possible to waste much sympathy over
John Thurtell. He had thoroughly disgraced himself in Norwich before he
removed to London. There he got further and further into difficulties,
and one of the many publications which arose out of his trial and
execution was devoted to pointing the moral of the evils of
gambling.[72] It was bad luck at cards, and the loss of much money to
William Weare, who seems to have been an exceedingly vile person, that
led to the murder. Thurtell had a friend named Probert who lived in a
quiet cottage in a byway of Hertfordshire--Gill's Hill, near Elstree. He
suggested to Weare in a friendly way that they should go for a day's
shooting at Gill's Hill, and that Probert would put them up for the
night. Weare went home, collected a few things in a bag, and took a
hackney coach to a given spot, where Thurtell met him with a gig. The
two men drove out of London together. The date was 24th October 1823. On
the high-road they met and passed Probert and a companion named Joseph
Hunt, who had even been instructed by Thurtell to bring a sack with
him--this was actually used to carry away the body--and must therefore
have been privy to the intended murder. By the time the second gig
containing Probert and Hunt arrived near Probert's cottage, Thurtell met
it in the roadway, according to their accounts, and told the two men
that he had done the deed; that he had killed Weare first by
ineffectively shooting him, then by dashing out his brains with his
pistol, and finally by cutting his throat. Thurtell further told his
friends, if their evidence was to be trusted, that he had left the body
behind a hedge. In the night the three men placed the body in a sack and
carried it to a pond near Probert's house and threw it in. The next
night they fished it out and threw it into another pond some distance
away.
Thurtell meanwhile had divided the spoil--some L20, which he said was
all that he had obtained from Weare's body--with his companions. Hunt,
it may be mentioned, afterwards declared his conviction that Thurtell,
when he first committed the murder, had removed his victim's principal
treasure, notes to the value of three or four hundred pounds. Suspicion
was aroused, and the hue and cry raised through the finding by a
labourer of the pistol in the hedge, and the discovery of a pool of
blood on the roadway. Probert promptly turned informer; Hunt also tried
to save himself by a rambling confession, and it was he who revealed
where the body was concealed, accompanying the officers to the pond and
pointing out the exact spot where the corpse would be found. When
recovered the body was taken to the Artichoke Inn at Elstree, and here
the coroner's inquest was held. Meanwhile Thurtell had been arrested in
London, and taken down to Elstree to be present at the inquest. A
verdict of guilty against all three miscreants was given by the
coroner's jury, and Weare's body was buried in Elstree Churchyard.[73]
In January 1824 John Thurtell was brought to trial at Hertford Assizes,
and Hunt also. But first of all there were some interesting proceedings
in the Court of King's Bench, before the Chief Justice and two other
judges,[74] complaining that Thurtell had not been allowed to see his
counsel. And there were other points at issue. Thurtell's counsel moved
for a criminal injunction against the proprietor of the Surrey Theatre
in that a performance had been held there, and was being held, which
assumed Thurtell's guilt, the identical horse and gig being exhibited in
which Weare was supposed to have ridden to the scene of his death.
Finally this was arranged, and a _mandamus_ was granted 'commanding the
admission of legal advisers to the prisoner.' At last the trial came on
at Hertford before Mr. Justice Park. It lasted two days, although the
judge wished to go on all night in order to finish in one. But the
protest of Thurtell, supported by the jury, led to an adjournment.
Probert had been set free and appeared as a witness. The jury gave a
verdict of guilty, and Thurtell and Hunt were sentenced to be hanged,
but Hunt escaped with transportation. Thurtell made his own speech for
the defence, which had a great effect upon the jury, until the judge
swept most of its sophistries away. It was, however, a very able
performance. Thurtell's line of defence was to declare that Hunt and
Probert were the murderers, and that he was a victim of their perjuries.
If hanged, he would be hanged on circumstantial evidence only, and he
gave, with great elaboration, the details of a number of cases where men
had been wrongfully hanged upon circumstantial evidence. His lawyers had
apparently provided him with books containing these examples from the
past, and his month in prison was devoted to this defence, which showed
great ability. The trial took place on 6th January 1824, and Thurtell
was hanged on the 9th, in front of Hertford Gaol: his body was given to
the Anatomical Museum in London. A contemporary report says that
Thurtell, on the scaffold,
fixed his eyes on a young gentleman in the crowd, whom he had
frequently seen as a spectator at the commencement of the
proceedings against him. Seeing that the individual was
affected by the circumstances, he removed them to another
quarter, and in so doing recognised an individual well known in
the sporting circles, to whom he made a slight bow.
The reader of _Lavengro_ might speculate whether that 'young gentleman'
was Borrow, but Borrow was in Norwich in January 1824, his father dying
in the following month. In his _Celebrated Trials_ Borrow tells the
story of the execution with wonderful vividness, and supplies effective
quotations from 'an eyewitness.' Borrow no doubt exaggerated his
acquaintance with Thurtell, as in his _Robinson Crusoe_ romance he was
fully entitled to do for effect. He was too young at the time to have
been much noticed by a man so much his senior. The writer who accepts
Borrow's own statement that he really gave him 'some lessons in the
noble art' is too credulous,[75] and the statement that Thurtell's house
'on the Ipswich Road was a favourite rendezvous for the Fancy' is
unsupported by evidence. Old Alderman Thurtell owned the house in
question, and we find no evidence that he encouraged his son's
predilection for prize-fighting. In _The Romany Rye_ he gives his friend
the jockey as his authority for the following apologia:
The night before the day he was hanged at H----, I harnessed a
Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had
offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought
me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours
I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at
H---- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail--the
scaffold--and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in
the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the
midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I
came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted,
'God Almighty bless you, Jack!' The dying man turned his pale
grim face towards me--for his face was always somewhat grim, do
you see--nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, 'All
right, old chap.' The next moment--my eyes water. He had a high
heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost his
half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the
throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had.
But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never
did half the bad things laid to his charge.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence
from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825_. In six volumes. London:
Printed for Geo. Knight & Lacey, Paternoster Row, 1825. Price L3, 12s.
in boards.
[66] _The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactors Recording
Register_. By William Jackson. Six vols. 1802.
[67] Cobbett and Howell's _State Trials_. In thirty-three volumes and
index, 1809 to 1828. The last volume, apart from the index, was actually
published the year after Borrow's _Celebrated Trials_, that is, in 1826;
but the last trial recorded was that of Thistlewood in 1820. The editors
were William Cobbett, Thomas Bayly Howell, and his son, Thomas Jones
Howell.
[68] The following note appeared in _The Monthly Magazine_ for 1st July
1824 (vol. lvii. p. 557):
'A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is
printing in five volumes. It will include all famous cases, from that of
Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of John Thurtell;
and those connected with foreign as well as English jurisprudence. Mr.
Borrow, the editor, has availed himself of all the resources of the
English, German, French, and Italian languages; and his work, including
from 150 to 200 of the most interesting cases on record, will appear in
October next. The editor of the preceding has ready for the press a
_Life of Faustus, his Death, and Descent into Hell_, which will also
appear early in the next winter.'
[69] Did the poet, who had an interest in criminology, know of his
father's quite innocent association with the Fauntleroy trial?
[70] Another witness attained fame by her answer to the inquiry, 'Was
supper postponed?' with the reply, 'No, it was pork.'
[71] I have already stated (ch. x. p. 111) that three members of the
Thurtell family subscribed for _Romantic Ballads_. I should have
hesitated to include John Thurtell among the subscribers, as he was
hanged two years before the book was published, had I not the high
authority of Mr. Walter Rye, but recently Mayor of Norwich, and the
honoured author of a _History of Norfolk Families_ and other works. Mr.
Rye, to whom I owe much of the information concerning the Thurtells
published here, tells me that there was only this one, 'J. Thurtell.'
Borrow had doubtless been appealing for subscribers for a very long
time. I cannot, however, accept Mr. Rye's suggestion to me that Borrow
left Norwich because he was mixed up with Thurtell in ultra-Whig or
Radical scrapes, the intimidation and 'cooping' of Tory voters being a
characteristic of the elections of that day with the wilder spirits, of
whom Thurtell was doubtless one. Borrow's sympathies were with the Tory
party from his childhood up--following his father.
[72] _The Fatal Effects of Gambling Exemplified in the Murder of Wm.
Weare and the Trial and Fate of John Thurtell, the Murderer, and his
Accomplices_. London: Thomas Kelly, Paternoster Row. 1824. I have a very
considerable number of Weare pamphlets in my possession, one of them
being a record of the trial by Pierce Egan, the author of _Life in
London_ and _Boxiana_. Walter Scott writes in his diary of being
absorbed in an account of the trial, while he deprecates John Bull's
maudlin sentiment over 'the pitiless assassin.' That was in 1826, but in
1828 Scott went out of his way when travelling from London to Edinburgh,
to visit Gill's Hill, and describes the scene of the tragedy very
vividly. Lockhart's _Life_, ch. lxxvi.
[73] Elstree had already had its association with a murder case, for
Martha Reay, the mistress of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, was
buried in the church in 1779. She was the mother of several of the
Earl's children, one of whom was Basil Montagu. She was a beautiful
woman and a delightful singer, and was appearing on the stage at Covent
Garden, which theatre she was leaving on the night of 7th April 1779,
when the Reverend James Hackman, Vicar of Wiveton in Norfolk, shot her
through the head with a pistol in a fit of jealous rage. Hackman was
hanged at Tyburn, Boswell attending the funeral. Croft's supposed
letters between Hackman and Martha Reay, which made a great sensation
when issued under the title of _Love and Madness_, are now known to be
spurious (see ch. x. p. 115). Martha Reay was buried in the chancel of
Elstree Church, but Lord Sandwich, who, although he sent word to
Hackman, who asked his forgiveness, that 'he had robbed him of all
comfort in this world,' took no pains to erect a monument over her
remains. On 28th February 1913 the present writer visited Elstree in the
interest of this book. He found that the church of Martha Reay and
William Weare had long disappeared. A new structure dating from 1853 had
taken its place. The present vicar, he was told, has located the spot
where Weare was buried, and it coincides with the old engravings. Martha
Reay's remains, at the time of the rebuilding, were removed to the
churchyard, and lie near the door of the vestry, lacking all memorial.
The Artichoke Inn has also been rebuilt, and 'Weare's Pond,' which alone
recalls the tragedy to-day, where the body was found, has contracted
into a small pool. It is, however, clearly authentic, the brook, as
pictured in the old trial-books, now running under the road.
[74] One of them was Mr. Justice Best, of whom it is recorded that a
certain index had the reference line, 'Mr. Justice Best: his Great
Mind,' which seemed to have no justification in the mental qualities of
that worthy, but was explained when one referred to the context and saw
that 'Mr. Justice Best said that he had a great mind to commit the
witness for contempt.'
[75] See an introduction by Thomas Seccombe to _Lavengro_ in 'Everyman's
Library.'
CHAPTER XII
BORROW AND THE FANCY
George Borrow had no sympathy with Thurtell the gambler. I can find no
evidence in his career of any taste for games of hazard or indeed for
games of any kind, although we recall that as a mere child he was able
to barter a pack of cards for the Irish language. But he had certainly
very considerable sympathy with the notorious criminal as a friend and
patron of prize-fighting. This now discredited pastime Borrow ever
counted a virtue. Was not his God-fearing father a champion in his way,
or, at least, had he not in open fight beaten the champion of the
moment, Big Ben Brain? Moreover, who was there in those days with blood
in his veins who did not count the cultivation of the Fancy as the
noblest and most manly of pursuits! Why, William Hazlitt, a prince among
English essayists, whose writings are a beloved classic in our day,
wrote in _The New Monthly Magazine_ in these very years[76] his own
eloquent impression, and even introduces John Thurtell more than once as
'Tom Turtle,' little thinking then of the fate that was so soon to
overtake him. What could be more lyrical than this:
Reader, have you ever seen a fight? If not, you have a pleasure
to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the
Gas-man and Bill Neate.
And then the best historian of prize-fighting, Henry Downes Miles, the
author of _Pugilistica_, has his own statement of the case. You will
find it in his monograph on John Jackson, the pugilist who taught Lord
Byron to box, and received the immortality of an eulogistic footnote in
_Don Juan_. Here is Miles's defence:
No small portion of the public has taken it for granted that
pugilism and blackguardism are synonymous. It is as an antidote
to these slanderers that we pen a candid history of the boxers;
and taking the general habits of men of humble origin (elevated
by their courage and bodily gifts to be the associates of those
more fortunate in worldly position), we fearlessly maintain
that the best of our boxers present as good samples of honesty,
generosity of spirit, goodness of heart and humanity, as an
equal number of men of any class of society.
From Samuel Johnson to George Bernard Shaw literary England has had a
kindness for the pugilist, although the magistrate has long, and
rightly, ruled him out as impossible. Borrow carried his enthusiasm
further than any, and no account of him that concentrates attention upon
his accomplishment as a distributor of Bibles and ignores his delight in
fisticuffs, has any grasp of the real George Borrow. Indeed it may be
said, and will be shown in the course of our story, that Borrow entered
upon Bible distribution in the spirit of a pugilist rather than that of
an evangelist. But to return to Borrow's pugilistic experiences. He
claims, as we have seen, occasionally to have put on the gloves with
John Thurtell. He describes vividly enough his own conflicts with the
Flaming Tinman and with Petulengro. His one heroine, Isopel Berners,
had 'Fair Play and Long Melford' as her ideal, 'Long Melford' being the
good right-handed blow with which Lavengro conquered the Tinman. Isopel,
we remember, had learned in Long Melford Union to 'Fear God and take
your own part!'
George Borrow, indeed, was at home with the whole army of
prize-fighters, who came down to us like the Roman Caesars or the Kings
of England in a noteworthy procession, their dynasty commencing with
James Fig of Thame, who began to reign in 1719, and closing with Tom
King, who beat Heenan in 1863, or with Jem Mace, who flourished in a
measure until 1872. With what zest must Borrow have followed the account
of the greatest battle of all, that between Heenan and Tom Sayers at
Farnborough in 1860, when it was said that Parliament had been emptied
to patronise a prize-fight; and this although Heenan complained that he
had been chased out of eight counties. For by this time, in spite of
lordly patronage, pugilism was doomed, and the more harmless boxing had
taken its place. 'Pity that corruption should have crept in amongst
them,' sighed Lavengro in a memorable passage, in which he also has his
paean of praise for the bruisers of England:
Let no one sneer at the bruisers of England--what were the
gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its
palmiest days, compared to England's bruisers?[77]
[Illustration: THE FAMILY OF JASPER PETULENGRO
'Jasper' or Ambrose Smith was a very old man when this picture was taken
by Mr. Andrew Innes of Dunbar in 1878. In both pictures we see
Sanspirella, Jasper's wife, seated and holding a child. We are indebted
to Mr. Charles Spence of Dunbar for these interesting groups.]
Yes: Borrow was never hard on the bruisers of England, and followed
their achievements, it may be said, from his cradle to his grave. His
beloved father had brought him up, so to speak, upon memories of one who
was champion before George was born--Big Ben Brain of Bristol. Brain,
although always called 'Big Ben,' was only 5 feet 10 in. high. He was
for years a coal porter at a wharf off the Strand. It was in 1791 that
Ben Brain won the championship which placed him upon a pinnacle in the
minds of all robust people. The Duke of Hamilton then backed him against
the then champion, Tom Johnson, for five hundred guineas. 'Public
expectation,' says _The Oracle_, a contemporary newspaper, 'never was
raised so high by any pugilistic contest; great bets were laid, and it
is estimated L20,000 was wagered on this occasion.' Ben Brain was the
undisputed conqueror, we are told, in eighteen rounds, occupying no more
than twenty-one minutes.[78] Brain died in 1794, and all the biographers
tell of the piety of his end, so that Borrow's father may have read the
Bible to him in his last moments, as Borrow avers,[79] but I very much
doubt the accuracy of the following:
Honour to Brain, who four months after the event which I have
now narrated was champion of England, having conquered the
heroic Johnson. Honour to Brain, who, at the end of other four
months, worn out by the dreadful blows which he had received in
his manly combats, expired in the arms of my father, who read
the Bible to him in his latter moments--Big Ben Brain.
We have already shown that Brain lived for four years after his fight
with Johnson. Perhaps the fight in Hyde Park between Borrow's father and
Ben, as narrated in _Lavengro_, is all romancing. It makes good reading
in any case, as does Borrow's eulogy of some of his own contemporaries
of the prize-ring:
So the bruisers of England are come to be present at the grand
fight speedily coming off; there they are met in the precincts
of the old town, near the field of the chapel, planted with
tender saplings at the restoration of sporting Charles, which
are now become venerable elms as high as many a steeple. There
they are met at a fitting rendezvous, where a retired coachman,
with one leg, keeps an hotel and a bowling-green. I think I now
see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst
hundreds of people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them
with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though
it lasts only for a day. There's Cribb, the champion of
England, and perhaps the best man in England; there he is, with
his huge, massive figure, and face wonderfully like that of a
lion. There is Belcher, the younger, not the mighty one, who is
gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most scientific
pugilist that ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to be,
I won't say what. He appears to walk before me now, as he did
that evening, with his white hat, white greatcoat, thin genteel
figure, springy step, and keen, determined eye. Crosses him,
what a contrast! grim, savage Shelton, who has a civil word for
nobody, and a hard blow for anybody--hard! one blow, given with
the proper play of his athletic arm, will unsense a giant.
Yonder individual, who strolls about with his hands behind him,
supporting his brown coat lappets, under-sized, and who looks
anything but what he is, is the king of the light weights, so
called--Randall! the terrible Randall, who has Irish blood in
his veins--not the better for that, nor the worse; and not far
from him is his last antagonist, Ned Turner, who, though beaten
by him, still thinks himself as good a man, in which he is,
perhaps, right, for it was a near thing; and 'a better
shentleman,' in which he is quite right, for he is a Welshman.
But how shall I name them all? They were there by dozens, and
all tremendous in their way. There was Bulldog Hudson, and
fearless Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam the Jew.
There was Black Richmond--no, he was not there, but I knew him
well; he was the most dangerous of blacks, even with a broken
thigh. There was Purcell, who could never conquer till all
seemed over with him. There was--what! shall I name thee last?
ay, why not? I believe that thou art the last of all that
strong family still above the sod, where mayest thou long
continue--true piece of English stuff, Tom of Bedford--sharp as
winter, kind as spring.
All this is very accurate history. We know that there really was this
wonderful gathering of the bruisers of England assembled in the
neighbourhood of Norwich in July 1820, that is to say, sixteen miles
away at North Walsham. More than 25,000 men, it is estimated, gathered
to see Edward Painter of Norwich fight Tom Oliver of London for a purse
of a hundred guineas. There were three Belchers, heroes of the
prize-ring, but Borrow here refers to Tom, whose younger brother, Jem,
had died in 1811 at the age of thirty. Tom Belcher died in 1854 at the
age of seventy-one. Thomas Cribb was champion of England from 1805 to
1820. One of Cribb's greatest fights was with Jem Belcher in 1807, when,
in the forty-first and last round, as we are told by the chroniclers,
'Cribb proving the stronger man put in two weak blows, when Belcher,
quite exhausted, fell upon the ropes and gave up the combat.' Cribb had
a prolonged career of glory, but he died in poverty in 1848. Happier was
an earlier champion, John Gully, who held the glorious honour for three
years--from 1805 to 1808. Gully turned tavern-keeper, and making a
fortune out of sundry speculations, entered Parliament as member for
Pontefract, and lived to be eighty years of age.
It is necessary to dwell upon Borrow as the friend of prize-fighters,
because no one understands Borrow who does not realise that his real
interests were not in literature but in action. He would have liked to
join the army but could not obtain a commission. And so he had to be
content with such fighting as was possible. He cared more for the men
who could use their fists than for those who could but wield the pen. He
would, we may be sure, have rejoiced to know that many more have visited
the tomb of Tom Sayers in Highgate Cemetery than have visited the tomb
of George Eliot in the same burial-ground. A curious moral obliquity
this, you may say. But to recognise it is to understand one side of
Borrow, and an interesting side withal.
FOOTNOTES:
[76] _The New Monthly Magazine_, February 1822, 'The Fight.' Reprinted
among William Hazlitt's _Fugitive Writings_ in vol. xii. of his
Collected Works (Dent, 1904).
[77] _Lavengro_ ch. xxvi. 'It is as good as Homer,' says Mr. Augustine
Birrell, quoting the whole passage in his _Res Judicatae_. Mr. Birrell
tells a delightful story of an old Quaker lady who was heard to say at a
dinner-table, when the subject of momentary conversation was a late
prize-fight: 'Oh, pity it was that ever corruption should have crept in
amongst them'--she had just been reading _Lavengro_.
[78] _Pugilistica_, vol. i. 69.
[79] _Lavengro_, ch. i.
CHAPTER XIII
EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE
There has been much nonsense written concerning what has been called the
'veiled period' of George Borrow's life. This has arisen from a letter
which Richard Ford of the _Handbook for Travellers in Spain_ wrote to
Borrow after a visit to him at Oulton in 1844. Borrow was full of his
projected _Lavengro_, the idea of which he outlined to his friends. He
was a genial man in those days, on the wave of a popular success.
Was not _The Bible in Spain_ passing merrily from edition to
edition! Borrow, it is clear, told Ford that he was writing his
'Autobiography'--he had no misgiving then as to what he should call
it--and he evidently proposed to end it in 1825 and not in 1833, when
the Bible Society gave him his real chance in life. Ford begged him, in
letters that came into Dr. Knapp's possession, and from which he quotes
all too meagrely, not to 'drop a curtain' over the eight years
succeeding 1825. 'No doubt,' says Ford, 'it will excite a mysterious
interest,' but then he adds in effect it will lead to a wrong
construction being put upon the omission. Well, there can be but one
interpretation, and that not an unnatural one. Borrow had a very rough
time during these eight years. His vanity was hurt, and no wonder. It
seems a small matter to us now that Charles Dickens should have been
ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood. Genius has a
right to a penurious, and even to a sordid, boyhood. But genius has no
right to a sordid manhood, and here was George 'Olaus' Borrow, who was
able to claim the friendship of William Taylor, the German scholar; who
was able to boast of his association with sound scholastic foundations,
with the High School at Edinburgh and the Grammar School at Norwich; who
was a great linguist and had made rare translations from the poetry of
many nations, starving in the byways of England and of France. What a
fate for such a man that he should have been so unhappy for eight years;
should have led the most penurious of roving lives, and almost certainly
have been in prison as a common tramp.[80] It was all very well to
romance about a poverty-stricken youth. But when youth had fled there
ceased to be romance, and only sordidness was forthcoming. From his
twenty-third to his thirty-first year George Borrow was engaged in a
hopeless quest for the means of making a living. There is, however, very
little mystery. Many incidents of each of these years are revealed at
one or other point. His home, to which he returned from time to time,
was with his mother at the cottage in Willow Lane, Norwich. Whether he
made sufficient profit out of a horse, as in _The Romany Rye_, to enable
him to travel upon the proceeds, as Dr. Knapp thinks, we cannot say. Dr.
Knapp is doubtless right in assuming that during this period he led 'a
life of roving adventure,' his own authorised version of his career at
the time, as we have quoted from the biography in his handwriting from
_Men of the Time_. But how far this roving was confined to England, how
far it extended to other lands, we do not know. We are, however,
satisfied that he starved through it all, that he rarely had a penny in
his pocket. At a later date he gave it to be understood at times that he
had visited the East, and that India had revealed her glories to him. We
do not believe it. Defoe was Borrow's master in literature, and he
shared Defoe's right to lie magnificently on occasion. Dr. Knapp has
collected the various occasions upon which Borrow referred to his
supposed earlier travels abroad prior to his visit to St. Petersburg in
1833. The only quotation that carries conviction is an extract from a
letter to his mother from St. Petersburg, where he writes of 'London,
Paris, Madrid, and other capitals which I have visited.' I am not,
however, disinclined to accept Dr. Knapp's theory that in 1826-7 Borrow
did travel to Paris and through certain parts of Southern Europe. It is
strange, all the same, that adventures which, had they taken place,
would have provoked a thousand observations, provoked but two or three
passing references. Yet there is no getting over that letter to his
mother, nor that reference in _The Gypsies of Spain_, where he
says--'Once in the south of France, when I was weary, hungry, and
penniless....' Borrow certainly did some travel in these years, but it
was sordid, lacking in all dignity--never afterwards to be recalled. For
the most part, however, he was in England. We know that Borrow was in
Norwich in 1826, for we have seen him superintending the publication of
the _Romantic Ballads_ by subscription in that year. In that year also
he wrote the letter to Haydon, the painter, to say that he was ready to
sit for him, but that he was 'going to the south of France in a little
better than a fortnight.'[81] We know also that he was in Norwich in
1827, because it was then, and not in 1818 as described in _Lavengro_,
that he 'doffed his hat' to the famous trotting stallion Marshland
Shales, when that famous old horse was exhibited at Tombland Fair on the
Castle Hill. We meet him next as the friend of Dr. Bowring. The letters
to Bowring we must leave to another chapter, but they commence in 1829
and continue through 1830 and 1831. Through them all Borrow shows
himself alive to the necessity of obtaining an appointment of some kind,
and meanwhile he is hard at work upon his translations from various
languages, which, in conjunction with Dr. Bowring, he is to issue as
_Songs of Scandinavia_. Dr. Knapp thinks that in 1829 he made the
translation of the _Memoirs of Vidocq_, which appeared in that year with
a short preface by the translator.[82] But these little volumes bear no
internal evidence of Borrow's style, and there is no external evidence
to support the assumption that he had a hand in their publication. His
occasional references to Vidocq are probably due to the fact that he had
read this little book.
I have before me one very lengthy manuscript of Borrow's of this period.
It is dated December 1829, and is addressed, 'To the Committee of the
Honourable and Praiseworthy Association, known by the name of the
Highland Society.'[83] It is a proposal that they should publish in two
thick octavo volumes a series of translations of the best and most
approved poetry of the ancient and modern Scots-Gaelic bards. Borrow was
willing to give two years to the project, for which he pleads 'with no
sordid motive.' It is a dignified letter, which will be found in one of
Dr. Knapp's appendices--so presumably Borrow made two copies of it. The
offer was in any case declined, and so Borrow passed from disappointment
to disappointment during these eight years, which no wonder he desired,
in the coming years of fame and prosperity, to veil as much as possible.
The lean years in the lives of any of us are not those upon which we
delight to dwell, or upon which we most cheerfully look back.[84]
FOOTNOTES:
[80] Only thus can we explain Borrow's later declaration that he had
_four_ times been in prison.
[81] I quote this letter in another chapter. Mr. Herbert Jenkins thinks
(_Life_, ch. v. p. 88) that Borrow was in Paris during the revolution of
1830, because of a picturesque reference to the war correspondents there
in _The Bible in Spain_. But Borrow never hesitated to weave little
touches of romance from extraneous writers into his narratives, and may
have done so here. I have visited most of the principal capitals of the
world, he says in _The Bible in Spain_. This we would call a palpable
lie were not so much of _The Bible in Spain_ sheer invention.
[82] _Memoirs of Vidocq, Principal Agent of the French Police until
1827, and now proprietor of the paper manufactory at St. Mande_. Written
by himself. Translated from the French. In Four Volumes. London:
Whittaker, Treacher and Arnot, Ave Maria Lane, 1829.
[83] This with other documents I am about to present to the Borrow
Museum, Norwich.
[84] In 1830 Borrow had another disappointment. He translated _The
Sleeping Bard_ from the Welsh. This also failed to find a publisher. It
was issued in 1860, under which date we discuss it.
CHAPTER XIV
SIR JOHN BOWRING
'Poor George.... I wish he were making money. He works hard and remains
poor'--thus wrote John Borrow to his mother in 1830 from Mexico, and it
disposes in a measure of any suggestion of mystery with regard to five
of those years that he wished to veil. They were not spent, it is clear,
in rambling in the East, as he tried to persuade Colonel Napier many
years later. They were spent for the most part in diligent attempt at
the capture of words, in reading the poetry and the prose of many lands,
and in making translations of unequal merit from these diverse tongues.
This is indisputably brought home to me by the manuscripts in my
possession, supplemented by those that fell to Dr. Knapp. These
manuscripts represent years of work. Borrow has been counted a
considerable linguist, and he had assuredly a reading and speaking
acquaintance with a great many languages. But this knowledge was
acquired, as all knowledge is, with infinite trouble and patience. I
have before me hundreds of small sheets of paper upon which are written
English words and their equivalents in some twenty or thirty languages.
These serve to show that Borrow learnt a language as a small boy in an
old-fashioned system of education learns his Latin or French--by writing
down simple words--'father,' 'mother,' 'horse,' 'dog,' and so on with
the same word in Latin or French in front of them. Of course Borrow had
a superb memory and abundant enthusiasm, and so he was enabled to add
one language to another and to make his translations from such books as
he could obtain, with varied success. I believe that nearly all the
books that he handled came from the Norwich library, and when Mrs.
Borrow wrote to her elder son to say that George was working hard, as we
may fairly assume, from the reply quoted, that she did, she was
recalling this laborious work at translation that must have gone on for
years. We have seen the first fruit in the translation from the
German--or possibly from the French--of Klinger's _Faustus_; we have
seen it in _Romantic Ballads_ from the Danish, the Irish, and the
Swedish. Now there really seemed a chance of a more prosperous
utilisation of his gift, for Borrow had found a zealous friend who was
prepared to go forward with him in this work of giving to the English
public translations from the literatures of the northern nations. This
friend was Dr. John Bowring, who made a very substantial reputation in
his day.
Bowring has told his own story in a volume of _Autobiographical
Recollections_,[85] a singularly dull book for a man whose career was at
once so varied and so full of interest. He was born at Exeter in 1792 of
an old Devonshire family, and entered a merchant's office in his native
city on leaving school. He early acquired a taste for the study of
languages, and learnt French from a refugee priest precisely in the way
in which Borrow had done. He also acquired Italian, Spanish, German and
Dutch, continuing with a great variety of other languages. Indeed, only
the very year after Borrow had published _Faustus_, he published his
_Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain_, and the year after Borrow's
_Romantic Ballads_ came Bowring's _Servian Popular Poetry_. With such
interest in common it was natural that the two men should be brought
together, but Bowring had the qualities which enabled him to make a
career for himself and Borrow had not. In 1811, as a clerk in a London
mercantile house, he was sent to Spain, and after this his travels were
varied. He was in Russia in 1820, and in 1822 was arrested at Calais and
thrown into prison, being suspected by the Bourbon Government of
abetting the French Liberals. Canning as Foreign Minister took up his
cause, and he was speedily released. He assisted Jeremy Bentham in
founding _The Westminster Review_ in 1824. Meanwhile he was seeking
official employment, and in conjunction with Mr. Villiers, afterwards
Earl of Clarendon, and that ambassador to Spain who befriended Borrow
when he was in the Peninsula, became a commissioner to investigate the
commercial relations between England and France. After the Reform Bill
of 1832 Bowring was frequently a candidate for Parliament, and was
finally elected for Bolton in 1841. In the meantime he assisted Cobden
in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1838. Having suffered
great monetary losses in the interval, he applied for the appointment of
Consul at Canton, of which place he afterwards became Governor, being
knighted in 1854. At one period of his career at Hong Kong his conduct
was made the subject of a vote of censure in Parliament, Lord
Palmerston, however, warmly defending him. Finally returning to England
in 1862, he continued his literary work with unfailing zest. He died at
Exeter, in a house very near that in which he was born, in 1872. His
extraordinary energies cannot be too much praised, and there is no
doubt but that in addition to being the possessor of great learning he
was a man of high character. His literary efforts were surprisingly
varied. There are at least thirty-six volumes with his name on the
title-page, most of them unreadable to-day; even such works, for
example, as his _Visit to the Philippine Isles_ and _Siam and the
Siamese_, which involved travel into then little-known lands. Perhaps
the only book by him that to-day commands attention is his translation
of Chamisso's _Peter Schlemihl_. The most readable of many books by him
into which I have dipped is his _Servian Popular Poetry_ of 1827, in
which we find interesting stories in verse that remind us of similar
stories from the Danish in Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_ published only
the year before. The extraordinary thing, indeed, is the many points of
likeness between Borrow and Bowring. Both were remarkable linguists;
both had spent some time in Spain and Russia; both had found themselves
in foreign prisons. They were alike associated in some measure with
Norwich--Bowring through friendship with Taylor--and I might go on to
many other points of likeness or of contrast. It is natural, therefore,
that the penniless Borrow should have welcomed acquaintance with the
more prosperous scholar. Thus it is that, some thirty years later,
Borrow described the introduction by Taylor:
The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he
met at the table of a certain Anglo-Germanist an individual,
apparently somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and
weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of
vision, and a large pair of spectacles. This person, who had
lately come from abroad, and had published a volume of
translations, had attracted some slight notice in the literary
world, and was looked upon as a kind of lion in a small
provincial capital. After dinner he argued a great deal, spoke
vehemently against the Church, and uttered the most desperate
Radicalism that was perhaps ever heard, saying, he hoped that
in a short time there would not be a king or queen in Europe,
and inveighing bitterly against the English aristocracy, and
against the Duke of Wellington in particular, whom he said, if
he himself was ever president of an English republic--an event
which he seemed to think by no means improbable--he would hang
for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he
had perpetrated in Spain. Being informed that the writer was
something of a philologist, to which character the individual
in question laid great pretensions, he came and sat down by
him, and talked about languages and literature. The writer, who
was only a boy, was a little frightened at first.[86]
The quarrels of authors are frequently amusing but rarely edifying, and
this hatred of Bowring that possessed the soul of poor Borrow in his
later years is of the same texture as the rest. We shall never know the
facts, but the position is comprehensible enough. Let us turn to the
extant correspondence[87] which, as far as we know, opened when Borrow
paid what was probably his third visit to London in 1829:
To Dr. John Bowring
17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY. [_Dec. 6, 1829._]
MY DEAR SIR,--Lest I should intrude upon you when you are busy,
I write to inquire when you will be unoccupied. I wish to shew
you my translation of _The Death of Balder_, Ewald's most
celebrated production,[88] which, if you approve of, you will
perhaps render me some assistance in bringing forth, for I
don't know many publishers. I think this will be a proper time
to introduce it to the British public, as your account of
Danish literature will doubtless cause a sensation. My friend
Mr. R. Taylor has my _Kaempe Viser_, which he has read and
approves of; but he is so very deeply occupied, that I am
apprehensive he neglects them: but I am unwilling to take them
out of his hands, lest I offend him. Your letting me know when
I may call will greatly oblige,--Dear Sir, your most obedient
servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY. [_Dec. 28, 1829._][89]
MY DEAR SIR,--I trouble you with these lines for the purpose of
submitting a little project of mine for your approbation. When
I had last the pleasure of being at yours, you mentioned, that
we might at some future period unite our strength in composing
a kind of Danish Anthology. You know, as well as I, that by far
the most remarkable portion of Danish poetry is comprised in
those ancient popular productions termed _Kaempe Viser_, which I
have translated. Suppose we bring forward at once the first
volume of the Danish Anthology, which should contain the heroic
and supernatural songs of the _K. V._, which are certainly the
most interesting; they are quite ready for the press with the
necessary notes, and with an introduction which I am not
ashamed of. The second volume might consist of the Historic
songs and the ballads and Romances, this and the third volume,
which should consist of the modern Danish poetry, and should
commence with the celebrated 'Ode to the Birds' by Morten
Borup, might appear in company at the beginning of next season.
To Oelenslager should be allotted the principal part of the
fourth volume; and it is my opinion that amongst his minor
pieces should be given a good translation of his Aladdin, by
which alone he has rendered his claim to the title of a great
poet indubitable. A proper Danish Anthology cannot be contained
in less than 4 volumes, the literature being so copious. The
first volume, as I said before, might appear instanter, with no
further trouble to yourself than writing, if you should think
fit, a page or two of introductory matter.--Yours most truly,
my dear Sir,
GEORGE BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, _Decr. 31, 1829._
MY DEAR SIR,--I received your note, and as it appears that you
will not be disengaged till next Friday evening (this day week)
I will call then. You think that no more than two volumes can
be ventured on. Well! be it so! The first volume can contain 70
choice _Kaempe Viser_; viz. all the heroic, all the supernatural
ballads (which two classes are by far the most interesting),
and a few of the historic and romantic songs. The sooner the
work is advertised the better, _for I am terribly afraid of
being forestalled in the Kaempe 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. I
am quite ready with the first volume, which might appear by the
middle of February (the best time in the whole season), and if
we unite our strength in the second, I think we can produce
something worthy of fame, for we shall have plenty of matter to
employ talent upon.--Most truly yours,
GEORGE BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY, _Jany. 14, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I approve of the prospectus in every respect; it
is business-like, and there is nothing flashy in it. I do not
wish to suggest one alteration. I am not idle: I translated
yesterday from your volume 3 longish _Kaempe Visers_, among
which is the 'Death of King Hacon at Kirkwall in Orkney,' after
his unsuccessful invasion of Scotland. To-day I translated 'The
Duke's Daughter of Skage,' a noble ballad of 400 lines. When I
call again I will, with your permission, retake Tullin and
attack _The Surveyor_. Allow me, my dear Sir, to direct your
attention to Oelenschlaeger's _St. Hems Aftenspil_, which is the
last in his Digte of 1803. It contains his best lyrics, one or
two of which I have translated. It might, I think, be contained
within 70 pages, and I could translate it in 3 weeks. Were we
to give the whole of it we should gratify Oelenschlaeger's wish
expressed to you, that one of his larger pieces should appear.
But it is for you to decide entirely on what _is_ or what is
_not_ to be done. When you see the _foreign_ editor I should
feel much obliged if you would speak to him about my reviewing
Tegner, and enquire whether a _good_ article on Welsh poetry
would be received. I have the advantage of not being a
Welshman. I would speak the truth, and would give translations
of some of the best Welsh poetry; and I really believe that my
translations would not be the worst that have been made from
the Welsh tongue.--Most truly yours,
G. BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
17 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY, _Jany. 7, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I send the prospectus[90] for your inspection and
for the correction of your master hand. I have endeavoured to
assume a Danish style, I know not whether I have been
successful.
Alter, I pray you, whatever false logic has crept into it, find
a remedy for its incoherencies, and render it fit for its
intended purpose. I have had for the two last days a rising
headache which has almost prevented me doing anything. I sat
down this morning and translated a hundred lines of the
_May-day_; it is a fine piece.--Yours most truly, my dear Sir,
GEORGE BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM STREET, _Jany. 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I write this to inform you that I am at No. 7
Museum St., Bloomsbury. I have been obliged to decamp from
Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution having been
sent into the house, and I thought myself happy in escaping
with my things. I have got half of the Manuscript from Mr.
Richard Taylor, but many of the pages must be rewritten owing
to their being torn, etc. He is printing the prospectus, but a
proof has not yet been struck off. Send me some as soon as you
get them.[91] I will send one with a letter to _H. G._--Yours
eternally,
G. BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM STREET, _Jany. 25, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I find that you called at mine, I am sorry that I
was not at home. I have been to Richard Taylor, and you will
have the prospectuses this afternoon. I have translated
Ferroe's 'Worthiness of Virtue' for you, and the two other
pieces I shall translate this evening, and you shall have them
all when I come on Wednesday evening. If I can at all assist
you in anything, pray let me know, and I shall be proud to do
it.--Yours most truly,
G. BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM STREET, _Feby. 20, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--To my great pleasure I perceive that the books
have all arrived safe. But I find that, instead of an
Icelandic Grammar, you have lent me an _Essay on the origin of
the Icelandic Language_, which I here return. Thorlakson's
Grave-ode is superlatively fine, and I translated it this
morning, as I breakfasted. I have just finished a translation
of Baggesen's beautiful poem, and I send it for your
inspection.--Most sincerely yours,
GEORGE BORROW.
_P.S._--When I come we will make the modifications of this
piece, if you think any are requisite, for I have various
readings in my mind for every stanza. I wish you a very
pleasant journey to Cambridge, and hope you will procure some
names amongst the literati.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM STREET, _March 9, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I have thought over the Museum matter which we
were talking about last night, and it appears to me that it
would be the very thing for me, provided that it could be
accomplished. I should feel obliged if you would deliberate
upon the best mode of proceeding, so that when I see you again
I may have the benefit of your advice.--Yours most sincerely,
GEORGE BORROW.
To this letter Bowring replied the same day, and his reply is preserved
by Dr. Knapp. He promised to help in the Museum project 'by every sort
of counsel and creation.' 'I should rejoice to see you _nicked_ in the
British Museum,' he concludes.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM STREET, _Friday Evening, May 21, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I shall be happy to accept your invitation to
meet Mr. Grundtvig to-morrow morning. As at present no doubt
seems to be entertained of Prince Leopold's accepting the
sovereignty of Greece, would you have any objection to write to
him concerning me? I should be very happy to go to Greece in
his service. I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic
capacity, and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such
situations have been long since filled up; I wish to go in a
military one, for which I am qualified by birth and early
habits. You might inform the Prince that I have been for years
on the Commander-in-Chief's List for a commission, but that I
have not had sufficient interest to procure an appointment. One
of my reasons for wishing to reside in Greece is, that the
mines of Eastern Literature would be acceptable to me. I should
soon become an adept in Turkish, and would weave and transmit
to you such an anthology as would gladden your very heart. As
for _The Songs of Scandinavia_, all the ballads would be ready
before departure, and as I should take books, I would in a few
months send you translations of the modern lyric poetry. I hope
this letter will not displease you. I do not write it from
_flightiness_, but from thoughtfulness. I am uneasy to find
myself at four and twenty drifting on the sea of the world, and
likely to continue so.--Yours most sincerely,
G. BORROW.
This letter is printed in part by Dr. Knapp, and almost in its entirety
by Mr. Herbert Jenkins. Dr. Knapp has much sound worldly reflection upon
its pathetic reference to 'drifting on the sea of the world.' If only,
he suggests, Borrow had not received that unwise eulogy from Allan
Cunningham about his 'exquisite Danish ballads,' if only he had listened
to Richard Ford's advice--which came too late in any case--'Avoid poetry
and translations of poets'--how much better it would have been. But
Borrow had not the makings in him of a 'successful' man, and we who
enjoy his writings to-day must be contented with the reflection that he
had just the kind of life-experience which gave us what he had to give.
Here Borrow holds his place among the poets--an unhappy race. In any
case the British Museum appointment was not for him, nor the military
career. Had one or other fallen to his lot, we might have had much
literary work of a kind, but certainly not _Lavengro_. To return to the
correspondence:
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM ST., _June 1, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I send you _Hafbur and Signe_ to deposit in the
Scandinavian Treasury, and I should feel obliged by your doing
the following things.
1. Hunting up and lending me your Anglo-Saxon Dictionary as
soon as possible, for Grundtvig wishes me to assist him in the
translation of some Anglo-Saxon Proverbs.
2. When you write to Finn Magnussen to thank him for his
attention, pray request him to send the _Feeroiska Quida_, or
popular songs of Ferroe, and also _Broder Run's Historie, or
the History of Friar Rush_, the book which Thiele mentions in
his _Folkesagn_.--Yours most sincerely,
G. BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM STREET, _June 7, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I have looked over Mr. Grundtvig's manuscripts.
It is a very long affair, and the language is Norman-Saxon. L40
would not be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so they
told him at the museum. However, as I am doing nothing
particular at present, and as I might learn something from
transcribing it, I would do it for L20. He will call on you
to-morrow morning, and then if you please you may recommend me.
The character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think
you can answer for my competency.--Yours most truly,
G. BORROW.
_P.S._--Do not lose the original copies of the Danish
translations which you sent to the _Foreign Quarterly_, for I
have no duplicates. I think _The Roses_ of Ingemann was sent;
it is not printed; so if it be not returned, we shall have to
re-translate it.
To Dr. John Bowring
7 MUSEUM ST., _Sept. 14, 1830._
MY DEAR SIR,--I return you the Bohemian books. I am going to
Norwich for some short time as I am very unwell, and hope that
cold bathing in October and November may prove of service to
me. My complaints are, I believe, the offspring of ennui and
unsettled prospects. I have thoughts of attempting to get into
the French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve
under Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign. I shall leave
London next Sunday and will call some evening to take my leave;
I cannot come in the morning, as early rising kills me.--Most
sincerely yours,
G. BORROW.
To Dr. John Bowring
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _Sept. 11, 1831._
MY DEAR SIR,--I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind
letter of the 2nd inst., and though you have not been
successful in your application to the Belgian authorities in my
behalf, I know full well that you did your utmost, and am only
sorry that at my instigation you attempted an impossibility.
The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the
opinion of the great Cyrus, who gives this advice to his
captains: 'Take no heed from what countries ye fill up your
ranks, but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those
particularly who are of your own country, but those of merit.'
The Belgians will only have such recruits as are born in
Belgium, and when we consider the _heroic_ manner in which the
native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign
in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for
their determination? It is rather singular, however, that,
resolved as they are to be served only by themselves, they
should have sent for 50,000 Frenchmen to clear their country of
a handful of Hollanders, who have generally been considered the
most unwarlike people in Europe, but who, if they had had fair
play given them, would long ere this time have replanted the
Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians
what they deserve to be--hewers of wood and drawers of water.
And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important
part of your letter. You ask me whether I wish to purchase a
commission in the British Service, because in that case you
would speak to the Secretary at War about me. I must inform
you, therefore, that my name has been for several years upon
the list _for the purchase_ of a commission, and I have never
yet had sufficient interest to procure an appointment. If I can
do nothing better I shall be very glad to purchase; but I will
pause two or three months before I call upon you to fulfil your
kind promise. It is believed that the militias will be embodied
in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and,
provided I can obtain a commission in one of them and they are
kept in service, it would be better than spending L500 upon one
in the line. I am acquainted with the colonels of the two
Norfolk regiments, and I dare say that neither of them would
have any objection to receive me. If they are not embodied I
will most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you
recommend me that, being well grounded in Arabic, and having
some talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps
in one of our Eastern colonies. I flatter myself that I could
do a great deal in the East provided I could once get there,
either in a civil or military capacity. There is much talk at
present about translating European books into the two great
languages, the Arabic and Persian. Now I believe that with my
enthusiasm for those tongues I could, if resident in the East,
become in a year or two better acquainted with them than any
European has been yet, and more capable of executing such a
task. Bear this in mind, and if, before you hear from me again,
you should have any opportunity to recommend me as a proper
person to fill any civil situation in those countries, or to
attend any expedition thither, I pray you to lay hold of it,
and no conduct of mine shall ever give you reason to repent of
it.--I remain, my dear Sir, your most obliged and obedient
servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
_P.S._--Present my best remembrances to Mrs. Bowring and to
Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved. There is
now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing
within twenty miles of this place. I have lately been wandering
about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the
peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement. I have
repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest-field swear that
not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be eaten, and
that they would as lieve be hanged as live. I am afraid all
this will end in a famine and a rustic war.
Borrow's next letter to Bowring that has been preserved is dated 1835
and was written from Portugal. With that I will deal when we come to
Borrow's travels in the Peninsula. Here it sufficeth to note that during
the years of Borrow's most urgent need he seems to have found a kind
friend if not a very zealous helper in the 'Old Radical' whom he came to
hate so cordially.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] _Autobiographical Reflections of Sir John Bowring. With a Brief
Memoir by Lewin B. Bowring_. Henry S. King and Co., London, 1877.
[86] _The Romany Rye_ Appendix, ch. xi.
[87] Kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John
Bowring's grandson. The rights which I hold through the executors of
George Borrow's stepdaughter, Mrs. MacOubrey, over the Borrow
correspondence enable me to publish in their completeness letters which
three previous biographers, all of whom have handled the correspondence,
have published mainly in fragments.
[88] The manuscript of _The Death of Balder_ came into the hands of Mr.
William Jarrold of Norwich through Mr. Webber of Ipswich, who purchased
a large mass of Borrow manuscripts that were sold at Borrow's death,
most of which were re-purchased by Dr. Knapp. His firm, Jarrold and
Sons, issued _The Death of Balder, from the Danish of Johannes Ewald_,
in 1889.
[89] This and the previous letter are undated, but bear the careful
endorsement of Dr. John Bowring, as he then was, with the date of
receipt, presumably the day _after_ the letters were written.
[90]
'PROSPECTUS
It is proposed to publish, in Two Volumes Octavo Price to Subscribers
L1, 1s., to Non Subscribers L1, 4s.
THE SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA
Translated by
Dr. BOWRING and Mr. BORROW.
Dedicated to the King of Denmark, by permission of His Majesty.
* * * * *
The First Volume will contain about One Hundred Specimens of the Ancient
Popular Ballads of North-Western Europe, arranged under the heads of
Heroic, Supernatural, Historical, and Domestic Poems.
The Second Volume will represent the Modern School of Danish Poetry,
from the time of Tullin, giving the most remarkable lyrical productions
of Ewald, Oelenschlaeger, Baggesen, Ingemann, and many others.'
This four-page leaflet contains two blank pages for lists of
subscribers, who apparently did not come, and the project seems to have
been abandoned.
[91] The prospectus, already quoted, bears the imprint: Printed by
Richard Taylor, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
CHAPTER XV
BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY
That George Borrow should have become an agent for the Bible Society,
then in the third decade of its flourishing career, has naturally
excited doubts as to his moral honesty. The position was truly a
contrast to an earlier ideal contained in the letter to his Norwich
friend, Roger Kerrison, that we have already given, in which, with all
the zest of a Shelley, he declares that he intends to live in London,
'write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion, and get myself prosecuted.'
But that was in 1824, and Borrow had suffered great tribulation in the
intervening eight years. He had acquired many languages, wandered far
and written much, all too little of which had found a publisher. There
was plenty of time for his religious outlook to have changed in the
interval, and in any case Borrow was no theologian. The negative outlook
of 'Godless Billy Taylor,' and the positive outlook of certain
Evangelical friends with whom he was now on visiting terms, were of
small account compared with the imperative need of making a living--and
then there was the passionate longing of his nature for a wider
sphere--for travelling activity which should not be dependent alone upon
the vagabond's crust. What matter if, as Harriet Martineau--most
generous and also most malicious of women, with much kinship with Borrow
in temperament--said, that his appearance before the public as a devout
agent of the Bible Society excited a 'burst of laughter from all who
remembered the old Norwich days'; what matter if another 'scribbling
woman,' as Carlyle called such strident female writers as were in vogue
in mid-Victorian days--Frances Power Cobbe--thought him 'insincere';
these were unable to comprehend the abnormal heart of Borrow, so
entirely at one with Goethe in _Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre_:
Bleibe nicht am Boden heften,
Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus!
Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kraften,
Ueberall sind sie zu Haus;
Wo wir uns der Sonne freuen,
Sind wir jede Sorge los;
Dass wir uns in ihr zerstreuen,
Darum ist die Welt so gross.[92]
Here was Borrow's opportunity indeed. Verily I believe that it would
have been the same had it been a society for the propagation of the
writings of Defoe among the Persians. With what zest would Borrow have
undertaken to translate _Moll Flanders_ and _Captain Singleton_ into the
languages of Hafiz and Omar! But the Bible Society was ready to his
hand, and Borrow did nothing by halves. A good hater and a staunch
friend, he was loyal to the Bible Society in no half-hearted way, and
not the most pronounced quarrel with forces obviously quite out of tune
with his nature led to any real slackening of that loyalty. In the end a
portion of his property went to swell the Bible Society's funds.[93]
When Borrow became one of its servants, the Bible Society was only in
its third decade. It was founded in the year 1804, and had the names of
William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, and Zachary Macaulay on its first
committee. To circulate the authorised version of the Bible without note
or comment was the first ideal that these worthy men set before them;
never to the entire satisfaction of the great printing organisations,
which already had a considerable financial interest in such a
circulation. For long years the words 'Sold under cost price' upon the
Bibles of the Society excited mingled feelings among those interested in
the book trade[94]. The Society's first idea was limited to Bibles in
the English tongue. This was speedily modified. A Bible Society was set
up in Nuremberg to which money was granted by the parent organisation. A
Bible in the Welsh language was circulated broadcast through the
Principality, and so the movement grew. From the first it had one of its
principal centres in Norwich, where Joseph John Gurney's house was open
to its committee, and at its annual gatherings at Earlham his sister
Elizabeth Fry took a leading part, while Wilberforce, Charles Simeon,
the famous preacher, and Legh Richmond, whose _Dairyman's Daughter_
Borrow failed to appreciate, were of the company. 'Uncles Buxton and
Cunningham are here,' we find one of Joseph John Gurney's daughters
writing in describing a Bible Society gathering. This was John
Cunningham, rector of Harrow, and it was his brother who helped Borrow
to his position in connection with the Society, as we shall see. At the
moment of these early meetings Borrow is but a boy, meeting Joseph
Gurney on the banks of the river near Earlham, and listening to his
discourse upon angling. The work of the Bible Society in Russia may be
said to have commenced when one John Paterson of Glasgow, who had been a
missionary of the Congregational body, went to St. Petersburg during
those critical months of 1812 that Napoleon was marching into Russia.
Paterson indeed, William Canton tells us,[95] was 'one of the last to
behold the old Tartar wall and high brick towers' and other splendours
of the Moscow which in a month or two were to be consumed by the flames.
Paterson was back again in St. Petersburg before the French were at the
gates of Moscow, and it is noteworthy that while Moscow was burning and
the Czar was on his way to join his army, this remarkable Scot was
submitting to Prince Galitzin a plan for a Bible Society in St.
Petersburg, and a memorial to the Czar thereon:
The plan and memorial were examined by the Czar on the 18th (of
December); with a stroke of his pen he gave his sanction--'So
be it, Alexander'; and as he wrote, the last tattered remnants
of the Grand Army struggled across the ice of the Niemen.[96]
The Society was formed in January 1813, and when the Czar returned to
St. Petersburg in 1815, after the shattering of Napoleon's power, he
authorised a new translation of the Bible into modern Russian. From
Russia it was not a far cry, where the spirit of evangelisation held
sway, to Manchuria and to China. To these remote lands the Bible Society
desired to send its literature. In 1822 the gospel of St. Matthew was
printed in St. Petersburg in Manchu. Ten years later the type of the
whole New Testament in that language was lying in the Russian capital.
'All that was required was a Manchu scholar to see the work through the
press'.[97] Here came the chance for Borrow. At this period there
resided at Oulton Hall, Suffolk, but a few miles from Norwich, a family
of the name of Skepper, Edward and Anne his wife, with their two
children, Breame and Mary. Mary married in 1817 one Henry Clarke, a
lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He died a few months afterwards of
consumption. Of this marriage there was a posthumous child, Henrietta
Mary, born but two months after her father's death. Mary Clarke, as she
now was, threw herself with zest into all the religious enthusiasms of
the locality, and the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of St. Margaret's,
Lowestoft, was one of her friends. Borrow had met Mary Clarke on one of
his visits to Lowestoft, and she had doubtless been impressed with his
fine presence, to say nothing of the intelligence and varied learning of
the young man. The following note, the first communication I can find
from Borrow to his future wife, indicates how matters stood at the time:
To Mrs. Clarke
ST. GILES, NORWICH, 22 _October 1832._
DEAR MADAM,--According to promise I transmit you a piece of
Oriental writing, namely the tale of Blue Beard, translated
into Turkish by myself. I wish it were in my power to send you
something more worthy of your acceptance, but I hope you will
not disdain the gift, insignificant though it be. Desiring to
be kindly remembered to Mr. and Mrs. Skepper and the remainder
of the family,--I remain, dear Madam, your most obedient humble
servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
That Borrow owed his introduction to Mr. Cunningham to Mrs. Clarke is
clear, although Cunningham, in his letter to the Bible Society urging
the claims of Borrow, refers to the fact that a 'young farmer' in the
neighbourhood had introduced him. This was probably her brother, Breame
Skepper. Dr. Knapp was of the opinion that Joseph John Gurney obtained
Borrow his appointment, but the recently published correspondence of
Borrow with the Bible Society makes it clear that Cunningham wrote--on
27th December 1832--recommending Borrow to the secretary, the Rev.
Andrew Brandram. How little he knew of Borrow is indicated by the fact
that he referred to him as 'independent in circumstances.' Brandram told
Caroline Fox many years afterwards that Gurney had effected the
introduction, but this was merely a lapse of memory. In fact we find
Borrow asking to be allowed to meet Gurney before his departure. In any
case he has himself told us, in one of the brief biographies of himself
that he wrote, that he promptly walked to London, covering the whole
distance of 112 miles in twenty-seven hours, and that his expenses
amounted to 5-1/2d. laid out in a pint of ale, a half-pint of milk, a
roll of bread, and two apples. He reached London in the early morning,
called at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl Street, and was
kindly received by Andrew Brandram and Joseph Jowett, the two
secretaries. He was asked if he would care to learn Manchu, and go to
St. Petersburg. He was given six months for the task, and doubtless also
some money on account. He returned to Norwich more luxuriously--by mail
coach. In June 1833 we find a letter from Borrow to Jowett, dated from
Willow Lane, Norwich, and commencing, 'I have mastered Manchu, and I
should feel obliged by your informing the committee of the fact, and
also my excellent friend, Mr. Brandram.' A long reply to this by Jowett
is among my Borrow Papers, but the Bible Society clearly kept copies of
its letters, and a portion of this one has been printed.[98] It shows
that Borrow went through much heart-burning before his destiny was
finally settled. At last he was again invited to London, and found
himself as one of two candidates for the privilege of going to Russia.
The examination consisted of a Manchu hymn, of which Borrow's version
seems to have proved the more acceptable, and he afterwards printed it
in his _Targum_. Finally, on the 5th of July 1833, Borrow received a
letter from Jowett offering him the appointment, with a salary of L200 a
year and expenses. The letter contained his first lesson in the then
unaccustomed discipline of the Evangelical vocabulary. Borrow had spoken
of the prospect of becoming 'useful to the Deity, to man, and to
himself.'
'Doubtless you meant,' commented Jowett, 'the prospect of glorifying
God,' and Jowett frankly tells him that his tone of confidence in
speaking of himself 'had alarmed some of the excellent members of our
committee.' Borrow adapted himself at once, and is congratulated by
Jowett in a later communication upon the 'truly Christian' spirit of his
next letter.
By an interesting coincidence there was living in Norwich at the moment
when Borrow was about to leave it, a man who had long identified himself
with good causes in Russia, and had lived in that country for a
considerable period of his life. John Venning[99] was born in Totnes in
1776, and he is buried in the Rosary Cemetery at Norwich, where he died
in 1858, after twenty-eight years' residence in that city. He started
for St. Petersburg four years after John Howard had died, ostensibly on
behalf of the commercial house with which he was associated, but with
the intention of carrying on the work of that great man in prison
reform. Alexander I. was on the throne, and he made Venning his friend,
frequently conversing with him upon religious subjects. He became the
treasurer of a society for the humanising of Russian prisons; but when
Nicholas became Czar in 1825 Venning's work became more difficult,
although the Emperor was sympathetic. Venning returned to England in
1830, and thus opportunely, in 1833, was able to give his
fellow-townsman letters of introduction to Prince Galitzin and other
Russian notables, so that Borrow was able to set forth under the
happiest auspices--with an entire change of conditions from those eight
years of semi-starvation that he was now to leave behind him for ever.
Borrow left London for St. Petersburg on 31st July 1833, not forgetting
to pay his mother before he left the L17 he had had to borrow during his
time of stress. Always devoted to his mother, Borrow sent her sums of
money at intervals from the moment the power of earning came to him. We
shall never know, we can only surmise something of the self-sacrificing
devotion of that mother during the years in which Borrow had failed to
find remunerative work. Wherever he wandered there had always been a
home in the Willow Lane cottage. It is probable that much the greater
part of the period of his eight years of penury was spent under her
roof. Yet we may be sure that the good mother never once reproached her
son. She had just that touch of idealism in her character that made for
faith and hope. In any case never more was Borrow to suffer penury, or
to be a burden on his mother. Henceforth she was to be his devoted care
to her dying day.
FOOTNOTES:
[92]
Keep not standing, fixed and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout heart, are still at home.
In each land the sun does visit;
We are gay whate'er betide.
To give room for wandering is it,
That the world was made so wide.
--Carlyle's translation.
[93] Through the will of his stepdaughter, Henrietta MacOubrey.
[94] Although the Bible Society then as now purchased all the sheets of
its Bibles from the three authorised sources of production--the King's
printers who hold a patent, and the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, which hold licences to print--these exclusive privileges
being granted in order that the text of the Bible should be maintained
with accuracy.
[95] Let me here acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to that fine
work _The History of the British Foreign Bible Society_ (1904-10,
Murray), by William Canton, which is worthy of the accomplished author
of _The Invisible Playmate_. An earlier history of the Society, by the
Rev. George Browne, published in 1859, has necessarily been superseded
by Mr. Canton's book.
[96] Canton's _History of the Bible Society_, vol. i. 195.
[97] _Ibid._, vol. ii. 127.
[98] In _Letters from George Borrow to the Bible Society_ (Hodder and
Stoughton), 1911.
[99] See _Memoirs of John Venning, Esq., formerly of St. Petersburgh and
late of Norwich. With Numerous Notices from his Manuscripts relative to
the Imperial Family of Russia_. By Thulia S. Henderson. London: Knight
and Son, 1862. Borrow's name is not once mentioned, but there is a
slight reference to him on pages 148 and 149.
CHAPTER XVI
ST. PETERSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD
Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Luebeck to Travemuende, whence he
went by sea to St. Petersburg, where he arrived on the twentieth of
August 1833. He was back in London in September 1835, and thus it will
be seen that he spent two years in Russia. After the hard life he had
led, everything was now rose-coloured. 'Petersburg is the finest city in
the world,' he wrote to Mr. Jowett; 'neither London nor Paris nor any
other European capital which I have visited has sufficient pretensions
to enter into comparison with it in respect to beauty and grandeur.' But
the striking thing about Borrow in these early years was his capacity
for making friends. He had not been a week in St. Petersburg before he
had gained the regard of one, William Glen, who, in 1825, had been
engaged by the Bible Society to translate the Old Testament into
Persian. The clever Scot, of whom Borrow was informed by a competent
judge that he was 'a Persian scholar of the first water,' was probably
too heretical for the Society which recalled him, much to his chagrin.
'He is a very learned man, but of very simple and unassuming manners,'
wrote Borrow to Jowett.[100] His version of the _Psalms_ appeared in
1830, and of _Proverbs_ in 1831. Thus he was going home in despair, but
seems to have had good talk on the way with Borrow in St. Petersburg. In
1845 his complete Old Testament in Persian appeared in Edinburgh. This
William Glen has been confused with another William Glen, a law student,
who taught Carlyle Greek, but they had nothing in common. Borrow and
Carlyle could not possibly have had friends in common. Borrow was drawn
towards this William Glen by his enthusiasm for the Persian language.
But Glen departed out of his life very quickly. Hasfeld, who entered it
about the same time, was to stay longer. Hasfeld was a Dane, now
thirty-three years of age, who, after a period in the Foreign Office at
Copenhagen, had come to St. Petersburg as an interpreter to the Danish
Legation, but made quite a good income as a professor of European
languages in cadet schools and elsewhere. The English language and
literature would seem to have been his favourite topic. His friendship
for Borrow was a great factor in Borrow's life in Russia and elsewhere.
If Borrow's letters to Hasfeld should ever turn up, they will prove the
best that he wrote. Hasfeld's letters to Borrow were preserved by him.
Three of them are in my possession. Others were secured by Dr. Knapp,
who made far too little use of them. They are all written in Danish on
foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but
if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a
more human Borrow than the correspondence with the friends at Earl
Street reveals:
ST. PETERSBURG, _6/18 November 1836._
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Much water has run through the Neva since I
last wrote to you, my last letter was dated 5/17th April; the
last letter I received from you was dated Madrid, 23rd May, and
I now see with regret that it is still unanswered; it is,
however, a good thing that I have not written as often to you
as I have thought about you, for otherwise you would have
received a couple of letters daily, because the sun never sets
without you, my lean friend, entering into my imagination. I
received the Spanish letter a day or two before I left for
Stockholm, and it made the journey with me, for it was in my
mind to send you an epistle from Svea's capital, but there were
so many petty hindrances that I was nearly forgetting myself,
let alone correspondence. I lived in Stockholm as if each day
were to be my last, swam in champagne, or rested in girls'
embraces. You doubtless blush for me; you may do so, but don't
think that that conviction will murder my almost shameless
candour, the only virtue which I possess, in a superfluous
degree. In Sweden I tried to be lovable, and succeeded, to the
astonishment of myself and everybody else. I reaped the reward
on the most beautiful lips, which only too often had to
complain that the fascinating Dane was faithless like the foam
of the sea and the ice of spring. Every wrinkle which
seriousness had impressed on my face vanished in joy and
smiles; my frozen heart melted and pulsed with the rapid beat
of gladness; in short, I was not recognisable. Now I have come
back to my old wrinkles, and make sacrifice again on the altar
of friendship, and when the incense, this letter, reaches you,
then prove to me your pleasure, wherever you may be, and let an
echo of friendship's voice resound from Granada's Alhambra or
Sahara's deserts. But I know that you, good soul, will write
and give me great pleasure by informing me that you are happy
and well; when I get a letter from you my heart rejoices, and I
feel as if I were happy, and that is what happiness consists
of. Therefore, let your soldierlike letters march promptly to
their place of arms--paper--and move in close columns to St.
Petersburg, where they will find warm winter quarters. I have
received a letter from my correspondent in London, Mr. Edward
Thomas Allan, No. 11 North Audley St.; he informs me that my
manuscript has been promenading about, calling on publishers
without having been well received; some of them would not even
look at it, because it smelt of Russian leather; others kept it
for three or six weeks and sent it back with 'Thanks for the
loan.' They probably used it to get rid of the moth out of
their old clothes. It first went to Longman and Co.'s,
Paternoster Row; Bull of Hollis St.; Saunders and Otley,
Conduit St.; John Murray of Albemarle St., who kept it for
three weeks; and finally it went to Bentley of New Burlington
St., who kept it for SIX weeks and returned it; now it is to
pay a visit to a Mr. Colburn, and if he won't have the
abandoned child, I will myself care for it. If this finds you
in London, which is quite possible, see whether you can do
anything for me in this matter. Thank God, I shall not buy
bread with the shillings I perhaps may get for a work which has
cost me seventy nights, for I cannot work during the day. In
_The Athenaenum_,[101] No. 436, issued on the 3rd March this
year, you will find an article which I wrote, and in which you
are referred to; in the same paper you will also find an
extract from my translation. I hope that article will meet with
your approbation. Ivan Semionewitch sends his kind regards to
you. I dare not write any more, for then I should make the
letter a double one, and it may perhaps go after you to the
continent; if it reaches you in England, write AT ONCE to your
sincere friend,
J. P. HASFELD.
My address is, Stieglitz and Co., St. Petersburg.
ST. PETERSBURG, _9th/21st July 1842._
DEAR FRIEND,--I do not know how I shall begin, for you have
been a long time without any news from me, and the fault is
mine, for the last letter was from you; as a matter of fact, I
did produce a long letter for you last year in September, but
you did not get it, because it was too long to send by post and
I had no other opportunity, so that, as I am almost tired of
the letter, you shall, nevertheless, get it one day, for
perhaps you will find something interesting in it; I cannot do
so, for I never like to read over my own letters. Six days ago
I commenced my old hermit life; my sisters left on the 3rd/15th
July, and are now, with God's help, in Denmark. They left with
the French steamer _Amsterdam_, and had two Russian ladies with
them, who are to spend a few months with us and visit the sea
watering-places. These ladies are the Misses Koladkin, and have
learnt English from me, and became my sisters' friends as soon
as they could understand each other. My sisters have also made
such good progress in your language that they would be able to
arouse your astonishment. They read and understand everything
in English, and thank you very much for the pleasure you gave
them with your 'Targum'; they know how to appreciate 'King
Christian stood by the high mast,' and everything which you
have translated of languages with which they are acquainted.
They have not had more than sixty real lessons in English.
After they had taken ten lessons, I began, to their great
despair, to speak English, and only gave them a Danish
translation when it was absolutely necessary. The result was
that they became so accustomed to English that it scarcely ever
occurs to them to speak Danish together; when one cannot get
away from me one must learn from me. The brothers and sisters
remaining behind are now also to go to school when they get
home, for they have recognised how pleasant it is to speak a
language which servants and those around one do not understand.
During all the winter my dearest thought was how, this summer,
I was going to visit my long, good friend, who was previously
lean and who is now fat, and how I should let him fatten me a
little, so as to be able to withstand better the long winter in
Russia; I would then in the autumn, like the bears, go into my
winter lair fat and sleek, and of all these romantic thoughts
none has materialised, but I have always had the joy of
thinking them and of continuing them; I can feel that I smile
when such ideas run through my mind. I am convinced that if I
had nothing else to do than to employ my mind with pleasant
thoughts, I should become fat on thoughts alone. The principal
reason why this real pleasure journey had to be postponed, was
that my eldest sister, Hanna, became ill about Easter, and it
was not until the end of June that she was well enough to
travel. I will not speak about the confusion which a sick lady
can cause in a bachelor's house, occasionally I almost lost my
patience. For the amount of roubles which that illness cost I
could very well have travelled to America and back again to St.
Petersburg; I have, however, the consolation in my reasonable
trouble that the money which the doctor and chemist have
received was well spent. The lady got about again after she had
caused me and Augusta just as much pain, if not more, than she
herself suffered. Perhaps you know how amiable people are when
they suffer from liver trouble; I hope you may never get it. I
am not anxious to have it either, for you may do what the devil
you like for such persons, and even then they are not
satisfied. We have had great festivals here by reason of the
Emperor's marriage; I did not move a step to see the pageantry;
moreover, it is difficult to find anything fresh in it which
would afford me enjoyment; I have seen illuminations and
fireworks, the only attractive thing there was must have been
the King of Prussia; but as I do not know that good man, I have
not very great interest in him either; nor, so I am told, did
he ask for me, and he went away without troubling himself in
the slightest about me; it was a good thing that I did not
bother him.
J. P. H.
ST. PETERSBURG, _26th April/8th May 1858._
DEAR FRIEND,--I thank you for your friendly letter of the 12th
April, and also for the invitation to visit you. I am thinking
of leaving Russia soon, perhaps permanently, for twenty-seven
years are enough of this climate. It is as yet undecided when I
leave, for it depends on business matters which must be
settled, but I hope it will be soon. What I shall do I do not
yet know either, but I shall have enough to live on; perhaps I
shall settle down in Denmark. It is very probable that I shall
come to London in the summer, and then I shall soon be at
Yarmouth with you, my old true friend. It was a good thing that
you at last wrote, for it would have been too bad to extend
your disinclination to write letters even to me. The last
period one stays in a country is strange, and I have many
persons whom I have to separate from. If you want anything done
in Russia, let me know promptly; when I am in movement I will
write, so that you may know where I am, and what has become of
me. I have been ill nearly all the winter, but now feel daily
better, and when I get on the water I shall soon be well. We
have already had hot and thundery weather, but it has now
become cool again. I have already sold the greater part of my
furniture, and am living in furnished apartments which cost me
seventy roubles per month; I shall soon be tired of that. I am
expecting a letter from Denmark which will settle matters, and
then I can get ready and spread my wings to get out into the
world, for this is not the world, but Russia. I see you have
changed houses, for last year you lived at No. 37. With kindest
regards to your dear ones, I am, dear friend, yours sincerely,
JOHN P. HASFELD.[102]
FOOTNOTES:
[100] Darlow's _George Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society_, page 76.
There are twenty letters written by Borrow from Russia to the Bible
Society, contained in T. H. Darlow's _Letters of George Borrow to the
British and Foreign Bible Society_, several of which, in the original
manuscripts, are in my possession. There are as many also in Knapp's
_Life of Borrow_, and these last are far more interesting, being
addressed to his mother and other friends. I have several other letters
concerned with Borrow's Bible Society work in Russia, but they are not
inspiring. Borrow's correspondence with Hasfeld, of which Knapp gives us
glimpses, is more bracing, and the two or three letters from that
admirable Dane that are in my collection I am glad to print here.
[101] In the _Athenaeum_ for March 5, 1836, there is a short, interesting
letter, dated from St. Petersburg, signed J. P. H. This was obviously
written by Hasfeld. 'Here your journal is found in every well furnished
library,' he writes, 'and yet not a passing word do you ever bestow upon
us,' and then, to the extent of nearly five columns, he discourses upon
the present state of Russian literature, and has very much to say about
his friend George Borrow:
'Will it be thought ultra-barbarian if I mention that Mr. George Borrow
concluded, in the autumn, the publication of the New Testament in the
Mandchou language? Remember, if you please, that he was sent here for
the express purpose by the British and Foreign Bible Society of London.
The translation was made for the Society by Mr. Lipoftsof, a gentleman
in the service of the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs, who has
spent the greater part of an industrious life in Peking and the East. I
can only say that it is a beautiful edition of an Oriental work, that it
is printed with great care on a fine imitation of Chinese paper made on
purpose. At the outset, Mr. Borrow spent weeks and months in the
printing-office to make the compositors acquainted with the intricate
Mandchou types, and that, as for the contents, I am assured by
well-informed persons, that this translation is remarkable for the
correctness and fidelity with which it has been executed.'
Then Hasfeld goes on to describe Borrow's small volume, _Targum_: 'The
exquisite delicacy with which he has caught and rendered the beauties of
his well-chosen originals,' he says, 'is a proof of his learning and
genius. The work is a pearl in literature, and, like pearls, it derives
value from its scarcity, for the whole edition was limited to about a
hundred copies.' Then Hasfeld gives two poems from the book, which
really justify his eulogy, for the poetic quality of _Targum_ has not
had justice done to it by Borrow's later critics.
[102] The name is frequently spelt 'Hasfeldt,' but I have followed the
spelling not only of Hasfeld's signature in his letters in my
possession, but also of the printed addressed envelope which he was in
the habit of forwarding to his friends in his letters.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MANCHU BIBLE--_TARGUM_--_THE TALISMAN_
The Bible Society wanted the Bible to be set up in the Manchu language,
the official language of the Chinese Court and Government. A Russian
scholar named Lipoftsof, who had spent twenty years in China, undertook
in 1821 to translate the New Testament into Manchu for L560. Lipoftsof
had done his work in 1826, and had sent two manuscript copies to London.
In 1832 the Rev. William Swan of the London Missionary Society in
passing through St. Petersburg discovered a transcript of a large part
of the Old and New Testament in Manchu, made by one Pierot, a French
Jesuit, many years before. This transcript was unavailable, but a second
was soon afterwards forthcoming for free publication if a qualified
Manchu scholar could be found to see it through the Press. Mr. Swan's
communication of these facts to the Bible Society in London gave Borrow
his opportunity. It was his task to find the printers, buy the paper,
and hire the qualified compositors for setting the type. It must be
admitted Borrow worked hard for his L200 a year. First he had to ask the
diplomatists for permission from the Russian Government, not now so
friendly to British Missionary zeal. The Russian Bible Society had been
suppressed in 1826. He succeeded here. Then he had to continue his
studies in the Manchu language. He had written from Norwich to Mr.
Jowett on 9th June 1833, 'I have mastered Manchu,' but on 20th January
1834 we find him writing to the same correspondent: 'I pay about six
shillings, English, for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the perfect
acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent wishes.'[103] Then he
found the printers--a German firm, Schultz and Beneze--who probably
printed the two little books of Borrow's own for him as a 'make weight.'
He purchased paper for his Manchu translation with an ability that would
have done credit to a modern newspaper manager. Every detail of these
transactions is given in his letters to the Bible Society, and one
cannot but be amused at Borrow's explanation to the Reverend Secretary
of the little subterfuges by which he proposed to 'best' the godless for
the benefit of the godly:
Knowing but too well that it is the general opinion of the
people of this country that Englishmen are made of gold, and
that it is only necessary to ask the most extravagant price for
any article in order to obtain it, I told no person, to whom I
applied, who I was, or of what country; and I believe I was
supposed to be a German.[104]
Then came the composing or setting up of the type of the book. When
Borrow was called to account by his London employers, who were not sure
whether he was wasting time, he replied: 'I have been working in the
printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen hours
every day.' In another letter Borrow records further difficulties with
the printers after the composition had been effected. Several of the
working printers, it appears, 'went away in disgust,' Then he adds:
I was resolved 'to do or die,' and, instead of distressing and
perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write nothing
until I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I now
can; and to bring about that result I have spared neither
myself nor my own money. I have toiled in a close
printing-office the whole day, during ninety degrees of heat,
for the purpose of setting an example, and have bribed people
to work whom nothing but bribes would induce so to do. I am
obliged to say all this in self-justification. No member of the
Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what
I have undergone but for the question, 'What has Mr. Borrow
been about?'[105]
It is not my intention to add materially to the letters of Borrow from
Russia and from Spain that have already been published, although many
are in my possession. They reveal an aspect of the life of Borrow that
has been amply dealt with by other biographers, and it is an aspect that
interests me but little. Here, however, is one hitherto unpublished
letter that throws much light upon Borrow's work at this time:
To the Rev. Andrew Brandram
ST. PETERSBURG, _18th Oct. 1833._
REVEREND SIR,--Supposing that you will not be displeased to
hear how I am proceeding, I have taken the liberty to send a
few lines by a friend[106] who is leaving Russia for England.
Since my arrival in Petersburg I have been occupied eight hours
every day in transcribing a Manchu manuscript of the Old
Testament belonging to Baron Schilling, and I am happy to be
able to say that I have just completed the last of it, the Rev.
Mr. Swan, the Scottish missionary, having before my arrival
copied the previous part. Mr. Swan departs to his mission in
Siberia in about two months, during most part of which time I
shall be engaged in collating our transcripts with the
original. It is a great blessing that the Bible Society has now
prepared the whole of the Sacred Scriptures in Manchu, which
will doubtless, when printed, prove of incalculable benefit to
tens of millions who have hitherto been ignorant of the will of
God, putting their trust in idols of wood and stone instead of
in a crucified Saviour. I am sorry to say that this country in
respect to religion is in a state almost as lamentable as the
darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests
entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all
attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor
things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and,
notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for
the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English
Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood.
But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the
Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense of their
fallen and miserable state, and of the proper means to be
employed to free themselves from the thraldom of Satan. The
last few copies which remained of the New Testament in Russian
were purchased and distributed a few days ago, and it is
lamentable to be compelled to state that at the present there
appears no probability of another edition being permitted in
the modern language. It is true that there are near twenty
thousand copies of the Sclavonic bible in the shop which is
entrusted with the sale of the books of the late Russian Bible
Society, but the Sclavonian translation is upwards of a
thousand years old, having been made in the eighth century, and
differs from the dialect spoken at present in Russia as much as
the old Saxon does from the modern English. Therefore it cannot
be of the slightest utility to any but the learned, that is, to
about ten individuals in one thousand. I hope and trust that
the Almighty will see fit to open some door for the
illumination of this country, for it is not to be wondered if
vice and crime be very prevalent here when the people are
ignorant of the commandments of God. Is it to be wondered that
the people follow their every day pursuits on the Sabbath when
they know not the unlawfulness of so doing? Is it to be
wondered that they steal when only in dread of the laws of the
country, and are not deterred by the voice of conscience which
only exists in a few. This accounts for their profanation of
their Sabbath, their proneness to theft, etc. It is only
surprising that so much goodness is to be found in their nature
as is the case, for they are mild, polite, and obliging, and in
most of their faces is an expression of great kindness and
benignity. I find that the slight knowledge which I possess of
the Russian tongue is of the utmost service to me here, for the
common opinion in England that only French and German are
spoken by persons of any respectability in Petersburg is a
great and injurious error. The nobility, it is true, for the
most part speak French when necessity obliges them, that is,
when in company with foreigners who are ignorant of Russian,
but the affairs of most people who arrive in Petersburg do not
lie among the nobility, therefore a knowledge of the language
of the country, unless you associate solely with your own
countrymen, is indispensable. The servants speak no language
but their native tongue, and also nine out of ten of the middle
classes of Russians. I might as well address Mr. Lipoftsof, who
is to be my coadjutor in the edition of the New Testament (in
Manchu) in Hebrew as in either French or German, for though he
can read the first a little he cannot speak a word of it or
understand when spoken. I will now conclude by wishing you all
possible happiness. I have the honour to be, etc.,
GEORGE BORROW.
When the work was done at so great a cost of money,[107] and of energy
and enthusiasm on the part of George Borrow, it was found that the books
were useless. Most of these New Testaments were afterwards sent out to
China, and copies distributed by the missionaries there as opportunities
offered. It was found, however, that the Manchus in China were able to
read Chinese, preferring it to their own language, which indeed had
become almost confined to official use.[108] In the year 1859 editions
of _St. Matthew_ and _St. Mark_ were published in Manchu and Chinese
side by side, the Manchu text being a reprint of that edited by Borrow,
and these books are still in use in Chinese Turkestan. But Borrow had
here to suffer one of the many disappointments of his life. If not
actually a gypsy he had all a gypsy's love of wandering. No impartial
reader of the innumerable letters of this period can possibly claim that
there was in Borrow any of the proselytising zeal or evangelical fervour
which wins for the names of Henry Martyn and of David Livingstone so
much honour and sympathy even among the least zealous. At the best
Borrow's zeal for religion was of the order of Dr. Keate, the famous
headmaster of Eton--'Blessed are the pure in heart ... if you are not
pure in heart, by God, I'll flog you!' Borrow had got his New Testaments
printed, and he wanted to distribute them because he wished to see still
more of the world, and had no lack of courage to carry out any well
defined scheme of the organisation which was employing him. Borrow had
thrown out constant hints in his letters home. People had suggested to
him, he said, that he was printing Testaments for which he would never
find readers. If you wish for readers, they had said to him, 'you must
seek them among the natives of Pekin and the fierce hordes of desert
Tartary.' And it was this last most courageous thing that Borrow
proposed. Let him, he said to Mr. Jowett, fix his headquarters at
Kiachta upon the northern frontier of China. The Society should have an
agent there:
I am a person of few words, and will therefore state without
circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak
Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian
steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I
might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of
which town are Chinamen. I am therefore not altogether
unqualified for such an adventure.[109]
The Bible Committee considered this and other plans through the
intervening months, and it seems clear that at the end they would have
sanctioned some form of missionary work for Borrow in the Chinese
Empire; but on 1st June 1835 he wrote to say that the Russian
Government, solicitous of maintaining good relations with China, would
not grant him a passport across Siberia except on the condition that he
carried not one single Manchu Bible thither.[110] And so Borrow's dreams
were left unfulfilled. He was never to see China or the farther East,
although, because he was a dreamer and like his hero, Defoe, a bit of a
liar, he often said he had. In September 1835 he was back in England
awaiting in his mother's home in Norwich further commissions from his
friends of the Bible Society.
* * * * *
Work on the Manchu New Testament did not entirely absorb Borrow's
activities in St. Petersburg. He seems to have made a proposition to
another organisation, as the following letter indicates. The proposal
does not appear to have borne any fruit:
PRAYER BOOK AND HOMILY SOCIETY,
NO. 4 EXETER HALL, LONDON, _January 16th, 1835._
SIR,--Your letters dated July and November 17, 1834, and
addressed to the Rev. F. Cunningham, have been laid before the
Committee of the Prayer Book and Homily Society, who have
agreed to print the translation of the first three Homilies
into the Russian language at St. Petersburg, under the
direction of Mr. and Mrs. Biller, so soon as they shall have
caused the translation to undergo a thorough revision, and
shall have certified the same to this Society. I write by this
post to Mrs. Biller on the subject. In respect to the second
Homily in Manchu, if we rightly understand your statement, an
edition of five hundred copies may be sent forth, the whole
expense of which, including paper and printing, will amount to
about L12. If we are correct in this the Committee are willing
to bear the expense of five hundred copies, by way of trial,
their wish being this, viz.: that printed copies should be put
into the hands of the most competent persons, who shall be
invited to offer such remarks on the translation as shall seem
desirable; especially that Dr. Morrison of Canton should be
requested to submit copies to the inspection of Manchu scholars
as he shall think fit. When the translation has been thoroughly
revised the Committee will consider the propriety of printing a
larger edition. They think that the plan of submitting copies
in letters of gold to the inspection of the highest personages
in China should probably be deferred till the translation has
been thus revised. We hope that this resolution will be
satisfactory to you; but the Committee, not wishing to
prescribe a narrower limit than such as is strictly necessary,
have directed me to say, that should the expense of an edition
of five hundred copies of the Homily in Manchu exceed L12, they
will still be willing to meet it, but not beyond the sum of
L15.
Should you print this edition be pleased to furnish us with
twenty-five copies, and send twenty-five copies at the least to
Rev. Dr. Morrison, at Canton, if you have the means of doing
so; if not, we should wish to receive fifty copies, that _we_
may send twenty-five to Canton. In this case you will be at
liberty to draw a bill upon us for the money, within the limits
specified above, in such manner as is most convenient. Possibly
Mr. and Mrs. Biller may be able to assist you in this matter.
Believe me, dear Sir, yours most sincerely,
C. R. PRITCHETT.
Mr. G. Borrow.
I am not aware whether I am addressing a clergyman or a layman,
and therefore shall direct as above. Will you be so kind as to
send the MS. of the Russian Homilies to Mrs. Biller?
During Borrow's last month or two in St. Petersburg he printed two thin
octavo volumes of translations--some of them verses which, undeterred by
the disheartening reception of earlier efforts, he had continued to make
from each language in succession that he had the happiness to acquire,
although most of the poems are from his old portfolios. These little
books were named _Targum_ and _The Talisman_. Dr. Knapp calls the latter
an appendix to the former. They are absolutely separate volumes of
verse, and I reproduce their title-pages from the only copies that
Borrow seems to have reserved for himself out of the hundred printed of
each. The publishers, it will be seen, are the German firm that printed
the Manchu New Testament, Schultz and Beneze. Borrow's preface to
_Targum_ is dated 'St. Petersburg, June 1, 1835.' Here in _Targum_ we
find the trial poem which in competition with a rival candidate had won
him the privilege of going to Russia for the Bible Society--_The
Mountain Chase_. Here also among new verses are some from the Arabic,
the Persian, and the Turkish. If it be true, as his friend Hasfeld said,
that here was a poet who was able to render another without robbing the
garland of a single leaf--that would but prove that the poetry which
Borrow rendered was not of the first order. Nor, taking another
standard--the capacity to render the ballad with a force that captures
'the common people,'--can we agree with William Bodham Donne, who was
delighted with _Targum_ and said that 'the language and rhythm are
vastly superior to Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_.' In _The Talisman_
we have four little poems from the Russian of Pushkin followed by
another poem, _The Mermaid_, by the same author. Three other poems in
Russian and Polish complete the booklet. Borrow left behind him in St.
Petersburg with his friend, Hasfeld, a presentation copy for Pushkin,
who, when he received it, expressed regret that he had not met his
translator while Borrow was in St. Petersburg.
[Illustration: Title Page from "Targum"]
[Illustration: Title Page from "The Talisman"]
FOOTNOTES:
[103] Darlow, _Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 32.
[104] _Ibid._ p. 47.
[105] Darlow, _Letters to the Bible Society_, pp. 60, 61.
[106] Mr. Glen.
[107] The Manchu version--_i.e._ the transcript of Pierot's MS. of the
Old Testament and 1000 copies of Lipoftsof's translation of the
New--cost the Society in all L2600. Canton: _History of the Bible
Society_, vol. ii. p. 239.
[108] Darlow; _Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 96.
[109] Darlow: _Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 65.
[110] _Ibid._, p. 81.
CHAPTER XVIII
THREE VISITS TO SPAIN
From his journey to Russia Borrow had acquired valuable experience, but
nothing in the way of fame, although his mother had been able to record
in a letter to St. Petersburg that she had heard at a Bible Society
gathering in Norwich his name 'sounded through the hall' by Mr. Joseph
John Gurney and Mr. Cunningham, to her great delight. 'All this is very
pleasing to me,' she said, 'God bless you!' Even more pleasing to Borrow
must have been a letter from Mary Clarke, his future wife, who was able
to tell him that she heard Francis Cunningham refer to him as 'one of
the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present day.'
But these tributes were not all-satisfying to an ambitious man, and this
Borrow undoubtedly was. His Russian journey was followed by five weeks
of idleness in Norwich varied by the one excitement of attending a Bible
meeting at Oulton with the Reverend Francis Cunningham in the chair,
when 'Mr. George Borrow from Russia'[111] made one of the usual
conventional missionary speeches, Mary Clarke's brother, Breame Skepper,
being also among the orators. Borrow begged for more work from the
Society. He urged the desirability of carrying out its own idea of an
investigation in Portugal and perhaps also in Spain, and hinted that he
could write a small volume concerning what he saw and heard which might
cover the expense of the expedition.[112] So much persistency conquered.
Borrow sailed from London on 6th November 1835, and reached Lisbon on
12th November, this his first official visit to the Peninsula lasting
exactly eleven months. The next four years and six months were to be
spent mainly in Spain.[113] Broadly the time divides itself in the
following fashion:
1st Tour (_via_ Lisbon),
Nov. 1835 to Oct. 1836.
Lisbon.
Mafia.
Evora.
Badajoz.
Madrid.
2nd Tour (_via_ Cadiz),
Nov. 1836 to Sept. 1838.
Cadiz.
Lisbon.
Seville.
Madrid.
Salamanca.
Coruna.
Oviedo.
Toledo.
3rd Tour (_via_ Cadiz),
Dec. 1838 to March 1840.
Cadiz.
Seville.
Madrid.
Gibraltar.
Tangier.
What a world of adventure do the mere names of these places call up.
Borrow entered the Peninsula at an exciting period of its history.
Traces of the Great War in which Napoleon's legions faced those of
Wellington still abounded. Here and there a bridge had disappeared, and
some of Borrow's strange experiences on ferry-boats were indirectly due
to the results of Napoleon's ambition.[114] Everywhere there was still
war in the land. Portugal indeed had just passed through a revolution.
The partisans of the infant Queen Maria II. had been fighting with her
uncle Dom Miguel for eight years, and it was only a few short months
before Borrow landed at Lisbon that Maria had become undisputed queen.
Spain, to which Borrow speedily betook himself, was even in a worse
state. She was in the throes of a six years' war. Queen Isabel II., a
child of three, reigned over a chaotic country with her mother Dona
Christina as regent; her uncle Don Carlos was a formidable claimant to
the throne and had the support of the absolutist and clerical parties.
Borrow's political sympathies were always in the direction of
absolutism; but in religion, although a staunch Church of England man,
he was certainly an anti-clerical one in Roman Catholic Spain. In any
case he steered judiciously enough between contending factions,
describing the fanatics of either side with vigour and sometimes with
humour. Mr. Brandram's injunction to Borrow 'to be on his guard against
becoming too much committed to one particular party' seems to have been
unnecessary.
Borrow's three expeditions to Spain have more to be said for them than
had his journey to St. Petersburg. The work of the Bible Society was and
is at its highest point of human service when distributing either the
Old or the New Testament in Christian countries, Spain, England, or
another. Few there be to-day in any country who, in the interests of
civilisation, would deny to the Bible a wider distribution. In a remote
village of Spain a Bible Society's colporteur, carrying a coloured
banner, sold me a copy of Cipriano de Valera's New Testament for a
peseta. The villages of Spain that Borrow visited could even at that
time compare favourably morally and educationally, with the villages of
his own county of Norfolk at the same period. The morals of the
agricultural labourers of the English fen country eighty years ago were
a scandal, and the peasantry read nothing; more than half of them could
not read. They had not, moreover, the humanising passion for song and
dance that Andalusia knew. But this is not to deny that the Bible
Society under Borrow's instrumentality did a good work in Spain, nor
that they did it on the whole in a broad and generous way. Borrow admits
that there was a section of the Roman Catholic clergy 'favourably
disposed towards the circulation of the Gospel,'[115] and the Society
actually fixed upon a Roman Catholic version of the Spanish Bible, that
by Scio de San Miguel,[116] although this version Borrow considered a
bad translation. Much has been said about the aim of the Bible Society
to provide the Bible without notes or comment--in its way a most
meritorious aim, although then as now opposed to the instinct of a large
number of the priests of the Roman Church. It is true that their
attitude does not in any way possess the sanction of the ecclesiastical
authorities. It may be urged, indeed, that the interpretation of the
Bible by a priest, usually of mature judgment, and frequently of a
higher education than the people with whom he is associated, is at least
as trustworthy as its interpretation at the hands of very partially
educated young women and exceedingly inadequately equipped young men who
to-day provide interpretation and comment in so many of the Sunday
Schools of Protestant countries.[117]
Behold George Borrow, then, first in Portugal and a little later in
Spain, upon his great mission--avowedly at first a tentative
mission--rather to see what were the prospects for Bible distribution
than to distribute Bibles. But Borrow's zeal knew no such limitations.
Before very long he had a shop in one of the principal streets of
Madrid--the Calle del Principe--much more in the heart of things than
the very prosperous Bible Society of our day ventures upon.[118]
Meanwhile he is at present in Portugal not very certain of his
movements, and he writes to his old friend Dr. Bowring the following
letter with a request with which Bowring complied, although in the
coldest manner:
To Dr. John Bowring.
EVORA IN THE ALEMTEJO, _27 Decr. 1835._
DEAR SIR,--Pray excuse me for troubling you with these lines. I
write to you, as usual, for assistance in my projects,
convinced that you will withhold none which it may be in your
power to afford, more especially when by so doing you will
perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow creatures. I
returned from dear, glorious Russia about three months since,
after having edited there the Manchu New Testament in eight
volumes. I am now in Portugal, for the Society still do me the
honour of employing me. 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 entirely 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 not other persons', 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. When you send the Portuguese
letters direct thus:
Mr. George Borrow,
to the care of Mr. Wilby,
Rua Dos Restauradores, Lisbon.
I start for Spain to-morrow, and I want letters something
similar (there is impudence for you) for Madrid, _which I
should like to have as soon as possible_. I do not much care at
present for an introduction to the Ambassador at Madrid, as I
shall not commence operations seriously in Spain until I have
disposed of Portugal. I will not apologise for writing to you
in this manner, for you know me, but I will tell you one
thing, which is that the letter which you procured for me, on
my going to St. Petersburg, from Lord Palmerston, assisted me
wonderfully. I called twice at your domicile on my return; the
first time you were in Scotland, the second in France, and I
assure you I cried with vexation. Remember me to Mrs. Bowring
and God bless you.
G. BORROW.
_P.S._--I am told that Mendizabal is liberal, and has been in
England; perhaps he would assist me.
During this eleven months' stay in the Peninsula Borrow made his way to
Madrid, and here he interviewed the British Minister, Sir George
Villiers, afterwards fourth Earl of Clarendon, and had received a quite
remarkable encouragement from him for the publication and distribution
of the Bible. He also interviewed the Spanish Prime Minister,
Mendizabal, 'whom it is as difficult to get nigh as it is to approach
the North Pole,' and he has given us a picturesque account of the
interview in _The Bible in Spain_. It was agreed that 5000 copies of the
Spanish Testament were to be reprinted from Scio's text at the expense
of the Bible Society, and all these Borrow was to handle as he thought
fit. Then Borrow made his way to Granada, where, under date 30th August
1836, his autograph may be read in the visitors' book of the Alhambra:
_George Borrow Norvicensis._
Here he studied his friends the gypsies, now and probably then, as we
may assume from his _Zincali_, the sordid scum on the hillside of that
great city, but now more assuredly than then unutterably demoralised by
the numerous but curious tourists who visit this rabble under police
protection, the very policeman or gendarme not despising a peseta for
his protective services. But Borrow's hobbies included the Romanies of
every land, and a year later he produced and published a gypsy version
of the Gospel of St. Luke.[119] In October 1836 Borrow was back in
England. He found that the Bible Society approved of him. In November of
the same year he left London for Cadiz on his second visit to Spain. The
journey is described in _The Bible in Spain_;[120] but here, from my
Borrow Papers, is a kind letter that Mr. Brandram wrote to Borrow's
mother on the occasion:
[Illustration: PORTION OF A LETTER FROM GEORGE BORROW TO THE REV. SAMUEL
BRANDRAM.]
NO. 10 EAST STREET, _Jany. 11, 1837._
MY DEAR MADAM,--I have the joyful news to send you that your
son has again safely arrived at Madrid. His journey we were
aware was exceedingly perilous, more perilous than we should
have allowed him to take had we sooner known the extent of the
danger. He begs me to write, intending to write to you himself
without delay. He has suffered from the intense cold, but
nothing beyond inconvenience. Accept my congratulations, and my
best wishes that your dear son may be preserved to be your
comfort in declining years--and may the God of all consolation
himself deign to comfort your heart by the truths of that holy
volume your son is endeavouring, in connection with our
Society, to spread abroad.--Believe me, dear Madam, yours
faithfully,
A. BRANDRAM.
Mrs. Borrow, Norwich.
A brilliant letter from Seville followed soon after, and then he went on
to Madrid, not without many adventures. 'The cold nearly killed me,' he
said. 'I swallowed nearly two bottles of brandy; it affected me no more
than warm water.' This to kindly Mr. Brandram, who clearly had no
teetotaller proclivities, for the letter, as he said, 'filled his heart
with joy and gladness.' Meanwhile those five thousand copies of the New
Testament were a-printing, Borrow superintending the work with the
assistance of a new friend, Dr. Usoz. 'As soon as the book is printed
and issued,' he tells Mr. Brandram, 'I will ride forth from Madrid into
the wildest parts of Spain, ...' and so, after some correspondence with
the Society which is quite entertaining, he did. The reader of _The
Bible in Spain_ will note some seventy separate towns and villages that
Borrow visited, not without countless remarkable adventures on the way.
'I felt some desire,' he says in _The Romany Rye_, 'to meet with one of
those adventures which upon the roads of England are generally as
plentiful as blackberries in autumn.' Assuredly in this tour of Spanish
villages Borrow met with no lack of adventures. The committee of the
Bible Society authorised this tour in March 1837, and in May Borrow
started off on horseback attended by his faithful servant, Antonio. This
tour was to last five months, and 'if I am spared,' he writes to his
friend Hasfeld, 'and have not fallen a prey to sickness, Carlists,
banditti, or wild beasts, I shall return to Madrid.' He hopes a little
later, he tells Hasfeld, to be sent to China. We have then a glimpse of
his servant, the excellent Antonio, which supplements that contained in
_The Bible of Spain_. 'He is inordinately given to drink, and is of so
quarrelsome a disposition that he is almost constantly involved in some
broil.'[121] Not all his weird experiences were conveyed in his letters
to the Bible Society's secretary. Some of these letters, however--the
more highly coloured ones--were used in _The Bible in Spain_, word for
word, and wonderful reading they must have made for the secretary, who
indeed asked for more, although, with a view to keeping Borrow
humble--an impossible task--Mr. Brandram takes occasion to say 'Mr.
Graydon's letters, as well as yours, are deeply interesting,' Graydon
being a hated rival, as we shall see. The question of L.S.D. was also
not forgotten by the assiduous secretary. 'I know you are no
accountant,' he writes, 'but do not forget there are some who are,' and
a financial document was forwarded to Borrow about this time which we
reproduce in facsimile.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF AN ACCOUNT OF GEORGE BORROW'S EXPENSES IN
SPAIN MADE OUT BY THE BIBLE SOCIETY]
But now Borrow was happy, for next to the adventures of five glorious
months in the villages between Madrid and Coruna nothing could be more
to the taste of Borrow than a good wholesome quarrel. He was imprisoned
by order of the Spanish Government and released on the intervention of
the British Embassy.[122] He tells the story so graphically in _The
Bible in Spain_ that it is superfluous to repeat it; but here he does
not tell of the great quarrel with regard to Lieutenant Graydon that led
him to attack that worthy zealot in a letter to the Bible Society. This
attack did indeed cause the Society to recall Graydon, whose zealous
proclamation of anti-Romanism must however have been more to the taste
of some of its subscribers than Borrow's trimming methods. Moreover,
Graydon worked for love of the cause and required no salary, which must
always have been in his favour. Borrow was ten days in a Madrid prison,
and there, as ever, he had extraordinary adventures if we may believe
his own narrative, but they are much too good to be torn from their
context. Suffice to say here that in the actual correspondence we find
breezy controversy between Borrow and the Society. Borrow thought that
the secretary had called the accuracy of his statements in question as
to this or that particular in his conduct. Ever a fighter, he appealed
to the British Embassy for confirmation of his word, and finally Mr.
Brandram suggested he should come back to England for a time and talk
matters over with the members of the committee. In the beginning of
September 1838 Borrow was again in England, when he issued a lengthy and
eloquent defence of his conduct and a report on 'Past and Future
Operations in Spain.'[123] In December of the same year Borrow was
again on his way to Cadiz upon his third and last visit to Spain.
Borrow reached Cadiz on this his last visit on 31st December 1838, and
went straight to Seville, where he arrived on 2nd January 1839. Here he
took a beautiful little house, 'a paradise in its way,' in the Plazuela
de la Pila Seca, and furnished it--clearly at the expense of his friend
Mrs. Clarke of Oulton, who must have sent him a cheque for the purpose.
He had been corresponding regularly with Mrs. Clarke, who had told him
of her difficulties with lawyers and relatives, and Borrow had advised
her to cut the Gordian knot and come to Spain. But Mrs. Clarke and her
daughter, Henrietta, did not arrive from England until June.
In the intervening months Borrow had been working more in his own
interests than in those of the patient Bible Society, for he started to
gather material for his _Gypsies of Spain_, and this book was for the
most part actually written in Seville. It was at this period that he had
the many interviews with Colonel Elers Napier that we quote at length in
our next chapter.
A little later he is telling Mr. Brandram of his adventure with the
blind girl of Manzanares who could talk in the Latin tongue, which she
had been taught by a Jesuit priest, an episode which he retold in _The
Bible in Spain_. 'When shall we hear,' he asks, 'of an English rector
instructing a beggar girl in the language of Cicero?' To which Mr.
Brandram, who was rector of Beckenham, replied 'Cui bono?' The letters
of this period are the best that he ever wrote, and are incorporated
more exactly than the earlier ones in _The Bible in Spain_.
[Illustration: WHERE BORROW LIVED IN MADRID
The house of Maria Diaz in the Calle del Santiago. Borrow occupied the
third floor front. A laundry is now in possession.]
[Illustration: THE CALLE DEL PRINCIPE, MADRID
Where Borrow opened a shop for the sale of New Testaments, which was
finally closed by order of the Government.]
Four letters to his mother within the period of his second and third
Spanish visits may well be presented together here from my Borrow
Papers:
To Mrs. Ann Borrow
MADRID, _July 27, 1838._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I am in perfect health though just returned
from a long expedition in which I have been terribly burnt by
the sun. In about ten days I sold nearly a thousand Testaments
among the labourers of the plains and mountains of Castille and
La Mancha. Everybody in Madrid is wondering and saying such a
thing is a miracle, as I have not entered a town, and the
country people are very poor and have never seen or heard of
the Testament before. But I confess to you that I dislike my
situation and begin to think that I have been deceived; the
B.S. have had another person on the sea-coast who has nearly
ruined their cause in Spain by circulating seditious handbills
and tracts. The consequence has been that many of my depots
have been seized in which I kept my Bibles in various parts of
the country, for the government think that he is employed by
me; I told the B.S. all along what would be the consequence of
employing this man, but they took huff and would scarce believe
me, and now all my words are come true; I do not blame the
government in the slightest degree for what they have done in
many points, they have shown themselves to be my good friends,
but they have been driven to the step by the insane conduct of
the person alluded to. I told them frankly in my last letter
that I would leave their service if they encouraged him; for I
will not be put in prison again on his account, and lose
another servant by the gaol fever, and then obtain neither
thanks nor reward. I am going out of town again in a day or
two, but I shall now write very frequently, therefore be not
alarmed for I will run into no danger. Burn this letter and
speak to no one about it, nor any others that I may send. God
bless you, my dear mother.
G. B.
To Mrs. Ann Borrow, Willow Lane, St. Giles, Norwich (Inglaterra)
MADRID, _August 5, 1838._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I merely write this to inform you that I am
back to Madrid from my expedition. I have been very successful
and have sold a great many Testaments. Indeed all the villages
and towns within thirty miles have been supplied. In Madrid
itself I can do nothing as I am closely watched by order of the
government and not permitted to sell, so that all I do is by
riding out to places where they cannot follow me. I do not
blame them, for they have much to complain of, though nothing
of me, but if the Society will countenance such men as they
have lately done in the South of Spain they must expect to reap
the consequences. It is very probable that I may come to
England in a little time, and then you will see me; but do not
talk any more about yourself being 'no more seen,' for it only
serves to dishearten me, and God knows I have enough to make me
melancholy already. I am in a great hurry and cannot write any
more at present.--I remain, dear mother, yours affectionately,
GEORGE BORROW.
To Mrs. Ann Borrow
(No date.)
MY DEAR MAMA,--As I am afraid that you may not have received my
last letter in consequence of several couriers having been
stopped, I write to inform you that I am quite well.
I have been in some difficulties. I was selling so many
Testaments that the priests became alarmed, and prevailed on
the government to put a stop to my selling any more; they were
likewise talking of prosecuting me as a witch, but they have
thought better of it. I hear it is very cold in England, pray
take care of yourself, I shall send you more in a few
weeks.--God bless you, my dear mama,
G. B.
It was in the middle of his third and last visit to Spain that Borrow
wrote this next letter to his mother which gives the first suggestion of
the romantic and happy termination of his final visit to the Peninsula:
To Mrs. Ann Borrow
SEVILLE, SPAIN, _April 27, 1839._
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I should have written to you before I left
Madrid, but I had a long and dangerous journey to make, and I
wished to get it over before saying anything to you. I am now
safely arrived, by the blessing of God, in Seville, which, in
my opinion, is the most delightful town in the world. If it
were not a strange place with a strange language I know you
would like to live in it, but it is rather too late in the day
for you to learn Spanish and accommodate yourself to Spanish
ways. Before I left Madrid I accomplished a great deal, having
sold upwards of one thousand Testaments and nearly five hundred
Bibles, so that at present very few remain; indeed, not a
single Bible, and I was obliged to send away hundreds of people
who wanted to purchase, but whom I could not supply. All this
has been done without the slightest noise or disturbance or
anything that could give cause of displeasure to the
government, so that I am now on very good terms with the
authorities, though they are perfectly aware of what I am
about. Should the Society think proper to be guided by the
experience which I have acquired, and my knowledge of the
country and the people, they might if they choosed sell at
least twelve thousand Bibles and Testaments yearly in Spain,
but let them adopt or let any other people adopt any other
principle than that on which I act and everything will
miscarry. All the difficulties, as I told my friends the time I
was in England, which I have had to encounter were owing to the
faults and imprudencies of other people, and, I may say, still
are owing. Two Methodist schoolmasters have lately settled at
Cadiz, and some little time ago took it into their heads to
speak and preach, as I am informed, against the Virgin Mary;
information was instantly sent to Madrid, and the blame, or
part of it, was as usual laid to me; however, I found means to
clear myself, for I have powerful friends in Madrid, who are
well acquainted with my views, and who interested themselves
for me, otherwise I should have been sent out of the country,
as I believe the two others have been or will be. I have said
nothing on this point in my letters home, as people would
perhaps say that I was lukewarm, whereas, on the contrary, I
think of nothing but the means best adapted to promote the
cause; but I am not one of those disposed to run a ship on a
rock when only a little skill is necessary to keep her in the
open sea.
I hope Mrs. Clarke will write shortly; tell her if she wishes
for a retreat I have found one here for her and Henrietta. I
have my eye on a beautiful one at fifteen pence a day. I call
it a small house, though it is a paradise in its way, having a
stable, court-yard, fountain, and twenty rooms. She has only to
write to my address at Madrid and I shall receive the letter
without fail. Henrietta had better bring with her a Spanish
grammar and pocket dictionary, as not a word of English is
spoken here. The house-dog--perhaps a real English bulldog
would be better--likewise had better come, as it may be useful.
God bless you therefore for the present, my dearest mother.
GEORGE BORROW.
Borrow had need of friends more tolerant of his idiosyncrasies than the
'powerful friends' he describes to his mother, for the Secretary of the
Bible Society was still in a critical mood:--
You narrate your perilous journey to Seville, and say at the
beginning of the description, 'my usual wonderful good fortune
accompanying us.' This is a mode of speaking to which we are
not accustomed--it savours, some of our friends would say, a
little of the profane.[124]
On 29th July 1839 Borrow was instructed by his Committee to return to
England, but he was already on the way to Tangier, whence in September
he wrote a long and interesting letter to Mr. Brandram, which was
afterwards incorporated in _The Bible in Spain_. He had left Mrs. Clarke
and her daughter in Seville, and they joined him at Gibraltar later. We
find him _en route_ for Tangier, staying two days with Mr. John M.
Brackenbury, the British Consul in Cadiz, who found him a most
fascinating man.
His Tangier life is fully described in _The Bible in Spain_. Here he
picked up a Jewish youth, Hayim Ben Attar, who returned to Spain as his
servant, and afterwards to England.
Borrow, at the end of September, was back again in Seville, in his house
near the cathedral, in the Plazuela de la Pila Seca, which, when I
visited Seville in the spring of this year (1913), I found had long been
destroyed to make way for new buildings. Here he received the following
letter from Mr. George Browne of the Bible Society:--
To Mr. Borrow
BIBLE HOUSE, _Oct. 7, 1839._
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Mr. Brandram and myself being both on the eve
of a long journey, I have only time to inform you that yours of
the 2d ult. from Tangier, and 21st from Cadiz came to hand this
morning. Before this time you have doubtless received Mr.
Brandram's letter, accompanying the resolution of the Comee.,
of which I apprised you, but which was delayed a few days, for
the purpose of reconsideration. We are not able to suggest
precisely the course you should take in regard to the books
left at Madrid and elsewhere, and how far it may be absolutely
necessary or not for you to visit that city again before you
return. The books you speak of, as at Seville, may be sent to
Gibraltar rather than to England, as well as any books you may
deem it expedient or find it necessary to bring out of the
country. As soon as your arrangements are completed we shall
look for the pleasure of seeing you in this country. The haste
in which I am compelled to write allows me to say no more than
that my best wishes attend you, and that I am, with sincere
regard, yours truly,
G. BROWNE.
I thank you for your kind remembrance of Mrs. Browne. Did I
thank you for your letter to her? She feels, I assure you, very
much obliged. Your description of Tangier will be another
interesting 'morceau' for her.
'Where is Borrow?' asked the Bible Society meanwhile of the Consuls at
Seville and Cadiz, but Borrow had ceased to care. He hoped to become a
successful author with his _Gypsies_; he would at any rate secure
independence by marriage, which must have been already mooted. In
November he and Mrs. Clarke were formally betrothed, and would have
been married in Spain, but a Protestant marriage was impossible there.
When preparing to leave Seville he had one of those fiery quarrels, with
which his life was to be studded. This time it was with an official of
the city over a passport, and the official promptly locked him up, for
thirty hours. Hence the following letter in response to his complaint.
The writer is Mr., afterwards Sir, George Jerningham, then Secretary of
Legation at Madrid, who it may be mentioned came from Costessey, four
miles from Norwich. It is written from the British Legation, and is
dated 23rd December 1839:
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your two
letters, the one without date, the second dated the _19th
November_ (which however ought to have been _December_),
respecting the outrageous conduct pursued towards you at
Seville by the Alcalde of the district in which you resided. I
lost no time in addressing a strong representation thereon to
the Spanish Minister, and I have to inform you that he has
acquainted me with his having written to Seville for exact
information upon the whole subject, and that he has promised a
further answer to my representation as soon as his inquiries
shall have been answered. In the meantime I shall not fail to
follow up your case with proper activity.
Borrow was still in Seville, hard at work upon the _Gypsies_, all
through the first three months of the year 1840. In April the three
friends left Cadiz for London. A letter of this period from Mr.
Brackenbury, the British Consul at Cadiz, is made clear by these facts:
To George Borrow, Esq.
BRITISH CONSULATE, CADIZ, _January 27th, 1840._
MY DEAR SIR,--I received on the 19th your very acceptable
letter without date, and am heartily rejoiced to find that you
have received satisfaction for the insult, and that the Alcalde
is likely to be punished for his unjustifiable conduct. If you
come to Cadiz your baggage may be landed and deposited at the
gates to be shipped with yourselves wherever the steamer may
go, in which case the authorities would not examine it, if you
bring it into Cadiz it would be examined at the gates--or, if
you were to get it examined at the Custom House at Seville and
there sealed with the seal of the Customs--it might then be
transhipped into the steamer or into any other vessel without
being subjected to any examination. If you take your horse, the
agents of the steamer ought to be apprized of your intention,
that they may be prepared, which I do not think they generally
are, with a suitable box.
Consuls are not authorised to unite Protestant subjects in the
bonds of Holy Matrimony in popish countries--which seems a
peculiar hardship, because popish priests could not, if they
would--hence in Spain no Protestants can be legally married.
Marriages solemnised abroad according to the law of that land
wheresoever the parties may at the time be inhabitants are
valid--but the law of Spain excludes their priests from
performing these ceremonies where both parties are
Protestants--and where one is a Papist, except a dispensation
be obtained from the Pope. So you must either go to
Gibraltar--or wait till you arrive in England. I have
represented the hardship of such a case more than once or twice
to Government. In my report upon the Consular Act, 6 Geo. IV.
cap. 87--eleven years ago--I suggested that provision should be
made to legalise marriages solemnised by the Consul within the
Consulate, and that such marriages should be registered in the
Consular Office--and that duly certified copies thereof should
be equivalent to certificates of marriages registered in any
church in England. These suggestions not having been acted
upon, I brought the matter under the consideration of Lord John
Russell (I being then in England at the time of his altering
the Marriage Act), and proposed that Consuls abroad should have
the power of magistrates and civil authorities at home for
receiving the declarations of British subjects who might wish
to enter into the marriage state--but they feared lest the
introduction of such a clause, simple and efficacious as it
would have been, might have endangered the fate of the Bill;
and so we are as Protestants deprived of all power of being
legally married in Spain.
What sort of a horse is your hack?--What colour? What age?
Would he carry me?--What his action? What his price? Because if
in all these points he would suit me, perhaps you would give me
the refusal of him. You will of course enquire whether your
Arab may be legally exported.
All my family beg to be kindly remembered to you.--I am, my
dear sir, most faithfully yours,
J. M. BRACKENBURY.
There is a young gentleman here, who is in Spain partly on
account of his health--partly for literary purposes. I will
give him, with your leave, a line of introduction to you
whenever he may go to Seville. He is the Honourable R. Dundas
Murray, brother of Lord Elibank, a Scottish nobleman.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] _Norfolk Chronicle_, 17th October 1835.
[112] Secretary Samuel Brandram, writing to Borrow from the office of
the Bible Society in October 1835, gave clear indication that the
Society was uncertain how next to utilise Borrow's linguistic and
missionary talents. Should he go to Portugal or to China was the
question. In November the committee had decided on Portugal, although
they thought it probable that Borrow would 'eventually go to China,'
'With Portugal he is already acquainted,' said Mr. Brandram in a letter
of introduction to the Rev. E. Whitely, the British chaplain in Oporto.
So that Borrow must really have wandered into Portugal in that earlier
and more melancholy apprenticeship to vagabondage concerning which there
is so much surmise and so little knowledge. Had he lied about his
acquaintance with Portugal he would certainly have been 'found out' by
this Portuguese acquaintance, with whom he had much social intercourse.
[113] The reader who finds Borrow's _Bible in Spain_ insufficient for
his account of that period, and I am not of the number, may turn to the
_Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society_, from which we have
already quoted, or to Mr. Herbert Jenkins's _Life of George Borrow_. In
the former book the greater part of 500 closely-printed pages is taken
up with repetitions of the story as told in _The Bible in Spain_, or
with additions which Borrow deliberately cancelled in the work in
question. In Mr. Jenkins's _Life_ he will find that out of a solid
volume of 496 pages exactly 212 are occupied with Borrow's association
with the Peninsula and his work therein. To the enthusiast who desires
to supplement _The Bible in Spain_ with valuable annotation I cordially
commend both these volumes.
[114] Who that has visited Spain can for a moment doubt but that, if
Napoleon had really conquered the Peninsula and had been able to put his
imprint upon it as he did upon Italy, the Spain of to-day would have
become a much greater country than it is at present--than it will be in
a few short years.
[115] _The Bible in Spain_, ch. xlii.
[116] The Old and New Testament, in ten volumes, were first issued in
Spanish at Valencia in 1790-93. When in Madrid I picked up on a
second-hand bookstall a copy of a cheap Spanish version of Scio's New
Testament, which bears a much earlier date than the one Borrow carried.
It was published, it will be noted, two years before Borrow published
his translation of Klinger's ribald book _Faustus_:--
'El Nuevo Testamento, Traducido al Espanol de la Vulgata Latina por el
Rmo. P. Philipe Scio de S. Miguel. Paris: En la Imprenta de J. Smith,
1823,'
[117] This kind of interpretation is not restricted to the youthful
Sunday School teacher. At a meeting of the Bible Society held at
Norwich--Borrow's own city--on 29th May 1913, Mrs. Florence Barclay, the
author of many popular novels, thus addressed the gathering. I quote
from the _Eastern Daily Press_: 'She had heard sometimes a shallow form
of criticism which said that it was impossible that in actual reality
any man should have lived and breathed three days and three nights in
the interior of a fish. Might she remind the meeting that the Lord Jesus
Christ, who never made mistakes, said Himself, "As Jonah was three days
and three nights in the interior of the sea monster." Please note that
in the Greek the word was not "whale," but "sea monster." And then, let
us remember, that we were told that the Lord God had prepared the great
fish in order that it should swallow Jonah. She did suggest that if mere
man nowadays could construct a submarine, which went down to the depths
of the ocean and came up again when he pleased, it did not require very
much faith to believe that Almighty God could specially prepare a great
fish which should rescue His servant, to whom He meant to give another
chance, from the depths of the sea, and land him in due course upon the
shore. (Applause).' These crude views, which ignored the symbolism of
Nineveh as a fish, now universally accepted by educated people, were
not, however, endorsed by Dr. Beeching, the learned Dean of Norwich, who
in the same gathering expressed the point of view of more scholarly
Christians:--'He would not distinguish inspired writing from fiction. He
would say there could be inspired fiction just as well as inspired
facts, and he would point to the story of the prodigal son as a
wonderful example from the Bible of inspired fiction. There were a good
many other examples in the Old Testament, and he had not the faintest
doubt that the story of Jonah was one. It was on the same level as the
prodigal son. It was a story told to teach the people a distinct truth.'
[118] When in Madrid in May 1913 I called upon Mr. William Summers, the
courteous Secretary of the Madrid Branch of the British and Foreign
Bible Society in the Flor Alta. Mr. Summers informs me that the issues
of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Bibles and Testaments, in
Spain for the past three years are as follows:
Year. Bibles. Testaments. Portions. Total. 1910, 5,309 8,971 70,594
84,874 1911, 5,665 11,481 79,525 96,671 1912, 9,083 11,842 85,024
105,949
The Calle del Principe is now rapidly being pulled down and new
buildings taking the place of those Borrow knew.
[119] _Embeo e Majaro Lucas. El Evangelio segun S. Lucas traducido al
Romani o dialecto de los Gitanos de Espana_, 1857. Two later copies in
my possession bear on their title-pages 'Lundra, 1871' and 'Lundra,
1872.' But the Bible Society in Spain has long ceased to handle or to
sell any gypsy version of St. Luke's Gospel.
[120] And in Darlow's _Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society_,
pp. 180-4.
[121] Darlow, _Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society_.
[122] The story of all the negotiations concerning this imprisonment and
release is told by Dr. Knapp (_Life_, vol. i, pp. 279-297), and is
supplemented by Mr. Herbert Jenkins by valuable documents from the
Foreign Office Papers at the Record Office.
[123] Printed by Mr. Darlow in _Letters of George Borrow to the Bible
Society_, pp. 359-379.
[124] Darlow, _George Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society_, p. 414.
CHAPTER XIX
BORROW'S SPANISH CIRCLE
There are many interesting personalities that pass before us in Borrow's
three separate narratives,[125] as they may be considered, of his
Spanish experiences. We would fain know more concerning the two
excellent secretaries of the Bible Society--Samuel Brandram and Joseph
Jowett. We merely know that the former was rector of Beckenham and was
one of the Society's secretaries until his death in 1850;[126] that the
latter was rector of Silk Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and belonged to
the same family as Jowett of Balliol. But there are many quaint
characters in Borrow's own narrative to whom we are introduced. There is
Maria Diaz, for example, his landlady in the house in the Calle de
Santiago in Madrid, and her husband, Juan Lopez, also assisted Borrow in
his Bible distribution. Very eloquent are Borrow's tributes to the pair
in the pages of _The Bible in Spain_. 'Honour to Maria Diaz, the quiet,
dauntless, clever, Castilian female! I were an ungrate not to speak well
of her,' We get a glimpse of Maria and her husband long years afterwards
when a pensioner in a Spanish almshouse revealed himself as the son of
Borrow's friends. Eduardo Lopez was only eight years of age when Borrow
was in Madrid, and he really adds nothing to our knowledge.[127] Then
there were those two incorrigible vagabonds--Antonio Buchini, his Greek
servant with an Italian name, and Benedict Mol, the Swiss of Lucerne,
who turns up in all sorts of improbable circumstances as the seeker of
treasure in the Church of St. James of Compostella--only a masterly
imagination could have made him so interesting. Concerning these there
is nothing to supplement Borrow's own story. But we have attractive
glimpses of Borrow in the frequently quoted narrative of Colonel
Napier,[128] and this is so illuminating that I venture to reproduce it
at greater length than previous biographers have done. Edward Elers
Napier, who was born in 1808, was the son of one Edward Elers of the
Royal Navy. His widow married the famous Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who
adopted her four children by her first husband. Edward Elers, the
younger, or Edward Napier, as he came to be called, was educated at
Sandhurst and entered the army, serving for some years in India. Later
his regiment was ordered to Gibraltar, and it was thence that he made
several sporting excursions into Spain and Morocco. Later he served in
Egypt, and when, through ill-health, he retired in 1843 on half-pay, he
lived for some years in Portugal. In 1854 he returned to the army and
did good work in the Crimea, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1864. He
died in 1870. He wrote, in addition to these _Excursions_, several
other books, including _Scenes and Sports in Foreign Lands_.[129] It was
during his military career at Gibraltar that he met George Borrow at
Seville, as the following extracts from his book testify. Borrow's
pretension to have visited the East is characteristic--and amusing:--
1839. _Saturday 4th_.--Out early, sketching at the Alcazar.
After breakfast it set in a day of rain, and I was reduced to
wander about the galleries overlooking the 'patio.' Nothing so
dreary and out of character as a rainy day in Spain. Whilst
occupied in moralising over the dripping water-spouts, I
observed a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, dressed in a
zamarra,[130] leaning over the balustrades, and apparently
engaged in a similar manner with myself. Community of thoughts
and occupation generally tends to bring people together. From
the stranger's complexion, which was fair, but with brilliant
black eyes, I concluded he was not a Spaniard; in short, there
was something so remarkable in his appearance that it was
difficult to say to what nation he might belong. He was tall,
with a commanding appearance; yet, though apparently in the
flower of manhood, his hair was so deeply tinged with the
winter of either age or sorrow as to be nearly snow-white.
Under these circumstances, I was rather puzzled as to what
language I should address him in. At last, putting a bold face
on the matter, I approached him with a 'Bonjour, monsieur, quel
triste temps!'
'Yes, sir,' replied he in the purest Parisian accent; 'and it
is very unusual weather here at this time of the year.'
'Does "monsieur" intend to be any time at Seville?' asked I. He
replied in the affirmative. We were soon on a friendly footing,
and from his varied information I was both amused and
instructed. Still I became more than ever in the dark as to his
nationality; I found he could speak English as fluently as
French. I tried him on the Italian track; again he was
perfectly at home.
He had a Greek servant, to whom his gave his orders in Romaic.
He conversed in good Castilian with 'mine host'; exchanged a
German salutation with an Austrian Baron, at the time an inmate
of the fonda; and on mentioning to him my morning visit to
Triano, which led to some remarks on the gypsies, and the
probable place from whence they derived their origin, he
expressed his belief that it was from Moultan, and said that,
even to this day, they retained many Moultanee and Hindoostanee
expressions, such as 'panee' (water), 'buree panee'[131] (the
sea), etc. He was rather startled when I replied 'in Hindee,'
but was delighted on finding I was an Indian, and entered
freely, and with depth and acuteness, on the affairs of the
East, most of which part of the world he had visited.
In such varied discourse did the hours pass so swiftly away
that we were not a little surprised when Pepe, the 'mozo' (and
I verily believe all Spanish waiters are called Pepe),
announced the hour of dinner; after which we took a long walk
together on the banks of the river. But, on our return, I was
as much as ever in ignorance as to who might be my new and
pleasant acquaintance.
I took the first opportunity of questioning Antonio Baillie
(Buchini) on the subject, and his answer only tended to
increase my curiosity. He said that nobody knew what nation the
mysterious 'Unknown' belonged to, nor what were his motives for
travelling. In his passport he went by the name of ----, and as
a British subject, but in consequence of a suspicion being
entertained that he was a Russian spy, the police kept a sharp
look-out over him. Spy or no spy, I found him a very agreeable
companion; and it was agreed that on the following day we
should visit together the ruins of Italica.
_May 5._--After breakfast, the 'Unknown' and myself, mounting
our horses, proceeded on our expedition to the ruins of
Italica. Crossing the river, and proceeding through the
populous suburb of Triano, already mentioned, we went over the
same extensive plain that I had traversed in going to San
Lucar, but keeping a little more to the right a short ride
brought us in sight of the Convent of San Isidrio, surrounded
by tall cypress and waving date-trees. This once richly-endowed
religious establishment is, together with the small
neighbouring village of Santi Ponci, I believe, the property of
the Duke of Medina Coeli, at whose expense the excavations are
now carried on at the latter place, which is the ancient site
of the Roman Italica.
We sat down on a fragment of the walls, and sadly recalling the
splendour of those times of yore, contrasted with the
desolation around us, the 'Unknown' began to feel the vein of
poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by
reciting, with great emphasis and effect, and to the
astonishment of the wondering peasant, who must have thought
him 'loco,' the following well-known and beautiful lines:--
'Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown,
Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd
On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown
In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep'd
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd,
Deeming it midnight; Temples, baths, or halls--
Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reap'd
From her research hath been, that these are walls.'
I had been too much taken up with the scene, the verses, and
the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling,
to notice the approach of one who now formed the fourth person
of our party. This was a slight female figure, beautiful in the
extreme, but whom tattered garments, raven hair (which fell in
matted elf-locks over her naked shoulders), swarthy complexion,
and flashing eyes, proclaimed to be of the wandering tribe of
'gitanos.' From an intuitive sense of natural politeness she
stood with crossed arms, and a slight smile on her dark and
handsome countenance, until my companion had ceased, and then
addressed us in the usual whining tone of supplication, with
'Caballeritos, una limosita! Dios se lo pagara a ustedes!'
('Gentlemen, a little charity! God will repay it to you!') The
gypsy girl was so pretty, and her voice so sweet, that I
involuntarily put my hand in my pocket.
'Stop!' said the 'Unknown.' 'Do you remember what I told you
about the Eastern origin of these people? You shall see I am
correct. Come here, my pretty child,' said he in Moultanee,
'and tell me where are the rest of your tribe?'
The girl looked astounded, replied in the same tongue, but in
broken language; when, taking him by the arm, she said, in
Spanish: 'Come, caballero; come to one who will be able to
answer you;' and she led the way down amongst the ruins towards
one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and
disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The
sombre walls of this gloomy abode were illumined by a fire, the
smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in the massy
roof; whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on
the bronzed features of a group of children, of two men, and a
decrepit old hag, who appeared busily engaged in some culinary
preparations.
On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of the party,
and a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of the
'faja,'[132] caused in _me_, at least, anything but a
comfortable sensation; but their hostile intentions, if ever
entertained, were immediately removed by a wave of the hand
from our conductress, who, leading my companion towards the
sibyl, whispered something in her ear. The old crone appeared
incredulous. The 'Unknown' uttered one word; but that word had
the effect of magic; she prostrated herself at his feet, and in
an instant, from an object of suspicion he became one of
worship to the whole family, to whom, on taking leave, he made
a handsome present, and departed with their united blessings,
to the astonishment of myself, and what looked very like terror
in our Spanish guide.
I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and, as soon
as we mounted our horses, exclaimed, 'Where, in the name of
goodness, did you pick up your acquaintance and the language of
these extraordinary people?' 'Some years ago, in Moultan,' he
replied. 'And by what means do you possess such apparent
influence over them?' But the 'Unknown' had already said more
than he perhaps wished on the subject. He drily replied that he
had more than once owed his life to gipsies, and had reason to
know them well; but this was said in a tone which precluded all
further queries on my part. The subject was never again
broached, and we returned in silence to the fonda....
_May 7th._--Pouring with rain all day, during which I was
mostly in the society of the 'Unknown.' This is a most
extraordinary character, and the more I see of him the more I
am puzzled. He appears acquainted with everybody and
everything, but apparently unknown to every one himself. Though
his figure bespeaks youth--and by his own account his age does
not exceed thirty--yet the snows of eighty winters could not
have whitened his locks more completely than they are. But in
his dark and searching eye there is an almost supernatural
penetration and lustre, which, were I inclined to superstition,
might induce me to set down its possessor as a second Melmoth;
and in that character he often appears to me during the
troubled rest I sometimes obtain through the medium of the
great soother, 'laudanum.'
The next most interesting figure in the Borrow gallery of this period is
Don Luis de Usoz y Rio, who was a good friend to Borrow during the whole
of his sojourn in Spain. It was he who translated Borrow's appeal to the
Spanish Prime Minister to be permitted to distribute Scio's New
Testament. He watched over Borrow with brotherly solicitude, and wrote
him more than one excellent letter, of which the two following from my
Borrow Papers, the last written at the close of the Spanish period, are
the most interesting:
To Mr. George Borrow
(_Translated from the Spanish_)
PIAZZA DI SPAGNA 17, ROME, _7 April 1838._
DEAR FRIEND,--I received your letter, and thank you for the
same. I know the works under the name of 'Boz,' about which you
write, and also the _Memoirs of the Pickwick Club_, and
although they seemed to me good, I have failed to appreciate
properly their qualities, because much of the dramatic style
and dialogue in the same are very difficult for those who know
English merely from books. I made here a better acquaintance
than that of Mezzofanti (who knows nothing), namely, that of
Prof. Michel-Angelo Lanci, already well-known on account of his
work, _La sacra scrittura illustrata con monumenti
fenico-assiri ed egiziani_, etc., etc. (The Scriptures,
illustrated with Ph[oe]nician-Assyrian and Egyptian monuments),
which I am reading at present, and find very profound and
interesting, and more particularly very original. He has
written and presented me a book, _Esposizione dei versetti del
Giobbe intorno al cavallo_ (Explanation of verses of Job about
a horse), and in these and other works he proves himself to be
a great philologist and Oriental scholar. I meet him almost
daily, and I assure you that he seems to me to know everything
he treats thoroughly, and not like Gayangos or Calderon, etc.,
etc. His philosophic works have created a great stir here, and
they do not please much the friars here; but as here they are
not like the police barbarians there, they do not forbid it, as
they cannot. Lanci is well known in Russia and in Germany, and
when I bring his works there, and you are there and have not
read them, you will read them and judge for yourself.
Wishing you well, and always at your service, I remain, always
yours,
LUIS DE USOZ Y RIO.
To Mr. George Borrow
(_Translated from the Spanish_)
NAPLES, _28 August 1839._
DEAR FRIEND,--I received your letter of the 28 July written
from Sevilla, and I am waiting for that which you promise me
from Tangier.
I am glad that you liked Sevilla, and I am still more glad of
the successful shipment of the beloved book. In distributing
it, you are rendering the greatest service that generous
foreigners (I mean Englishmen) can render to the real freedom
and enlightenment in Spain, and any Spaniard who is at heart a
gentleman must be grateful for this service to the Society and
to its agent. In my opinion, if Spain had maintained the
customs, character, and opinions that it had three centuries
ago, it ought to have maintained also unity in religious
opinions: but that at present the circumstances have changed,
and the moral character and the advancement of my unfortunate
country would not lose anything in its purification and
progress by (the grant of) religious liberty.
You are saying that I acted very light-mindedly in judging
Mezzofanti without speaking to him. You know that the other
time when I was in Italy I had dealings and spoke with him, and
that I said to you that he had a great facility for speaking
languages, but that otherwise he was no good. Because I have
seen him several times in the Papal chapels with a certain air
of an ass and certain grimaces of a blockhead that cannot
happen to a man of talent. I am told, moreover, that he is a
spy, and that for that reason he was given the hat. I know,
moreover, that he has not written anything at all. For that
reason I do not wish to take the trouble of seeing him.
As regards Lanci, I am not saying anything except that I am
waiting until you have read his work without passion, and that
if my books have arrived at Madrid, you can ask my brother in
Santiago.
You are judging of him and of Pahlin in the way you reproach me
with judging Mezzofanti; I thank you, and I wish for the
dedication Gabricote; and I also wish for your return to
Madrid, so that in going to Toledo you would get a copy of
Aristophanes with the order that will be given to you by my
brother, who has got it.
If for the Gabricote or other work you require my clumsy pen,
write to Florence and send me a rough copy of what is to be
done, in English or in Spanish, and I will supply the finished
work. From Florence I intend to go to London, and I should be
obliged if you would give me letters and instructions that
would be of use to me in literary matters, but you must know
that my want of knowledge of _speaking_ English makes it
necessary that the Englishmen who speak to me should know
Spanish, French, or Italian.
As regards robberies, of which you accuse Southern people, from
the literatures of the North, do you think that the robberies
committed by the Northerners from the Southern literature would
be left behind? Erunt vitia donec homines.--Always yours,
ELEUTHEROS.
Yet another acquaintance of these Spanish days was Baron Taylor--Isidore
Justin Severin Taylor, to give him his full name--who had a career of
wandering achievement, with Government pay, that must have appealed to
Borrow. Although his father was an Englishman he became a naturalised
Frenchman, and he was for a time in the service of the French Government
as Director of the Theatre Francais, when he had no little share in the
production of the dramas of Victor Hugo and Dumas. Later he was
instrumental in bringing the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris. He wrote
books upon his travels in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.[133] He wandered
all over Europe in search of art treasures for the French Government,
and may very well have met Borrow again and again. Borrow tells us that
he had met Taylor in France, in Russia, and in Ireland, before he met
him in Andalusia, collecting pictures for the French Government.
Borrow's description of their meetings is inimitable:--
Whenever he descries me, whether in the street or the desert,
the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin _haimas_, at Novogorod or
Stambul, he flings up his arms and exclaims, "_O ciel_! I have
again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable
Borrow."[134]
[Illustration: A LETTER FROM SIR GEORGE VILLIERS, AFTERWARDS EARL OF
CLARENDON, BRITISH MINISTER TO SPAIN, TO GEORGE BORROW]
The last and most distinguished of Borrow's colleagues while in Spain
was George Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, whom we judge to have
been in private life one of the most lovable men of his epoch. George
Villiers was born in London in 1800, and was the grandson of the first
Earl, Thomas Villiers, who received his title when holding office in
Lord North's administration, but is best known from his association in
diplomacy with Frederick the Great. His grandson was born, as it were,
into diplomacy, and at twenty years of age was an _attache_ to the
British Embassy in St. Petersburg. Later he was associated with Sir John
Bowring in negotiating a commercial treaty with France. In August 1833
he was sent as British Minister--'envoy extraordinary' he was called--to
Madrid, and he had been two years in that seething-pot of Spanish
affairs, with Christinos and Carlists at one another's throats, when
Borrow arrived in the Peninsula. His influence was the greater with a
succession of Spanish Prime Ministers in that in 1838 he had been
largely instrumental in negotiating the quadruple alliance between
England, France, Spain, and Portugal. In March 1839--exactly a year
before Borrow took his departure--he resigned his position at Madrid,
having then for some months exchanged the title of Sir George Villiers
for that of Earl of Clarendon through the death of his uncle;[135]
Borrow thereafter having to launch his various complaints and grievances
at his successor, Mr.--afterwards Sir George--Jerningham, who, it has
been noted, had his home in Norfolk, at Costessey, four miles from
Norwich. Villiers returned to England with a great reputation, although
his Spanish policy was attacked in the House of Lords. In that same
year, 1839, he joined Lord Melbourne's administration as Lord Privy
Seal, O'Connell at the time declaring that he ought to be made
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, so sympathetic was he towards concession and
conciliation in that then feverishly excited country. This office
actually came to him in 1847, and he was Lord-Lieutenant through that
dark period of Ireland's history, including the Famine, the Young
Ireland rebellion, and the Smith O'Brien rising. He pleased no one in
Ireland. No English statesman could ever have done so under such ideals
of government as England would have tolerated then, and for long years
afterwards. The Whigs defended him, the Tories abused him, in their
respective organs. He left Ireland in 1852 and was more than once
mentioned as possible Prime Minister in the ensuing years. He was
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Lord Aberdeen's Administration
during the Crimean War, and he held the same office under Lord
Palmerston, again under Earl Russell in 1865, and under Mr. Gladstone in
1868. He might easily have become Prime Minister. Greville in his
_Diary_ writes of Prince Albert's desire that he should succeed Lord
John Russell, but Clarendon said that no power on earth would make him
take that position. He said he could not speak, and had not had
parliamentary experience enough. He died in 1870, leaving a reputation
as a skilful diplomatist and a disinterested politician, if not that of
a great statesman. He had twice refused the Governor-Generalship of
India, and three times a marquisate.
Sir George Villiers seems to have been very courteous to Borrow during
the whole of the time they were together in Spain. It would have been
easy for him to have been quite otherwise. Borrow's Bible mission
synchronised with a very delicate diplomatic mission of his own, and in
a measure clashed with it. The government of Spain was at the time
fighting the ultra-clericals. Physical and moral strife were rife in the
land. Neither Royalists nor Carlists could be expected to sympathise
with Borrow's schemes, which were fundamentally to attack their church.
But Villiers was at all times friendly, and, as far as he could be,
helpful. Borrow seems to have had ready access to him, and he answered
his many letters. He gave Borrow an opportunity of an interview with the
formidable Prime Minister Mendizabal, and he interviewed another
minister and persuaded him to permit Borrow to print and circulate his
Bibles. He intervened successfully to release Borrow from his Madrid
prison. But Villiers could not have had any sympathy with Borrow other
than as a British subject to be protected on the Roman citizen
principle. We do not suppose that when _The Bible in Spain_ appeared he
was one of those who were captivated by its extraordinary qualities.
When Borrow crossed his path in later life he received no special
consideration, such as would be given very promptly in our day by a
Cabinet minister to a man of letters of like distinction. We find him on
one occasion writing to the ex-minister, now Lord Clarendon, asking his
help for a consulship. Clarendon replied kindly enough, but sheltered
himself behind the statement that the Prime Minister was overwhelmed
with applications for patronage. Yet Clarendon, who held many high
offices in the following years, might have helped if he had cared to do
so. Some years later--in 1847--there was further correspondence when
Borrow desired to become a Magistrate of Suffolk. Here again Clarendon
wrote three courteous letters, and appears to have done his best in an
unenthusiastic way. But nothing came of it all.
FOOTNOTES:
[125] The accounts in _The Bible in Spain_, _The Gypsies of Spain_, and
the _Letters to the Bible Society_.
[126] The only 'Samuel Brandram' in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ is a reciter who died in 1892; he certainly had less claim to
the distinction than his namesake.
[127] See 'Footprints of George Borrow' by A. G. Jayne in _The Bible in
the World_ for July 1908.
[128] _Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean_, by
Lieut.-Colonel E. Napier, vol. ii (Henry Colburn), 1842.
[129] See _Dictionary of National Biography_, vol. xl. pp. 54-55.
[130] A sheepskin jacket with the wool outside, a costume much worn here
in cold weather.
[131] 'panee' is masculine (marginal note in pencil).
[132] In the folds of the sash is concealed the 'navaja,' or formidable
clasp-knife, always worn by the Spaniard.
[133] His principal work was _Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans
l'ancienne France_.
[134] _The Bible in Spain_, ch. xv.
[135] Many interesting letters from Villiers will be found in _Memoirs
and Memories_, by his niece, Mrs. C. W. Earle, 1911.
CHAPTER XX
MARY BORROW
Among the many Borrow manuscripts in my possession I find a page of
unusual pathos. It is the inscription that Borrow wrote for his wife's
tomb, and it is in the tremulous handwriting of a man weighed down by
the one incomparable tragedy of life's pilgrimage:
_Sacred to the Memory of Mary Borrow,
the Beloved and Affectionate Wife of
George Borrow, Esquire, who departed
this Life on the 30th Jan. 1869._
GEORGE BORROW.
The death of his wife saddened Borrow, and assisted to transform him
into the unamiable creature of Norfolk tradition. But it is well to bear
in mind, when we are considering Borrow on his domestic and personal
side, that he was unquestionably a good and devoted husband throughout
his married life of twenty-nine years. It was in the year 1832 that
Borrow and his wife first met. He was twenty-nine; she was a widow of
thirty-six. She was undeniably very intelligent, and was keenly
sympathetic to the young vagabond of wonderful adventures on the
highways of England, now so ambitious for future adventure in distant
lands. Her maiden name was Mary Skepper. She was one of the two children
of Edmund Skepper and his wife Anne, who lived at Oulton Hall in
Suffolk, whither they had removed from Beceles in 1805. Mary's brother
inherited the Oulton Hall estate of three hundred acres, and she had a
mortgage the interest of which yielded L450 per annum. In July 1817 Mary
married, at Oulton Church, Henry Clarke,[136] a lieutenant in the Navy,
who died eight months later of consumption. Two months after his death
their child Henrietta Mary, the 'Hen' who was Borrow's life companion,
was born. There is a letter among my Borrow Papers addressed to the
widow by her husband's father at this time. It is dated 17th June 1818,
and runs as follows:
I read your very kind, affectionate, and respectful Letter of
the 15th Inst. with Feelings of Satisfaction and
thankfulness--thankful that God has mercifully given you so
pleasing a Pledge of the Love of my late dear, but lamented
son, and I most sincerely hope and trust that dear little
Henrietta will live to be the Joy and Consolation of your Life:
and satisfyed I am that you are what I always esteemed you to
be, _one_ of the best of Women; God grant! that you may be, as
I am sure you deserve to be _one_ of the happiest--His Ways of
Providence are past finding out; to you--they seem indeed to
have been truly afflictive: but we cannot possibly say that
they are really so; we cannot doubt His Wisdom nor ought we to
distrust His Goodness, let us avow, then, where we have not the
Power of fathoming--viz. the dispensations of God; in His good
time He will show us, perhaps, that every painful Event which
has happened was abundantly for the best--I am truly glad to
hear that you and the sweet Babe, my little grand Daughter, are
doing so well, and I hope I shall have the pleasure shortly of
seeing you either at Oulton or Sisland. I am sorry to add that
neither Poor L. nor myself are well.--Louisa and my Family join
me in kind love to you, and in best regards to your worthy
Father, Mother, and Brother.
Mary Skepper was certainly a bright, intelligent girl, as I gather from
a manuscript poem before me written to a friend on the eve of leaving
school. As a widow, living at first with her parents at Oulton Hall, and
later with her little daughter in the neighbouring cottage, she would
seem to have busied herself with all kinds of philanthropies, and she
was clearly in sympathy with the religious enthusiasms of certain
neighbouring families of Evangelical persuasion, particularly the
Gurneys and the Cunninghams. The Rev. Francis Cunningham was Rector of
Pakefield, near Lowestoft, from 1814 to 1830. He married Richenda, a
sister of the distinguished Joseph John Gurney and of Elizabeth Fry, in
1816. In 1830 he became Vicar of St. Margaret's, Lowestoft. His brother,
John William Cunningham, was Vicar of Harrow, and married a Verney of
the famous Buckinghamshire family. This John William Cunningham was a
great light of the Evangelical Churches of his time, and was for many
years editor of _The Christian Observer_. His daughter Mary Richenda
married Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the well-known judge, and the
brother of Sir Leslie Stephen. But to return to Francis Cunningham,
whose acquaintance with Borrow was brought about through Mrs. Clarke.
Cunningham was a great supporter of the British and Foreign Bible
Society, and was the founder of the Paris branch. It was speedily
revealed to him that Borrow's linguistic abilities could be utilised by
the Society, and he secured the co-operation of his brother-in-law,
Joseph John Gurney, in an effort to find Borrow work in connection with
the Society. There is a letter of Borrow's to Mrs. Clarke of this period
in my Borrow Papers which my readers will already have read.[137]
We do not meet Mary Clarke again until 1834, when we find a letter from
her to Borrow addressed to St. Petersburg, in which she notifies to him
that he has been 'mentioned at many of the Bible Meetings this year,'
adding that 'dear Mr. Cunningham' had spoken so nicely of him at an
Oulton gathering. 'As I am not afraid of making you proud,' she
continues, 'I will tell you one of his remarks. He mentioned you as one
of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present
day.' Henceforth clearly Mary Clarke corresponded regularly with Borrow,
and one or two extracts from her letters are given by Dr. Knapp. Joseph
Jowett of the Bible Society forwarded Borrow's letters from Russia to
Cunningham, who handed them to Mrs. Clarke and her parents. Borrow had
proposed to continue his mission by leaving Russia for China, but this
Mary Clarke opposed:
I must tell you that your letter chilled me when I read your
intention of going as a Missionary or Agent, with the Manchu
Scriptures in your hand, to the Tartars, that land of
incalculable dangers.[138]
In 1835 Borrow was back in England at Norwich with his mother, and on a
visit to Mary Clarke and the Skeppers at Oulton. Mrs. Skepper died just
before his arrival in England--that is, in September 1835--while her
husband died in February 1836. Mary Clarke's only brother died in the
following year.[139]
Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged about forty, left to fight the world with
her daughter, aged twenty-three, and not only to fight the world but her
own family, particularly her brother's widow, owing to certain
ambiguities in her father's will which are given forth in dreary detail
in Dr. Knapp's _Life_.[140] It was these legal quarrels that led Mary
Clarke and her daughter to set sail for Spain, where Mary had had the
indefatigable and sympathetic correspondent during the previous year of
trouble. Borrow and Mary Clarke met, as we have seen, at Seville and
there, at a later period, they became 'engaged.' Mrs. Clarke and her
daughter Henrietta sailed for Spain in the _Royal Tar_, leaving London
for Cadiz in June 1839. Much keen correspondence between Borrow and Mrs.
Clarke had passed before the final decision to visit Spain. His mother
was one of the few people who knew of Mrs. Clarke's journey to Seville,
and must have understood, as mothers do, what was pending, although her
son did not When the engagement is announced to her--in November
1839--she writes to Mary Clarke a kindly, affectionate letter:
I shall now resign him to your care, and may you love and
cherish him as much as I have done. I hope and trust that each
will try to make the other happy.
There is no reason whatever to accept Dr. Knapp's suggestion,[141]
strange as coming from so pronounced a hero-worshipper, that Borrow
married for money. And this because he had said in one of his letters,
'It is better to suffer the halter than the yoke,' the kind of thing
that a man might easily say on the eve of making a proposal which he was
not sure would be accepted. Nor can Dr. Knapp's further discovery of a
casual remark of Borrow's--'marriage is by far the best way of getting
possession of an estate'--be counted as conclusive. That Borrow was all
his life devoted to his wife I think is proved by his many letters to
her that are given in this volume, letters, however, which Dr. Knapp had
not seen. Borrow's further tribute to his wife and stepdaughter in _Wild
Wales_ is well known:
Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of
wives, can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is
the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia. Of my
stepdaughter--for such she is, though I generally call her
daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always
shown herself a daughter to me--that she has all kinds of good
qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of
conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch
style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar--not the
trumpery German thing so called, but the real Spanish guitar.
Borrow belonged to the type of men who would never marry did not some
woman mercifully take them in hand. Mrs. Clarke, when she set out for
Spain, had doubtless determined to marry Borrow. It is clear that he had
no idea of marrying her. Yet he was certainly 'engaged,' as we learn
from a letter to Mr. Brackenbury, to be given hereafter, when he wrote a
letter from Seville to Mr. Brandram, dated March 18, in which he said:
'I wish very much to spend the remaining years of my life in the
northern parts of China, as I think I have a call to those regions.... I
hope yet to die in the cause of my Redeemer.' Surely never did man take
so curious a view of the responsibilities of marriage. He must have
known that his proposal would be declined--as it was.
Very soon after the engagement Borrow experienced his third term of
imprisonment in Spain, this time, however, only for thirty hours, and
all because he had asked the Alcalde, or mayor of the district in which
he lived, for his passport, and had quarrelled with his worship over the
matter. Borrow gave up the months of this winter of 1839 rather to
writing his first important book, _The Gypsies of Spain_, than to the
concerns of the Bible Society. Finally Borrow, with Mrs. Clarke and her
daughter, sailed from Cadiz on the 3rd April 1840, as we have already
related. He had with him his Jewish servant, Hayim Ben Attar, and his
Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, both of which were to astonish the
natives of the Suffolk broads. The party reached London on 16th April
and stayed at the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street. The marriage
took place at St. Peter's Church, Cornhill, on 23rd April 1840.
[Illustration: MRS. BORROW'S COPY OF HER MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE.]
There are only two letters from Mrs. Borrow to her husband extant. Dr.
Knapp apparently discovered none in the Borrow Papers in his possession.
The two before me were written in the Hereford Square days between the
years 1860 and 1869--the last year of Mrs. Borrow's life. The pair had
been married some twenty-five years at least, and it is made clear by
these letters alone that at the end of this period they were still a
most happily assorted couple. Mrs. Borrow must have gone to Brighton for
her health on two separate occasions, each time accompanied by her
daughter. Borrow, who had enjoyed many a pleasant ramble on his own
account, as we shall see--rambles which extended as far away as
Constantinople--is 'keeping house' in Hereford Square, Brompton, the
while. It will be noted that Mrs. Borrow signed herself 'Carreta,' the
pet name that her husband always gave her. Dr. Knapp points out that
'carreta' means a Spanish dray-cart, and that 'carita,' 'my dear,' was
probably meant. But, careless as was the famous word-master over the
spelling of words in the tongues that he never really mastered
scientifically, he could scarcely have made so obvious a blunder as
this, and there must have been some particular experience in the lives
of husband and wife that led to the playful designation.[142] Here are
the two letters:
To George Borrow, Esq.
GRENVILLE PLACE, BRIGHTON, SUSSEX.
MY DARLING HUSBAND,--I am thankful to say that I arrived here
quite safe on Saturday, and on Wednesday I hope to see you at
home. We may not be home before the evening about six o'clock,
sooner or later, so do not be anxious, as we shall be careful.
We took tea with the Edwards at six o'clock the day I came;
they are a very kind, nice family. You must take a walk when we
come home, but remember now we have a young servant, and do not
leave the house for very long together. The air here is very
fresh, and much cooler than in London, and I hope after the
five days' change I shall be benefited, but I wish to come home
on Wednesday. See to all the doors and windows of a night, and
let Jane keep up the chain, and lock the back door by the hop
plant before it gets dark. Our love to Lady Soame.--And with
our best love to you, believe me, your own
CARRETA.
_Sunday morning, 10 o'clock._
If I do not hear from you I shall conclude all is well, and you
may do the same with regard to us. Have the tea ready a little
before six on Wednesday. Henrietta is wonderfully improved by
the change, and sends dear and best love to you.
To George Borrow, Esq.
33 GRENVILLE PLACE, BRIGHTON, SUSSEX.
_Thursday morning_.
MY DEAR HUSBAND,--As it is raining again this morning I write a
few lines to you. I cannot think that we have quite so much
rain as you have at Brompton, for I was out _twice_ yesterday,
an hour in the morning in a Bath chair, and a little walk in
the evening on the Marine Parade, and I have been out little or
much every day, and hope I feel a little better. Our dear
Henrietta likewise says that she feels the better for the air
and change. As we are here I think we had better remain till
Tuesday next, when the fortnight will be up, but I fear you
feel very lonely. I hope you get out when you can, and that you
take care of your health. I hope Ellen continues to attend to
yr. comfort, and that when she gives orders to Mrs. Harvey or
the Butcher that she shews you what they send. I shall want
the stair carpets down, and the drawing-room _nice_--blinds and
shutters closed to prevent the sun, also bed-rooms prepared,
with well _aired sheets_ and counterpane _by next Tuesday_. I
suppose we shall get to Hereford Square perhaps about five
o'clock, but I shall write again. You had better dine at yr.
usual time, and as we shall get a dinner here we shall want
only tea.
Henrietta's kindest dear love and mine, remaining yr. true and
affectionate wife.
CARRETA.
There is one letter from Borrow to his wife, written from London in
1843, in which he says:
I have not been particularly well since I wrote last; indeed,
the weather has been so horrible that it is enough to depress
anybody's spirits, and, of course, mine. I did very wrong not
to bring you when I came, for without you I cannot get on at
all. Left to myself a gloom comes upon me which I cannot
describe.[143]
Assuredly no reader can peruse the following pages without recognising
the true affection for his wife that is transparent in his letters to
her. Arthur Dalrymple's remark that he had frequently seen Borrow and
his wife travelling:
He stalking along with a huge cloak wrapped round him in all
weathers, and she trudging behind him like an Indian squaw,
with a carpet bag, or bundle, or small portmanteau in her arms,
and endeavouring under difficulty to keep up with his enormous
strides,
is clearly a travesty. 'Mrs. Borrow was devoted to her husband, and
looked after business matters; and he always treated her with exceeding
kindness,' is the verdict of Miss Elizabeth Jay, who was frequently
privileged to visit the husband and wife at Oulton.
FOOTNOTES:
[136] All I know of Henry Clarke is contained in two little documents in
my Borrow Papers which run as follows:
'These are to Certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of H.M.
Navy that Mr. Henry Clarke has Served as Midshipman on board H.M. Ship
_Salvador del Mundo_ under my Command from the 23 September 1810 to the
date hereof, during which time he behaved with Diligence, Sobriety, and
Attention, and was always obedient to Command.
Given under my Hand on board the _Salvador del Mundo_ the 4 April 1811.
JAMES NASH, _Captain_.'
'These are to Certify the Principal Officers and Commissioners of H.M.
Navy that Mr. Henry Clarke has Served as Midshipman on board H.M. Ship
_Tisiphone_ under my Command from the 20th of June 1813 to the date
hereof, during which time he behaved with Diligence, Sobriety, and
Attention, and was always obedient to Command.
Given under my Hand on board the _Tisiphone_ in the Needles passage this
30th day of November 1813.
E. HODDER, _Captain_.'
[137] _Vide supra_, p. 158.
[138] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i. 189.
[139] The tombs in Oulton Churchyard bear the following inscriptions:
(1) Beneath this stone are interred in the same grave the Mortal Remains
of Edmund Skepper, who died Febry. 5th, 1836, aged 69. Also Ann Skepper,
his wife, who died Sept. 15th, 1835, aged 62.
(2) Beneath this stone are interred the Mortal Remains of Breame
Skepper, who died May 22nd, 1837, aged 42, leaving a wife and six
children to lament his severe loss.
(3) Sacred to the Memory of Lieut. Henry Clarke of His Maj.'s Royal
Navy, who departed this life on the 21st of March 1818, aged 25 years,
leaving a firmly attached widow and an infant daughter to lament his
irreparable loss.
A further tomb commemorates the mother of George Borrow, whose epitaph
is given elsewhere.
[140] The following document in Henrietta's handwriting is among my
Borrow Papers:
'When my Grandfather died he owed a mortgage of L5000 on the Oulton Hall
estate--to a Mrs. Purdy.
'At my Grandfather's death my Mother applied to her Brother for the
money left to her and also the money left--beside the money owed to her
daughter which is also mentioned in the Will. She was refused both, and
told moreover that neither the money nor the interest would be paid to
her.
'My Mother and I were living at the Cottage since the funeral of my
Grandfather--the Skeppers removed to the Hall. The Estate was to be
sold--and my Mother and myself were to be paid. 'My Mother mentioned
this to her solicitor, who hastened back to Norwich and got L5000--which
he carried to the old lady, Mrs. Purdy, next day and paid off the
mortgage. My Mother then was mortgagee in possession--after which she
let the place for what she could get--this accounts for the whole affair
and the whole confusion.
'My Mother was a Widow at this time and remained so for some time
after--consequently all transactions took place with her and not with
Mr. Borrow--she being afterwards married to Mr. Borrow without a
settlement.
'After this, in 1844, the place was again put up by public auction and
bought in by Mr. Borrow and my Mother.'
[141] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i. pp. 330, 331.
[142] The following suggestion has, however, been made to me by a friend
of Henrietta MacOubrey _nee_ Clarke:
'I think Borrow intended "Carreta" for "dearest," It is impossible to
think that he would call his wife a "cart." Perhaps he intended
"Carreta" for "Querida." Probably their pronunciation was not
Castillian, and they spelled the word as they pronounced it. In speaking
of her to "Hen." Borrow always called her "Mamma." Mrs. MacOubrey took a
great fancy to me because she said I was like "Mamma." She meant in
character, not in person.'
[143] Dr. Knapp: _Life_, vol. ii p. 39.
CHAPTER XXI
'THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR'
Behold George Borrow, then, in a comfortable home on the banks of Oulton
Broad--a family man. His mother--sensible woman--declines her son's
invitation to live with the newly-married pair. She remains in the
cottage at Norwich where her husband died. The Borrows were married in
April 1840, by May they had settled at Oulton. It was a pleasantly
secluded estate, and Borrow's wife had L450 a year. He had, a month
before his marriage, written to Mr. Brandram to say that he had a work
nearly ready for publication, and 'two others in a state of
forwardness.' The title of the first of these books he enclosed in his
letter. It was _The Zincali: Or an Account of the Gypsies of Spain_. Mr.
Samuel Smiles, in his history of the House of Murray--_A Publisher and
his Friends_--thus relates the circumstances of its publication:--
In November 1840 a tall, athletic gentleman in black called
upon Mr. Murray offering a MS. for perusal and publication....
Mr. Murray could not fail to be taken at first sight with this
extraordinary man. He had a splendid physique, standing six
feet two in his stockings, and he had brains as well as
muscles, as his works sufficiently show. The book now submitted
was of a very uncommon character, and neither the author nor
the publisher were very sanguine about its success. Mr. Murray
agreed, after perusal, to print and publish 750 copies of _The
Gypsies of Spain_, and divide the profits with the author.
It was at the suggestion of Richard Ford, then the greatest living
English authority on Spain, that Mr. Murray published the book. It did
not really commence to sell until _The Bible in Spain_ came a year or so
later to bring the author reputation.[144] From November 1840 to June
1841 only three hundred copies had been sold in spite of friendly
reviews in some half dozen journals, including _The Athenaeum_ and _The
Literary Gazette_. The first edition, it may be mentioned, contained on
its title-page a description of the author as 'late agent of the British
and Foreign Bible Society in Spain.'[145] There is very marked
compression in the edition now in circulation, and a perusal of the
first edition reveals many interesting features that deserve to be
restored for the benefit of the curious. But nothing can make _The
Zincali_ a great piece of literature. It was summarised by the
_Edinburgh Review_ at the time as 'a hotch-potch of the jockey, tramper,
philologist, and missionary.' That description, which was not intended
to be as flattering as it sounds to-day, appears more to apply to _The
Bible in Spain_. But _The Zincali_ is too confused, too ill-arranged a
book to rank with Borrow's four great works. There are passages in it,
indeed, so eloquent, so romantic, that no lover of Borrow's writings can
afford to neglect them. But this was not the book that gypsy-loving
Borrow, with the temperament of a Romany, should have written, or could
have written had he not been obsessed by the 'science' of his subject.
His real work in gypsydom was to appear later in _Lavengro_ and _The
Romany Rye_. For Borrow was not a man of science--a philologist, a
folk-lorist of the first order.
No one, indeed, who had read only _The Zincali_ among Borrow's works
could see in it any suspicion of the writer who was for all time to
throw a glamour over the gypsy, to make the 'children of the open air' a
veritable cult, to earn for him the title of 'the walking lord of gypsy
lore,' and to lay the foundations of an admirable succession of books
both in fact and fiction--but not one as great as his own. The city of
Seville, it is clear, with sarcastic letters from Bible Society
secretaries on one side, and some manner of love romance on the other,
was not so good a place for an author to produce a real book as Oulton
was to become. Richard Ford hit the nail on the head when he said with
quite wonderful prescience:
How I wish you had given us more about yourself, instead of the
extracts from those blunder-headed old Spaniards, who knew
nothing about gypsies! I shall give you the _rap_, on that, and
a hint to publish your whole adventures for the last twenty
years.[146]
Henceforth Borrow was to write about himself and to become a great
author in consequence. For in writing about himself as in _Lavengro_ and
_The Romany Rye_ he was to write exactly as he felt about the gypsies,
and to throw over them the glamour of his own point of view, the view of
a man who loved the broad highway and those who sojourned upon it. In
_The Gypsies of Spain_ we have a conventional estimate of the gypsies.
'There can be no doubt that they are human beings and have immortal
souls,' he says, even as if he were writing a letter to the Bible
Society. All his anecdotes about the gypsies are unfavourable to them,
suggestive only of them as knaves and cheats. From these pictures it is
a far cry to the creation of Jasper Petulengro and Isopel Berners. The
most noteworthy figure in _The Zincali_ is the gypsy soldier of
Valdepenas, an unholy rascal. 'To lie, to steal, to shed human
blood'--these are the most marked characteristics with which Borrow
endows the gypsies of Spain. 'Abject and vile as they have ever been,
the gitanos have nevertheless found admirers in Spain,' says the author
who came to be popularly recognised as the most enthusiastic admirer of
the gypsies in Spain and elsewhere. Read to-day by the lover of Borrow's
other books _The Zincali_ will be pronounced a readable collection of
anecdotes, interspersed with much dull matter, with here and there a
piece of admirable writing. But the book would scarcely have lived had
it not been followed by four works of so fine an individuality. Well
might Ford ask Borrow for more about himself and less of the extracts
from 'blunder-headed old Spaniards.' When Borrow came to write about
himself he revealed his real kindness for the gypsy folk. He gave us
Jasper Petulengro and the incomparable description of 'the wind on the
heath.' He kindled the imagination of men, proclaimed the joys of
vagabondage in a manner that thrilled many hearts. He had some
predecessors and many successors, but 'none could then, or can ever
again,' says the biographer of a later Rye, 'see or hear of Romanies
without thinking of Borrow.'[147] In her biography of one of these
successors in gypsy lore, Charles Godfrey Leland, Mrs. Pennell discusses
the probability that Borrow and Leland met in the British Museum. That
is admitted in a letter from Leland to Borrow in my possession. To this
letter Borrow made no reply. It was wrong of him. But he was then--in
1873--a prematurely old man, worn out and saddened by neglect and a
sense of literary failure. For this and for the other vagaries of those
latter years Borrow will not be judged harshly by those who read his
story here. Nothing could be more courteous than Borrow's one letter to
Leland, written in the failing handwriting--once so excellent--of the
last sad decade of his life:
[Illustration: AN APPLICATION FOR A BOOK IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, WITH
BORROWS SIGNATURE]
22 HEREFORD SQUARE, BROMPTON, _Nov. 2, 1871._
SIR,--I have received your letter and am gratified by the
desire you express to make my acquaintance. Whenever you please
to come I shall be happy to see you.--Yours truly,
GEORGE BORROW.[148]
The meeting did not, through Leland's absence from London, then take
place. Two years later it was another story. The failing powers were
more noteworthy. Borrow was by this time dead to the world, as the
documents before me abundantly testify. It is not, therefore, necessary
to assume, as Leland's friends have all done, that Borrow never replied
because he was on the eve of publishing a book of his own about the
gypsies. There seems no reason to assume, as Dr. Knapp does and as
Leland does, that this was the reason for the unanswered letter:
To George Borrow, Esq.
LANGHAM HOTEL, PORTLAND PLACE, _March 31st, 1873._
DEAR SIR,--I sincerely trust that the limited extent of our
acquaintanceship will not cause this note to seem to you too
presuming. _Breviter_, I have thrown the results of my
observations among English gypsies into a very unpretending
little volume consisting almost entirely of facts gathered from
the Romany, without any theory. As I owe all my interest in the
subject to your writings, and as I am sincerely grateful to you
for the impulse which they gave me, I should like very much to
dedicate my book to you. Of course if your kindness permits I
shall submit the proofs to you, that you may judge whether the
work deserves the honour. I should have sent you the MS., but
not long after our meeting at the British Museum I left for
Egypt, whence I have very recently returned, to find my
publisher clamorous for the promised copy.
It is _not_--God knows--a mean and selfish desire to help my
book by giving it the authority of your name, which induces
this request. But I am earnestly desirous for my conscience'
sake to publish nothing in the Romany which shall not be true
and sensible, even as all that you have written is true and
sensible. Therefore, _should_ you take the pains to glance over
my proof, I should be grateful if you would signify to me any
differences of opinion should there be ground for any. Dr. A.
F. Pott in his _Zigeuner_ (vol. ii. p. 224), intimates very
decidedly that you took the word _shastr_ (Exhastra de Moyses)
from Sanskrit and put it into Romany; declaring that it would
be very important if _shaster_ were Romany. I mention in my
book that English gypsies call the New Testament (also any MS.)
a _shaster_, and that a betting-book on a racecourse is called
a _shaster_ 'because it is written.' I do not pretend in my
book to such deep Romany as you have achieved--all that I claim
is to have collected certain words, facts, phrases, etc., out
of the Romany of the roads--corrupt as it is--as I have found
it to-day. I deal only with the gypsy of the _Decadence_. With
renewed apology for intrusion should it seem such, I remain,
yours very respectfully,
CHARLES G. LELAND.
Francis Hindes Groome remarked when reviewing Borrow's _Word Book_ in
1874,[149] that when _The Gypsies of Spain_ was published in 1841 'there
were not two educated men in England who possessed the slightest
knowledge of Romany.' In the intervening thirty-three years all this was
changed. There was an army of gypsy scholars or scholar gypsies of whom
Leland was one, Hindes Groome another, and Professor E. H. Palmer a
third, to say nothing of many scholars and students of Romany in other
lands. Not one of them seemed when Borrow published his _Word Book of
the Romany_ to see that he was the only man of genius among them. They
only saw that he was an inferior philologist to them all. And so Borrow,
who prided himself on things that he could do indifferently quite as
much as upon things that he could do well, suffered once again, as he
was so often doomed to suffer, from the lack of appreciation which was
all in all to him, and his career went out in a veritable blizzard. He
published nothing after his _Romano Lavo-Lil_ appeared in 1874.[150] He
was then indeed a broken and a bitter man, with no further interest in
life. Dedications of books to him interested him not at all. In any
other mood, or a few years earlier, Leland's book, _The English
Gypsies_,[151] would have gladdened his heart. In his preface Leland
expresses 'the highest respect for the labours of Mr. George Borrow in
this field,' he quotes Borrow continually and with sympathy, and renders
him honour as a philologist, that has usually been withheld. 'To Mr.
Borrow is due the discovery that the word _Jockey_ is of gypsy origin
and derived from _chuckiri_, which means a whip,' and he credits Borrow
with the discovery of the origin of 'tanner' for sixpence; he vindicates
him as against Dr. A. F. Pott,--a prince among students of gypsydom--of
being the first to discover that the English gypsies call the Bible the
_Shaster_. But there is a wealth of scientific detail in Leland's books
that is not to be found in Borrow's, as also there is in Francis Hindes
Groome's works. What had Borrow to do with science? He could not even
give the word 'Rumani' its accent, and called it 'Romany.' He 'quietly
appropriated,' says Groome, 'Bright's Spanish gypsy words for his own
work, mistakes and all, without one word of recognition. I think one
has the ancient impostor there.'[152] 'His knowledge of the strange
history of the gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more
so, and of their folk-lore practically _nil_,' says Groome
elsewhere.[153] Yet Mr. Hindes Groome readily acknowledges that Borrow
is above all writers on the gypsies. 'He communicates a subtle insight
into gypsydom'--that is the very essence of the matter.[154] Controversy
will continue in the future as in the present as to whether the gypsies
are all that Borrow thought them. Perhaps 'corruption has crept in among
them' as it did with the prize-fighters. They have intermarried with the
gorgios, thrown over their ancient customs, lost all their picturesque
qualities, it may be. But Borrow has preserved in literature for all
time, as not one of the philologists and folk-lore students has done, a
remarkable type of people. But this is not to be found in his first
original work, _The Zincali_, nor in his last, _The Romano Lavo-Lil_.
This glamour is to be found in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, to which
books we shall come in due course. Here we need only refer to the fact
that Borrow had loved the gypsies all his life--from his boyish meeting
with Petulengro until in advancing years the prototype of that wonderful
creation of his imagination--for this the Petulengro of _Lavengro_
undoubtedly was--came to visit him at Oulton. Well might Leland call him
'the Nestor of Gypsydom.'
We find the following letter to Dr. Bowring accompanying a copy of _The
Zincali_:
To Dr. John Bowring.
58 JERMYN STREET, ST. JAMES, _April 14, 1841._
MY DEAR SIR,--I have sent you a copy of my work by the mail. If
you could contrive to notice it some way or other I should feel
much obliged. Murray has already sent copies to all the
journals. It is needless to tell you that despatch in these
matters is very important, the first blow is everything. Lord
Clarendon is out of town. So I must send him his presentation
copy through Murray, and then write to him. I am very unwell,
and must go home. My address is George Borrow, Oulton Hall,
Oulton, Lowestoft, Suffolk. Your obedient servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
Two years later we find Borrow writing to an unknown correspondent upon
a phase of folk-lore:
OULTON, LOWESTOFT, SUFFOLK, _August 11, 1843._
MY DEAR SIR,--Many thanks for your interesting and kind letter
in which you do me the honour to ask my opinion respecting the
pedigree of your island goblin, le feu follet Belenger; that
opinion I cheerfully give with a premise that it is only an
opinion; in hunting for the etymons of these fairy names we can
scarcely expect to arrive at anything like certainty.
I suppose you are aware that the name of Bilenger or Billinger
is of occasional though by no means of frequent occurrence both
in England and France. I have seen it; you have heard of
Billings-gate and of Billingham, the unfortunate assassin of
poor Percival,--all modifications of the same root; Belingart,
Bilings home or Billing ston. But what is Billin-ger? Clearly
that which is connected in some way or other with Billing. You
will find _ger_, or something like it, in most
European-tongues--Boulan_ger_, horolo_ger_, tal_ker_, walk_er_,
ba_ker_, bre_wer_, beg_gar_. In Welsh it is of frequent
occurrence in the shape of _ur_ or _gwr_--hen_ur_ (an eld_er_),
her_wr_ (a prow_ler_); in Russian the ger, gwr, ur, er, appears
in the shape of _ik_ or _k_--sapojgn_ik_, a shoema_ker_,
Chinobu_ik_, a man possessed of rank. The root of all these, as
well as of _or_ in senator, victor, etc., is the Sanscrit _ker_
or _kir_, which means lord, master, maker, doer, possessor of
something or connected with something.
We want now to come at the meaning of Beling or Billing, which
probably means some action, or some moral or personal
attribute; Bolvile in Anglo-Saxon means honest, Danish Bollig;
Wallen, in German, to wanken or move restlessly about; Baylan,
in Spanish, to dance (Ball? Ballet?), connected with which are
to whirl, to fling, and possibly Belinger therefore may mean a
Billiger or honest fellow, or it may mean a Walter_ger_, a
whirl_enger_, a flinger, or something connected with restless
motion.
Allow me to draw your attention to the word 'Will' in the
English word will-o-the-wisp; it must not be supposed that this
Will is the abbreviation of William; it is pure Danish,
'Vild'--pronounced will,--and signifies wild; Vilden Visk, the
wild or moving wisp. I can adduce another instance of the
corruption of the Danish vild into will: the rustics of this
part of England are in the habit of saying 'they are led will'
(vild or wild) when from intoxication or some other cause they
are bewildered at night and cannot find their way home. This
expression is clearly from the old Norse or Danish. I am not at
all certain that 'Bil' in Bilinger may not be this same will or
vild, and that the word may not be a corruption of vilden, old
or elder, wild or flying fire. It has likewise occurred to me
that Bilinger may be derived from 'Volundr,' the worship of the
blacksmith or Northern Vulcan. Your obedient servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
FOOTNOTES:
[144] There were 750 copies of the first edition of _The Zincali_ in two
vols. in 1841. 750 of the second edition in 1843, and a third issue of
750 in the same year. A fourth edition of 7,500 copies appeared in the
cheap Home and Colonial Library in 1846, and there was a fifth edition
of 1000 copies in 1870. These were all the editions published in England
during Borrow's lifetime. Dr. Knapp traced three American editions
during the same period.
[145] _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. By George Borrow, Late Agent of the British and
Foreign Bibl |
