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 p. 8Borrow 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 at 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 farmhouse, 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 as the scion “of an ancient but reduced Cornish family, tracing descent from the de Burghs, and entitled to carry their arms.”
 
When Thomas Borrow was born the family were 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.  p. 9This 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.  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.  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 p. 10guarding 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.”  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 p. 11his 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.” [11a]
 
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.” [11b]
 
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.  p. 12Why 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 be 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 p. 13of 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 books 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.
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.”  She was one of the eight children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have devoted their lives to East Anglia.  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 p. 15seems 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 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. [15]
 
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, p. 16although of these no record remains.  The cottage still stands in its modest court, and now serves the worthy purpose of a museum for Borrow relics.  In Borrow’s day it 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.  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.  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.
CHAPTER III John Thomas Borrow
 John Thomas Borrow was born two years before his younger brother, that is, on the 15th of 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, p. 18soon 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 p. 19father, 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.  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 p. 20started 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 £100 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.” [20]
 
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 £100.  “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 p. 21thighs 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 former 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, [21] 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 £300, and his Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem had been sold for £240, although it had brought him £3000 in receipts at exhibitions.  Clearly heroic pictures did not pay, and Haydon here took up “the torment of portrait-painting” as he called it.
 
p. 22“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.  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 £20 I got only £3 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. [22]
 
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 p. 23comic 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 £300 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, 1833.  He had far exceeded any leave that his Colonel could p. 24in fairness grant, and before his death his name had been taken off the army rolls.
 
I have said that there are letters of John Borrow’s extant.  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.
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 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 p. 26his 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:
 
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 p. 27the 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 best of which 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 left Dereham in his eighth year, only to revisit it when famous.
 
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 p. 28land 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, 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 are no doubt many of them mythical.  He was an imaginative writer, 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 p. 29at 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, “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 Fāden 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.  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 associations of one p. 30of 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:—
 
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.
 
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 gaoler 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 p. 31of this youthful gaolbird.  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, a little book that had a wide circulation.  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 gaol, out of which he breaks rather dramatically, fleeing with a companion to Kelso.  He had, indeed, more than one experience of gaol.  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 gaoler named Morrin on the head with a stone he unexpectedly killed him.  His p. 32escape from Dumfries gaol 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 M‘Colgan, and that he came from Armagh.  He escaped from Dromore gaol 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 gaol, Edinburgh, and was tried and executed.
 
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.  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 p. 33least 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.  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. [33a]
 
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. [33b]  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 p. 34the very appreciation of Irish as a language to be seriously studied in days before Dr. George Sigerson and Dr. Douglas Hyde 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. [34]
 
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 anxious that he should be 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 p. 35road 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 for Irish was to lead him later 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.
CHAPTER V The Gurneys and the Taylors of Norwich
 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 p. 37Edward 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.  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.
 
In 1803—the year of Borrow’s birth—John Gurney became a partner in the great London Bank of Overend p. 38and 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 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 £2000 a year.  This is a long story to tell by way of introduction to one episode in Lavengro.  This episode had place in the year 1817, when Borrow was but fourteen years of age and Gurney was twenty-nine.  It is doubtful if Borrow met Joseph John Gurney more than on the one occasion.  At the commencement of his engagement with the Bible Society he writes to its secretary, Mr. Jowett (18th March, 1833), to say that he must procure from Mr. Cunningham “a letter of introduction from him to John p. 39Gurney,” 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.
 
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 1733 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. [39]  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.  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 p. 40the 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.”
 
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 Bürger’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.  The son of a wealthy manufacturer of p. 41Norwich, 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, p. 42Welsh, 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 Bürger’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 [42] 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 p. 43Emerson 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.
CHAPTER VI At the Norwich 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 school-days, of which the records are all too scanty, and not in the least invigorating.  p. 45The 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.  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.
 
p. 46Yet 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 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 ignominiously 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:
 
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—p. 47if 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; [47] 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 p. 48used 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.
 
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 halfway—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 ringleader.  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:
 
p. 49Dr. 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. 
 
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.
CHAPTER VII In a Lawyer’s Office
 Doubts were very frequently expressed in Borrow’s lifetime as to his having really been articled to a solicitor, but that point has been set 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 at present occupy the original offices 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.” [50]
 
Borrow tells us how at this time 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.  p. 51The 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, [51] but he acquired most of his varied knowledge in these impressionable years in the Corporation Library of Norwich.  Dr. Knapp found, in his very 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 sighed “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 p. 52who 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.
 
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, p. 53as 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.
 
Borrow might improve his German—not sufficiently, as we shall see in our next chapter—but he would certainly p. 54never 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. [54]
CHAPTER VIII An Old-Time Publisher
 “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.  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.
 
Farming not being congenial, Phillips hired a small room in Leicester, and opened a school for instruction in the three p. 56R’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 founded 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 naïvely informed in the Memoir, by the young woman’s talent in the preparation of a vegetable p. 57pie.  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.
 
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 Magazine, repurchased after his bankruptcy, and some rights in many 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.
 
p. 58“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.”
 
Phillips explains that he has given up publishing, except “under the rose,” had only The Monthly Magazine, here [58] 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, 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, 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.  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 the 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 p. 59translation, 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.  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.
CHAPTER IX “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.
 
p. 61He 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 p. 62owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an English town called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday’s best. [62]
 
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 Höllenfahrt, 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 nowhere mentions Klinger’s name in his book, 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, p. 631825, 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 p. 64he 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.
 
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.
 
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, p. 65he 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 church-door 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:
 
It says much for the literary proclivities of Norwich at this period that Borrow should have had so kindly a reception p. 66for 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 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.
CHAPTER X “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 [67a] 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 [67b] and the State Trials [67c] 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 André, 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 p. 68all 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 £50 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.
 
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 p. 69the distinguished poet.  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 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.
 
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 p. 70lasting 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 gigmanhood 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, 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 p. 71Norwich, 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 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.  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 p. 72Probert’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 £20, 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 murder against all three miscreants was given by the coroner’s jury, and Weare’s body was buried in Elstree Churchyard.
 
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, 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.  p. 73Thurtell 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, 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.
 
CHAPTER XI Borrow and The Fancy
 George Borrow had no sympathy with Thurtell the gambler.  I 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 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 p. 75the 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 onwards 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?
 
p. 76Yes: 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 once 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 £20,000 was wagered on this occasion.”  Ben Brain was the undisputed conqueror, we are told, in eighteen rounds, occupying no more than twenty-one minutes.  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, 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.
 
Brain actually lived for four years after his fight with Johnson, but 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.
 
It is all 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 p. 77Belcher 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.
CHAPTER XII 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.  His friend Ford indeed begged him 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 years.  His vanity was hurt, and no wonder.  It seems a strange 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 poverty-stricken—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 p. 79roving lives, and almost certainly have been in prison as a common tramp. [79]  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 may learn 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.  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.”  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 p. 80and 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.  It has been said that in 1829 he made the translation of the Memoirs of Vidocq, which appeared in that year with a short preface by the translator.  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.”  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. 
CHAPTER XIII 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.  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 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 p. 82the 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 his 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, 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 p. 83the 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 p. 84heard, 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.
 
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 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, 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 Kæmpe 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.]
 
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 Kæmpe p. 85Viser, 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 Ölenslager 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 Kæmpe 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 Kæmpe 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. 7, 1830.
 
My dear Sir,—I send the prospectus 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 p. 86purpose.  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
 
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 longish Kæmpe 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 Ölenschlæger’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 Ölenschlæger’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 Welsh-man.  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
 
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.  I will send one with a letter to H. G.—Yours eternally,
 
G. Borrow.
 
 
p. 87To 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.  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.
 
p. 88To 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.
 
 
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.  £40 would not be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so p. 89they told him at the museum.  However, as I am doing nothing particular at present, and as I might learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for £20.  He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then if you please you may recommend me.  The character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my competency.—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.
 
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.
CHAPTER XIV 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:
 
p. 91Bleibe nicht am Boden heften,
Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus!
Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kräften,
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. [91a]
 
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. [91b]
 
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.  The Society’s first idea was limited to Bibles in the English tongue.  This was speedily modified.  p. 92A 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, 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. [92]
 
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 p. 93Bible 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.”  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, Edmund 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 afterwards of consumption.  A posthumous child of the marriage, Henrietta Mary, was born two months after her father died.  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 her 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 p. 94Skepper.  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 5½d. 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.  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 £200 a year and expenses.  The letter contained his first lesson in the then unaccustomed discipline of the Evangelical vocabulary.  He was not at first at home in the precise measure p. 95of unction required by his new friends.  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 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, though 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 £17 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 p. 96part 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, to her dying day, she was to be his devoted care.
CHAPTER XV St. Petersburg and John P. Hasfeld
 Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Lübeck to Travemünde, whence he went by sea to St. Petersburg, now called Petrograd, 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.  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, p. 98who, 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 come to light, 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, p. 99good 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 Athenæum, 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 me 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 p. 100understand 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.
 
 
p. 101St. 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.
CHAPTER XVI The Manchu Bible—“Targum”—“The Talisman”
 As for the absurd object for which Borrow was sent to Russia the less said the better.  Any of my readers who care for the survey of human folly associated with undiscriminating Bible worship can read of this particular example in the Society’s own records. [102]  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 Lipóftsof, who had spent twenty years in China, undertook in 1821 to translate the New Testament into Manchu for £560.  Lipóftsof 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 £200 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 p. 103same 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.” [103a]  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. [103b]
 
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?” [103c]
 
p. 104It 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 already, 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, and shows, moreover, how well he was learning the cant phrases which found acceptance with his friends in Earl Street:
 
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 [104] 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 p. 105the 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. Lipóftsof, 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, 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 then—why not before is not explained—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. [105]  In fact what was p. 106a congenial livelihood for Borrow—this production of a Bible in the Manchu tongue—would have been death and desolation to the highly placed caste of the Chinese Empire had these been compelled to make use of Borrow’s efforts.  The experiment was not to be made.  The Bible Society had such comfort for their subscribers as is contained in the fact that 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 that 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. [106]
 
p. 107The 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. [107]  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 £12.  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 p. 108inspection 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 £12, they will still be willing to meet it, but not beyond the sum of £15.
 
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.  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 p. 109the 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 little book.  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.
CHAPTER XVII 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” [110] 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.  So much persistency conquered.  Borrow sailed from London on 6th November, 1835, and reached Lisbon on 12th November, this his first visit to the Peninsula lasting exactly eleven months.  The next four years and six months were to be spent mainly in p. 111Spain.  
 
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.  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 p. 112work 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.  But in the minds of the worthy people who ran the Bible Society eighty years ago it was not so much that humanity was to be bettered as that Roman Catholicism was to be worsened.  Every New Testament sold in Spain was in the eyes of the English fanatic who subscribed his silver a blow to the Church of that land.  Otherwise and as to the humanising influence of the propaganda it may be said that the villages of Spain that Borrow visited could even at that time compare favourably, morally and educationally, with 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,” and the Society actually fixed upon a Roman Catholic version of the Spanish Bible, that by Scio de San Miguel, 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 p. 113men who to-day provide interpretation and comment in so many of the Sunday Schools of Protestant countries.
 
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. [113]  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 p. 114established.  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 Mendizábal 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, Mendizábal, “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 5,000 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.
 
p. 115Here 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.  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; but here, from my Borrow Papers, is a kind letter that Mr. Brandram wrote to Borrow’s mother on the occasion:
 
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 teetotaler 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 p. 116with 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 in Spain.  “He is inordinately given to drink, and is of so quarrelsome a disposition that he is almost constantly involved in some broil.”  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 money was also not overlooked 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 as a stimulus and a warning.
 
But Borrow was happy, for next to the adventures of five glorious months in the villages between Madrid and Coruña nothing could be more to his taste than a good, wholesome quarrel.  He was imprisoned by order of the Spanish Government and released on the intervention of the British Embassy.  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 p. 117to 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 in question the accuracy of his statements 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.  An interesting letter to his future wife belongs to this period:
 
To Mrs. Clarke
 
Toledo, Decr. 5, 1837.
 
My dear Madam,—I received your letter the day previous to my leaving Madrid for this place, whither I arrived in safety on the 2nd inst.  I have availed myself of the very first opportunity of answering it which has presented itself.  Permit me in the first place to sympathise sincerely in the loss which you have, it appears, lately sustained in your excellent brother, more especially as he was my own good kind friend.  I little deemed when I parted from him only one short year since, at Oulton, that I was doomed never to press his honest hand again; but why should we grieve?  He was a devout and humble Christian, and we have no reason to doubt that he has been admitted to the joys of his Lord; he was also zealous in his way, and although he had but two talents entrusted to him, he turned them to the best account and doubled them; perhaps he now rules over as many heavenly cities; therefore why, why should we grieve?  Indeed it is possible that if we knew all, we should deem that we had high and cogent reason to rejoice that the Lord has snatched him from earth and earthly ties at this particular season.  His principles were very excellent, but an evil and undue influence, continually exerted over him, might have gradually corrupted his heart, until it became alienated from loyalty and true religion, which are indeed inseparable; p. 118for the latter he might have substituted the vulgar savage bigotry of what is called “Dissent,” for the former “Radicalism,” that upas tree of the British Isles whose root is in the infernal pit.
 
You have stated to me how unpleasantly you are situated, and certain heavy trials which you have lately been subjected to.  You have, moreover, done me the honour to ask my advice upon these points.  I give it without hesitation and in a very few words.  Maintain unflinchingly your right, your whole right, without yielding one particle, without abandoning one position, as the slightest manifestation of weakness and hesitation will be instantly taken advantage of by your adversaries, and be fraught with danger to yourself.  Permit me here to state that it was in anticipation of something allied to the evil spirit which has lately been displayed towards you, I advised you on my last visit never to be persuaded to resign the house which you now occupy; it is one of the strongest of your entrenchments—abandon it and the foot of the enemy is in your camp, and with the help of law and chicanery you might be reduced to extremity.  A line of the poet Spencer is strongly applicable to your situation:
 
“Be firm, be firm, and everywhere be firm.”
 
I would likewise strongly advise that with the least possible delay you call in the entire amount of whatever claim you possess on the landed property lately your brother’s, else I foresee that you will be involved in an endless series of dispute and litigation, which by one single act of resolution you may avoid.  Remember that no forbearance on your part will be properly appreciated, and that every kindly feeling and desire of conciliation which you may display, will be set down to fear, and the consciousness of standing on weak ground.  I am old in the knowledge of the world and those who dwell upon it, and would rather trust myself to the loving mercies of the hungry wolves of the Spanish mountains, than to the generosity and sense of justice of the Radicals of England.  However determined you may show yourself, no reasonable person can cast any blame upon you, for from the contents of your letter, it appears, that your enemies have kept no terms with you, and entirely unprovoked, have done all in their power to outrage and harrow your feelings.  Enough on this point.
 
Toledo was formerly the capital of Spain.  Its population at present barely amounts to fifteen thousand souls, though in the time of the Romans and also during the Middle Ages, its population is said to have amounted to between two and three hundred thousand souls, which at present however does not amount to fifteen thousand.  It is situated about twelve leagues (40 miles) to the westward of Madrid, and is built upon a steep rocky hill, round which flows the Tagus on all sides but the North.  It still possesses a great many remarkable edifices, notwithstanding that it has long since fallen into decay.  Its Cathedral is the most magnificent of Spain, and is the See of p. 119the Primate.  In the tower of this Cathedral is the famous bell of Toledo, the largest in the world, with the exception of the monster-bell of Moscow, which I have also seen.  It weighs 1543 arrobes, or 37-032 pounds.  It has, however, a disagreeable sound, owing to a large cleft in its side.  Toledo could once boast the finest pictures in Spain, but many were stolen or destroyed [by the] French during the Peninsular War, and still more have lately been removed by order of the Government.  Perhaps the most remarkable still remains.  I allude to that which represents the burial of the Count of Orgaz, the masterpiece of Domenico the Greek, a most extraordinary genius some of whose productions possess merit of a very high order; the picture in question is in the little parish church of San Tomé, at the bottom of the aisle, at the left hand of the altar.  Could it be purchased, I should say it would be cheap at £5,000.  You will easily guess that I did not visit Toledo for the sake of seeing its curiosities, but rather in the hope of propagating the Word.  I have this day caused three hundred advertisements to be affixed to the walls, informing the people where it is to be had.  I have humble hope in the Lord that he will bless my labours, notwithstanding that Toledo abounds with priests, friars, and other minions of cruel Rome.  Should you see my dear Mrs. Ritson, pray remember me kindly to her and assure her that I often think of her, and the same you may say to Miss Henrietta.  I hope my dear Mother is well.  God bless you at all times and seasons.
 
G. B.
 
P.S.—My Gipsy Translation of Luke is ready for the press, and I shall commence printing it as soon as I return to Madrid.  I hope that in the event of any of these singular people visiting your neighbourhood you will seek them out, and speak to them of Christ, and tell them what is being done for their brethren in a far foreign land.  A Gipsy woman and her child have paid me several visits since my arrival here; her husband is in the prison for mule-stealing, and next week departs for ten years slavery in the galleys.  She is in great trouble and affliction, and says that I am the only friend she has ever met with in Spain.  She goes about telling fortunes, in order to support her husband in prison, notwithstanding that he had previously abandoned her, and departed for Granada with another Gypsy woman of the name of Aurora, who persuaded him to commit the robbery, for which he is now suffering.  If this is not conjugal affection, what is?
 
Mrs. Clarke,
   Oulton Cottage,
      Lowestoft,
         Suffolk,
            England.
 
In the beginning of September, 1838, Borrow was again p. 120in England, when he issued a lengthy and eloquent defence of his conduct and a report on “Past and Future Operations in Spain.”  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 in 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.
 
Four letters to his mother within the period of his second and third 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 p. 121burnt 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.
 
 
p. 122To 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 p. 123are 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, courtyard, 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 worthy 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 mood of speaking to which we are not accustomed—it savours, some of our friends would say, a little of the profane.
 
I find among my papers an interesting letter to Mrs. Clarke of this period:
 
To Mrs. Clarke
 
Seville, 10 January, 1839.
 
My dear Madam,—As I left England very suddenly and had many preparations to make at exceedingly short notice, I was unable to perform my wish, and I believe my promise, of writing p. 124to you before my departure.  I took shipping at Falmouth and arrived at Cadiz without any circumstance worthy of remark occurring.  I am now, and have been for the last week, in Seville, the principal town of Andalusia, one of the most beautiful provinces in Spain.  I proceed to Madrid within a few days, but it is my intention to return as soon as possible to these parts, and commence operations here, where up to the present moment nothing has been done towards propagating the word of God.  Indeed my sole motive for visiting Madrid, and subjecting myself to a fatiguing journey through a country which I have already twice traversed, is to furnish myself with a sufficient stock of Testaments for distribution in the principal villages of Andalusia, as it is my intention to address myself chiefly to the peasantry, whom hitherto I have invariably found far more docile to instruction, and eager to acquire knowledge, than the brethren of the large towns.  I intend, however, to make Seville my headquarters, and a depot for the books intended for other places.  Nothing can be more delightful than the situation of this place, which stands on the eastern bank of the Guadalquivir, the largest river in Spain, with the exception of the Ebro; smiling meadows, orange-groves and gardens encompass it on every side; while far away towards the south east are descried the blue ridges and misty pinnacles of the noble chain of mountains called the Sierrania de Ronda.  The streets are narrow and crooked like those of all the old Spanish and Moorish towns.  Indeed in many of them, whilst standing in the middle, you can touch both sides with your hands extended.  Yet the narrowness of the streets is by no means an inconvenience in this climate, especially in the summer when the sun burns with great heat and fury, but on the contrary is a very great comfort, as the hot beams are excluded, and the houses by this means kept seasonably cool.  Nothing pleases me more than the manner in which the houses of Seville are built.  They are, for the most part, of two stories, which surround a quadrangular court, of large or small dimensions, according to the size of the edifice—the upper story being furnished with a gallery overhanging the court, and offering an agreeable place for walking to those not disposed to go abroad.  In most of the courts is a stone fountain, continually streaming with cool and delicious water, and not unfrequently at the angles orange trees are planted, which perfume the air with their fruit and blossoms.  There are many magnificent edifices in Seville, especially the Cathedral and Alcazar or castle.  The former is indeed a glorious pile, constructed at various periods, and so large and covering so much ground that St. Paul’s, magnificent edifice as it certainly is, would look contemptible, if placed by its side.  Its tower which is called La Giralda is the work of the Moors, and once formed part of a mosque, and was the place from which the Imams at morn and eve summoned the children of Ismael to their devotions with the awful and true cry “There is but one God”; stultified however by the sequence “Mahomet is the Prophet p. 125of God.”  The Alcazar is also the work of the Moors, and was the palace of their kings as long as they lorded on the banks of the Guadalquivir; it contains halls of grandeur indescribable, and which are worthy specimens of the perfection to which architecture was carried in Spain by the Moors who certainly deserve to be styled Lords of Masonry, and who perhaps were upon the whole the most extraordinary nation which has appeared upon the earth since the time of the creation.
 
I must however proceed no further at present in describing the remarkable objects of Seville as there are other matters which I must now touch upon, and which relate immediately to yourself.  Respecting your questions as to what quarter I would advise you to direct your course, as soon as your affairs shall have been arranged to your satisfaction, I beg leave to answer that I do not think that yourself and Miss Hen. could do better than come out to Seville, for a time, where you would be far out of the reach of the malignity of your ill-wishers, and might soon become useful helpers in the cause of God.  With your income you might live here with the greatest respectability, tenant one of the charming houses, which I have just described, and enjoy one of the finest climates in the world.  Therefore you had better give this point your very serious consideration.  I do not think that Colchester or Edinburgh would please you half so much as Seville, where you would find a few excellent and worthy English families, long established in Spain, and following with great success the pursuits of commerce.
 
Perhaps it would be well to invest part of your money in the purchase of some vessel trading to the Mediterranean if such extraordinary good interest, with perfect security, can be obtained, as you have stated.  However, pray act with the greatest caution and endeavour thoroughly to know your people before you place confidence in any person.  Should Mr. W. apply to you again, I think you may tell him that you will reconsider the matter provided he will give you one thousand pounds for your interest in your charming little estate.  I have no doubt that he would comply.
 
The best general advice that I can give you for the present is to make the most of any species of property which you may deem it advisable to dispose of, and by no precipitate haste run the risk of incurring a loss.  Let no person persuade you, whether legal adviser or not, to take any step by which you may deem that your interests will be in the slightest degree compromised, and be reserved in your communications to all respecting your ultimate intentions.  I shall write to you speedily from Madrid and then I hope to have the satisfaction of hearing from you.
 
Pray let Hen. continue to collect as much money as possible towards affording spiritual instruction to the Spanish Gypsies.  Pay a visit to dear Mrs. Ritson and communicate to her my best remembrances and kindest regards and inform her at the p. 126same time that if she please she may subscribe in this good cause.  I am shortly about to publish, on my own account, a work which I hope will prove of no slight spiritual benefit to these unhappy people.—I remain, dearest Madam, ever yours,
 
G. B.
 
Mrs. Clarke,
   Oulton Cottage,
      Oulton,
         near Lowestoft,
            Suffolk,
               England.
 
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 the 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 p. 127may 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 p. 128this 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.
 
p. 129What 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.
CHAPTER XVIII Borrow’s Spanish Circle
 There are many interesting personalities that pass before us in Borrow’s three separate narratives, 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; 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 ingrate not to speak well of her.”  We get a glimpse of Maria and her husband long years afterwards—a pensioner in a Spanish almshouse revealing 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.  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, 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 p. 131in 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.  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, 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 he gave his orders in Romaïc.  p. 132He 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 “pánee” (water), “buree pánee” (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 Pépé, the “mozo” (and I verily believe all Spanish waiters are called Pépé), 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
p. 133On 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 whose 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,” 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.
 
p. 134I 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 Usóz 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 47, 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 p. 135than 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 Phœnician-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 p. 136of 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 Séverin 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 Théâtre Français, 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.  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:—
 
p. 137Whenever 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.”
 
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 attaché 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; 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, p. 138including 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 Lord John 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 Mendizábal, 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 p. 139of 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.
CHAPTER XIX 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-eight.  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 Beccles in 1805.  Mary’s brother inherited the Oulton Hall estate of three hundred acres, and she had a mortgage, the interest of which yielded £450 per annum.  In July, 1817, Mary married, at Oulton Church, Henry Clarke, 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 p. 141Papers 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, 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.  p. 142But 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.
 
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.
 
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.  Her only brother died in the following year.
 
Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged forty-three, left to fight the world with her daughter, aged nineteen, 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.  It was these legal quarrels that led Mary Clarke and her daughter to set sail for Spain, where Mary p. 143had 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 the suggestion that has been made 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 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.  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 p. 144determined 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, when he wrote a letter from Seville to Mr. Brandram, dated 18th March, 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.  Possibly here also Borrow was adapting himself to the language of the Bible Society.  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, which fidgeted exceedingly, no doubt imaging heavy bills for expenses, with no corresponding reports of the usual character to be read out at meetings.  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.
 
There are only two letters from Mrs. Borrow to her husband extant.  They 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 those 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 p. 145“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.  It has been suggested that as “carreta” means a Spanish dray-cart, “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. [145a]  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.
 
 
p. 146To 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.
 
No reader can peruse the following pages without recognising the true affection for his wife that is transparent in Borrow’s 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.
CHAPTER XX “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 £450 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 in 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.  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 Athenæum and The Literary Gazette.  The first edition, it may be mentioned, contained on its title-page a description of the author as p. 148“late agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain.”  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.  It is clear that the city of Seville, 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’s judgment was sound 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. [148]
 
Henceforth Borrow was to write about himself and to p. 149become 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 gitános 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.”  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 p. 150old 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:
 
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.
 
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 done, that Borrow never replied because he was on the eve of publishing a book of his own about the gypsies.
 
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 p. 151should 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, [151] 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, for 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.  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, 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 p. 152the 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 “Rúmani” 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.”  “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.  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.  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.”