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 gathering¹ 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 undoubtedly² was.  His Russian journey was followed by five weeks of idleness in Norwich varied³ 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 missionary⁴ speeches, Mary Clarke’s brother, Breame Skepper, being also among the orators⁵.  Borrow begged for more work from the Society.  He urged the desirability of carrying out its own idea of an investigation⁶ 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 persistency⁷ conquered.  Borrow sailed from London on 6th November, 1835, and reached Lisbon on 12th November, this his first visit to the Peninsula lasting⁸ exactly eleven months.  The next four years and six months were to be spent mainly in p. 111Spain.