Chapter XXXII: Life in London, 1860–1874

GEORGE BORROW’S earlier visits to London are duly recorded, with that glamour of which he was a master, in the pages of _Lavengro_. Who can cross London Bridge even to-day without thinking of the apple-woman and her copy of _Moll Flanders_; and many passages of Borrow’s great book make a very special appeal to the lover of London. Then there was that visit to the Bible Society’s office made on foot from Norwich, and the expedition a few months later to pass an examination in the Manchu language. When he became a country squire and the author of the very successful _Bible in Spain_ Borrow frequently visited London, and his various residences may be traced from his letters. Take, for example, these five notes to his wife, the first apparently written in 1848, but all undated:

TO MRS. GEORGE BORROW

_Tuesday afternoon_.

MY DEAR WIFE,—I just write you a line to tell you that I am tolerably
well as I hope you are. Every thing is in confusion abroad. The
French King has disappeared and will probably never be heard of,
though they are expecting him in England. Funds are down nearly to
eighty. The Government have given up the income tax and people are
very glad of it. _I am not_. With respect to the funds, if I were
to sell out I should not know what to do with the money. J. says
they will rise. I do not think they will, they may, however,
fluctuate a little.—Keep up your spirits, my heart’s dearest, and
kiss old Hen. for me.

G. B.

* * * * *

TO MRS. GEORGE BORROW

53_a_, PALL MALL.

DEAR WIFE CARRETA,—I write you a line as I suppose you will be glad
to have one. I dine to-night with Murray and Cooke, and we are going
to talk over about _The Sleeping Bard_; both are very civil. I have
been reading hard at the Museum and have lost no time. Yesterday I
went to Greenwich to see the Leviathan. It is almost terrible to
look at, and seems too large for the river. It resembles a floating
town—the paddle is 60 feet high. A tall man can stand up in the
funnel as it lies down. ’Tis sad, however, that money is rather
scarce. I walked over Blackheath and thought of poor dear Mrs.
Watson. I have just had a note from FitzGerald. We have had some
rain but not very much. London is very gloomy in rainy weather. I
was hoping that I should have a letter from you this morning. I hope
you and Hen. have been well.—God bless you.

GEORGE BORROW.

* * * * *

TO MRS. GEORGE BORROW

PALL MALL, 53_a_, _Saturday_.

DEAR CARRETA,—I am thinking of coming to you on Thursday. I do not
know that I can do anything more here, and the dulness of the weather
and the mists are making me ill. Please to send another five pound
note by Tuesday morning. I have spent scarcely anything of that
which you sent except what I owe to Mrs. W., but I wish to have money
in my pocket, and Murray and Cooke are going to dine with me on
Tuesday; I shall be glad to be with you again, for I am very much in
want of your society. I miss very much my walks at Llangollen by the
quiet canal; but what’s to be done? Everything seems nearly at a
standstill in London, on account of this wretched war, at which it
appears to me the English are getting the worst, notwithstanding
their boasting. They thought to settle it in an autumn’s day; they
little knew the Russians, and they did not reflect that just after
autumn comes winter, which has ever been the Russians’ friend. Have
you heard anything about the rent of the Cottage? I should have been
glad to hear from you this morning. Give my love to Hen. and may God
bless you, dear.

GEORGE BORROW.

(Keep this.)

* * * * *

TO MRS. GEORGE BORROW

No. 53_a_ PALL MALL.

DEAR CARRETA,—I hope you received my last letter written on Tuesday.
I am glad that I came to London. I find myself much the better for
having done so. I was going on in a very spiritless manner.
Everybody I have met seems very kind and glad to see me. Murray
seems to be thoroughly staunch. Cooke, to whom I mentioned the F.T.,
says that Murray was delighted with the idea, and will be very glad
of the 4th of _Lavengro_. I am going to dine with Murray to-day,
Thursday. W. called upon me to-day. I wish you would send me a
blank cheque, in a letter so that if I want money I may be able to
draw for a little. I shall not be long from home, but now I am here
I wish to do all that’s necessary. If you send me a blank cheque, I
suppose W. or Murray would give me the money. I hope you got my last
letter. I received yours, and Cooke has just sent the two copies of
_Lavengro_ you wrote for, and I believe some engravings of the
picture. I shall wish to return by the packet if possible, and will
let you know when I am coming. I hope to write again shortly to tell
you some more news. How is mother and Hen., and how are all the
creatures? I hope all well. I trust you like all I propose—now I am
here I want to get two or three things, to go to the Museum, and to
arrange matters. God bless you. Love to mother and Hen.

GEORGE BORROW.

* * * * *

TO MRS. GEORGE BORROW

No. 58 JERMYN STREET, ST. JAMES.

DEAR CARRETA,—I got here safe, and upon the whole had not so bad a
journey as might be expected. I put up at the Spread Eagle for the
night for I was tired and _hungry_; have got into my old lodgings as
you see, those on the second floor, they are very nice ones, with
every convenience; they are expensive, it is true, but they are
_cheerful_, which is a grand consideration for me. I have as yet
seen nobody, for it is only now a little past eleven. I can scarcely
at present tell you what my plans are, perhaps to-morrow I shall
write again. Kiss Hen., and God bless you.

G. B.

Borrow was in London in 1845 and again in 1848. There must have been other occasional visits on the way to this or that starting point of his annual holiday, but in 1860 Borrow took a house in London, and he resided there until 1874, when he returned to Oulton. In a letter to Mr. John Murray, written from Ireland in November, 1859, Mrs. Borrow writes to the effect that in the spring of the following year she will wish to look round “and select a pleasant holiday residence within three to ten miles of London.” There is no doubt that a succession of winters on Oulton Broad had been very detrimental to Mrs. Borrow’s health, although they had no effect on Borrow, who bathed there with equal indifference in winter as in summer, having, as he tells us in _Wild Wales_, “always had the health of an elephant.” And so Borrow and his wife arrived in London in June, and took temporary lodgings at 21 Montagu Street, Portman Square. In September they went into occupation of a house in Brompton—22 Hereford Square, which is now commemorated by a County Council tablet. Here Borrow resided for fourteen years, and here his wife died on 30th January, 1869. She was buried in Brompton Cemetery, where Borrow was laid beside her twelve years later. For neighbours on the one side the Borrows had Mr. Robert Collinson and, on the other, Miss Frances Power Cobbe and her companion, Miss M. C. Lloyd. From Miss Cobbe we have occasional glimpses of Borrow, all of them unkindly. She was of Irish extraction, her father having been grandson of Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin. Miss Cobbe was an active woman in all kinds of journalistic and philanthropic enterprises in the London of the ’seventies and ’eighties of the last century, writing in particular in the now defunct newspaper, the _Echo_, and she wrote dozens of books and pamphlets, all of them forgotten except her _Autobiography_, in which she devoted several pages to her neighbour in Hereford Square. Borrow had no sympathy with fanatical women with many “isms,” and the pair did not agree, although many neighbourly courtesies passed between them for a time. Here is an extract from Miss Cobbe’s _Autobiography_:

George Borrow, who, if he were not a gypsy by blood, _ought_ to have
been one, was for some years our near neighbour in Hereford Square.
My friend was amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham)
enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his acquaintance. I never liked
him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite. His missions,
recorded in _The Bible in Spain_, and his translations of the
Scriptures into the out-of-the-way tongues, for which he had a gift,
were by no means consonant with his real opinions concerning the
veracity of the said Bible.

One only needs to quote this by the light of the story as told so far in these pages to see how entirely Miss Cobbe misunderstood Borrow, or rather how little insight she was able to bring to a study of his curious character. The rest of her attempt at interpretation is largely taken up to demonstrate how much more clever and more learned she was than Borrow. Altogether it is a sorry spectacle, this of the pseudo-philanthropist relating her conversations with a man broken by misfortune and the death of his wife. Many of Miss Cobbe’s statements have passed into current acceptance. I do not find them convincing. Archdeacon Whately on the other hand tells us that he always found Borrow “most civil and hospitable,” and his sister gives us the following “impression”:

When Mr. Borrow returned from this Spanish journey, which had been
full, as we all know, of most entertaining adventures, related with
much liveliness and spirit by himself, he was regarded as a kind of
“lion” in the literary circles of London. When we first saw him it
was at the house of a lady who took great pleasure in gathering
“celebrities” in various ways around her, and our party was struck
with the appearance of this renowned traveller—a tall, thin, spare
man with prematurely white hair and intensely dark eyes, as he stood
upright against the wall of one of the drawing-rooms and received the
homage of lion-hunting guests, and listened in silence to their
unsuccessful attempts to make him talk.

During this sojourn in London, which was undertaken because Oulton and Yarmouth did not agree with his wife, Borrow suffered the tragedy of her loss. Borrow dragged on his existence in London for another five years, a much broken man. It is extraordinary how little we know of Borrow during that fourteen years’ sojourn in London; how rarely we meet him in the literary memoirs of this period. Happily one or two pleasant friendships relieved the sadness of his days; and in particular the reminiscences of Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton assist us to a more correct appreciation of the Borrow of these last years of London life. Of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s “memories,” we shall write in our next chapter. Here it remains only to note that Borrow still continued to interest himself in his various efforts at translation, and in 1861 and 1862 the editor of _Once a Week_ printed various ballads and stories from his pen. The volumes of this periodical are before me, and I find illustrations by Sir John Millais, Sir E. J. Poynter, Simeon Solomon and George Du Maurier; stories by Mrs. Henry Wood and Harriet Martineau, and articles by Walter Thornbury.

In 1862 _Wild Wales_ was published, as we have seen. In 1865 Henrietta married William MacOubrey, and in the following year, Borrow and his wife went to visit the pair in their Belfast home. In the beginning of the year 1869 Mrs. Borrow died, aged seventy-three. There are no records of the tragedy that are worth perpetuating. Borrow consumed his own smoke. With his wife’s death his life was indeed a wreck. No wonder he was so “rude” to that least perceptive of women, Miss Cobbe. Some four or five years more Borrow lingered on in London, cheered at times by walks and talks with Gordon Hake and Watts-Dunton, and he then returned to Oulton—a most friendless man.