Chapter XXIX: January 1869–1881 (1)

THE death of his wife was a last blow to Borrow, and he soon retired from the world. At first he appears to have sought consolation in books, to judge from the number of purchases he made about this time; but it was, apparently, with pitiably unsuccessful results. In a letter to a friend Miss Cobbe gives a picture in his lonliness:

“Poor old Borrow is in a sad state,” she wrote. “I hope he is
starting in a day or two for Scotland. I sent C. with a note begging
him to come and eat the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent
back word, ‘Yes.’ Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a
most agitated manner said he had come to say ‘he would rather not.
He would not trouble anyone with his sorrows.’ I made him sit down,
and talked as gently to him as possible, saying: ‘It won’t be a
trouble Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me.’ But it was all of
no use. He was so cross, so _rude_, I had the greatest difficulty in
talking to him. I asked about his servant, and he said I could not
help him. I asked him about Bowring, and he said: ‘Don’t speak of
it.’ (It was some dispute with Sir John Bowring, who was an
acquaintance of mine, and with whom I offered to mediate.) ‘I asked
him would he look at the photos of the Siamese,’ and he said: ‘Don’t
show them to me!’ So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I had
been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met Mr L—,
who told me of certain curious books of mediæval history. ‘Did he
know them?’ ‘No, and he _dare said_ Mr L— did not, either! Who was
Mr L—?’ I described that _obscure_ individual, (one of the foremost
writers of the day), and added that he was immensely liked by
everybody. Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times,
‘Immensely liked! As if a man could be immensely liked!’ quite
insultingly. To make a diversion (I was very patient with him as he
was in trouble), ‘I said I had just come home from the Lyell’s and
had heard—’ . . . But there was no time to say what I had heard! Mr
Borrow asked: ‘Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man who stands
at the door (of some den or other) and _bets_?’ I explained who Sir
Charles was, {459a} (of course he knew very well), but he went on and
on, till I said gravely: ‘I don’t think you will meet those sort of
people here, Mr Borrow. We don’t associate with blacklegs,
exactly.’” {459b}

In the Autumn of 1870 Borrow became acquainted with Charles G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”) as the result of receiving from him the following letter:—

BRIGHTON, 24_th_ _October_ 1870.

DEAR SIR,—During the eighteen months that I have been in England, my
efforts to find some mutual friend who would introduce me to you have
been quite in vain. As the author of two or three works which have
been kindly received in England, I have made the acquaintance of many
literary men and enjoyed much hospitality; but I assure you very
sincerely that my inability to find you out or get at you has been a
source of great annoyance to me. As you never published a book which
I have not read through five times—excepting _The Bible in Spain_ and
_Wild Wales_, which I have only read once—you will perfectly
understand why I should be so desirous of meeting you.

As you have very possibly never heard of me before, I would state
that I wrote a collection of Ballads satirising Germany and the
Germans under the title of _Hans Breitmann_.

I never before in my life solicited the favour of any man’s
acquaintance, except through the regular medium of an introduction.
If my request to be allowed the favour of meeting and seeing you does
not seem too _outré_, I would be to glad to go to London, or wherever
you may be, if it can be done without causing you any inconvenience,
and if I should not be regarded as an intruder. I am an American,
and among us such requests are _parfaitment_ (sic) _en régle_.

I am, . . .

CHARLES G. LELAND.

Borrow replied on 2nd Nov.:

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.

Truly yours,

GEORGE BORROW. {460a}

The meeting unquestionably took place at Hereford Square, and Leland found Borrow “a tall, large, fine-looking man who must have been handsome in his youth.” {460b} The result of the interview was that Leland sent to Borrow a copy of his _Ballads_ and also _The Music Lesson of Confucius_, then about to appear. At the same time he wrote to Borrow drawing his attention to one of the ballads written in German Romany _jib_, and enquiring if it were worth anything. Whilst deprecating his “impudence” in writing a Romany _gili_ and telling, as a pupil might a master, of his interest in and his association with the gypsies, he continues: “My dear Mr Borrow, for all this you are entirely responsible. More than twenty years ago your books had an incredible influence on me, and now you see the results.” After telling him that he can _never_ thank him sufficiently for the instructions he has given in _The Romany Rye_ as to how to take care of a horse on a thirty mile ride, he concludes—“With apologies for the careless tone of this letter, and with sincere thanks for your kindness in permitting me to call on you and for your courteous note,—I am your sincere admirer.”

The account that Leland gives of this episode in his _Memoirs_ is puzzling and contradictory in the light of his first letter. He writes:

“There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted
in those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him,
exercised in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature.
This was George Borrow. I was in the habit of reading a great deal
in the British Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced
to him. {461a} [Leland seems to be in error here; see _ante_, page
460.] He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish, and
made the remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living
who could read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was
‘fished’ out of Sir W. Betham). We discussed several Gypsy words and
phrases. I met him in the same place several times.” {461b}

Leland states that he sent a note to Borrow, care of John Murray, asking permission to dedicate to him his forthcoming book, _The English Gypsies and Their Language_; but received no reply, although Murray assured him that the letter had been received by Borrow. “He received my note on the Saturday,” Leland writes—“never answered it—and on Monday morning advertised in all the journals his own forthcoming work on the same subject.” {461c} Had Borrow asked him to delay publishing his own book, Leland says he would have done so, “for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of Gypsyism, that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with such a small sacrifice.” {462a}

However Borrow may have heard that Leland had in preparation a book on the English Gypsies, he seemed to feel that it was a trespass upon ground that was peculiarly his own. Having revised and prepared for the press the new edition of the Gypsy St Luke for the Bible Society (published December 1872), and the one-volume editions of _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, he set to work to forestall Leland with his own _Romano Lavo-Lil_.

In spite of his haste, however, Borrow was beaten in the race, and Leland got his volume out first. When the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ {462b} appeared in March 1874, Borrow found what, in all probability he had not dreamed of, that the thirty-three years intervening between its publication and that of _The Zincali_, had changed the whole literary world as regards “things of Egypt.” In 1841 Borrow had produced a unique book, such as only one man in England could have written, and that man himself {462c}; but in 1874 he found himself not only out of date, but out-classed.

The title very thoroughly explains the scope of the work. The Vocabulary had existed in manuscript for many years. For some reason, difficult to explain, Borrow had omitted from this Vocabulary a number of the gypsy words that appeared in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_. In spite of this “Mr Borrow’s present vocabulary makes a goodly show,” wrote F. H. Groome, “. . . containing no fewer than fourteen hundred words, of which about fifty will be entirely new to those who only know Romany in books.” {463a}

After praising the Gypsy songs as the best portion of the book, Groome proceeds:

“Of his prose I cannot say so much. It is the Romany of the study
rather than of the tents [!] Mr Borrow has attempted to rehabilitate
English Romany by enduing it with forms and inflections, of which
some are still rarely to be heard, some extinct, and others
absolutely incorrect; while Mr Leland has been content to give it as
it really is. Of the two methods I cannot doubt that most readers
will agree with me in thinking that Mr Leland’s is the more
satisfactory.” {463b}

The _Athenæum_ sternly rebuked Borrow for seeming “to make the mistake of confounding the amount of Rommanis which he has collected in this book with the actual extent of the language itself.” The reviewer pays a somewhat grudging tribute to other portions of the book, the accounts of the Gypsyries and the biographical particulars of the Romany worthies, but the work suffers by comparison with those of Paspati and Leland. He acknowledges that Borrow was one of the pioneers of those who gave accounts of the Gypsies in English, who gave to many their present taste for Gypsy matters,

“but,” he proceeds, “we cannot allow merely sentimental
considerations to prevent us from telling the honest truth. The fact
is that the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ is nothing more than a _réchauffé_ of
the materials collected by Mr Borrow at an early stage of his
investigations, and nearly every word and every phrase may be found
in one form or another in his earlier works. Whether or not Mr
Borrow _has_ in the course of his long experience become the _deep_
Gypsy which he has always been supposed to be, we cannot say; but it
is certain that his present book contains little more than he gave to
the public forty years ago, and does not by any means represent the
present state of knowledge on the subject. But at the present day,
when comparative philology has made such strides, and when want of
accurate scholarship is as little tolerated in strange and remote
languages as in classical literature, the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ is, to
speak mildly, an anachronism.”

This notice, if Borrow read it, must have been very bitter to him. All the loyalty to, and enthusiasm for, Borrow cannot disguise the fact that his work, as far as the Gypsies were concerned, was finished. He had first explored the path, but others had followed and levelled it into a thoroughfare, and Borrow found his facts and theories obsolete—a humiliating discovery to a man so shy, so proud, and so sensitive.

The _Romano Lavo-Lil_ was Borrow’s swan song. He lived for another seven years; but as far as the world was concerned he was dead. In an obituary notice of Robert Latham, Mr Watts-Dunton tells a story that emphasizes how thoroughly his existence had been forgotten. At one of Mrs Procter’s “at homes” he was talking of Latham and Borrow, but when he happened to mention that both men were still alive, that is in the early Seventies, and that quite recently he had been in the company of each on separate occasions, he found that he had lost caste in the eyes of his hearers for talking about men as alive “who were well known to have been dead years ago.” {464}

There is an interesting picture of Borrow as he appeared in the Seventies, given by F. H. Groome, who writes:

“The first time I ever saw him was at Ascot, the Wednesday evening of
the Cup week in, I think, the year 1872. I was stopping at a wayside
inn, half-a-mile on the Windsor road, just opposite which inn there
was a great encampment of Gypsies. One of their lads had on the
Tuesday affronted a soldier; so two or three hundred redcoats came
over from Windsor, intending to wreck the camp. There was a babel of
cursing and screaming, much brandishing of belts and tent-rods, when
suddenly an arbiter appeared, a white-haired, brown-eyed, calm
Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of
ale—in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were
sworn friends over a loving-quart. “Mr Burroughs,” said one of the
Gypsies (it is the name by which Gypsies still speak of him), and I
knew that at last I had met him whom of all men I most wished to
meet. Matty Cooper, the ‘celebrated Windsor Frog’ (_vide_ Leland),
presented me as ‘a young gentleman, _Rya_, a scholard from Oxford’;
and ‘H’m,’ quoth Colossus, ‘a good many fools come from Oxford.’ It
was a bad beginning, but it ended well, by his asking me to walk with
him to the station, and on the way inviting me to call on him in
London. I did so, but not until nearly a twelve-month afterwards,
when I found him in Hereford Square, and when he set strong ale
before me, as again on the occasion of my third and last meeting with
him in the tent of our common acquaintance, Shadrach Herne, at the
Potteries, Notting Hill. Both these times we had much talk together,
but I remember only that it was partly about East Anglia, and more
about ‘things of Egypt.’ Conversations twenty years old are easy to
imagine, hard to reproduce . . . Probably Borrow asked me the Romany
for ‘frying-pan,’ and I modestly answered, ‘Either _maasalli_ or
_tasseromengri_’ (this is password No. 1), and then I may have asked
him the Romany for ‘brick,’ to which he will have answered, that
‘there is no such word’ (this is No. 2). But one thing I do
remember, that he was frank and kindly, interesting and interested; I
was only a lad, and he was verging on seventy. I could tell him
about a few ‘travellers’ whom he had not recently seen—Charlie
Pinfold, the hoary polygamist, Plato and Mantis Buckland, Cinderella
Petulengro, and Old Tom Oliver (‘Ha! so he has seen Tom Oliver,’ I
seem to remember that).” {466a}

There was nothing now to keep Borrow in London. Nobody wanted to read his books, other stars had risen in the East. His publisher had exclaimed with energy, as Borrow himself would relate, “I want to meet with good writers, but there are none to be had: I want a man who can write like Ecclesiastes.” There is something tragic in the account that Mr Watts-Dunton gives of his last encounter with Borrow:

“The last time I ever saw him,” he writes, “was shortly before he
left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on
Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular
and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were
reeling and boiling over the West-End. Borrow came up and stood
leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might
be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for
sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and
certainly my pen could not describe it . . . I never saw such a
sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its
association with ‘the last of Borrow,’ I shall never forget it.”
{466b}

In 1874 Borrow withdrew to Oulton, there to end his lonely life, his spirit seeming to enjoy the dreary solitude of the Cottage, with its mournful surroundings. His stepdaughter, the Henrietta of old, remained in London with her husband, and Borrow’s loneliness was complete. Sometimes he was to be seen stalking along the highways at a great pace, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a Spanish cloak, a tragic figure of solitude and despair, speaking to no one, no one daring to speak to him, who locally was considered as “a funny tempered man.”

In a fragment of a letter from Edward FitzGerald to W. B. Donne (June 1874), there is an interesting reference to Borrow:—

“Wait!” he writes. “I have one little thing to tell you, which,
little as it is, is worth all the rest, if you don’t know already.

“_Borrow_—has got back to his own Oulton Lodge. My Nephew, Edmund
Kerrich, now Adjutant to some Volunteer Battalion, wants a house
_near_, not _in_, Lowestoft: and got some Agent to apply for
Borrow’s—who sent word that he is himself there—an old Man—wanting
Retirement, etc. This was the account Edmund got.

“I saw in some Athenæum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.’s
‘Rommany Lil’ or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that
B. should not meddle with _science_ of any sort; but some years ago
he would not have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have
cooled him now.” {467}

Borrow sent a message to FitzGerald through Edmund Kerrich of Geldeston, asking him to visit Oulton Cottage. The reply shows all the sweetness of the writer’s nature:—

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_Jan._ 10/75.

DEAR BORROW,—My nephew Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation that
you sent to me, through him, some while ago. I think the more of it
because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away
from human company as much—as I have! For the last fifteen years I
have not visited any one of my very oldest friends, except the
daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and Donne—once only, and
for half a day, just to assure myself by—my own eyes how he was after
the severe illness he had last year, and which he never will quite
recover from, I think; though he looked and moved better than I
expected.

Well—to tell you all about _why_ I have thus fallen from my company
would be a tedious thing, and all about one’s self too—whom,
Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person
talked about. Suffice to say, ‘so it is’; and one’s friends, however
kind and ‘loyal’ (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy
themselves pretty reasonably without one.

So with me. And is it not much the same with you also? Are you not
glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than
the grasshopper? If one ever had this solitary habit, it is not
likely to alter for the better as one grows older—as one grows _old_.
I like to think over my old friends. There they are, lingering as
ineffaceable portraits—done in the prime of life—in my memory.
Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen-years
separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse. I do
not say _that_ would be your case; but you must, at any rate, be less
inclined to disturb the settled repose into which you, I suppose,
have fallen. I remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five
years ago; then at Donne’s in London; then at my own happy home in
Regent’s Park; then _ditto_ at Gorleston—after which, I have seen
nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me by my good sister
Kerrich.

So shall things rest? I could not go to you, after refusing all this
while to go to older—if not better—friends, fellow Collegians, fellow
schoolfellows; and yet will you still believe me (as I hope _they_
do)

Yours and theirs sincerely,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.

Borrow was still a remarkably robust man. Mr Watts-Dunton tells how,

“At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o’clock in
Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at
Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in
the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water
like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off
some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then,
after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would
have done Sir Walter Scott’s eyes good to see. Finally, he would
walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the
physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened
to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was
still more so. Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen
could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is
that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as
much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchetty,
and odd as to draw them. This was the humour of Borrow.” {469a}

He was seventy years of age when, one March day during a bitterly-cold east wind, he stripped and plunged into one of the Fen Ponds in Richmond Park, which was covered with ice, and dived and swam under the water for a time, reappearing some distance from the spot where he had entered the water. {469b}

The remaining years of Borrow’s life were spent in Suffolk. He would frequently go to Norwich, however; for the old city seemed to draw him irresistibly from his hermitage. He would take a lodging there, and spend much of his time occupying a certain chair in the Norfolk Hotel in St Giles. There were so many old associations with Norwich that made it appear home to him. He was possessed of sentiment in plenty, it had caused his old mother to wish that “dear George would not have such fancies about _the old house_” in Willow Lane.

Later, Dr and Mrs MacOubrey removed to Oulton (about 1878), and Borrow’s life became less dismal and lonely; but he was nearing his end. Sometimes there would be a flash of that old unconquerable spirit. His stepdaughter relates how,

“on the 21st of November [1878], the place [the farm] having been
going to decay for fourteen months, Mr Palmer [the tenant] called to
demand that Mr Borrow should put it in repair; otherwise he would do
it himself and send in the bills, saying, ‘I don’t care for the old
farm or you either,’ and several other insulting things; whereupon Mr
Borrow remarked very calmly, ‘Sir, you came in by that door, you can
go out by it’—and so it ended.” {470a}

It was on an occasion such as this that Borrow yearned for a son to knock the rascal down. He was an infirm man, his body feeling the wear and tear of the strenuous open-air life he had led. In 1879, according to Mrs MacOubrey, he was “unable to walk as far as the white gate,” the boundary of his estate. He was obviously breaking-up very rapidly. The surroundings appear to have reflected the gloomy nature of the master of the estate. The house was dilapidated, “with everything about it more or less untidy,” {470b} although at this period his income amounted to upwards of five hundred pounds a year.

“During his latter years,” writes Mr W. A. Dutt, “his tall, erect,
somewhat mysterious figure was often seen in the early hours of
summer mornings or late at night on the lonely pathways that wind in
and out from the banks of Oulton Broad . . . the village children
used to hush their voices and draw aside at his approach. They
looked upon him with fear and awe. . . . In his heart, Borrow was
fond of the little ones, though it amused him to watch the impression
his strange personality made upon them. Older people he seldom spoke
to when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would flash out
such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows
as would make timid country folk hasten on their way filled with
vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye.” {470c}

Even to the last the old sensitiveness occasionally flashed out, as on the occasion of a visit from the Vicar of Lowestoft, who drove over with an acquaintance of Borrow’s to make the hermit’s acquaintance. The visitor was so incautious as to ask the age of his host, when, with Johnsonian emphasis, came the reply: “Sir, I tell my age to no man!” This occurred some time during the year 1880. Immediately his discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to the summer-house, where he drew up the following apothegm on “People’s Age”:—

“Never talk to people about their age. Call a boy a boy, and he will
fly into a passion and say, ‘Not quite so much of a boy either; I’m a
young man.’ Tell an elderly person that he’s not so young as he was,
and you will make him hate you for life. Compliment a man of
eighty-five on the venerableness of his appearance, and he will
shriek out: ‘No more venerable than yourself,’ and will perhaps hit
you with his crutch.”

On 1st December 1880 Borrow sent for his solicitor from Lowestoft, and made his will, by which he bequeathed all his property, real and personal, to his stepdaughter Henrietta, devising that it should be held in trust for her by his friend Elizabeth Harvey. It was evidently Borrow’s intention so to tie up the bequest that Dr MacOubrey could not in any way touch his wife’s estate.

The end came suddenly. On the morning of 26th July 1881 Dr and Mrs MacOubrey drove into Lowestoft, leaving Borrow alone in the house. When they returned he was dead. Throughout his life Borrow had been a solitary, and it seems fitting that he should die alone. It has been urged against his stepdaughter that she disregarded Borrow’s appeals not to be left alone in the house, as he felt himself to be dying. He may have made similar requests on other occasions; still, whatever the facts, it was strange to leave so old and so infirm a man quite unattended.

On 4th August the body was brought to London, and buried beside that of Mrs George Borrow in Brompton Cemetery. On the stone, which is what is known as a saddle-back, is inscribed:

IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF

GEORGE HENRY BORROW, ESQ.,

WHO DIED JULY 26TH, 1881 (AT HIS RESIDENCE “OULTON COTTAGE, SUFFOLK”)

IN HIS 79TH YEAR.

(AUTHOR OF THE BIBLE IN SPAIN, LAVENGRO—AND OTHER WORKS.)

“IN HOPE OF A GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.”

A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow to purchase the whole of Borrow’s manuscripts, library, and papers for the Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a thousand pounds, was considered too high, and they passed into the possession of another. Eventually they found their way into the reverent hands of the man who subsequently made Borrow his hero, and who devoted years of his life to the writing of his biography—Dr W. J. Knapp.

It was Borrow’s fate, a tragic fate for a man so proud, to outlive the period of his fame. Not only were his books forgotten, but the world anticipated his death by some seven or eight years. His was a curiously complex nature, one that seems specially to have been conceived by Providence to arouse enmity among the many, and to awaken in the hearts of the few a sterling, unwavering friendship. It is impossible to reconcile the accounts of those who hated him with those whose love and respect he engaged.

He was in sympathy with vagrants and vagabonds—a taste that was perhaps emphasised by the months he spent in preparing _Celebrated Trials_. If those months of hack work taught him sympathy with pariahs, it also taught him to write strong, nervous English.

He was one of the most remarkable characters of his century—whimsical, eccentric, lovable, inexplicable; possessed of an odd, dry humour that sometimes failed him when most he needed it. He lived and died a stranger to the class to which he belonged, and was the intimate friend and associate of that dark and mysterious personage, Mr Petulengro. He hated his social equals, and admired Tamerlane and Jerry Abershaw. It has been said {473} that he was born three centuries too late, and that he belonged to the age when men dropped mysteriously down the river in ships, later to return with strange stories and great treasure from the Spanish Main. Mr Watts-Dunton has said:—

“When Borrow was talking to people in his own class of life there was
always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism. What Carlyle
called the ‘armed neutrality’ of social intercourse oppressed him.
He felt himself to be in the enemy’s camp. In his eyes there was
always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his
interlocutor and weighing him against himself. He seemed to be
observing what effect his words were having, and this attitude
repelled people at first. But the moment he approached a gypsy on
the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by
the wayside, he became another man. He threw off the burden of
restraint. The feeling of the ‘armed neutrality’ was left behind,
and he seemed to be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that
could give him pleasure. This it was that enabled him to make
friends so entirely with the gypsies. Notwithstanding what is called
‘Romany guile’ (which is the growth of ages of oppression), the basis
of the Romany character is a joyous frankness. Once let the
isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from the ‘Gorgio’ be broken
through, and the communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins
to show itself. The gypsies are extremely close observers; they were
very quick to notice how different was Borrow’s bearing towards
themselves from his bearing towards people of his own race, and
Borrow used to say that ‘old Mrs Herne and Leonora were the only
gypsies who suspected and disliked him.’” {474a}

This convincing character sketch seems to show the real Borrow. It accounts even for that high-piping, artificial voice (a gypsy trait) that he assumed when speaking with those who were not his intimate friends, and which any sudden interest in the conversation would cause him to abandon in favour of his own deep, rich tones. Mr F. J. Bowring, himself no friend of Borrow’s for very obvious reasons, has described this artificial intonation as something between a beggar’s whine and the high-pitched voice of a gypsy—in sort, a falsetto. He tells how, on one occasion, when in conversation with Borrow, he happened to mention to him something of particular interest concerning the gypsies, Borrow became immensely interested, immediately dropped the falsetto and spoke in his natural voice, which Mr Bowring describes as deep and manly.

Even his friends were led sometimes into criticisms that appear unsympathetic. {474b} He was, Dr Hake has said, “essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the prince that he felt himself in its midst.” {474c} It is the son who shows the better understanding, although there is no doubt about Dr Hake’s loyalty to Borrow. There is a faithful presentation of a man such as Borrow really seems to have been, in the following words:—

“Few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow.
His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so
bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval beardless face, his
loud rich voice and bold heroic air were such as to impress the most
indifferent lookers-on. Added to this there was something not easily
forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our
gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart.” {475a}

If Borrow wrote that he was ashamed of being an Englishman and referred to their “pinched and mortified expressions,” if he found the virtues of the Saxons “uncouth and ungracious,” he never permitted others to make disparaging remarks about his country or his countrymen. {475b} He was typically English in this: agree with his strictures, add a word or two of dispraise of the English, and there appeared a terrifying figure of a patriot; “not only an Englishman but an East Englishman,” which in Borrow’s vocabulary meant the finest of the breed. He might with more truth have said a Cornishman. “I could not command myself when I heard my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner,” {475c} he once exclaimed. He permitted to himself, and to himself only, a certain latitude in such matters.

That Borrow exaggerated is beyond all question, but it must not be called deliberate. He desired to give impressions of scenes and people, and he was inclined to emphasize certain features. Isopel Berners he wished it to be known was a queenly creature, and he described her as taller than himself (he was 6 feet 2 inches without his shoes). Exaggeration is colour, not form. A disbelief in his having encountered the convict son of the old apple-woman near Salisbury does not imply that the old woman herself is a fiction. Borrow insisted upon Norfolk as his county, “where the people eat the best dumplings in the world, and speak the purest English.” He even spoke with a strong, if imperfect, East Anglian accent. As a matter of fact his father was Cornish and his mother of Huguenot stock. It would be absurd to argue from this obvious exaggeration of the actual facts that Borrow was a myth.

Then he has been taken to task for not being a philologist as well as a linguist. He may have used the word philologist somewhat loosely on occasion. “Think what the reader would have lost,” says one eminent but by no means prejudiced critic {476} with real sympathy and insight, “had Borrow waited to verify his etymologies.” In all probability Nature will never produce a Humboldt-Le Sage combination of intellect. Language was to Borrow merely the key that permitted him access to the chamber of men’s minds. It must be confessed that sometimes he invaded the sacred precincts of philology. His chapter on the Basque language in _The Bible in Spain_ has been described as “utterly frantic,” and German philologists, speechless in their astonishment, have expressed themselves upon his conclusions in marks of exclamation! He was not qualified to discourse upon the science of language.

He was a staunch member of the Church of England, because he believed there was in it more religion than in any other Church; but this did not hinder him from consorting with the godless children of the tents, or contributing towards the upkeep of Nonconformist-schools. The gypsies honoured and trusted him because, crooked themselves, they appreciated straightness and clean living in another. They had never known him use a bad word or do a bad thing. He was, on occasion, arrogant, overbearing, ungracious, in short all the unattractive things that a proud and masterful man can be; but his friendship was as strong as the man himself; his charity above the narrow prejudices of sect. When he threw his tremendous power into any enterprise or undertaking, it was with the determination that it should succeed, if work and self-sacrifice could make it. “The wisest course,” he thought, was, “ . . . to blend the whole of the philosophy of the tombstone with a portion of the philosophy of the publican and something more, to enjoy one’s pint and pipe and other innocent pleasures, and to think every now and then of death and judgment.” {477}

Borrow loved mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able quite to penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality. Those who came nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men. Of all Borrow’s friends it is probable that none understood him so well as Hasfeldt. He recognised the strength of character of the white-haired man who sang when he was happy, and he refused to be affected by his gloomy moods. “Write and tell me,” he requests, “if you have not fallen in love with some nun or Gypsy in Spain, or have met with some other romantic adventure worthy of a roaming knight.” On another occasion (June 1845) he boasts with some justification, “Heaven be praised, I can comprehend you as a reality, while many regard you as an imaginary, fantastic being. But they who portray you have not eaten bread and salt with you.”

Borrow’s contemporary recognition was a chance; he was writing for another generation, and some of the friends that he left behind have loyally striven to erect to him the only monument an artist desires—the proclaiming of his works.

Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of magnificence, and, lest he should be enticed away from her, had instilled into his soul a hatred of all things artificial and at variance with her august decrees. He was shy and suspicious with the men and women who regulated their lives by the narrow standards of civilisation and decorum; but with the children of the tents and the vagrants of the wayside he was a single-minded man, eager to learn the lore of the open air. He recognised in these vagabonds the true sons and daughters of “the Great Mother who mixes all our bloods.”

* * * * *

THE END

* * * * *

LIST OF BORROW’S WORKS

1825

_Celebrated Trials_, _and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence_, _from the Earliest Records to the Year_ 1825. Six volumes, with plates. London.

_Faustus_: _His Life_, _Death_, _and Descent into Hell_. Translated from the German [of F. M. von Klinger]. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, London.

1826

_Romantic Ballads_. Translated from the Danish: and Miscellaneous Pieces. S. Wilkin, Norwich.

1835

_Targum_: _or_, _Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects_. St Petersburgh. Reprinted later by Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.

_The Talisman_. From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. With _Other Pieces_. St Petersburg.

1841

_The Zincali_; _or_, _An Account of the Gypsies of Spain_. With an Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary of their Language. Two volumes. John Murray, London.

1842

_The Bible in Spain_; _or_, _the Journeys_, _Adventures_, _and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula_. Three volumes. John Murray, London.

_Lavengro_: The Scholar—The Gypsy—The Priest. Three volumes. John Murray, London.

_The Romany Rye_: _a Sequel to Lavengro_. Two volumes. John Murray, London.

_The Sleeping Bard_; _or_, _Visions of the World_, _Death_, _and Hell_. By Elis Wyn. Translated from the Cambrian British. John Murray, London.

1862

_Wild Wales_: _Its People_, _Language_, _and Scenery_. Three volumes. John Murray, London.

_Romano Lavo-Lil_: _Word-Book of Romany_; _or_, _English Gypsy Language_. With Many Pieces in Gypsy, Illustrative of the Way of Speaking and Thinking of the English Gypsies; with Specimens of Their Poetry, and an Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England. John Murray, London.

1884

_The Turkish Jester_; _or_, _the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi_. Translated from the Turkish. Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.

1892

_The Death of Balder_. Translated from the Danish of Evald. Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.

From the foregoing list has been omitted the mysterious _Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell_, _the Great Traveller_, and those works that Borrow edited or translated for the British and Foreign Bible Society.

FOOTNOTES

{3} Afterwards General Morshead and friend of the Duke of York. Captain Morshead, himself a Cornishman, is credited with doing everything in his power to dissuade Thomas Borrow from enlisting, but without result.

{4a} _Lavengro_, page 2. References to Borrow’s works throughout this volume are to the Standard Edition, published by John Murray.

{4b} Ann, the third of eight children born to Samuel Perfrement and Mary his wife, 23rd January 1772.

{4c} Locally, the name is pronounced “_Par_frement.” This is quite in accordance with the Norfolk dialect, which changes “e” into “a.” Thus “Ernest” becomes “Arnest”; “Earlham,” “Arlham”; “Erpingham,” “Arpingham,” and so on. In Norfolk there are grave peculiarities of pronunciation, which have caused many a stranger to wish that he had never enquired his way, so puzzling are the replies hurled at him in an incomprehensible vernacular.

{5} Married the Rev. Wm. Holland, rector of Walmer and afterwards rector of Brasted, Kent.

{6a} _Lavengro_, page 5.

{6b} _Lavengro_, page 5.

{7a} George in honour of the King, it is said, and Henry after his father’s eldest brother.

{7b} _Lavengro_, page 6.

{7c} _Lavengro_, page 6.

{7d} _Lavengro_, page 6.

{7e} _Lavengro_, page 7.

{7f} _Lavengro_, page 7.

{9a} _Lavengro_, page 16.

{9b} The widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the _Paston Letters_.

{9c} _Lavengro_, page 15.

{10a} _Lavengro_, pages 398–9.

{10b} “Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those which I can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, pass away, and become forgotten, except by myself, who, in spite of all my endeavours, never can forget anything.”—_Lavengro_, page 166.

{10c} _Lavengro_, page 16.

{11a} _Lavengro_, pages 19–20.

{11b} _Lavengro_, page 22.

{12a} The gypsies “have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family having a public and private name, one by which they are known to the Gentiles, and another to themselves alone . . . There are only two names of trades which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper names, Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English gypsy dialect by _Vardo-mescro_ and _Petulengro_ (_Romano Lavo-Lil_, page 185). Thus the Smiths are known among themselves as the Petulengros. Petul, a horse shoe, and engro a “masculine affix used in the formation of figurative names.” Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes from Bosh a fiddle, Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor = to fight.

{12b} The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard narrated at a provincial Bible Society’s meeting that when Borrow first called at Earl Street “he said that he had been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had passed several years with them, but had been recognised at a fair in Norfolk and brought home to his family by his uncle.” There is, however, nothing to confirm this story.

{13a} _Lavengro_, page 164.

{13b} The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait making; but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of the English that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.

{13c} _Lavengro_, page 45.

{14} David Haggart, born 24th June 1801, was an instinctive criminal, who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the West Norfolks. Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his career of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, he was hanged at Edinburgh.

{15a} _Lavengro_, page 138.

{15b} John Crome (1768–1821), landscape painter. Apprenticed 1783 as sign-painter; introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded the Norwich School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy 1806.

{17} Borrow was always a magnificent horseman. “Vaya! how you ride! It is dangerous to be in your way!” said the Archbishop of Toledo to him years later. In _The Bible in Spain_ he wrote that he had “been accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a saddle.” The Rev. Wentworth Webster states that in Madrid “he used to ride with a Russian skin for a saddle and _without stirrups_.”

{20} Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_, 26th April 1851.

{21a} “It is probable, that had I been launched about this time into some agreeable career, that of arms, for example, for which, being the son of a soldier, I had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I might have thought nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any kind; but, having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to my genius which appeared open to me.”—_Lavengro_, page 89.

{21b} The Rev. Thomas D’Eterville, M.A., “Poor Old Detterville,” as the Grammar School boys called him, of Caen University, who arrived at Norwich in 1793. He acquired a small fortune by teaching languages. There were rumours that he was engaged in the contraband trade, an occupation more likely to bring fortune than teaching languages.

{21c} Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_, 26th April 1851.

{22} It was here, in 1827, that he saw the world’s greatest trotter, Marshland Shales, and in common with other lovers of horses lifted his hat to salute “the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England.” In _Lavengro_ Borrow antedated this event by some nine years.

{23} Manuscript autobiographical notes supplied by Borrow to Mr John Longe, 1862.

{24} _Lavengro_, page 134.

{25a} This account is taken from a letter by “A Schoolfellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_, 26th April 1851.

{25b} In a letter to Borrow, dated 15th October 1862, John Longe, J.P., of Spixworth Park, Norwich, in acknowledging some biographical particulars that Borrow had sent him for inclusion in Burton’s _Antiquities of the Royal School of Norwich_, wrote:—

“You have omitted an important and characteristic anecdote of your
early days (fifteen years of age). When at school you, with
Theodosius and Francis W. Purland, _absented_ yourself from home and
school and took up your abode in a certain ‘Robber’s Cave’ at Acle,
where you _resided_ three days, and once more returned to your
homes.”

{26} According to the original manuscript of _Lavengro_, it appears that Roger Kerrison, a Norwich friend of Borrow’s, strongly advised the law as “an excellent profession . . . for those who never intend to follow it.”—_Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp, i., 66.

{27a} The Rev. Wm. Drake of Mundesley, in a letter which appeared in _The Eastern Daily Press_, 22nd September 1892:—

“ . . . I was at the Norwich Grammar School nine years, from 1820 to
1829, and during that time (probably in 1824 and 1825) George Borrow
was lodging in the Upper Close . . . The house was a low
old-fashioned building with a garden in front of it, and the fact of
Borrow’s residence there is fixed in my memory because I had spent
the first five or six years of my own life in the same house, from
1811 to 1816 or 1817. My father occupied it in virtue of his being a
minor canon in Norwich Cathedral. I remember Borrow very distinctly,
because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who used to gather
round the railings of his garden, and occasionally he would ask one
or two of them to have tea with him. I have a faint recollection
that he gave us some of our first notions of chess, but I am not sure
of this. I . . . remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man,
usually dressed in black. In person he was not unlike another
Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different notoriety
from that which now belongs to Borrow’s name. I mean John Thurtell,
who murdered Mr Weare.”

{27b} _Wild Wales_, page 3.

{28a} _Wild Wales_, page 157.

{28b} Forty years later Borrow wrote of these days:—“‘How much more happy, innocent, and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I translated Iolo’s ode than I am at the present time!’ Then covering my face with my hands I wept like a child.”—_Wild Wales_, page 448.

{30a} There is no doubt that Borrow became possessed of a copy of _Kiæmpe Viser_, first collected by Anders Vedel, which may or may not have been given to him, with a handshake from the old farmer and a kiss from his wife, in recognition of the attention he had shown the pair in his official capacity. He refers to the volume repeatedly in _Lavengro_, and narrates how it was presented by some shipwrecked Danish mariners to the old couple in acknowledgment of their humanity and hospitality. It is, however, most likely that he was in error when he stated that “in less than a month” he was able “to read the book.”—_Lavengro_, pages 140–4.

{30b} _Wild Wales_, page 2.

{30c} _Wild Wales_, page 374.

{30d} _Wild Wales_, page 9. There is an interesting letter written to Borrow by the old lawyer’s son on the appearance of _Lavengro_, in which he says: “With tearful eyes, yet smiling lips, I have read and re-read your faithful portrait of my dear old father. I cannot mistake him—the creaking shoes, the florid face, the polished pate—all serve as marks of recognition to his youngest son!”

{31a} _Wild Wales_, page 374.

{31b} During the five years that he was articled to Simpson & Rackham, Borrow, according to Dr Knapp, studied Welsh, Danish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Gaelic, and Armenian. He already had a knowledge of Latin, Greek, Irish, French, Italian, and Spanish.

{31c} _Lavengro_, page 235.

{32a} Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), the historical painter.

{32b} _Lavengro_, page 166.

{33a} William Taylor (1765–1836) was an admirer of German literature and a defender of the French Revolution. He is credited with having first inspired his friend Southey with a liking for poetry. He travelled much abroad, met Goethe, attended the National Assembly debates in 1790, translated from the German and contributed to a number of English periodicals.

{33b} Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.

{33c} Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.

{33d} Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.

{34a} _Memoir of Wm. Taylor_, by J. W. Robberds.

{34b} _Memoir of Wm. Taylor_, by J. W. Robberds.

{34c} Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.

{35a} The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in a letter, 17th February 1887.

{35b} Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.

{35c} _Lavengro_, page 355.

{36a} John Bowring, F.R.S. (1792–1872), began life in trade, went to the Peninsula for Milford & Co., army contractors, in 1811, set up for himself as a merchant, travelled and acquired a number of languages. He was ambitious, energetic and shrewd. He became editor of _The Westminster Review_ in 1824, and LL.D., Grönigen, in 1829. He was sent by the Government upon a commercial mission to Belgium, 1833; to Egypt; Syria and Turkey, 1837–8; M.P. for Clyde burghs, 1835–7, and for Bolton, 1841; was instrumental in obtaining the issue of the florin as a first step toward a decimal system of currency; Consul of Canton, 1847; plenipotentiary to China; governor, commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral of Hong Kong, 1854; knighted 1854; established diplomatic and commercial relations with Siam, 1855. He published a number of volumes of translations from various languages. He died full of years and honours in 1872.

{36b} _The Romany Rye_, page 368, _et seq._

{38} _Lavengro_, pages 177–8.

{39} _Lavengro_, pages 179–80. Captain Borrow was in his sixty-sixth year at his death; b. December 1758, d. 28th February 1824. He was buried in St Giles churchyard, Norwich, on 4th March 1824.

{40a} _The Romany Rye_, page 302.

{40b} In his will Captain Borrow bequeathed to George his watch and “the small Portrait,” and to John “the large Portrait” of himself; his mother to hold and enjoy them during her lifetime. Should Mrs Borrow die or marry again, elaborate provision was made for the proper distribution of the property between the two sons.

{41} In particular Borrow believed in Ab Gwilym “the greatest poetical genius that has appeared in Europe since the revival of literature” (_Wild Wales_, page 6). “The great poet of Nature, the contemporary of Chaucer, but worth half-a-dozen of the accomplished word-master, the ingenious versifier of Norman and Italian Tales.” (_Wild Wales_, page xxviii.).

{42a} Lines to Six-Foot-Three. _Romantic Ballads_. Norwich 1826.

{42b} Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840) before becoming a publisher was a schoolmaster, hosier, stationer, bookseller, and vendor of patent medicines at Leicester, where he also founded a newspaper. In 1795 he came to London, was sheriff in 1807, and received his knighthood a year later.

{43} It has been urged against Borrow’s accuracy that Sir Richard Phillips had retired to Brighton in 1823, vide _The Dictionary of National Biography_. In the January number (1824) of _The Monthly Magazine_ appeared the following paragraph: “The Editor [Sir Richard Phillips], having retired from his commercial engagements and removed from his late house of business in New Bridge Street, communications should be addressed to the appointed Publishers [Messrs Whittakers]; but personal interviews of Correspondents and interested persons may be obtained at his private residence in Tavistock Square.” This proves conclusively that Sir Richard was to be seen in London in the early part of 1824.

{44a} _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from the Earliest Records to the Year_ 1825, 6 vols., with plates. London, 1825.

{44b} _Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe_. By Sir Richard Phillips. London, 1821.