George Borrow and His Circle
by Clement King Shorter · English · Gutenberg #19767 · 896,088 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: George Borrow and His Circle
Author: Clement King Shorter
Release date: November 12, 2006 [eBook #19767]
Most recently updated: January 21, 2016
Language: English
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[Illustration: George Henry Borrow
From a painting by Henry Wyndham Phillips]
GEORGE BORROW
AND HIS CIRCLE
WHEREIN MAY BE FOUND MANY HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF BORROW AND HIS
FRIENDS
BY
CLEMENT KING SHORTER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1913
TO
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL
A FRIEND OF LONG YEARS AND A TRUE
LOVER OF GEORGE BORROW
C. K. S.
Transcriber's Notes: Minor typos have been corrected. A letter with a
macron over it has been designated with a [=], for example [=a] is an a
with a macron over it. There is Persian and Russian writing in this
book, which have been marked as [Persian] or as [Russian]. V^{m}
signifies that the m is a superscript.
PREFACE
I have to express my indebtedness first of all to the executors of
Henrietta MacOubrey, George Borrow's stepdaughter, who kindly placed
Borrow's letters and manuscripts at my disposal. To the survivor of
these executors, a lady who resides in an English provincial town, I
would particularly wish to render fullest acknowledgment did she not
desire to escape all publicity and forbid me to give her name in print.
I am indebted to Sir William Robertson Nicoll without whose kindly and
active intervention I should never have taken active steps to obtain the
material to which this biography owes its principal value. I am under
great obligations to Mr. Herbert Jenkins, the publisher, in that,
although the author of a successful biography of Borrow, he has, with
rare kindliness, brought me into communication with Mr. Wilfrid J.
Bowring, the grandson of Sir John Bowring. To Mr. Wilfrid Bowring I am
indebted in that he has handed to me the whole of Borrow's letters to
his grandfather. I have to thank Mr. James Hooper of Norwich for the
untiring zeal with which he has unearthed for me a valuable series of
notes including certain interesting letters concerning Borrow. Mr.
Hooper has generously placed his collection, with which he at one time
contemplated writing a biography of Borrow, in my hands. I thank Dr.
Aldis Wright for reading my chapter on Edward FitzGerald; also Mr. W.H.
Peet, Mr. Aleck Abrahams, and Mr. Joseph Shaylor for assistance in the
little known field of Sir Richard Phillips's life. I have further to
thank my friends, Edward Clodd and Thomas J. Wise, for reading my
proof-sheets. To Theodore Watts-Dunton, an untiring friend of thirty
years, I have also to acknowledge abundant obligations.
C. K. S.
CONTENTS
PREFACE, v
INTRODUCTION, xv
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA, 1
CHAPTER II
BORROW'S MOTHER, 12
CHAPTER III
JOHN THOMAS BORROW, 18
CHAPTER IV
A WANDERING CHILDHOOD, 36
CHAPTER V
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GURNEYS, 54
CHAPTER VI
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE TAYLORS, 63
CHAPTER VII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, 70
CHAPTER VIII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE LAWYER'S OFFICE, 79
CHAPTER IX
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS, 87
CHAPTER X
'FAUSTUS' AND 'ROMANTIC BALLADS,' 101
CHAPTER XI
'CELEBRATED TRIALS' AND JOHN THURTELL, 112
CHAPTER XII
BORROW AND THE FANCY, 126
CHAPTER XIII
EIGHT YEARS OF VAGABONDAGE, 133
CHAPTER XIV
SIR JOHN BOWRING, 138
CHAPTER XV
BORROW AND THE BIBLE SOCIETY, 153
CHAPTER XVI
ST. PETERSBURG AND JOHN P. HASFELD, 162
CHAPTER XVII
THE MANCHU BIBLE--'TARGUM'--'THE TALISMAN,' 169
CHAPTER XVII
THREE VISITS TO SPAIN, 179
CHAPTER XIX
BORROW'S SPANISH CIRCLE, 201
CHAPTER XX
MARY BORROW, 215
CHAPTER XXI
'THE CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR,' 226
CHAPTER XXII
'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN,' 237
CHAPTER XXIII
RICHARD FORD, 248
CHAPTER XXIV
IN EASTERN EUROPE, 260
CHAPTER XXV
'LAVENGRO,' 275
CHAPTER XXVI
A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN, 289
CHAPTER XXVII
IN THE ISLE OF MAN, 296
CHAPTER XXVIII
OULTON BROAD AND YARMOUTH, 304
CHAPTER XXIX
IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND, 320
CHAPTER XXX
'THE ROMANY RYE,' 341
CHAPTER XXXI
EDWARD FITZGERALD, 350
CHAPTER XXXII
'WILD WALES,' 364
CHAPTER XXXIII
LIFE IN LONDON, 379
CHAPTER XXXIV
FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS, 389
CHAPTER XXXV
BORROW'S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS, 401
CHAPTER XXXVI
HENRIETTA CLARKE, 413
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE AFTERMATH, 434
INDEX, 438
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL-PAGE PLATES
GEORGE BORROW, _Frontispiece_
_A photogravure portrait from the painting by Henry Wyndham
Phillips._
PAGE
THE BORROW HOUSE, NORWICH, 16
ROBERT HAWKES, MAYOR OF NORWICH IN 1824, 24
_From the painting by Benjamin Haydon in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich._
GEORGE BORROW, 32
_From a portrait by his brother, John Thomas Borrow, in the
National Portrait Gallery, London._
THE ERPINGHAM GATE AND THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, NORWICH 72
WILLIAM SIMPSON, 80
_From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A., in the Black Friars
Hall, Norwich._
FRIENDS OF BORROW'S EARLY YEARS--
SIR JOHN BOWRING IN 1826, 96
JOHN P. HASFELD IN 1835, 96
WILLIAM TAYLOR, 96
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS, 96
THE FAMILY OF JASPER PETULENGRO, 128
WHERE BORROW LIVED IN MADRID, 192
THE CALLE DEL PRINCIPE, MADRID, 192
A HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF GEORGE BORROW, 304
_Taken in the garden of Mrs. Simms Reeve of Norwich in 1848._
OULTON COTTAGE FROM THE BROAD, 352
THE SUMMER-HOUSE, OULTON, AS IT IS TO-DAY, 352
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
GEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREEN, 35
_From a Drawing by Fortunino Matania._
TITLE-PAGES OF 'TARGUM' AND 'THE TALISMAN,' 178
PORTION OF A LETTER FROM GEORGE BORROW TO THE REV.
SAMUEL BRANDRAM, 187
_Written From Madrid, 13th May 1838._
FACSIMILE OF AN ACCOUNT OF GEORGE BORROW'S EXPENSES IN
SPAIN MADE OUT BY THE BIBLE SOCIETY, 190
A LETTER FROM SIR GEORGE VILLIERS, AFTERWARDS EARL OF
CLARENDON, BRITISH MINISTER TO SPAIN, TO GEORGE
BORROW, 211
MRS. BORROW'S COPY OF HER MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE, 222
AN APPLICATION FOR A BOOK IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, WITH
BORROW'S SIGNATURE, 230
A SHEKEL, 244
TITLE-PAGE OF BASQUE TRANSLATION BY OTEIZA OF THE GOSPEL
OF ST. LUKE, 247
TITLE-PAGE OF FIRST EDITION OF ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE
GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 247
TWO PAGES FROM BORROW'S CORRECTED PROOF SHEETS OF
ROMANY TRANSLATION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE, 247
INSCRIPTIONS IN BORROW'S HANDWRITING ON HIS WIFE'S COPIES
OF 'THE BIBLE IN SPAIN' AND 'LAVENGRO,' 275
THE ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE OF 'LAVENGRO,' 280
_From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George
Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF 'LAVENGRO,' 282
_From the Manuscript in the possession of the Author of 'George
Borrow and his Circle.'_
RUNIC STONE FROM THE ISLE OF MAN, 302
FACSIMILE OF A COMMUNICATION FROM CHARLES DARWIN TO
GEORGE BORROW, 318
FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF 'THE ROMANY
RYE,' 346
_From the Borrow Papers in the possession of the Author of
'George Borrow and his Circle._'
'WILD WALES' IN ITS BEGINNINGS, 365
_Two pages from one of George Borrow's Pocket-books with pencilled
notes made on his journey through Wales._
FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF 'WILD WALES,' 368
_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of
'George Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF 'WILD WALES,' 370
_From the original Manuscript in the possession of the Author of
'George Borrow and his Circle.'_
FACSIMILE OF A POEM FROM 'TARGUM,' 403
_A Translation from the French by George Borrow._
BORROW AS A PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES--AN ADVERTISEMENT, 409
A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF BORROW'S 'SONGS OF SCANDINAVIA'--AN
UNPUBLISHED WORK, 411
A LETTER FROM BORROW TO HIS WIFE WRITTEN FROM ROME IN
HIS CONTINENTAL JOURNEY OF 1844, 418
INTRODUCTION
It is now exactly seventeen years ago since I published a volume not
dissimilar in form to this under the title of _Charlotte Brontë and her
Circle_. The title had then an element of novelty, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti's _Dante and his Circle_, at the time the only book of this
particular character, having quite another aim. There are now some
twenty or more biographies based upon a similar plan.[1] The method has
its convenience where there are earlier lives of a given writer, as one
can in this way differentiate the book from previous efforts by making
one's hero stand out among his friends. Some such apology, I feel, is
necessary, because, in these days of the multiplication of books, every
book, at least other than a work of imagination, requires ample apology.
In _Charlotte Brontë and her Circle_ I was able to claim that, even
though following in the footsteps of Mrs. Gaskell, I had added some four
hundred new letters by Charlotte Brontë to the world's knowledge of that
interesting woman, and still more considerably enlarged our knowledge of
her sister Emily. This achievement has been generously acknowledged, and
I am most proud of the testimony of the most accomplished of living
biographers, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, who once rendered me the
following quite spontaneous tribute:
We have lately read _aloud_ for the second time your Brontë
book; let alone private readings. It is unique in plan and
excellence, and I am greatly obliged to you for it. Apart from
the pleasure of the book, the form of it has always interested
me as a professional biographer. It certainly is novel; and in
this case I am pretty sure that it is right.
With such a testimony before me I cannot hesitate to present my second
biography in similar form. In the case of George Borrow, however, I am
not in a position to supplement one transcendent biography, as in the
case of Charlotte Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell. I have before me no less than
four biographies of Borrow, every one of them of distinctive merit.
These are:
_Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow._ Derived
from Official and other Authentic Sources. By William I. Knapp,
Ph.D., LL.D. 2 vols. John Murray, 1899.
_George Borrow: The Man and his Work._ By R. A. J. Walling.
Cassell, 1908.
_The Life of George Borrow._ Compiled from Unpublished Official
Documents. His Works, Correspondence, etc. By Herbert Jenkins.
John Murray, 1912.
_George Borrow: The Man and his Books._ By Edward Thomas.
Chapman and Hall, 1912.
All of these books have contributed something of value and importance to
the subject. Dr. Knapp's work it is easiest to praise because he is
dead.[2] His biography of Borrow was the effort of a lifetime. A scholar
with great linguistic qualifications for writing the biography of an
author whose knowledge of languages was one of his titles to fame, Dr.
Knapp spared neither time nor money to achieve his purpose. Starting
with an article in _The Chautauquan Magazine_ in 1887, which was
reprinted in pamphlet form, Dr. Knapp came to England--to Norwich--and
there settled down to write a _Life_ of Borrow, which promised at one
time to develop into several volumes. As well it might, for Dr. Knapp
reached Norfolk at a happy moment for his purpose. Mrs. MacOubrey,
Borrow's stepdaughter, was in the humour to sell her father's
manuscripts and books. They were offered to the city of Norwich; there
was some talk of Mr. Jeremiah Coleman, M.P., whose influence and wealth
were overpowering in Norwich at the time, buying them. Finally, a very
considerable portion of the collection came into the hands of Mr.
Webber, a bookseller of Ipswich, who later became associated with the
firm of Jarrold of Norwich. From Webber Dr. Knapp purchased the larger
portion, and, as his bibliography indicates (_Life_, vol. ii. pp.
355-88), he became possessed of sundry notebooks which furnish a record
of certain of Borrow's holiday tours, about a hundred letters from and
to Borrow, and a considerable number of other documents. The result, as
I have indicated, was a book that abounded in new facts and is rich in
new material. It was not, however, a book for popular reading. You must
love the subject before you turn to this book with any zest. It is a
book for your true Borrovian, who is thankful for any information about
the word-master, not for the casual reader, who might indeed be
alienated from the subject by this copious memoir. The result was
somewhat discouraging. There were not enough of true Borrovians in those
years, and the book was not received too generously. The two volumes
have gone out of print and have not reached a second edition. Time
however, will do them justice. As it is, your good Borrow lover has
always appreciated their merits. Take Lionel Johnson for example, a good
critic and a master of style. After saying that these 'lengthy and rich
volumes are a monument of love's labour, but not of literary art or
biographical skill,' he adds: 'Of his over eight hundred pages there is
not one for which I am not grateful' and every new biographer of Borrow
is bound to re-echo that sentiment. Dr. Knapp did the spade work and
other biographers have but entered into his inheritance. Dr. Knapp's
fine collection of Borrow books and manuscripts was handed over by his
widow to the American nation--to the Hispanic Society of New York. Dr.
Knapp's biography was followed nine years later by a small volume by Mr.
R. A. J. Walling, whose little book adds considerably to our knowledge
of Borrow's Cornish relatives, and is in every way a valuable monograph
on the author of _Lavengro_. Mr. Herbert Jenkins's book is more
ambitious. Within four hundred closely printed pages he has compressed
every incident in Borrow's career, and we would not quarrel with him nor
his publisher for calling his life a 'definitive biography' if one did
not know that there is not and cannot be anything 'definitive' about a
biography except in the case of a Master. Boswell, Lockhart, Mrs.
Gaskell are authors who had the advantage of knowing personally the
subjects of their biographies. Any biographer who has not met his hero
face to face and is dependent solely on documents is crippled in his
undertaking. Moreover, such a biographer is always liable to be in a
manner superseded or at least supplemented by the appearance of still
more documents. However, Mr. Jenkins's excellent biography has the
advantage of many new documents from Mr. John Murray's archives and from
the Record Office Manuscripts. His work was the first to make use of the
letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society, which the Rev. T. H.
Darlow has published as a book under that title, a book to which I owe
him an acknowledgment for such use of it as I have made, as also for
permission to reproduce the title-page of Borrow's Basque version of St.
Luke's gospel. There only remains for me to say a word in praise of Mr.
Edward Thomas's fine critical study of Borrow which was published under
the title of _George Borrow: The Man and his Books_. Mr. Thomas makes no
claim to the possession of new documents. This brings me to such excuse
as I can make for perpetrating a fifth biography. When Mrs. MacOubrey,
Borrow's stepdaughter, the 'Hen.' of _Wild Wales_ and the affectionate
companion of his later years, sold her father's books and
manuscripts--and she always to her dying day declared that she had no
intention of parting with the manuscripts, which were, she said, taken
away under a misapprehension--she did not, of course, part with any of
his more private documents. All the more intimate letters of Borrow were
retained. At her death these passed to her executors, from whom I have
purchased all legal rights in the publication of Borrow's hitherto
unpublished manuscripts and letters. I trust that even to those who may
disapprove of the discursive method with which--solely for my own
pleasure--I have written this book, will at least find a certain
biographical value in the many new letters by and to George Borrow that
are to be found in its pages. The book has taken me ten years to write,
and has been a labour of love.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As for example, _Garrick and his Circle_; _Johnson and his Circle_;
_Reynolds and his Circle_; and even _The Empress Eugénie and her
Circle_.
[2] William Ireland Knapp died in Paris in June 1908, aged seventy-four.
He was an American, and had held for many years the Chair of Modern
Languages at Vassar College. After eleven years in Spain he returned to
occupy the Chair of Modern Languages at Yale, and later held a
Professorship at Chicago. After his _Life of Borrow_ was published he
resided in Paris until his death.
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN BORROW OF THE WEST NORFOLK MILITIA
George Henry Borrow was born at Dumpling Green near East Dereham,
Norfolk, on the 5th of July 1803. It pleased him to state on many an
occasion that he was born at East Dereham.
On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D----, a
beautiful little town in a certain district of East Anglia, I
first saw the light,
he writes in the opening lines of _Lavengro_, using almost the identical
phraseology that we find in the opening lines of Goethe's _Wahrheit und
Dichtung_. Here is a later memory of Dereham from _Lavengro_:
What it is at present I know not, for thirty years and more
have elapsed since I last trod its streets. It will scarcely
have improved, for how could it be better than it was? I love
to think on thee, pretty, quiet D----, thou pattern of an
English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets
branching out from thy modest market-place, with their
old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable
thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided
the Lady Bountiful--she, the generous and kind, who loved to
visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, while the
sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind.
Pretty, quiet D----, with thy venerable church, in which
moulder the mortal remains of England's sweetest and most pious
bard.
Then follows an exquisite eulogy of the poet Cowper, which readers of
_Lavengro_ know full well. Three years before Borrow was born William
Cowper died in this very town, leaving behind him so rich a legacy of
poetry and of prose, and moreover so fragrant a memory of a life in
which humour and pathos played an equal part. It was no small thing for
a youth who aspired to any kind of renown to be born in the
neighbourhood of the last resting-place of the author of _The Task_.
Yet Borrow was not actually born in East Dereham, but a mile and a half
away, at the little hamlet of Dumpling Green, in what was then a
glorious wilderness of common and furze bush, but is now a quiet
landscape of fields and hedges. You will find the home in which the
author of _Lavengro_ first saw the light without much difficulty. It is
a fair-sized farm-house, with a long low frontage separated from the
road by a considerable strip of garden. It suggests a prosperous yeoman
class, and I have known farm-houses in East Anglia not one whit larger
dignified by the name of 'hall.' Nearly opposite is a pond. The trim
hedges are a delight to us to-day, but you must cast your mind back to a
century ago when they were entirely absent. The house belonged to George
Borrow's maternal grandfather, Samuel Perfrement, who farmed the
adjacent land at this time. Samuel and Mary Perfrement had eight
children, the third of whom, Ann, was born in 1772.
In February 1793 Ann Perfrement, aged twenty-one, married Thomas Borrow,
aged thirty-five, in the Parish Church of East Dereham, and of the two
children that were born to them George Henry Borrow was the younger.
Thomas Borrow was the son of one John Borrow of St. Cleer in Cornwall,
who died before this child was born, and is described by his
grandson[3] as the scion 'of an ancient but reduced Cornish family,
tracing descent from the de Burghs, and entitled to carry their arms.'
This claim, of which I am thoroughly sceptical, is endorsed by Dr.
Knapp,[4] who, however, could find no trace of the family earlier than
1678, the old parish registers having been destroyed. When Thomas Borrow
was born the family were in any case nothing more than small farmers,
and Thomas Borrow and his brothers were working on the land in the
intervals of attending the parish school. At the age of eighteen Thomas
was apprenticed to a maltster at Liskeard, and about this time he joined
the local Militia. Tradition has it that his career as a maltster was
cut short by his knocking his master down in a scrimmage. The victor
fled from the scene of his prowess, and enlisted as a private soldier in
the Coldstream Guards. This was in 1783, and in 1792 he was transferred
to the West Norfolk Militia; hence his appearance at East Dereham,
where, now a serjeant, his occupations for many a year were recruiting
and drilling.[5] It is recorded that at a theatrical performance at East
Dereham he first saw, presumably on the stage of the county-hall, his
future wife--Ann Perfrement. She was, it seems, engaged in a minor part
in a travelling company, not, we may assume, altogether with the
sanction of her father, who, in spite of his inheritance of French
blood, doubtless shared the then very strong English prejudice against
the stage. However, Ann was one of eight children, and had, as we shall
find in after years, no inconsiderable strength of character, and so may
well at twenty years of age have decided upon a career for herself. In
any case we need not press too hard the Cornish and French origin of
George Borrow to explain his wandering tendencies, nor need we wonder at
the suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that he was 'supposed to be of
gypsy descent by the mother's side.' You have only to think of the
father, whose work carried him from time to time to every corner of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the mother with her reminiscence
of life in a travelling theatrical company, to explain in no small
measure the glorious vagabondage of George Borrow.
Behold then Thomas Borrow and Ann Perfrement as man and wife, he being
thirty-five years of age, she twenty-one. A roving, restless life was in
front of the pair for many a day, the West Norfolk Militia being
stationed in some eight or nine separate towns within the interval of
ten years between Thomas Borrow's marriage and his second son's birth.
The first child, John Thomas Borrow, was born on the 15th April 1801.[6]
The second son, George Henry Borrow, the subject of this memoir, was
born in his grandfather's house at Dumpling Green, East Dereham, his
mother having found a natural refuge with her father while her husband
was busily recruiting in Norfolk. The two children passed with their
parents from place to place, and in 1809 we find them once again in
East Dereham. From his son's two books, _Lavengro_ and _Wild Wales_, we
can trace the father's later wanderings until his final retirement to
Norwich on a pension. In 1810 the family were at Norman Cross in
Huntingdonshire, when Captain Borrow had to assist in guarding the
French prisoners of war; for it was the stirring epoch of the Napoleonic
conflict, and within the temporary prison 'six thousand French and other
foreigners, followers of the Grand Corsican, were now immured.'
What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their
blank blind walls, without windows or grating, and their
slanting roofs, out of which, through orifices where the tiles
had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads,
feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country
unfolded from that airy height. Ah! there was much misery in
those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful
look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the
poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the
disgrace of England be it said--of England, in general so kind
and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I
have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy
entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless
and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes.
But here we have only to do with Thomas Borrow, of whom we get many a
quaint glimpse in _Lavengro_, our first and our last being concerned
with him in the one quality that his son seems to have inherited, as the
associate of a prize-fighter--Big Ben Brain. Borrow records in his
opening chapter that Ben Brain and his father met in Hyde Park probably
in 1790, and that after an hour's conflict 'the champions shook hands
and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other's
prowess.' Borrow further relates that four months afterwards Brain 'died
in the arms of my father, who read to him the Bible in his last
moments.' Dr. Knapp finds Borrow in one of his many inaccuracies or
rather 'imaginings' here, as Brain did not die until 1794. More than
once in his after years the old soldier seems to have had a shy pride in
that early conflict, although the piety which seems to have come to him
with the responsibilities of wife and children led him to count any
recalling of the episode as a 'temptation.' When Borrow was about
thirteen years of age, he overheard his father and mother discussing
their two boys, the elder being the father's favourite and George the
mother's:
'I will hear nothing against my first-born,' said my father,
'even in the way of insinuation: he is my joy and pride; the
very image of myself in my youthful days, long before I fought
Big Ben, though perhaps not quite so tall or strong built. As
for the other, God bless the child! I love him, I'm sure; but I
must be blind not to see the difference between him and his
brother. Why, he has neither my hair nor my eyes; and then his
countenance! why, 'tis absolutely swarthy, God forgive me! I
had almost said like that of a gypsy, but I have nothing to say
against that; the boy is not to be blamed for the colour of his
face, nor for his hair and eyes; but, then, his ways and
manners!--I confess I do not like them, and that they give me
no little uneasiness.'[7]
Borrow throughout his narrative refers to his father as 'a man of
excellent common sense,' and he quotes the opinion of William Taylor,
who had rather a bad reputation as a 'freethinker' with all the
church-going citizens of Norwich, with no little pride. Borrow is of
course the 'young man' of the dialogue. He was then eighteen years of
age:
'Not so, not so,' said the young man eagerly; 'before I knew
you I knew nothing, and am still very ignorant; but of late my
father's health has been very much broken, and he requires
attention; his spirits also have become low, which, to tell you
the truth, he attributes to my misconduct. He says that I have
imbibed all kinds of strange notions and doctrines, which will,
in all probability, prove my ruin, both here and hereafter;
which--which----'
'Ah! I understand,' said the elder, with another calm whiff. 'I
have always had a kind of respect for your father, for there is
something remarkable in his appearance, something heroic, and I
would fain have cultivated his acquaintance; the feeling,
however, has not been reciprocated. I met him the other day, up
the road, with his cane and dog, and saluted him; he did not
return my salutation.'
'He has certain opinions of his own,' said the youth, 'which
are widely different from those which he has heard that you
profess.'
'I respect a man for entertaining an opinion of his own,' said
the elderly individual. 'I hold certain opinions; but I should
not respect an individual the more for adopting them. All I
wish for is tolerance, which I myself endeavour to practise. I
have always loved the truth, and sought it; if I have not found
it, the greater my misfortune.'[8]
When Borrow is twenty years of age we have another glimpse of father and
son, the father in his last illness, the son eager as usual to draw out
his parent upon the one subject that appeals to his adventurous spirit,
'I should like to know something about Big Ben,' he says:
'You are a strange lad,' said my father; 'and though of late I
have begun to entertain a more favourable opinion than
heretofore, there is still much about you that I do not
understand. Why do you bring up that name? Don't you know that
it is one of my temptations? You wish to know something about
him? Well, I will oblige you this once, and then farewell to
such vanities--something about him. I will tell you--his--skin
when he flung off his clothes--and he had a particular knack in
doing so--his skin, when he bared his mighty chest and back
for combat; and when he fought he stood, so--if I remember
right--his skin, I say, was brown and dusky as that of a toad.
Oh me! I wish my elder son was here!'
Concerning the career of Borrow's father there seem to be no documents
other than one contained in _Lavengro_, yet no _Life of Borrow_ can
possibly he complete that does not draw boldly upon the son's priceless
tributes. And so we come now to the last scene in the career of the
elder Borrow--his death-bed--which is also the last page of the first
volume of _Lavengro_. George Borrow's brother has arrived from abroad.
The little house in Willow Lane, Norwich, contained the mother and her
two sons sorrowfully awaiting the end, which came on 28th February 1824.
At the dead hour of night--it might be about two--I was
awakened from sleep by a cry which sounded from the room
immediately below that in which I slept. I knew the cry--it was
the cry of my mother; and I also knew its import, yet I made no
effort to rise, for I was for the moment paralysed. Again the
cry sounded, yet still I lay motionless--the stupidity of
horror was upon me. A third time, and it was then that, by a
violent effort, bursting the spell which appeared to bind me, I
sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs. My mother was
running wildly about the room; she had awoke and found my
father senseless in the bed by her side. I essayed to raise
him, and after a few efforts supported him in the bed in a
sitting posture. My brother now rushed in, and, snatching up a
light that was burning, he held it to my father's face. 'The
surgeon! the surgeon!' he cried; then, dropping the light, he
ran out of the room, followed by my mother; I remained alone,
supporting the senseless form of my father; the light had been
extinguished by the fall, and an almost total darkness reigned
in the room. The form pressed heavily against my bosom; at last
methought it moved. Yes, I was right; there was a heaving of
the breast, and then a gasping. Were those words which I heard?
Yes, they were words, low and indistinct at first, and then
audible. The mind of the dying man was reverting to former
scenes. I heard him mention names which I had often heard him
mention before. It was an awful moment; I felt stupefied, but I
still contrived to support my dying father. There was a pause;
again my father spoke: I heard him speak of Minden, and of
Meredith, the old Minden Serjeant, and then he uttered another
name, which at one period of his life was much on his lips, the
name of ----; but this is a solemn moment! There was a deep
gasp: I shook, and thought all was over; but I was mistaken--my
father moved, and revived for a moment; he supported himself in
bed without my assistance. I make no doubt that for a moment he
was perfectly sensible, and it was then that, clasping his
hands, he uttered another name clearly, distinctly--it was the
name of Christ. With that name upon his lips the brave old
soldier sank back upon my bosom, and, with his hands still
clasped, yielded up his soul.
Did Borrow's father ever really fight Big Ben Brain or Bryan in Hyde
Park, or is it all a fantasy of the artist's imagining? We shall never
know. Borrow called his _Lavengro_ 'An Autobiography' at one stage of
its inception, although he wished to repudiate the autobiographical
nature of his story at another. Dr. Knapp in his anxiety to prove that
Borrow wrote his own memoirs in _Lavengro_ and _Romany Rye_ tells us
that he had no creative faculty--an absurd proposition. But I think we
may accept the contest between Ben Brain and Thomas Borrow, and what a
revelation of heredity that impressive death-bed scene may be counted.
Borrow on one occasion in later life declared that his favourite hooks
were the Bible and the Newgate Calendar. We know that he specialised on
the Bible and Prize-Fighting in no ordinary fashion--and here we see his
father on his death-bed struggling between the religious sentiments of
his maturity and the one great worldly escapade of his early manhood.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] In the year 1870 Borrow was asked for material for a biography by
the editor of _Men of the Time_, a publication which many years later
was incorporated in the present _Who's Who_. He drew up two drafts in
his own handwriting, which are so interesting, and yet vary so much in
certain particulars, that we are tempted to print both here, or at least
that part of the second draft that differs from the first. The
concluding passages of both drafts are alike. The biography as it stands
in the 1871 edition of _Men of the Time_ appears to have been compiled
from the earlier of these drafts. It must have been another copy of
Draft No. 1 that was forwarded to the editor:
DRAFT I.--George Henry Borrow, born at East Dereham in the county of
Norfolk in the early part of the present century. His father was a
military officer, with whom he travelled about most parts of the United
Kingdom. He was at some of the best schools in England, and also for
about two years at the High School at Edinburgh. In 1818 he was articled
to an eminent solicitor at Norwich, with whom he continued five years.
He did not, however, devote himself much to his profession, his mind
being much engrossed by philology, for which at a very early period he
had shown a decided inclination, having when in Ireland acquired the
Irish language. At the age of twenty he knew little of the law, but was
well versed in languages, being not only a good classical scholar but
acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic
dialects, and also with the peculiar language of the English Romany
Chals or Gypsies. This speech, which, though broken and scanty, exhibits
evident signs of high antiquity, he had picked up amongst the wandering
tribes with whom he had formed acquaintance on a wild heath near
Norwich, where they were in the habit of encamping. At the expiration of
his clerkship, which occurred shortly after the death of his father, he
betook himself to London, and endeavoured to get a livelihood by
literature. For some time he was a hack author. His health failing he
left London, and for a considerable time lived a life of roving
adventure. In the year 1833 he entered the service of he British and
Foreign Bible Society, and being sent to Russia edited at Saint
Petersburg the New Testament in the Manchu or Chinese Tartar. Whilst at
Saint Petersburg he published a book called _Targum_, consisting of
metrical translations from thirty languages. He was subsequently for
some years agent of the Bible Society in Spain, where he was twice
imprisoned for endeavouring to circulate the Gospel. In Spain he mingled
much with the Calóre or Zincali, called by the Spaniards Gitanos or
Gypsies, whose language he found to be much the same as that of the
English Romany. At Madrid he edited the New Testament in Spanish, and
translated the Gospel of Saint Luke into the language of the Zincali.
Leaving the service of the Bible Society he returned to England in 1839,
and shortly afterwards married a Suffolk lady. In 1841 he published _The
Zincali_, or an account of the Gypsies of Spain, with a vocabulary of
their language, which he proved to be closely connected with the
Sanskrit. This work obtained almost immediately a European celebrity,
and was the cause of many learned works being published on the continent
on the subject of the Gypsies. In 1842 he gave to the world _The Bible
in Spain_, or an account of an attempt to circulate the Gospel in the
peninsula, a work which received a warm and eloquent eulogium from Sir
Robert Peel in the House of Commons. In 1844 he was wandering amongst
the Gypsies of Hungary, Walachia, and Turkey, gathering up the words of
their respective dialects of the Romany, and making a collection of
their songs. In 1851 he published _Lavengro_, in which he gives an
account of his early life, and in 1857 _The Romany Rye_, a sequel to the
same. His latest publication is _Wild Wales_. He has written many other
works, some of which are not yet published. He has an estate in Suffolk,
but spends the greater part of his time in wandering on foot through
various countries.
* * * * *
DRAFT II.--George Henry Borrow was born at East Dereham in the county of
Norfolk on the 5th July 1803. His father, Thomas Borrow, who died
captain and adjutant of the West Norfolk Militia, was of an ancient but
reduced Cornish family, tracing descent from the de Burghs, and entitled
to carry their arms. His mother, Ann Perfrement, was a native of
Norfolk, and descended from a family of French Protestants banished from
France on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He was the youngest of
two sons. His brother, John Thomas, who was endowed with various and
very remarkable talents, died at an early age in Mexico. Both the
brothers had the advantage of being at some of the first schools in
Britain. The last at which they were placed was the Grammar School at
Norwich, to which town their father came to reside at the termination of
the French war. In the year 1818 George Borrow was articled to an
eminent solicitor in Norwich, with whom he continued five years. He did
not devote himself much to his profession, his mind being engrossed by
another and very different subject--namely philology, for which at a
very early period he had shown a decided inclination, having when in
Ireland with his father acquired the Irish language. At the expiration
of his clerkship he knew little of the law, but was well versed in
languages, being not only a good Greek and Latin scholar, but acquainted
with French, Italian, and Spanish, all the Celtic and Gothic dialects,
and likewise with the peculiar language of the English Romany Chals or
Gypsies. This speech or jargon, amounting to about eleven hundred and
twenty-seven words, he had picked up amongst the wandering tribes with
whom he had formed acquaintance on Mousehold, a wild heath near Norwich,
where they were in the habit of encamping. By the time his clerkship was
expired his father was dead, and he had little to depend upon but the
exercise of his abilities such as they were. In 1823 he betook himself
to London, and endeavoured to obtain a livelihood by literature. For
some time he was a hack author, doing common work for booksellers. For
one in particular he prepared an edition of the Newgate Calendar, from
the careful study of which he has often been heard to say that he first
learned to write genuine English. His health failed, he left London, and
for a considerable time he lived a life of roving adventure.
[4] Knapp's _Life of Borrow_, vol. i. p. 6.
[5] The writer recalls at his own school at Downham Market in Norfolk an
old Crimean Veteran--Serjeant Canham--drilling the boys each week, thus
supplementing his income precisely in the same manner as did Serjeant
Borrow.
[6] The date has always hitherto been wrongly given. I find it in one of
Ann Borrow's notebooks, but although every vicar of every parish in
Chelmsford and Colchester has searched the registers for me, with
agreeable courtesy, I cannot discover a record of John's birthplace, and
am compelled to the belief that Dr. Knapp was wrong in suggesting one or
other of these towns.
[7] _Lavengro_, ch. xiv.
[8] _Lavengro_, ch. xxiii.
CHAPTER II
BORROW'S MOTHER
Throughout his whole life George Borrow adored his mother, who seems to
have developed into a woman of great strength of character far remote
from the pretty play-actor who won the heart of a young soldier at East
Dereham in the last years of the eighteenth century. We would gladly
know something of the early years of Ann Perfrement. Her father was a
farmer, whose farm at Dumpling Green we have already described. He did
not, however, 'farm his own little estate' as Borrow declared. The
grandfather--a French Protestant--came, if we are to believe Borrow,
from Caen in Normandy after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but
there is no documentary evidence to support the contention. However, the
story of the Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound up with
Norwich and the adjacent district. And so we may well take the name of
'Perfrement' as conclusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as
utterly untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
that Borrow's mother was 'of gypsy descent.'[9] She was one of the eight
children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have
devoted their lives to East Anglia.[10] We owe to Dr. Knapp's edition of
_Lavengro_ one exquisite glimpse of Ann's girlhood that is not in any
other issue of the book. Ann's elder sister, curious to know if she was
ever to be married, falls in with the current superstition that she must
wash her linen and 'watch' it drying before the fire between eleven and
twelve at night. Ann Perfrement was ten years old at the time. The two
girls walked over to East Dereham, purchased the necessary garment,
washed it in the pool near the house that may still be seen, and watched
and watched. Suddenly when the clock struck twelve they heard, or
thought they heard, a footstep on the path, the wind howled, and the
elder sister sprang to the door, locked and bolted it, and then fell in
convulsions on the floor. The superstition, which Borrow seems to have
told his mother had a Danish origin, is common enough in Ireland and in
Celtic lands. It could scarcely have been thus rehearsed by two Norfolk
children had they not had the blood of a more imaginative race in their
veins. In addition to this we find more than one effective glimpse of
Borrow's mother in _Lavengro_. We have already noted the episode in
which she takes the side of her younger boy against her husband, with
whom John was the favourite. We meet her again in the following
dialogue, with its pathetic allusions to Dante and to the complaint--a
kind of nervous exhaustion which he called 'the horrors'--that was to
trouble Borrow all his days:
'What ails you, my child?' said a mother to her son, as he lay
on a couch under the influence of the dreadful one; 'what ails
you? you seem afraid!'
_Boy._ And so I am; a dreadful fear is upon me.
_Mother._ But of what? there is no one can harm you; of what
are you apprehensive?
_Boy._ Of nothing that I can express. I know not what I am
afraid of, but afraid I am.
_Mother._ Perhaps you see sights and visions. I knew a lady
once who was continually thinking that she saw an armed man
threaten her, but it was only an imagination, a phantom of the
brain.
_Boy._ No armed man threatens me; and 'tis not a thing like
that would cause me any fear. Did an armed man threaten me I
would get up and fight him; weak as I am, I would wish for
nothing better, for then, perhaps, I should lose this fear;
mine is a dread of I know not what, and there the horror lies.
_Mother._ Your forehead is cool, and your speech collected. Do
you know where you are?
_Boy._ I know where I am, and I see things just as they are;
you are beside me, and upon the table there is a book which was
written by a Florentine; all this I see, and that there is no
ground for being afraid. I am, moreover, quite cool, and feel
no pain--but, but----
And then there was a burst of 'gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.'
Alas, alas, poor child of clay! as the sparks fly upward, so
wast thou born to sorrow--Onward![11]
Our next glimpse of Mrs. Borrow is when after his father's death George
had shouldered his knapsack and made his way to London to seek his
fortune by literature. His elder brother had remained at home,
determined upon being a painter, but joined George in London, leaving
the widowed mother momentarily alone in Norwich.
'And how are things going on at home?' said I to my brother,
after we had kissed and embraced. 'How is my mother, and how is
the dog?'
'My mother, thank God, is tolerably well,' said my brother,
'but very much given to fits of crying. As for the dog, he is
not so well; but we will talk more of these matters anon,' said
my brother, again glancing at the breakfast things. 'I am very
hungry, as you may suppose, after having travelled all night.'
Thereupon I exerted myself to the best of my ability to perform
the duties of hospitality, and I made my brother welcome--I may
say more than welcome; and when the rage of my brother's hunger
was somewhat abated, we recommenced talking about the matters
of our little family, and my brother told me much about my
mother; he spoke of her fits of crying, but said that of late
the said fits of crying had much diminished, and she appeared
to be taking comfort; and, if I am not much mistaken, my
brother told me that my mother had of late the prayer-book
frequently in her hand, and yet oftener the Bible.[12]
Ann Borrow lived in Willow Lane, Norwich, for thirty-three years. That
Borrow was a devoted husband these pages will show. He was also a
devoted son. When he had made a prosperous marriage he tried hard to
persuade his mother to live with him at Oulton, but all in vain. She had
the wisdom to see that such an arrangement is rarely conducive to a
son's domestic happiness. She continued to live in the little cottage
made sacred by many associations until almost the end of her days. Here
she had lived in earlier years with her husband and her two ambitious
boys, and in Norwich, doubtless, she had made her own friendships,
although of these no record remains. The cottage still stands in its
modest court, but is at the moment untenanted. There is a letter extant
from Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, who wrote _The Life of Mrs. Opie_, to Mary
Borrow at Oulton, when Mrs. Borrow the elder had gone to live there,
which records the fact that in 1851, two years after Mrs. Borrow had
left the cottage in Willow Lane, it had already changed its appearance.
Mrs. Brightwell writes:
Give my kind love to dear mother. Tell her I went past her
house to-day and looked up the court. It is quite changed: all
the trees and the ivy taken away.
The house was the property of Thomas King, a carpenter. You enter from
Willow Lane through a covered passage into what was then known as King's
Court. Here the little house faces you, and you meet it with a
peculiarly agreeable sensation, recalling more than one incident in
_Lavengro_ that transpired there. In 1897 the then mayor made the one
attempt of his city of a whole half century to honour Borrow by calling
this court Borrow's Court--thereby conferring a ridiculously small
distinction upon Borrow,[13] and removing a landmark connected with one
of its own worthy citizens. For Thomas King, the carpenter, was in
direct descent in the maternal line from the family of Parker, which
gave to Norwich one of its most distinguished sons in the famous
Archbishop of Queen Elizabeth's day. He extended his business as
carpenter sufficiently to die a prosperous builder. Of his two sons one,
also named Thomas, became physician to Prince Talleyrand, and married a
sister of John Stuart Mill.[14] All this by the way, but there is little
more to record of Borrow's mother apart from the letters addressed to
her by her son, which occur in their due place in these records. Yet one
little memorandum among my papers which bears Mrs. Borrow's signature
may well find place here:
In the year 1797 I was at Canterbury. One night at about one
o'clock Sir Robert Laurie and Captain Treve came to our
lodgings and tapped at our bedroom door, and told my husband to
get up, and get the men under arms without beat of drum as soon
as possible, for that there was a mutiny at the Nore. My
husband did so, and in less than two hours they had marched out
of town towards Sheerness without making any noise. They had to
break open the store-house in order to get provender, because
the Quartermaster, Serjeant Rowe, was out of the way. The
Dragoon Guards at that time at Canterbury were in a state of
mutiny.
ANN BORROW.
[Illustration: THE BORROW HOUSE, NORWICH
The house is situated in Borrow's Court, formerly King's Court, Willow
Lane, St. Giles's, Norwich, and here Borrow lived at intervals from 1816
to his marriage in 1839. His mother lived here for thirty-three years
until 1849; his father died here, and is buried in the neighbouring
churchyard of St. Giles's.]
FOOTNOTES:
[9] 24th May 1856. Dining at Mr. Rathbone's one evening last week (21st
May), it was mentioned that Borrow, author of _The Bible in Spain_, is
supposed to be of gypsy descent by the mother's side. Hereupon Mr.
Martineau mentioned that he had been a schoolfellow of Borrow, and
though he had never heard of his gypsy blood, he thought it probable,
from Borrow's traits of character. He said that Borrow had once run away
from school, and carried with him a party of other boys, meaning to lead
a wandering life (_The English Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne_, vol.
ii. 1858).
[10] Samuel and Maria Perfrement were married in 1766, the latter to
John Burcham. Two of her brothers survived Ann Borrow, Samuel Perfrement
dying in 1864 and Philip in 1867.
[11] _Lavengro_, ch. xviii.
[12] _Lavengro_, ch. xxxvii.
[13] In May 1913 the Lord Mayor of Norwich (Mr. A. M. Samuel) purchased
the Borrow house in Willow Lane for £375, and gave it to the city for
the purpose of a Borrow Museum.
[14] This Thomas King was a cousin of my mother; his father built the
Borrow House in Norwich in 1812. The only allusion to him I have ever
seen in print is contained in a letter on _Lavengro_ contributed by
Thomas Burcham to _The Britannia_ newspaper of June 26, 1851:--'With
your criticism on _Lavengro_ I cordially agree, and if you were
disappointed in the long promised work, what must I have been? A
schoolfellow of Borrow, who, in the autobiography, expected to find much
interesting matter, not only relating to himself, but also to
schoolfellows and friends--the associates of his youth, who, in
after-life, gained no slight notoriety--amongst them may be named Sir
James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak; poor Stoddard, who was murdered at
Bokhara, and who, as a boy, displayed that noble bearing and high
sensitiveness of honour which partly induced that fatal result; and
Thomas King, one of Borrow's early friends, who, the son of a carpenter
at Norwich, the landlord of Lavengro's father, after working in his
father's shop till nearly sixteen, went to Paris, entered himself as a
student at one of the hospitals, and through his energy and intellect
became internal surgeon of L'Hôtel Dieu and private physician to Prince
Talleyrand.' Thomas Borrow Burcham was Magistrate of Southwark Police
Court from 1856 till his death in 1869. He was the son of Maria
Perfrement, Borrow's aunt.
CHAPTER III
JOHN THOMAS BORROW
John Thomas Borrow was born two years before his younger brother, that
is, on the 15th April 1801. His father, then Serjeant Borrow, was
wandering from town to town, and it is not known where his elder son
first saw the light. John Borrow's nature was cast in a somewhat
different mould from that of his brother. He was his father's pride.
Serjeant Borrow could not understand George with his extraordinary taste
for the society of queer people--the wild Irish and the ragged Romanies.
John had far more of the normal in his being. Borrow gives us in
_Lavengro_ our earliest glimpse of his brother:
He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally seen in
England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes,
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon
countenance, in which, by the by, there is generally a cast of
loutishness and stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of
the Celtic character, particularly in the fire and vivacity
which illumined it; his face was the mirror of his mind;
perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever found amongst the
children of Adam, united, however, with no inconsiderable
portion of high and dauntless spirit. So great was his beauty
in infancy, that people, especially those of the poorer
classes, would follow the nurse who carried him about in order
to look at and bless his lovely face. At the age of three
months an attempt was made to snatch him from his mother's arms
in the streets of London, at the moment she was about to enter
a coach; indeed, his appearance seemed to operate so powerfully
upon every person who beheld him, that my parents were under
continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was
perhaps surpassed by the quickness of his parts. He mastered
his letters in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher
the names of people on the doors of houses and over the
shop-windows.
John received his early education at the Norwich Grammar School, while
the younger brother was kept under the paternal wing. Father and mother,
with their younger boy George, were always on the move, passing from
county to county and from country to country, as Serjeant Borrow, soon
to be Captain, attended to his duties of drilling and recruiting, now in
England, now in Scotland, now in Ireland. We are given a fascinating
glimpse of John Borrow in _Lavengro_ by way of a conversation between
Mr. and Mrs. Borrow over the education of their children. It was agreed
that while the family were in Edinburgh the boys should be sent to the
High School, and so at the historic school that Sir Walter Scott had
attended a generation before the two boys were placed, John being
removed from the Norwich Grammar School for the purpose. Among his many
prejudices of after years Borrow's dislike of Scott was perhaps the most
regrettable, otherwise he would have gloried in the fact that their
childhood had had one remarkable point in common. Each boy took part in
the feuds between the Old Town and the New Town. Exactly as Scott
records his prowess at 'the manning of the Cowgate Port,' and the
combats maintained with great vigour, 'with stones, and sticks, and
fisticuffs,' as set forth in the first volume of Lockhart, so we have
not dissimilar feats set down in _Lavengro_. Side by side also with the
story of 'Green-Breeks,' which stands out in Scott's narrative of his
school combats, we have the more lurid account by Borrow of David
Haggart. Literary biography is made more interesting by such episodes of
likeness and of contrast.
We next find John Borrow in Ireland with his father, mother, and
brother. George is still a child, but he is precocious enough to be
learning the language, and thus laying the foundation of his interest in
little-known tongues. John is now an ensign in his father's regiment.
'Ah! he was a sweet being, that boy soldier, a plant of early promise,
bidding fair to become in after time all that is great, good, and
admirable.' Ensign John tells his little brother how pleased he is to
find himself, although not yet sixteen years old, 'a person in authority
with many Englishmen under me. Oh! these last six weeks have passed like
hours in heaven.' That was in 1816, and we do not meet John again until
five years later, when we hear of him rushing into the water to save a
drowning man, while twenty others were bathing who might have rendered
assistance. Borrow records once again his father's satisfaction:
'My boy, my own boy, you are the very image of myself, the day
I took off my coat in the park to fight Big Ben,' said my
father, on meeting his son, wet and dripping, immediately after
his bold feat. And who cannot excuse the honest pride of the
old man--the stout old man?
In the interval the war had ended, and Napoleon had departed for St.
Helena. Peace had led to the pensioning of militia officers, or reducing
to half-pay of the juniors. The elder Borrow had settled in Norwich.
George was set to study at the Grammar School there, while his brother
worked in Old Crome's studio, for here was a moment when Norwich had its
interesting Renaissance, and John Borrow was bent on being an artist. He
had worked with Crome once before--during the brief interval that
Napoleon was at Elba--but now he set to in real earnest, and we have
evidence of a score of pictures by him that were catalogued In the
exhibitions of the Norwich Society of Artists between the years 1817 and
1824. They include one portrait of the artist's father, and two of his
brother George.[15] Old Crome died in 1821, and then John went to London
to study under Haydon. Borrow declares that his brother had real taste
for painting, and that 'if circumstances had not eventually diverted his
mind from the pursuit, he would have attained excellence, and left
behind him some enduring monument of his powers,' 'He lacked, however,'
he tells us, 'one thing, the want of which is but too often fatal to the
sons of genius, and without which genius is little more than a splendid
toy in the hands of the possessor--perseverance, dogged perseverance.'
It is when he is thus commenting on his brother's characteristics that
Borrow gives his own fine if narrow eulogy of Old Crome. John Borrow
seems to have continued his studies in London under Haydon for a year,
and then to have gone to Paris to copy pictures at the Louvre. He
mentions a particular copy that he made of a celebrated picture by one
of the Italian masters, for which a Hungarian nobleman paid him well.
His three years' absence was brought to an abrupt termination by news of
his father's illness. He returned to Norwich in time to stand by that
father's bedside when he died. The elder Borrow died, as we have seen,
in February 1824. The little home in King's Court was kept on for the
mother, and as John was making money by his pictures it was understood
that he should stay with her. On the 1st April, however, George started
for London, carrying the manuscript of _Romantic Ballads from the
Danish_ to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher. On the 29th of the same
month he was joined by his brother John. John had come to London at his
own expense, but in the interests of the Norwich Town Council. The
council wanted a portrait of one of its mayors for St. Andrew's
Hall--that Valhalla of Norwich municipal worthies which still strikes
the stranger as well-nigh unique in the city life of England. The
municipality would fain have encouraged a fellow-citizen, and John
Borrow had been invited to paint the portrait. 'Why,' it was asked,
'should the money go into a stranger's pocket and be spent in London?'
John, however, felt diffident of his ability and declined, and this in
spite of the fact that the £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.'[16]
At the mention of the heroic John bethought himself of Haydon, and
suggested his name; hence his visit to London, and his proposed
interview with Haydon. The two brothers went together to call upon the
'painter of the heroic' at his studio in Connaught Terrace, Hyde Park.
There was some difficulty about their admission, and it turned out
afterwards that Haydon thought they might be duns, as he was very hard
up at the time. His eyes glistened at the mention of the £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
thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. To his
bull's head, black hair, and body the painter had done justice;
there was one point, however, in which the portrait did not
correspond with the original--the legs were disproportionably
short, the painter having substituted his own legs for those of
the mayor.
John Borrow described Robert Hawkes to his brother as a person of many
qualifications:
--big and portly, with a voice like Boanerges; a religious man,
the possessor of an immense pew; loyal, so much so that I once
heard him say that he would at any time go three miles to hear
any one sing 'God save the King'; moreover, a giver of
excellent dinners. Such is our present mayor, who, owing to
his loyalty, his religion, and a little, perhaps, to his
dinners, is a mighty favourite.
Haydon, who makes no mention of the Borrows in his _Correspondence_ or
_Autobiography_, although there is one letter of George Borrow's to him
in the latter work, had been in jail for debt three years prior to the
visit of the Borrows. He was then at work on his greatest success in
'the heroic'--_The Raising of Lazarus_, a canvas nineteen feet long by
fifteen high. The debt was one to house decorators, for the artist had
ever large ideas. The bailiff, he tells us,[17] was so agitated at the
sight of the painting of Lazarus in the studio that he cried out, 'Oh,
my God! Sir, I won't arrest you. Give me your word to meet me at twelve
at the attorney's, and I'll take it.' In 1821 Haydon married, and a
little later we find him again 'without a single shilling in the
world--with a large picture before me not half done.' In April 1822 he
is arrested at the instance of his colourman, 'with whom I had dealt for
fifteen years,' and in November of the same year he is arrested again at
the instance of 'a miserable apothecary.' In April 1823 we find him in
the King's Bench Prison, from which he was released in July. _The
Raising of Lazarus_ meanwhile had gone to pay his upholsterer £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.
[Illustration: ROBERT HAWKES, MAYOR OF NORWICH IN 1824
From the painting by Benjamin Haydon in St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich. This
portrait has its association with Borrow in that his brother John was
sent to London to request Haydon to paint it, and Borrow describes the
picture in _Lavengro_.]
'Can you wonder,' he wrote in July 1825, 'that I nauseate
portraits, except portraits of clever people. I feel quite
convinced that every portrait-painter, if there be purgatory,
will leap at once to heaven, without this previous
purification.'
Perhaps it was Mayor Hawkes who helped to inspire this feeling.[18] Yet
the hundred pounds that John Borrow was able to procure must have been a
godsend, for shortly before this we find him writing in his diary of the
desperation that caused him to sell his books. 'Books that had cost me
£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.[19]
As Borrow was at the time in a most impoverished condition, it is not
easy to believe that he would have wished to be taken at his word. He
certainly had not a thousand pounds to lose. But he did undoubtedly, as
we shall see, take that journey on foot through the south of France,
after the manner of an earlier vagabond of literature--Oliver Goldsmith.
Haydon was to be far too much taken up with his own troubles during the
coming months to think any more about the Borrows when he had once
completed the portrait of the mayor, which he had done by July of this
year. Borrow's letter to him is, however, an obvious outcome of a remark
dropped by the painter on the occasion of his one visit to his studio
when the following conversation took place:
'I'll stick to the heroic,' said the painter; 'I now and then
dabble in the comic, but what I do gives me no pleasure, the
comic is so low; there is nothing like the heroic. I am engaged
here on a heroic picture,' said he, pointing to the canvas;
'the subject is "Pharaoh dismissing Moses from Egypt," after
the last plague--the death of the first-born,--it is not far
advanced--that finished figure is Moses': they both looked at
the canvas, and I, standing behind, took a modest peep. The
picture, as the painter said, was not far advanced, the Pharaoh
was merely in outline; my eye was, of course, attracted by the
finished figure, or rather what the painter had called the
finished figure; but, as I gazed upon it, it appeared to me
that there was something defective--something unsatisfactory in
the figure. I concluded, however, that the painter,
notwithstanding what he had said, had omitted to give it the
finishing touch. 'I intend this to be my best picture,' said
the painter; 'what I want now is a face for Pharaoh; I have
long been meditating on a face for Pharaoh.' Here, chancing to
cast his eye upon my countenance, of whom he had scarcely taken
any manner of notice, he remained with his mouth open for some
time, 'Who is this?' said he at last. 'Oh, this is my brother,
I forgot to introduce him----.'
We wish that the acquaintance had extended further, but this was not to
be. Borrow was soon to commence the wanderings which were to give him
much unsatisfactory fame, and the pair never met again. Let us, however,
return to John Borrow, who accompanied Haydon to Norwich, leaving his
brother for some time longer to the tender mercies of Sir Richard
Phillips. John, we judge, seems to have had plenty of shrewdness, and
was not without a sense of his own limitations. A chance came to him of
commercial success in a distant land, and he seized that chance. A
Norwich friend, Allday Kerrison, had gone out to Mexico, and writing
from Zacatecas in 1825 asked John to join him. John accepted. His salary
in the service of the Real del Monte Company was to be £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 1838. He had far exceeded any leave that his Colonel could in
fairness grant, and before his death his name had been taken off the
army rolls. The question of his pay produced a long correspondence,
which can be found in the archives of the Rolls Office. I have the
original drafts of these letters in Borrow's handwriting. The first
letter by Borrow is dated 8th September 1831; it is better to give the
correspondence in its order.[20] The letters speak for themselves, and
require no comment.
I
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _September 8, 1831._
SIR,--I take the liberty of troubling you with these lines for
the purpose of enquiring whether there is any objection to the
issuing of the disembodied allowance of my brother Lieut. John
Borrow of the Welsh Norfolk Militia, who is at present abroad.
I do this by the advice of the Army Pay Office, a power of
Attorney having been granted to me by Lieut. Borrow to receive
the said allowance for him. I beg leave to add that my brother
was present at the last training of his regiment, that he went
abroad with the leave of his Commanding Officer, which leave of
absence has never been recalled, that he has sent home the
necessary affidavits, and that there is no clause in the Pay
and Clothing Act to authorize the stoppage of his allowance. I
have the honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble
servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
II
To the Right Hon. The Secretary at War
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _17th Septr. 1831._
SIR,--I have to acknowledge the receipt of No. 33,063, dated
16th inst., from the War Office, in which I am informed that
the Office does not feel authorized to give instructions for
the issue of the arrears of disembodied allowance claimed by my
brother Lieut. Borrow of the West Norfolk, until he attend the
next training of his regiment, and I now beg leave to ask the
following question, and to request that I may receive an
answer with all convenient speed. What farther right to his
_present_ arrears of disembodied allowance will Lieut. Borrow's
appearance at the _next training_ of his regiment confer upon
him, and provided there is no authority at present for ordering
the payment of those arrears, by what authority will the War
Office issue instructions for the payment of the same, after
his arrival in this country and attendance at the training?
Sir, provided Lieut. Borrow is not entitled to his arrears of
disembodied allowance at the present moment, he will be
entitled to them at no future period, and I was to the last
degree surprised at the receipt of an answer which tends to
involve the office in an inextricable dilemma, for it is in
fact a full acknowledgment of the justice of Lieutenant
Borrow's claims, and a refusal to satisfy them until a certain
time, which instantly brings on the question, 'By what
authority does the War Office seek to detain the disembodied
allowance of an officer, to which he is entitled by Act of
Parliament, a moment after it has become due and is legally
demanded?' If it be objected that it is not legally demanded, I
reply that the affidavits filled up in the required form are in
the possession of the Pay Office, and also a power of Attorney
in the Spanish language, together with a Notarial translation,
which power of Attorney has been declared by the Solicitor of
the Treasury to be legal and sufficient. To that part of the
Official letter relating to my brother's appearance at the next
training I have to reply, that I believe he is at present lying
sick in the Mountains above Vera Cruz, the pest-house of the
New World, and that the last time I heard from him I was
informed that it would be certain death for him to descend into
the level country, even were he capable of the exertion, for
the fever was then raging there. Full six months have elapsed
since he prepared to return to his native country, having
received information that there was a probability that his
regiment would be embodied, (but) the hand of God overtook him
on his route. He is the son, Sir, of an Officer who served his
King abroad and at home for upwards of half a century; he had
intended his disembodied allowance for the use of his widowed
and infirm mother, but it must now be transmitted to him for
his own support until he can arrive in England. But, Sir, I do
not wish to excite compassion in his behalf, all I request is
that he may have justice done him, and if it be, I shall be
informed in the next letter, that the necessary order has been
given to the Pay Office for the issue of his arrears. I have
the honor to remain, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
III
To the Right Hon. The Secretary at War
NORWICH, _Novr. 24, 1831._
SIR,--Not having been favoured with an answer to the letter
which I last addressed to you concerning the arrears of
disembodied allowance due to Lieut. John Borrow of the West
Norfolk Militia, I again take the liberty of submitting this
matter to your consideration. More than six months have elapsed
since by virtue of a power of attorney granted to me by Lieut.
Borrow, I made demand at the army Pay Office for a portion of
those arrears, being the amount of two affidavits which were
produced, but owing to the much unnecessary demur which ensued,
chiefly with respect to the power of Attorney, since declared
to be valid, that demand has not hitherto been satisfied. I
therefore am compelled to beg that an order may be issued to
the Pay Office for the payment to me of the sums specified in
the said affidavits, that the amount may be remitted to Lieut.
Borrow, he being at present in great need thereof. If it be
answered that Lieut. Borrow was absent at the last training of
his regiment, and that he is not entitled to any arrears of
pay, I must beg leave to observe that the demand was legally
made many months previous to the said training, and cannot now
be set aside by his non-appearance, which arose from
unavoidable necessity; he having for the last year been lying
sick in one of the provinces of New Spain. And now, Sir, I will
make bold to inquire whether Lieut. Borrow, the son of an
Officer, who served his country abroad and at home, for upwards
of fifty years, is to lose his commission for being incapable,
from a natural visitation, of attending at the training; if it
be replied in the affirmative, I have only to add that his case
will be a cruelly hard one. But I hope and trust, Sir, that
taking all these circumstances into consideration you will not
_yet_ cause his name to be stricken off the list, and that you
will permit him to retain his commission in the event of his
arriving in England with all the speed which his health of body
will permit, and that to enable him so to do his arrears[21]
you will forthwith give an order for the payment of his
arrears. I have the honor to be, Sir, your very humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
IV
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War
NORWICH, _Decr. 13, 1831._
SIR,--I have just received a letter from my brother Lieutenant
J. Borrow, from which it appears he has had leave of absence
from his Colonel, the Earl of Orford, up to the present year.
He says 'in a letter dated Wolterton, 21st June 1828, Lord
Orford writes: "should you want a further leave I will not
object to it." 20th May 1829 says: "I am much obliged to you
for a letter of the 18th March, and shall be glad to allow you
leave of absence for a twelvemonth." I enclose his last letter
from Brussels, August 6, 1829. At the end it gives very evident
proof that my remaining in Mexico _was not only by his
Lordship's permission, but even by his advice_. Sir, if you
should require it I will transmit this last letter of the Earl
of Orford's, which my brother has sent to me, but beg leave to
observe that no blame can be attached to his Lordship in this
case, he having from a multiplicity of important business
doubtless forgotten these minor matters. I hope now, Sir, that
you will have no further objection to issue an order for the
payment of that portion of my brother's arrears specified in
the two affidavits in the possession of the Paymaster General.
By the unnecessary obstacles which have been flung in my
brother's way in obtaining his arrears he has been subjected to
great inconvenience and distress. An early answer on this point
will much oblige, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
V
To the Rt. Hon. The Secretary at War
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _May 24, 1833._
SIR,--I take the liberty of addressing you for the purpose of
requesting that an order be given to the Paymaster General for
the issue of the arrears of pay of my brother Lieutenant John
Borrow of the West Norfolk Militia, whose agent I am by virtue
of certain powers of Attorney, and also for the continuance of
the payment of his disembodied allowance. Lieutenant Borrow was
not present at the last training of his Regiment, being in
Mexico at the time, and knowing nothing of the matter. I beg
leave to observe that no official nor other letter was
dispatched to him by the adjutant to give him notice of the
event, nor was I, his agent, informed of it, he therefore
cannot have forfeited his arrears and disembodied allowance. He
was moreover for twelve months previous to the training, and
still is, so much indisposed from the effects of an attack of
the yellow fever, that his return would be attended with great
danger, which can be proved by the certificate of a Medical
Gentleman practising in Norwich, who was consulted from Mexico.
Lieutenants Harper and Williams, of the same Regiment, have
recovered their pay and arrears, although absent at the last
training, therefore it is clear and manifest that no objection
can be made to Lieut. Borrow's claim, who went abroad with his
Commanding Officer's permission, which those Gentlemen did not.
In conclusion I have to add that I have stated nothing which I
cannot substantiate, and that I court the most minute scrutiny
into the matter. I have the honor to be, Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant,
GEORGE BORROW.
[Illustration: GEORGE BORROW
From a portrait by his brother John Thomas Borrow taken in early youth
when his hair was black. This portrait is now in the National Portrait
Gallery, London.]
The last of these letters is in another handwriting than that of Borrow,
who by this time had started for St. Petersburg for the Bible Society.
The officials were adamant. To one letter the War Office replied that
they could not consider any claims until Lieutenant Borrow of the West
Norfolk Militia should have arrived in England to attend the training of
his regiment. These five letters are, as we have said, in the Rolls
Office, although the indefatigable Professor Knapp seems to have dropped
across only two of them there. Their chief interest is in that they are
the earliest in order of date of the hitherto known letters of Borrow.
There is one further letter on the subject written somewhat later by old
Mrs. Borrow. She also appeals to the War Office for her son's
allowance.[22] It would seem clear that the arrears were never paid.
To the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Orford
WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, _26 May 1834._
MY LORD,--I a few days since received the distressing
intelligence of the death of my dear son John, a lieutenant in
your Lordship's West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, after the
sufferings of a protracted and painful illness; the melancholy
event took place on the 22nd November last at Guanajuato in
Mexico. Having on the former irreparable loss of my dear
husband experienced your Lordship's kindness, I am induced to
trespass on your goodness in a like case of heavy affliction,
by requesting that you will be pleased to make the necessary
application to the Secretary at War to authorise me to receive
the arrears of pay due to my late son, viz.: ten months to the
period of the training, and from that time to the day of his
decease, for which I am informed it is requisite to have your
Lordship's certificate of leave of absence from the said
training. The amount is a matter of great importance to me in
my very limited circumstances, having been at considerable
expense in fitting him out, which, though at the time it
occasioned me much pecuniary inconvenience, I thought it my
duty to exert all my means to accomplish, my present distress
of mind is the greater having to struggle with my feelings
without the consolation and advice of my son George, who is at
this time at St. Petersburg. Your Lordship will, I trust,
pardon the liberty I am taking, and the trouble I am giving,
and allow for the feelings of an afflicted mother. I have the
honor to be your Lordship's most obedient servant,
ANN BORROW.
I have said that there are letters of John Borrow's extant. Fragments of
these will be found in Dr. Knapp's book. These show a keen intelligence,
great practicality, and common sense. George--in 1829--had asked his
brother as to joining him in Mexico. 'If the country is soon settled I
shall say "yes,"' John answers. With equal wisdom he says to his
brother, 'Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec.' In this same year,
1829, John writes to ask whether his mother and brother are 'still
living in that windy house of old King's; it gives me the rheumatism to
think of it.' In 1830 he writes to his mother that he wishes his brother
were making money. 'Neither he nor I have any luck, he works hard and
remains poor.' In February of 1831 John writes to George suggesting that
he should endeavour to procure a commission in the regiment, and in July
of the same year to try the law again:
I am convinced that your want of success in life is more owing
to your being unlike other people than to any other cause.
John, as we have seen, died in Mexico of fever. George was at St.
Petersburg working for the Bible Society when his mother writes from
Norwich to tell him the news. John had died on 22nd November 1833. 'You
are now my only hope,' she writes, '... do not grieve, my dear George.
I trust we shall all meet in heaven. Put a crape on your hat for some
time.' Had George Borrow's brother lived it might have meant very much
in his life. There might have been nephews and nieces to soften the
asperity of his later years. Who can say? Meanwhile, _Lavengro_ contains
no happier pages than those concerned with this dearly loved brother.
[Illustration: GEORGE BORROW'S BIRTHPLACE AT DUMPLING GREEN
_From a drawing by Fortunino Matania_]
FOOTNOTES:
[15] I am not able to trace more than three of John Borrow's pictures:
firstly, a portrait of George Borrow, reproduced in this book, which was
long in the possession of Mr. William Jarrold, the well-known publisher
of Norwich, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London,
having been purchased by the Director in 1912; secondly, the portrait of
Borrow's father in the possession of a lady at Leamington; and thirdly,
_The Judgment of Solomon_, which for a long time hung as an overmantel
in the Borrow Home in Willow Lane, Norwich. Dr. Knapp also saw in
Norwich 'A Portrait of a Gentleman,' by John Borrow. A second portrait
of George Borrow by his brother was taken by the latter to Mexico, and
has not since been heard of.
[16] _Lavengro_, ch. xxv.
[17] _Life of B. R. Haydon_, by Tom Taylor, 1853, vol. ii. p. 21.
[18] Or perhaps the experience contained in a letter to Miss Mitford in
1824 (_Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk_, 2 vols.,
1876):
'I have had a horrid week with a mother and eight daughters! Mamma
_remembering_ herself a beauty; Sally and Betsey, etc., see her a
matron. They say, "Oh! this is more suitable to mamma's age," and "that
fits mamma's time of life!" But mamma does not agree. Betsey, and Sally,
and Eliza, and Patty want "mamma"! Mamma wants herself as she looked
when she was Betsey's age, and papa fell in love with her. So I am
distracted to death. I have a great mind to paint her with a long beard
like Salvator, and say, "That's _my_ idea of a fit accompaniment."'
[19] _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table Talk_, with a
Memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, vol. i. pp. 360-61.
[20] From what are called the 'War Office Weeded Papers, Old Series, No.
33,063/17,' and succeeding numbers.
[21] ('his arrears' are ruled out.) Note by War Office.
[22] This letter is from the original among the Borrow Papers in my
possession.
CHAPTER IV
A WANDERING CHILDHOOD
We do not need to inquire too deeply as to Borrow's possible gypsy
origin in order to account for his vagabond propensities. The lives of
his parents before his birth, and the story of his own boyhood,
sufficiently account for the dominant tendency in Borrow. His father and
mother were married in 1793. Almost every year they changed their
domicile. In 1801 a son was born to them--they still continued to change
their domicile. Captain Borrow followed his regiment from place to
place, and his family accompanied him on these journeys. Dover,
Colchester, Sandgate, Canterbury, Chelmsford--these are some of the
towns where the Borrows sojourned. It was the merest accident--the Peace
of Amiens, to be explicit--that led them back to East Dereham in 1803,
so that the second son was born in his grandfather's house. George was
only a month old when he was carried off to Colchester; in 1804 he was
in the barracks of Kent, in 1805 of Sussex, in 1806 at Hastings, in 1807
at Canterbury, and so on. The indefatigable Dr. Knapp has recorded every
detail for all who love the minute, the meticulous, in biography. The
whole of the first thirteen years of Borrow's life is filled up in this
way, until in 1816 he and his parents found a home of some permanence in
Norwich. In 1809-10 they were at East Dereham, in 1810-11 at Norman
Cross, in 1812 wandering from Harwich to Sheffield, and in 1813
wandering from Sheffield to Edinburgh; in 1814 they were in Norwich, and
in 1815-16 in Ireland. In this last year they returned to Norwich, the
father to retire on full pay, and to live in Willow Lane until his
death. How could a boy, whose first twelve years of life had been made
up of such continual wandering, have been other than a restless,
nomad-loving man, envious of the free life of the gypsies, for whom
alone in later life he seemed to have kindliness? Those twelve years are
to most boys merely the making of a moral foundation for good or ill; to
Borrow they were everything, and at least four personalities captured
his imagination during that short span, as we see if we follow his
juvenile wanderings more in detail to Dereham, Norman Cross, Edinburgh,
and Clonmel, and the personalities are Lady Fenn, Ambrose Smith, David
Haggart, and Murtagh. Let us deal with each in turn:
A. EAST DEREHAM AND LADY FENN.--In our opening chapter we referred to
the lines in _Lavengro_, where Borrow recalls his early impressions of
his native town, or at least the town in the neighbourhood of the hamlet
in which he was born. Borrow, we may be sure, would have repudiated
'Dumpling Green' if he could. The name had a humorous suggestion. To
this day they call boys from Norfolk 'Norfolk Dumplings' in the
neighbouring shires. But East Dereham was something to be proud of. In
it had died the writer who, through the greater part of Borrow's life,
remained the favourite poet of that half of England which professed the
Evangelical creed in which Borrow was brought up. Cowper was buried here
by the side of Mary Unwin, and every Sunday little George would see his
tomb just as Henry Kingsley was wont to see the tombs in Chelsea Old
Church. The fervour of devotion to Cowper's memory that obtained in
those early days must have been a stimulus to the boy, who from the
first had ambitions far beyond anything that he was to achieve. Here was
his first lesson. The second came from Lady Fenn--a more vivid
impression for the child. Twenty years before Borrow was born Cowper had
sung her merits in his verse. She and her golden-headed cane are
commemorated in _Lavengro_. Dame Eleanor Fenn had made a reputation in
her time. As 'Mrs. Teachwell' and 'Mrs. Lovechild' she had published
books for the young of a most improving character, _The Child's
Grammar_, _The Mother's Grammar_, _A Short History of Insects_, and
_Cobwebs to Catch Flies_ being of the number. The forty-fourth edition
of _The Child's Grammar_ by Mrs. Lovechild appeared in 1851, and the
twenty-second edition of _The Mother's Grammar_ in 1849. But it is her
husband that her name most recalls to us. Sir John Fenn gave us the
delightful Paston Letters--of which Horace Walpole said that 'they make
all other letters not worth reading.' Walpole described 'Mr. Fenn of
East Dereham in Norfolk' as 'a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good
sort of man.' Fenn, who held the original documents of the Letters, sent
his first two volumes, when published, to Buckingham Palace, and the
King acknowledged the gifts by knighting the editor, who, however, died
in 1794, before George Borrow was born. His widow survived until 1813,
and Borrow was in his seventh or eighth year when he caught these
notable glimpses of his 'Lady Bountiful,' who lived in 'the
half-aristocratic mansion' of the town. But we know next to nothing of
Borrow in East Dereham, from which indeed he departed in his eighth
year. There are, however, interesting references to his memories of the
place in _Lavengro_. The first is where he recalls to his author friend,
who had offered him comet wine of 1811, his recollection of gazing at
the comet from the market-place of 'pretty D----' in 1811.[23] The
second reference is when he goes to church with the gypsies and dreams
of an incident in his childhood:
It appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old
church of pretty Dereham. I had occasionally done so when a
child, and had suddenly woke up. Yes, surely, I had been asleep
and had woke up; but no! if I had been asleep I had been waking
in my sleep, struggling, striving, learning and unlearning in
my sleep. Years had rolled away whilst I had been asleep--ripe
fruit had fallen, green fruit had come on whilst I had been
asleep--how circumstances had altered, and above all myself
whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in the old
church! I was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of black
leather in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but
in a strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer
those of days of yore. I was no longer with my respectable
father and mother, and my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral
and his wife, and the gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky
people. And what was I myself? No longer an innocent child but
a moody man, bearing in my face, as I knew well, the marks of
my strivings and strugglings; of what I had learnt and
unlearnt.
But Borrow, as I have said, left Dereham in his eighth year, and the
author of a _History of East Dereham_ thus accounts for several
inaccuracies in his memory, both as to persons and things.
B. NORMAN CROSS AND AMBROSE SMITH.--In _Lavengro_ Borrow recalls
childish memories of Canterbury and of Hythe, at which latter place he
saw the church vault filled with ancient skulls as we may see it there
to-day. And after that the book which impressed itself most vividly upon
his memory was _Robinson Crusoe_. How much he came to revere Defoe the
pages of _Lavengro_ most eloquently reveal to us. 'Hail to thee, spirit
of Defoe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee?' In 1810-11 his
father was in the barracks at Norman Cross in Huntingdonshire. Here the
Government had bought a large tract of land, and built upon it a huge
wooden prison, and overlooking this a substantial barrack also of wood,
the only brick building on the land being the house of the Commandant.
The great building was destined for the soldiers taken prisoners in the
French wars. The place was constructed to hold 5000 prisoners, and 500
men were employed by the War Office in 1808 upon its construction. The
first batch of prisoners were the victims of the battle of Vimeiro in
that year. Borrow's description of the hardships of the prisoners has
been called in question by a later writer, Arthur Brown,[24] who denies
the story of bad food and 'straw-plait hunts,' and charges Borrow with
recklessness of statement. 'What could have been the matter with the man
to write such stuff as this?' asks Brown in reference to Borrow's story
of bad meat and bad bread: which was not treating a great author with
quite sufficient reverence. Borrow was but recalling memories of
childhood, a period when one swallow does make a summer. He had
doubtless seen examples of what he described, although it may not have
been the normal condition of things. Brown's own description of the
Norman Cross prison was interwoven with a love romance, in which a
French officer fell in love with a girl of the neighbouring village of
Yaxley, and after Waterloo returned to England and married her. When he
wrote his story a very old man was still living at Yaxley, who
remembered, as a boy, having often seen the prisoners on the road, some
very well dressed, some in tatters, a few in uniform. The milestone is
still pointed out which marked the limit beyond which the
officer-prisoners might not walk. The buildings were destroyed in 1814,
when all the prisoners were sent home, and the house of the Commandant,
now a private residence, alone remains to recall this episode in our
history. But Borrow's most vivid memory of Norman Cross was connected
with the viper given to him by an old man, who had rendered it harmless
by removing the fangs. It was the possession of this tame viper that
enabled the child of eight--this was Borrow's age at the time--to
impress the gypsies that he met soon afterwards, and particularly the
boy Ambrose Smith, whom Borrow introduced to the world in _Lavengro_ as
Jasper Petulengro. Borrow's frequent meetings with Petulengro[25] are no
doubt many of them mythical. He was an imaginative writer, and Dr.
Knapp's worst banality is to suggest that he 'invented nothing.' But
Petulengro was a very real person, who lived the usual roving gypsy
life. There is no reason to assume otherwise than that Borrow did
actually meet him at Norman Cross when he was eight years old, and
Ambrose a year younger, and not thirteen as Borrow states. In the
original manuscript of _Lavengro_ in my possession, as in the copy of it
in Mrs. Borrow's handwriting that came into the possession of Dr. Knapp,
'Ambrose' is given instead of 'Jasper,' and the name was altered as an
afterthought. It is of course possible that Borrow did not actually meet
Jasper until his arrival in Norwich, for in the first half of the
nineteenth century various gypsy families were in the habit of
assembling their carts and staking their tents on the heights above
Norwich, known as Mousehold Heath, that glorious tract of country that
has been rendered memorable in history by the tragic life of Kett the
tanner, and has been immortalised in painting by Turner and Crome. Here
were assembled the Smiths and Hernes and Boswells, names familiar to
every student of gypsy lore. Jasper Petulengro, as Borrow calls him, or
Ambrose Smith, to give him his real name, was the son of F[=a]den Smith,
and his name of Ambrose was derived from his uncle, Ambrose Smith, who
was transported for stealing harness. Ambrose was twice married, and it
was his second wife, Sanspirella Herne, who comes into the Borrow story.
He had families by both his wives. Ambrose had an extraordinary varied
career. It will be remembered by readers of the _Zincali_ that when he
visited Borrow at Oulton in 1842 he complained that 'There is no living
for the poor people, brother, the chokengres (police) pursue us from
place to place, and the gorgios are become either so poor or miserly
that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and
ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon.' After a time Ambrose
left the eastern counties and crossed to Ireland. In 1868 he went to
Scotland, and there seems to have revived his fortunes. In 1878 he and
his family were encamped at Knockenhair Park, about a mile from Dunbar.
Here Queen Victoria, who was staying at Broxmouth Park near by with the
Dowager Duchess of Roxburghe, became interested in the gypsies, and paid
them a visit.[26] This was in the summer of 1878. Ambrose was then a
very old man. He died in the following October. His wife, Sanspi or
Sanspirella, received a message of sympathy from the Queen. Very shortly
after Ambrose's death, however, most of the family went off to America,
where doubtless they are now scattered, many of them, it may be, leading
successful lives, utterly oblivious of the association of one of their
ancestors with Borrow and his great book. Ambrose Smith was buried in
Dunbar cemetery, the Christian service being read over his grave, and
his friends erected a stone to him which bears the following
inscription, the hymn not being very accurately rendered:
In Memory of
AMBROSE SMITH, who died 22nd
October 1878, aged 74 years.
Also
THOMAS, his son,
who died 28th May 1879, aged 48 years.
'Nearer my Father's House,
Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the Great White Throne,
Nearer the Jasper Sea.
'Nearer the bound of life
Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the Cross,
Nearer gaining the Crown.
'Feel thee near me when my feet
Are slipping over the brink;
For it may be I'm nearer home,
Nearer now than I think.'[27]
In December 1912 a London newspaper contained an account of a gypsy
meeting at which Jasper Petulengro was present. Not only was this
obviously impossible, but no relative of Ambrose Smith is apparently
alive in England who could by any chance have justified the imposition.
I have said that it is probable that Borrow did not meet Jasper or
Ambrose until later days in Norwich. I assume this as possible because
Borrow misstates the age of his boy friend in _Lavengro_. Ambrose was
actually a year younger than Borrow, whereas when George was eight years
of age he represents Ambrose as 'a lad of some twelve or thirteen
years,' and he keeps up this illusion on more than one later occasion.
However, we may take it as almost certain that Borrow received his first
impression of the gypsies in these early days at Norman Cross.
C. EDINBURGH AND DAVID HAGGART.--Three years separated the sojourn of
the Borrow family at Norman Cross from their sojourn in Edinburgh--three
years of continuous wandering. The West Norfolk Militia were watching
the French prisoners at Norman Cross for fifteen months. After that we
have glimpses of them at Colchester, at East Dereham again, at Harwich,
at Leicester, at Huddersfield, concerning which place Borrow
incidentally in _Wild Wales_ writes of having been at school, in
Sheffield, in Berwick-on-Tweed, and finally the family are in Edinburgh,
where they arrive on 6th April 1813. We have already referred to
Borrow's presence at the High School of Edinburgh, the school sanctified
by association with Walter Scott and so many of his illustrious
fellow-countrymen. He and his brother were at the High School for a
single session, that is, for the winter session of 1813-14, although
with the licence of a maker of fiction he claimed, in _Lavengro_, to
have been there for two years. But it is not in this brief period of
schooling of a boy of ten that we find the strongest influence that
Edinburgh gave to Borrow. Rather may we seek it in the acquaintanceship
with the once too notorious David Haggart. Seven years later than this
all the peoples of the three kingdoms were discussing David Haggart, the
Scots Jack Sheppard, the clever young prison-breaker, who was hanged at
Edinburgh in 1821 for killing his jailer in Dumfries prison. How much
David Haggart filled the imagination of every one who could read in the
early years of last century is demonstrated by a reference to the
Library Catalogue of the British Museum, where we find pamphlet after
pamphlet, broadsheet after broadsheet, treating of the adventures,
trial, and execution of this youthful jailbird. Even George Combe, the
phrenologist, most famous in his day, sat in judgment upon the young man
while he was in prison, and published a pamphlet which made a great
impression upon prison reformers. Combe submitted his observations to
Haggart in jail, and told the prisoner indeed that he had a greater
development of the organs of benevolence and justice than he had
anticipated. There cannot be a doubt but that Combe started in a
measure, through his treatment of this case, the theory that many of our
methods of punishment led to the making of habitual criminals.[28] But
by far the most valuable publication with regard to Haggart is one that
Borrow must have read in his youth. This was a life of Haggart written
by himself,[29] a little book that had a wide circulation, and
containing a preface by George Robertson, Writer to the Signet, dated
Edinburgh, 20th July 1821. Mr. Robertson tells us that a portion of the
story was written by Haggart, and the remainder taken down from his
dictation. The profits of this book, Haggart arranged, were to go in
part to the school of the jail in which he was confined, and part to be
devoted to the welfare of his younger brothers and sister. From this
little biography we learn that Haggart was born in Golden Acre, near
Canon-Mills, in the county of Edinburgh in 1801, his father, John
Haggart, being a gamekeeper, and in later years a dog-trainer. The boy
was at school under Mr. Robin Gibson at Canon-Mills for two years. He
left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution
seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. He tells us that
before he was eleven years old he had stolen a bantam cock from a woman
belonging to the New Town of Edinburgh. He went with another boy to
Currie, six miles from Edinburgh, and there stole a pony, but this was
afterwards returned. When but twelve years of age he attended Leith
races, and it was here that he enlisted in the Norfolk Militia, then
stationed in Edinburgh Castle. This may very well have brought him into
contact with Borrow in the way described in _Lavengro_. He was only,
however, in the regiment for a year, for when it was sent back to
England the Colonel in command of it obtained young Haggart's discharge.
These dates coincide with Borrow's presence in Edinburgh. Haggart's
history for the next five or six years was in truth merely that of a
wandering pickpocket, sometimes in Scotland, sometimes in England, and
finally he became a notorious burglar. Incidentally he refers to a girl
with whom he was in love. Her name was Mary Hill She belonged to
Ecclefechan, which Haggart more than once visited. He must therefore
have known Carlyle, who had not then left his native village. In 1820 we
find him in Edinburgh, carrying on the same sort of depredations both
there and at Leith--now he steals a silk plaid, now a greatcoat, and now
a silver teapot. These thefts, of course, landed him in jail, out of
which he breaks rather dramatically, fleeing with a companion to Kelso.
He had, indeed, more than one experience of jail. Finally, we find him
in the prison of Dumfries destined to stand his trial for 'one act of
house-breaking, eleven cases of theft, and one of prison-breaking.'
While in prison at Dumfries he planned another escape, and in the
attempt to hit a jailer named Morrin on the head with a stone he
unexpectedly killed him. His escape from Dumfries jail after this
murder, and his later wanderings, are the most dramatic part of his
book. He fled through Carlisle to Newcastle, and then thought that he
would be safer if he returned to Scotland, where he found the rewards
that were offered for his arrest faced him wherever he went. He turned
up again in Edinburgh, where he seems to have gone about freely,
although reading everywhere the notices that a reward of seventy guineas
was offered for his apprehension. Then he fled to Ireland, where he
thought that his safety was assured. At Dromore he was arrested and
brought before the magistrate, but he spoke with an Irish brogue, and
declared that his name was John McColgan, and that he came from Armagh.
He escaped from Dromore jail by jumping through a window, and actually
went so far as to pay three pound ten shillings for his passage to
America, but he was afraid of the sea, and changed his mind, and lost
his passage money at the last moment. After this he made a tour right
through Ireland, in spite of the fact that the Dublin _Hue and Cry_ had
a description of his person which he read more than once. His assurance
was such that in Tullamore he made a pig-driver apologise before the
magistrate for charging him with theft, although he had been living on
nothing else all the time he was in Ireland. Finally, he was captured,
being recognised by a policeman from Edinburgh. He was brought from
Ireland to Dumfries, landed in Calton jail, Edinburgh, and was tried and
executed. In addition to composing this biography Haggart wrote while in
Edinburgh jail a rather long set of verses, of which I give the
following two as specimens (the original autograph is in Lord Cockburn's
copy in the British Museum):
Able and willing, you all will find
Though bound in chains, still free in mind,
For with these things I'll ne'er be grieved
Although of freedom I'm bereaved.
Now for the crime that I'm condemn'd,
The same I never did intend,
Only my liberty to take,
As I thought my life did lie at stake.
D. IRELAND AND MURTAGH.--We may pass over the brief sojourn in Norwich
that was Borrow's lot in 1814, when the West Norfolk Militia left
Scotland. When Napoleon escaped from Elba the West Norfolk Regiment was
despatched to Ireland, and Captain Borrow again took his family with
him. We find the boy with his family at Clonmel from May to December of
1815. Here Borrow's elder brother, now a boy of fifteen, was promoted
from Ensign to Lieutenant, gaining in a year, as Dr. Knapp reminds us, a
position that it had taken his father twelve years to attain. In
January 1816 the Borrows moved to Templemore, returning to England in
May of that year. Borrow, we see, was less than a year in Ireland, and
he was only thirteen years of age when he left the country. But it seems
to have been the greatest influence that guided his career. Three of the
most fascinating chapters in _Lavengro_ were one outcome of that brief
sojourn, a thirst for the acquirement of languages was another, and
perhaps a taste for romancing a third. Borrow never came to have the
least sympathy with the Irish race, or its national aspirations. As the
son of a half-educated soldier he did not come in contact with any but
the vagabond element of Ireland, exactly as his father had done before
him.[30] Captain Borrow was asked on one occasion what language is being
spoken:
'Irish,' said my father with a loud voice, 'and a bad language
it is.... There's one part of London where all the Irish
live--at least the worst of them--and there they hatch their
villainies to speak this tongue.'
And Borrow followed his father's prejudices throughout his life,
although in the one happy year in which he wrote _The Bible in Spain_ he
was able to do justice to the country that had inspired so much of his
work:
Honour to Ireland and her 'hundred thousand welcomes'! Her
fields have long been the greenest in the world; her daughters
the fairest; her sons the bravest and most eloquent. May they
never cease to be so.[31]
In later years Orangemen were to him the only attractive element in the
life of Ireland, and we may be sure that he was not displeased when his
stepdaughter married one of them. Yet the creator of literature works
more wisely than he knows, and Borrow's books have won the wise and
benign appreciation of many an Irish and Roman Catholic reader, whose
nationality and religion Borrow would have anathematised. Irishmen may
forgive Borrow much, because he was one of the first of modern English
writers to take their language seriously.[32] It is true that he had but
the most superficial knowledge of it. He admits--in _Wild Wales_--that
he only knew it 'by ear.' The abundant Irish literature that has been so
diligently studied during the last quarter of a century was a closed
book to Borrow, whose few translations from the Irish have but little
value. Yet the very appreciation of Irish as a language to be seriously
studied in days before Dr. Sigerson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, and Dr. Kuno
Meyer had waxed enthusiastic and practical kindles our gratitude. Then
what a character is Murtagh. We are sure there was a Murtagh, although,
unlike Borrow's other boyish and vagabond friend Haggart, we know
nothing about him but what Borrow has to tell. Yet what a picture is
this where Murtagh wants a pack of cards:
'I say, Murtagh!'
'Yes, Shorsha dear!'
'I have a pack of cards.'
'You don't say so, Shorsha ma vourneen?--you don't say that you
have cards fifty-two?'
'I do, though; and they are quite new--never been once used.'
'And you'll be lending them to me, I warrant?'
'Don't think it!--But I'll sell them to you, joy, if you like.'
'Hanam mon Dioul! am I not after telling you that I have no
money at all?'
'But you have as good as money, to me, at least; and I'll take
it in exchange.'
'What's that, Shorsha dear?'
'Irish!'
'Irish?'
'Yes, you speak Irish; I heard you talking it the other day to
the cripple. You shall teach me Irish.'
'And is it a language-master you'd be making of me?'
'To be sure!--what better can you do?--it would help you to
pass your time at school. You can't learn Greek, so you must
teach Irish!'
Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother
Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken
Irish.[33]
With what distrust as we learn again and again in _Lavengro_ did Captain
Borrow follow his son's inclination towards languages, and especially
the Irish language, in his early years, although seeing that he was well
grounded in Latin. Little did the worthy Captain dream that this, and
this alone, was to carry down his name through the ages:
Ah, that Irish! How frequently do circumstances, at first sight
the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and
permanent influence on our habits and pursuits!--how frequently
is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little
rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn! On a wild
road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time;
and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition
of which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other
languages. I had previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but
neither Latin nor Lilly made me a philologist.
Borrow was never a philologist, but this first inclination was to lead
him to Spanish, to Welsh, and above all to Romany, and to make of him
the most beloved traveller and the strangest vagabond in all English
literature.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] This episode, rescued from the manuscript that came into Dr.
Knapp's possession, is only to be found in his _Life of Borrow_. He does
not include it in his edition of _Lavengro_. That Borrow revisited East
Dereham in later manhood we learn from Mr. S. H. Baldrey. See p. 420.
[24] _The French Prisoners of Norman Cross: A Tale_, by the Rev. Arthur
Brown, Rector of Catfield, Norfolk. London: Hodder Brothers, 18 New
Bridge Street, E.C., 1895. Mr. Brown remarks that there were sixteen
casernes, whereas Borrow says in _Lavengro_ that there were five or six.
'They looked,' he says, 'from outside exactly like a vast congeries of
large, high carpenter's shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and
surrounded by wooden palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength.'
[25] The _Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_ teaches me that the name
should be spelt Pétulengro.
[26] See _In Gipsy Tents_ by Francis Hindes Groome, p. 17. The late
Queen herself writes (_More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the
Highlands_, Smith, Elder and Co., 1884, p. 370), under the date Monday,
August 26th: 'At half-past three started with Beatrice, Leopold, and the
Duchess in the landau and four, the Duke, Lady Ely, General Ponsonby,
and Mr. Yorke going in the second carriage, and Lord Haddington riding
the whole way. We drove through the west part of Dunbar, which was very
full, and where we were literally pelted with small nosegays, till the
carriage was full of them; then for some distance past the village of
Belhaven, Knockindale Hill (Knockenhair Park), where were stationed in
their best attire the queen of the gypsies, an oldish woman with a
yellow handkerchief on her head, and a youngish, very dark, and truly
gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl, and another woman. The queen
is a thorough gypsy, with a scarlet cloak and a yellow handkerchief
around her head. Men in red hunting-coats, all very dark, and all
standing on a platform here, bowed and waved their handkerchiefs. George
Smith told Mr. Myers that "the queen" was Sanspirella, that the
"gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl" was Bidi, and the other
woman Delaia. The men were Ambrose, Tommy, and Alfred.'
[27] I am indebted to an admirable article by Thomas William Thompson in
the _Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_, New Series, vol. iii, No, 3,
January 1910, for information concerning the later life of Jasper
Pétulengro.
[28] _Phrenological Observations on the Cerebral Development of David
Haggart, who was lately executed at Edinburgh for murder, and whose life
has since been published._ By George Combe, Esq. Edinburgh: W. and C.
Tait, 1821.
[29] _The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alias John Morison,
alias Barney McCone, alias John McColgan, alias Daniel O'Brien, alias
The Switcher_, written by himself while under sentence of death.
Edinburgh: Printed for W. and C. Tait by James Ballantyne and Co., 1821.
In the British Museum Library there is a copy with an autograph note by
Lord Cockburn on the fly-leaf, which runs as follows:
'This youngster was my client when he was tried and convicted. He was a
great villain. His life is almost all lies, and its chief curiosity
consists in the strange spirit of lying, the indulgence of which formed
his chief pleasure to the very last. The manuscript poem and picture of
himself (bound up at the end of the _Life_) were truly composed and
written by him. Being an enormous miscreant the phrenologists got hold
of him, and made the notorious facts of his character into evidence of
the truth of their system. He affected some decent poetry just before he
was hanged, and therefore the Saints took up his memory and wrote
monodies on him. His piety and the composition of the lies in this book
broke out at the same time. H. C.'
[30] Although Captain Borrow was never as ignorant as one or two of
Borrow's biographers, who call the Irish language 'Erse.'
[31] _The Bible in Spain_, ch. xx.
[32] Dr. Johnson was the first as Borrow was the second to earn this
distinction. Johnson, as reported by Boswell, says:
'_I have long wished that the Irish literature were cultivated. Ireland
is known by tradition to have been once the seat of piety and learning,
and surely it would be very acceptable to all those who are curious on
the origin of nations or the affinities of languages to be further
informed of the evolution of a people so ancient and once so
illustrious. I hope that you will continue to cultivate this kind of
learning which has too long been neglected, and which, if it be suffered
to remain in oblivion for another century, may perhaps never be
retrieved._'
[33] _Lavengro._
CHAPTER V
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GURNEYS
Norwich may claim to be one of the most fascinating cities in the
kingdom. To-day it is known to the wide world by its canaries and its
mustard, although its most important industry is the boot trade, in
which it employs some eight thousand persons. To the visitor it has many
attractions. The lovely cathedral with its fine Norman arches, the
Erpingham Gate so splendidly Gothic, the noble Castle Keep so imposingly
placed with the cattle-market below--these are all as Borrow saw them
nearly a century ago. So also is the church of St. Peter Mancroft, where
Sir Thomas Browne lies buried. And to the picturesque Mousehold Heath
you may still climb and recall one of the first struggles for liberty
and progress that past ages have seen, the Norfolk rising under Robert
Kett which has only not been glorified in song and in picture, because--
Treason doth never prosper--what's the reason?
Why if it prosper none dare call it treason.
And Kett's so-called rebellion was destined to failure, and its leader
to cruel martyrdom. Mousehold Heath has been made the subject of
paintings by Turner and Crome, and of fine word pictures by George
Borrow. When Borrow and his parents lighted upon Norwich in 1814 and
1816 the city had inspiring literary associations. Before the invention
of railways it seemed not uncommon for a fine intellectual life to
emanate from this or that cathedral city. Such an intellectual life was
associated with Lichfield when the Darwins and the Edgeworths gathered
at the Bishop's Palace around Dr. Seward and his accomplished daughters.
Norwich has more than once been such a centre. The first occasion was in
the period of which we write, when the Taylors and the Gurneys
flourished in a region of ideas; the second was during the years from
1837 to 1849, when Edward Stanley held the bishopric. This later period
does not come into our story, as by that time Borrow had all but left
Norwich. But of the earlier period, the period of Borrow's more or less
fitful residence in Norwich--1814 to 1833--we are tempted to write at
some length. There were three separate literary and social forces in
Norwich in the first decades of the nineteenth century--the Gurneys of
Earlham, the Taylor-Austin group, and William Taylor, who was in no way
related to Mrs. John Taylor and her daughter, Sarah Austin. The Gurneys
were truly a remarkable family, destined to leave their impress upon
Norwich and upon a wider world. At the time of his marriage in 1773 to
Catherine Bell, John Gurney, wool-stapler of Norwich, took his young
wife, whose face has been preserved in a canvas by Gainsborough, to live
in the old Court House in Magdalen Street, which had been the home of
two generations of the Gurney family. In 1786 John Gurney went with his
continually growing family to live at Earlham Hall, some two or three
miles out of Norwich on the Earlham Road. Here that family of eleven
children--one boy had died in infancy--grew up. Not one but has an
interesting history, which is recorded by Mr. Augustus Hare and other
writers.[34] Elizabeth, the fourth daughter, married Joseph Fry, and as
Elizabeth Fry attained to a world-wide fame as a prison reformer. Hannah
married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton of Slave Trade Abolition; Richenda, the
Rev. Francis Cunningham, who sent George Borrow upon his career; while
Louisa married Samuel Hoare of Hampstead. Of her Joseph John Gurney said
at her death in 1836 that she was 'superior in point of talent to any
other of my father's eleven children.' It is with the eleventh child,
however, that we have mainly to do, for this son, Joseph John Gurney,
alone appears in Borrow's pages. The picture of these eleven Quaker
children growing up to their various destinies under the roof of Earlham
Hall is an attractive one. Men and women of all creeds accepted the
catholic Quaker's hospitality. Mrs. Opie and a long list of worthies of
the past come before us, and when Mr. Gurney, in 1802, took his six
unmarried daughters to the Lakes Old Crome accompanied them as
drawing-master. There is, however, one picture in the story of
unforgettable charm, the episode of the courtship of Elizabeth Gurney by
Joseph Fry, and this I must quote from Mr. Augustus Hare's pleasant
book:
Mr. Fry had no intention of exposing himself to the possibility
of a refusal. He bought a very handsome gold watch and chain,
and laid it down upon a white seat--the white seat which still
exists--in the garden at Earlham. 'If Betsy takes up that
watch,' he said, 'it is a sign that she accepts me: if she does
not take it up by a particular hour, it will show that I must
leave Earlham.'
The six sisters concealed themselves in six laurel-bushes in
different parts of the grounds to watch. One can imagine their
intense curiosity and anxiety. At last the tall, graceful
Betsy, her flaxen hair now hidden under a Quaker cap, shyly
emerged upon the gravel walk. She seemed scarcely conscious of
her surroundings, as if, 'on the wings of prayer, she was being
wafted into the unseen.' But she reached the garden seat, and
there, in the sunshine, lay the glittering new watch. The sight
of it recalled her to earth. She could not, could not, take it,
and fled swiftly back to the house. But the six sisters
remained in their laurel-bushes. They felt sure she would
revoke, and they did not watch in vain. An hour elapsed, in
which her father urged her, and in which conscience seemed to
drag her forwards. Once again did the anxious sisters see Betsy
emerge from the house, with more faltering steps this time, but
still inwardly praying, and slowly, tremblingly, they saw her
take up the watch, and the deed was done. She never afterwards
regretted it, though it was a bitter pang to her when she
collected her eighty-six children in the garden at Earlham and
bade them farewell, and though she wrote in her journal as a
bride, 'I cried heartily on leaving Norwich; the very stones in
the street were dear to me.'
In 1803--the year of Borrow's birth--John Gurney became a partner in the
great London Bank of Overend and Gurney, and his son, Joseph John, in
that same year went up to Oxford. In 1809 Joseph returned to take his
place in the bank, and to preside over the family of unmarried sisters
at Earlham, father and mother being dead, and many members of the family
distributed. Incidentally, we are told by Mr. Hare that the Gurneys of
Earlham at this time drove out with four black horses, and that when
Bishop Bathurst, Stanley's predecessor, required horses for State
occasions to drive him to the cathedral, he borrowed these, and the more
modest episcopal horses took the Quaker family to their meeting-house.
It does not come within the scope of this book, discursive as I choose
to make it, to trace the fortunes of these eleven remarkable Gurney
children, or even of Borrow's momentary acquaintance, Joseph John
Gurney. His residence at Earlham, and his life of philanthropy, are a
romance in a way, although one wonders whether if the name of Gurney had
not been associated with so much of virtue and goodness the crash that
came long after Joseph John Gurney's death would have been quite so full
of affliction for a vast multitude. Joseph John Gurney died in 1847, in
his fifty-ninth year; his sister, Mrs. Fry, had died two years earlier.
The younger brother and twelfth child--Joseph John being the
eleventh--Daniel Gurney, the last of the twelve children, lived till
1880, aged eighty-nine. He had outlived by many years the catastrophe to
the great banking firm with which the name of Gurney is associated. This
great firm of Overend and Gurney, of which yet another brother, Samuel,
was the moving spirit, was organised nine years after his death--in
1865--into a joint-stock company, which failed to the amount of eleven
millions in 1866. At the time of the failure, which affected all
England, much as did the Liberator smash a generation later, the only
Gurney in the directorate was Daniel Gurney, to whom his sister, Lady
Buxton, allowed a pension of £2000 a year. This is a long story to tell
by way of introduction to one episode in _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp places
this episode in the year 1817, when Borrow was but fourteen years of age
and Gurney was twenty-nine. I need not apologise at this point for a
very lengthy quotation from a familiar book:
At some distance from the city, behind a range of hilly ground
which rises towards the south-west, is a small river, the
waters of which, after many meanderings, eventually enter the
principal river of the district, and assist to swell the tide
which it rolls down to the ocean. It is a sweet rivulet, and
pleasant it is to trace its course from its spring-head, high
up in the remote regions of Eastern Anglia, till it arrives in
the valley behind yon rising ground; and pleasant is that
valley, truly a good spot, but most lovely where yonder bridge
crosses the little stream. Beneath its arch the waters rush
garrulously into a blue pool, and are there stilled for a time,
for the pool is deep, and they appear to have sunk to sleep.
Farther on, however, you hear their voice again, where they
ripple gaily over yon gravelly shallow. On the left the hill
slopes gently down to the margin of the stream. On the right is
a green level, a smiling meadow, grass of the richest decks the
side of the slope; mighty trees also adorn it, giant elms, the
nearest of which, when the sun is nigh its meridian, fling a
broad shadow upon the face of the pool; through yon vista you
catch a glimpse of the ancient brick of an old English hall. It
has a stately look, that old building, indistinctly seen, as it
is, among those umbrageous trees; you might almost suppose it
an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood
an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some
Sigurd, or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled
down in the grey old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods,
and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called
the Earl's Home, though the hearth of Sigurd is now no more,
and the bones of the old Kemp, and of Sigrith his dame, have
been mouldering for a thousand years in some neighbouring
knoll; perhaps yonder, where those tall Norwegian pines shoot
up so boldly into the air. It is said that the old earl's
galley was once moored where is now that blue pool, for the
waters of that valley were not always sweet; yon valley was
once an arm of the sea, a salt lagoon, to which the war-barks
of 'Sigurd, in search of a home,' found their way.
I was in the habit of spending many an hour on the banks of
that rivulet with my rod in my hand, and, when tired with
angling, would stretch myself on the grass, and gaze upon the
waters as they glided past, and not unfrequently, divesting
myself of my dress, I would plunge into the deep pool which I
have already mentioned, for I had long since learned to swim.
And it came to pass, that on one hot summer's day, after
bathing in the pool, I passed along the meadow till I came to a
shallow part, and, wading over to the opposite side, I adjusted
my dress, and commenced fishing in another pool, beside which
was a small clump of hazels.
And there I sat upon the bank, at the bottom of the hill which
slopes down from 'the Earl's Home'; my float was on the waters,
and my back was towards the old hall. I drew up many fish,
small and great, which I took from off the hook mechanically,
and flung upon the bank, for I was almost unconscious of what I
was about, for my mind was not with my fish. I was thinking of
my earlier years--of the Scottish crags and the heaths of
Ireland--and sometimes my mind would dwell on my studies--on
the sonorous stanzas of Dante, rising and falling like the
waves of the sea--or would strive to remember a couplet or two
of poor Monsieur Boileau.
'Canst thou answer to thy conscience for pulling all those fish
out of the water and leaving them to gasp in the sun?' said a
voice, clear and sonorous as a bell.
I started, and looked round. Close behind me stood the tall
figure of a man, dressed in raiment of quaint and singular
fashion, but of goodly materials. He was in the prime and
vigour of manhood; his features handsome and noble, but full of
calmness and benevolence; at least I thought so, though they
were somewhat shaded by a hat of finest beaver, with broad
drooping eaves.
'Surely that is a very cruel diversion in which thou indulgest,
my young friend?' he continued.
'I am sorry for it, if it be, sir,' said I, rising; 'but I do
not think it cruel to fish.'
'What are thy reasons for thinking so?'
'Fishing is mentioned frequently in Scripture. Simon Peter was
a fisherman.'
'True; and Andrew his brother. But thou forgettest; they did
not follow fishing as a diversion, as I fear thou doest.--Thou
readest the Scriptures?'
'Sometimes.'
'Sometimes?--not daily?--that is to be regretted. What
profession dost thou make?--I mean to what religious
denomination dost thou belong, my young friend?'
'Church.'
'It is a very good profession--there is much of Scripture
contained in its liturgy. Dost thou read aught beside the
Scriptures?'
'Sometimes.'
'What dost thou read besides?'
'Greek, and Dante.'
'Indeed! then thou hast the advantage over myself; I can only
read the former. Well, I am rejoiced to find that thou hast
other pursuits beside thy fishing. Dost thou know Hebrew?'
'No.'
'Thou shouldest study it. Why dost thou not undertake the
study?'
'I have no books.'
'I will lend thee books, if thou wish to undertake the study. I
live yonder at the hall, as perhaps thou knowest. I have a
library there, in which are many curious books, both in Greek
and Hebrew, which I will show to thee, whenever thou mayest
find it convenient to come and see me. Farewell! I am glad to
find that thou hast pursuits more satisfactory than thy cruel
fishing.'
And the man of peace departed, and left me on the bank of the
stream. Whether from the effect of his words or from want of
inclination to the sport, I know not, but from that day I
became less and less a practitioner of that 'cruel fishing.' I
rarely flung line and angle into the water, but I not
unfrequently wandered by the banks of the pleasant rivulet. It
seems singular to me, on reflection, that I never availed
myself of his kind invitation. I say singular, for the
extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight
interest for me: and I had discernment enough to perceive that
yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not
from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long
been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I
might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those
calm, quiet lips, and my after-course might have been widely
different. As it was, I fell in with other queer companions,
from whom I received widely different impressions than those I
might have derived from him. When many years had rolled on,
long after I had attained manhood, and had seen and suffered
much, and when our first interview had long been effaced from
the mind of the man of peace, I visited him in his venerable
hall, and partook of the hospitality of his hearth. And there
I saw his gentle partner and his fair children, and on the
morrow he showed me the books of which he had spoken years
before by the side of the stream. In the low quiet chamber,
whose one window, shaded by a gigantic elm, looks down the
slope towards the pleasant stream, he took from the shelf his
learned books, Zohar and Mishna, Toldoth Jesu and Abarbenel.
'I am fond of these studies,' said he, 'which, perhaps, is not
to be wondered at, seeing that our people have been compared to
the Jews. In one respect I confess we are similar to them: we
are fond of getting money. I do not like this last author, this
Abarbenel, the worse for having been a money-changer. I am a
banker myself, as thou knowest.'
And would there were many like him, amidst the money-changers
of princes! The hall of many an earl lacks the bounty, the
palace of many a prelate the piety and learning, which adorn
the quiet Quaker's home!
It is doubtful if Borrow met Joseph John Gurney more than on the one
further occasion to which he refers above. At the commencement of his
engagement with the Bible Society he writes to its secretary, Mr. Jowett
(March 18, 1833), to say that he must procure from Mr. Cunningham 'a
letter of introduction from him to John Gurney,' and this second and
last interview must have taken place at Earlham before his departure for
Russia.
But if Borrow was to come very little under the influence of Joseph John
Gurney, his destiny was to be considerably moulded by the action of
Gurney's brother-in-law, Cunningham, who first put him in touch with the
Bible Society. Joseph John Gurney and his sisters were the very life of
the Bible Society in those years.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] See _The Gurneys of Earlham_ by Augustus J. C. Hare, 2 vols., 1895;
_Memoirs of Joseph Gurney; with Selections from his Journal and
Correspondence_, edited by Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, 2 vols., 1834.
CHAPTER VI
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE TAYLORS
With the famous 'Taylors of Norwich' Borrow seems to have had no
acquaintance, although he went to school with a connection of that
family, James Martineau. These socially important Taylors were in no way
related to William Taylor of that city, who knew German literature, and
scandalised the more virtuous citizens by that, and perhaps more by his
fondness for wine and also for good English beer--a drink over which his
friend Borrow was to become lyrical. When people speak of the Norwich
Taylors they refer to the family of Dr. John Taylor, who in 1783 was
elected to the charge of the Presbyterian congregation in Norwich. His
eldest son, Richard, married Margaret, the daughter of a mayor of
Norwich of the name of Meadows; and Sarah, another daughter of that same
worshipful mayor, married David Martineau, grandson of Gaston Martineau,
who fled from France at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes.[35] Harriet and James Martineau were grandchildren of this
David. The second son of Richard and Margaret Taylor was John, who
married Susannah Cook. Susannah is the clever Mrs. John Taylor of this
story, and her daughter of even greater ability was Sarah Austin, the
wife of the famous jurist. Their daughter married Sir Alexander
Duff-Gordon. She was the author of _Letters from Egypt_, a book to which
George Meredith wrote an 'Introduction,' so much did he love the writer.
Lady Duff-Gordon's daughter, Janet Ross, wrote the biography of her
mother, her grandmother, and Mrs. John Taylor, in _Three Generations of
Englishwomen_. A niece, Lena Duff-Gordon (Mrs. Waterfield), has written
pleasant books of travel, and so, for five generations, this family has
produced clever women-folk. But here we are only concerned with Mrs.
John Taylor, called by her friends the 'Madame Roland of Norwich.' Lucy
Aikin describes how she 'darned her boy's grey worsted stockings while
holding her own with Southey, Brougham, or Mackintosh.' One of her
daughters married Henry Reeve, and, as I have said, another married John
Austin. Borrow was twenty years of age and living in Norwich when Mrs.
Taylor died. It is to be regretted that in the early impressionable
years his position as a lawyer's clerk did not allow of his coming into
a circle in which he might have gained certain qualities of _savoir
faire_ and _joie de vivre_, which he was all his days to lack. Of the
Taylor family the Duke of Sussex said that they reversed the ordinary
saying that it takes nine tailors to make a man. The witticism has been
attributed to Sydney Smith, but Mrs. Ross gives evidence that it was the
Duke's--the youngest son of George III. In his _Life of Sir James
Mackintosh_ Basil Montagu, referring to Mrs. John Taylor, says:
Norwich was always a haven of rest to us, from the literary
society with which that city abounded. Dr. Sayers we used to
visit, and the high-minded and intelligent William Taylor; but
our chief delight was in the society of Mrs. John Taylor, a
most intelligent and excellent woman, mild and unassuming,
quiet and meek, sitting amidst her large family, occupied with
her needle and domestic occupations, but always assisting, by
her great knowledge, the advancement of kind and dignified
sentiment and conduct.
We note here the reference to 'the high-minded and intelligent William
Taylor,' because William Taylor, whose influence upon Borrow's destiny
was so pronounced, has been revealed to many by the slanders of Harriet
Martineau, that extraordinary compound of meanness and generosity, of
poverty-stricken intelligence and rich endowment. In her
_Autobiography_, published in 1877, thirty-four years after Robberds's
_Memoir of William Taylor_, she dwells upon the drinking propensities of
William Taylor, who was a schoolfellow of her father's. She admits,
indeed, that Taylor was an ideal son, whose 'exemplary filial duty was a
fine spectacle to the whole city,' and she continues:
His virtues as a son were before our eyes when we witnessed his
endurance of his father's brutality of temper and manners, and
his watchfulness in ministering to the old man's comfort in his
infirmities. When we saw, on a Sunday morning, William Taylor
guiding his blind mother to chapel ... we could forgive
anything that had shocked or disgusted us at the dinner-table.
Well, Harriet Martineau is not much to be trusted as to Taylor's virtues
or his vices, for her early recollections are frequently far from the
mark. Thus she refers under the date 1833 to the fact that:
The great days of the Gurneys were not come yet. The remarkable
family from which issued Mrs. Fry and Joseph John Gurney were
then a set of dashing young people, dressed in gay riding
habits and scarlet boots, and riding about the country to balls
and gaieties of all sorts.
As a matter of fact, in this year, 1833, Mrs. Fry was the mother of
fifteen children, and had nine grandchildren, and Joseph John Gurney had
been twice a widower. Both brother and sister were zealous
philanthropists at this date. And so we may take with some measure of
qualification Harriet Martineau's many strictures upon Taylor's drinking
habits, which were, no doubt, those of his century and epoch; although
perhaps beyond the acceptable standard of Norwich, where the Gurneys
were strong teetotallers, and the Bishop once invited Father Mathew,
then in the glory of his temperance crusade, to discourse in his
diocese. Indeed, Robberds, his biographer, tells us explicitly that
these charges of intemperance were 'grossly and unjustly exaggerated.'
William Taylor's life is pleasantly interlinked with Scott and Southey.
Lucy Aikin records that she heard Sir Walter Scott declare to Mrs.
Barbauld that Taylor had laid the foundations of his literary
career--had started him upon the path of glory through romantic verse to
romantic prose, from _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ to _Waverley_. It
was the reading of Taylor's translation of 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.[36] The son of a wealthy manufacturer of Norwich,
Taylor was born in that city in 1765. He was in early years a pupil of
Mrs. Barbauld. At fourteen he was placed in his father's counting-house,
and soon afterwards was sent abroad, in the company of one of the
partners, to acquire languages. He learnt German thoroughly at a time
when few Englishmen had acquaintance with its literature. To Goethe's
genius he never did justice, having been offended by that great man's
failure to acknowledge a book that Taylor sent to him, exactly as
Carlyle and Borrow alike were afterwards offended by similar
delinquencies on the part of Walter Scott. When he settled again in
Norwich he commenced to write for the magazines, among others for Sir
Richard Phillips's _Monthly Magazine_, and to correspond with Southey.
At the time Southey was a poor man, thinking of abandoning literature
for the law, and hopeful of practising in Calcutta. The Norwich
Liberals, however, aspired to a newspaper to be called _The Iris_.
Taylor asked Southey to come to Norwich and to become its editor.
Southey declined and Taylor took up the task. The _Norwich Iris_ lasted
for two years. Southey never threw over his friendship for Taylor,
although their views ultimately came to be far apart. Writing to Taylor
in 1803 he says:
Your theology does nothing but mischief; it serves only to thin
the miserable ranks of Unitarianism. The regular troops of
infidelity do little harm; and their trumpeters, such as
Voltaire and Paine, not much more. But it is such pioneers as
Middleton, and you and your German friends, that work
underground and sap the very citadel. That _Monthly Magazine_
is read by all the Dissenters--I call it the Dissenters'
Obituary--and here are you eternally mining, mining, under the
shallow faith of their half-learned, half-witted, half-paid,
half-starved pastors.
But the correspondence went on apace, indeed it occupies the larger part
of Robberds's two substantial volumes. It is in the very last letter
from Taylor to Southey that we find an oft-quoted reference to Borrow.
The letter is dated 12th March 1821:
A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller's _Wilhelm
Tell_ with the view of translating it for the Press. His name
is George Henry Borrow, and he has learnt German with
extraordinary rapidity; indeed, he has the gift of tongues,
and, though not yet eighteen, understands twelve
languages--English, Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German,
Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; he would like
to get into the Office for Foreign Affairs, but does not know
how.
Although this was the last letter to Southey that is published in the
memoir, Taylor visited Southey at Keswick in 1826. Taylor's three
volumes of the _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ appeared in 1828,
1829, and 1830. Sir Walter Scott, in the last year of his life, wrote
from Abbotsford on 23rd April 1832 to Taylor to protest against an
allusion to 'William Scott of Edinburgh' being the author of a
translation of _Goetz von Berlichingen_. Scott explained that he (Walter
Scott) was that author, and also made allusion to the fact that he had
borrowed with acknowledgment two lines from Taylor's _Lenore_ for his
own--
Tramp, tramp along the land,
Splash, splash across the sea.
adding that his recollection of the obligation was infinitely stronger
than of the mistake. It would seem, however, that the name 'William' was
actually on the title-page of the London edition of 1799 of _Goetz von
Berlichingen_. When Southey heard of the death of Taylor in 1836 he
wrote:
I was not aware of my old friend's illness, or I should
certainly have written to him, to express that unabated regard
which I have felt for him eight-and-thirty years, and that hope
which I shall ever feel, that we may meet in the higher state
of existence. I have known very few who equalled him in
talents--none who had a kinder heart; and there never lived a
more dutiful son, or a sincerer friend.
Taylor's many books are now all forgotten. His translation of 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_[37] against the many strictures in
which Taylor's biographer attempts to defend him. Taylor had none of
Carlyle's inspiration. Not a line of his work survives in print in our
day, but it was no small thing to have been the friend and correspondent
of Southey, whose figure in literary history looms larger now than it
did when Emerson asked contemptuously, 'Who's Southey?'; and to have
been the wise mentor of George Borrow is in itself to be no small thing
in the record of letters. There is a considerable correspondence between
Taylor and Sir Richard Phillips in Robberds's _Memoir_, and Phillips
seemed always anxious to secure articles from Taylor for the _Monthly_,
and even books for his publishing-house. Hence the introduction from
Taylor that Borrow carried to London might have been most effective if
Phillips had had any use for poor and impracticable would-be authors.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] _Three Generations of Englishwomen_, by Janet Ross, vol. i, p. 3.
[36] _A Memoir of the Life and Writings of William Taylor of Norwich:
Containing his Correspondence of many years with the late Robert
Southey, Esquire, and Original Letters from Sir Walter Scott and other
Eminent Literary Men_. Compiled and edited by J. W. Robberds of Norwich,
2 vols. London: John Murray, 1843.
[37] Reprinted in Carlyle's _Miscellanies_.
CHAPTER VII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL
When George Borrow first entered Norwich after the long journey from
Edinburgh, Joseph John Gurney, born 1788, was twenty-six years of age,
and William Taylor, born 1765, was forty-nine. Borrow was eleven years
of age. Captain Borrow took temporary lodgings at the Crown and Angel
Inn in St. Stephen's Street, George was sent to the Grammar School, and
his elder brother started to learn drawing and painting with John Crome
('Old Crome') of many a fine landscape. But the wanderings of the family
were not yet over. Napoleon escaped from Elba, and the West Norfolk
Militia were again put on the march. This time it was Ireland to which
they were destined, and we have already shadowed forth, with the help of
_Lavengro_, that momentous episode. The victory of Waterloo gave Europe
peace, and in 1816 the Borrow family returned to Norwich, there to pass
many quiet years. In 1819 Captain Borrow was pensioned--eight shillings
a day. From 1816 till his father's death in 1824 Borrow lived in Norwich
with his family. Their home was in King's Court, Willow Lane, a modest
one-storey house in a _cul de sac_, which we have already described. In
King's Court, Willow Lane, Borrow lived at intervals until his marriage
in 1840, and his mother continued to live in the house until, in 1849,
she agreed to join her son and daughter-in-law at Oulton. Yet the house
comes little into the story of Borrow's life, as do the early houses of
many great men of letters, nor do subsequent houses come into his story;
the house at Oulton and the house at Hereford Square are equally barren
of association; the broad highway and the windy heath were Borrow's
natural home. He was never a 'civilised' being; he never shone in
drawing-rooms. Let us, however, return to Borrow's schooldays, of which
the records are all too scanty, and not in the least invigorating. The
Norwich Grammar School has an interesting tradition. We pass to the
cathedral through the beautiful Erpingham Gate built about 1420 by Sir
Thomas Erpingham, and we find the school on the left. It was originally
a chapel, and the porch is at least five hundred years old. The
schoolroom is sufficiently old-world-looking for us to imagine the
schoolboys of past generations sitting at the various desks. The school
was founded in 1547, but the registers have been lost, and so we know
little of its famous pupils of earlier days. Lord Nelson and Rajah
Brooke are the two names of men of action that stand out most honourably
in modern times among the scholars[38]. In literature Borrow had but one
schoolfellow, who afterwards came to distinction--James Martineau.
Borrow's headmaster was the Reverend Edward Valpy, who held the office
from 1810 to 1829, and to whom is credited the destruction of the
school archives. Borrow's two years of the Grammar School were not
happy ones. Borrow, as we have shown, was not of the stuff of which
happy schoolboys are made. He had been a wanderer--Scotland, Ireland,
and many parts of England had assisted in a fragmentary education; he
was now thirteen years of age, and already a vagabond at heart. But let
us hear Dr. Augustus Jessopp, who was headmaster of the same Grammar
School from 1859 to 1879. Writing of a meeting of old Norvicensians to
greet the Rajah, Sir James Brooke, in 1858, when there was a great
'whip' of the 'old boys,' Dr. Jessopp tells us that Borrow, then living
at Yarmouth, did not put in an appearance among his schoolfellows:
My belief is that he never was popular among them, that he
never attained a high place in the school, and he was a 'free
boy.' In those days there were a certain number of day boys at
Norwich school, who were nominated by members of the
Corporation, and who paid no tuition fees; they had to submit
to a certain amount of snubbing at the hands of the boarders,
who for the most part were the sons of the county gentry. Of
course, such a proud boy as George Borrow would resent this,
and it seems to have rankled with him all through his life....
To talk of Borrow as a 'scholar' is absurd. 'A picker-up of
learning's crumbs' he was, but he was absolutely without any of
the training or the instincts of a scholar. He had had little
education till he came to Norwich, and was at the Grammar
School little more than two years. It is pretty certain that he
knew no Greek when he entered there, and he never seems to have
acquired more than the elements of that language.[39]
[Illustration: THE ERPINGHAM GATE AND THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, NORWICH
We pass through the Erpingham Gate direct to the Cathedral, the Grammar
School being on our left. Here it is on our right. Facing the school is
a statue of Lord Nelson, who was at school here about 1768-70. Borrow
was at school here 1816-18.]
Yet the only real influence that Borrow carried away from the Grammar
School was concerned with foreign languages. He did take to the French
master and exiled priest, Thomas d'Eterville, a native of Caen, who had
emigrated to Norwich in 1793. D'Eterville taught French, Italian, and
apparently, to Borrow, a little Spanish; and Borrow, with his wonderful
memory, must have been his favourite pupil. In his edition of _Lavengro_
Dr. Knapp publishes a brief dialogue between master and pupil, which
gives us an amusing glimpse of the worthy d'Eterville, whom the boys
called 'poor old Detterville.' In the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters
of _Lavengro_ he is pleasantly described by his pupil, who adds, with
characteristic 'bluff,' that d'Eterville said 'on our arrival at the
conclusion of Dante's _Hell_, "vous serez un jour un grand philologue,
mon cher."'
Borrow's biographers have dwelt at length upon one episode of his
schooldays--the flogging he received from Valpy for playing truant with
three other boys. One, by name John Dalrymple, faltered on the way, the
two faithful followers of George in his escapade being two brothers
named Theodosius and Francis Purland, whose father kept a chemist's shop
in Norwich. The three boys wandered away as far as Acle, eleven miles
from Norwich, whence they were ignomimously brought back and birched.
John Dalrymple's brother Arthur, son of a distinguished Norwich surgeon,
who became Clerk of the Peace at Norwich in 1854, and died in 1868, has
left a memorandum concerning Borrow, from which I take the following
extract[40]:
'I was at school with Borrow at the Free School, Norwich, under
the Rev. E. Valpy. He was an odd, wild boy, and always wanting
to turn Robinson Crusoe or Buccaneer. My brother John was about
Borrow's age, and on one occasion Borrow, John, and another,
whose name I forget, determined to run away and turn pirates.
John carried an old horse pistol and some potatoes as his
contribution to the general stock, but his zeal was soon
exhausted, he turned back at Thorpe Lunatic Asylum; but Borrow
went off to Yarmouth, and lived on the Caister Denes for a few
days. I don't remember hearing of any exploits. He had a
wonderful facility for learning languages, which, however, he
never appears to have turned to account.
James Martineau, afterwards a popular preacher and a distinguished
theologian of the Unitarian creed, here comes into the story. He was a
contemporary with Borrow at the Norwich Grammar School as already
stated, but the two boys had little in common. There was nothing of the
vagabond about James Martineau, and concerning Borrow--if on no other
subject--he would probably have agreed with his sister Harriet, whose
views we shall quote in a later chapter. In Martineau's _Memoirs_,
voluminous and dull, there is only one reference to Borrow;[41] but a
correspondent once ventured to approach the eminent divine concerning
the rumour as to Martineau's part in the birching of the author of _The
Bible in Spain_, and received the following letter:
35 GORDON SQUARE, LONDON, W.C., _December 6, 1895._
DEAR SIR,--Two or three years ago Mr. Egmont Hake (author, I
think, of a life of Gordon) sought an interview with me, as
reputed to be Borrow's sole surviving schoolfellow, in order to
gather information or test traditions about his schooldays.
This was with a view to a memoir which he was compiling, he
said, out of the literary remains which had been committed to
him by his executors. I communicated to him such recollections
as I could clearly depend upon and leave at his disposal for
publication or for suppression as he might think fit. Under
these circumstances I feel that they are rightfully his, and
that I am restrained from placing them at disposal elsewhere
unless and until he renounces his claim upon them. But though I
cannot repeat them at length for public use, I am not precluded
from correcting inaccuracies in stories already in circulation,
and may therefore say that Mr. Arthur Dalrymple's version of
the Yarmouth escapade is wrong in making his brother John a
partner in the transaction. John had quite too much sense for
that; the only victims of Borrow's romance were two or three
silly boys--mere lackeys of Borrow's commanding will--who
helped him to make up a kit for the common knapsack by
pilferings out of their fathers' shops.
The Norwich gentleman who fell in with the boys lying in the
hedgerow near the half-way inn knew one of them, and wormed out
of him the drift of their enterprise, and engaging a postchaise
packed them all into it, and in his gig saw them safe home.
It is true that I had to _hoist_ (not 'horse') Borrow for his
flogging, but not that there was anything exceptional or
capable of leaving permanent scars in the infliction. Mr. Valpy
was not given to excess of that kind.
I have never read _Lavengro_, and cannot give any opinion about
the correct spelling of the 'Exul sacerdos' name.
Borrow's romance and William Taylor's love of paradox would
doubtless often run together, like a pair of well-matched
steeds, and carry them away in the same direction. But there
was a strong--almost wild--_religious_ sentiment in Borrow, of
which only faint traces appear in W. T. In Borrow it had always
a tendency to pass from a sympathetic to an antipathetic form.
He used to gather about him three or four favourite
schoolfellows, after they had learned their class lesson and
before the class was called up, and with a sheet of paper and
book on his knee, invent and tell a story, making rapid little
pictures of each _dramatis persona_ that came upon the stage.
The plot was woven and spread out with much ingenuity, and the
characters were various and well discriminated. But two of
them were sure to turn up in every tale, the Devil and the
Pope, and the working of the drama invariably had the same
issue--the utter ruin and disgrace of these two potentates. I
had often thought that there was a presage here of the mission
which produced _The Bible in Spain_.--I am, dear sir, very
truly yours,
JAMES MARTINEAU.[42]
Yet it is amusing to trace the story through various phases. Dr.
Martineau's letter was the outcome of his attention being called to a
statement made in a letter written by a lady in Hampstead to a friend in
Norwich, which runs as follows:
_11th Nov. 1893._
Dr. Martineau, to amuse some boys at a school treat, told us
about George Borrow, his schoolfellow: he was always reading
adventures of smugglers and pirates, etc., and at last, to
carry out his ideas, got a set of his schoolfellows to promise
to join him in an expedition to Yarmouth, where he had heard of
a ship that he thought would take them. The boys saved all the
food they could from their meals, and what money they had, and
one morning started very early to walk to Yarmouth. They got
half-way--to Blofield, I think--when they were so tired they
had to rest by the roadside, and eat their lunch. While they
were resting, a gentleman, whose son was at the Free School,
passed in his gig. He thought it was very odd so many boys,
some of whom he had seen, should be waiting about, so he drove
back and asked them if they would come to dine with him at the
inn. Of course they were only too glad, poor boys: but as soon
as he had got them all in he sent his servant with a letter to
Mr. Valpy, who sent a coach and brought them all back. You know
what a cruel man that Dr. V. was. He made Dr. Martineau take
poor Borrow on his back, 'horse him,' I think he called it, and
flogged him so that Dr. M. said he would carry the marks for
the rest of his life, and he had to keep his bed for a
fortnight. The other boys got off with lighter punishment, but
Borrow was the ring-leader. Those were the 'good old times'! I
have heard Dr. M. say that not for another life would he go
through the misery he suffered as 'town boy' at that school.
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who lived next door to Borrow in Hereford
Square, Brompton, in the 'sixties, as we shall see later, has a word to
say on the point:
Dr. Martineau once told me that he and Borrow had been
schoolfellows at Norwich some sixty years before. Borrow had
persuaded several of his other companions to rob their fathers'
tills, and then the party set forth to join some smugglers on
the coast. By degrees the truants all fell out of line and were
picked up, tired and hungry, along the road, and brought back
to Norwich School, where condign chastisement awaited them.
George Borrow, it seems, received his large share _horsed_ on
James Martineau's back! The early connection between the two
old men, as I knew them, was irresistibly comic to my mind.
Somehow when I asked Mr. Borrow once to come and meet some
friends at our house he accepted our invitation as usual, but,
on finding that Dr. Martineau was to be of the party, hastily
withdrew his acceptance on a transparent excuse; nor did he
ever after attend our little assemblies without first
ascertaining that Dr. Martineau was not to be present.[43]
James Martineau died in 1900, but the last of Borrow's schoolfellows to
die was, I think, Mr. William Edmund Image, a Justice of the Peace and
Deputy Lieutenant for Suffolk. He resided at Herringswell House, near
Mildenhall, where he died in 1903, aged 96 years.
Mr. Valpy of the Norwich Grammar School is scarcely to be blamed that he
was not able to make separate rules for a quite abnormal boy. Yet, if
he could have known, Borrow was better employed playing truant and
living up to his life-work as a glorified vagabond than in studying in
the ordinary school routine. George Borrow belonged to a type of
boy--there are many such--who learn much more out of school than in its
bounds; and the boy Borrow, picking up brother vagabonds in Tombland
Fair, and already beginning, in his own peculiar way, his language
craze, was laying the foundations that made _Lavengro_ possible.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] In earlier times we have the names of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury; Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice; John Caius, the founder of
Caius College, Cambridge; and Samuel Clarke, divine and metaphysician;
and, indeed, a very considerable list of England's worthies.
[39] 'Lights on Borrow,' by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D. D., Hon. Canon
of Norwich Cathedral, in _The Daily Chronicle_, 30th April 1900.
[40] The whole memorandum on a sheet of notepaper, signed A. D., is in
the possession of Mrs. James Stuart of Carrow Abbey, Norwich, who has
kindly lent it to me.
[41] This is a contemptuous reference in Martineau's own words to
'George Borrow, the writer and actor of romance,' in the allusion to
Martineau's schoolfellows under Edward Valpy. Martineau was at the
Norwich Grammar School for four years--from 1815 to 1819. See _Life and
Letters_, by James Drummond and C. B. Upton, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.
[42] Reprint from an article by W. A. Dutt on 'George Borrow and James
Martineau' in _The Sphere_ for 30th August 1902. The letter was written
to Mr. James Hooper, of Norwich.
[43] _Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by Herself_, ch. xvii.
CHAPTER VIII
GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE LAWYER'S OFFICE
Doubts were very frequently expressed in Borrow's lifetime as to his
having really been articled to a solicitor, but the indefatigable Dr.
Knapp set that point at rest by reference to the Record Office. Borrow
was articled to Simpson and Rackham of Tuck's Court, St. Giles's,
Norwich, 'for the term of five years'--from March 1819 to March
1824--and these five years were spent in and about Norwich, and were
full of adventure of a kind with which the law had nothing to do. If
Borrow had had the makings of a lawyer he could not have entered the
profession under happier auspices. The firm was an old established one
even in his day. It had been established in Tuck's Court as Simpson and
Rackham, then it became Rackham and Morse, Rackham, Cooke and Rackham,
and Rackham and Cooke; finally, Tom Rackham, a famous Norwich man in his
day, moved to another office, and the firm of lawyers who occupy the
original offices in our day is called Leathes Prior and Sons. Borrow has
told us frankly what a poor lawyer's clerk he made--he was always
thinking of things remote from that profession, of gypsies, of
prize-fighters, and of word-makers. Yet he loved the head of the firm,
William Simpson, who must have been a kind and tolerant guide to the
curious youth. Simpson was for a time Town Clerk of Norwich, and his
portrait hangs in the Blackfriars Hall. Borrow went to live with Mr.
Simpson in the Upper Close near the Grammar School. Archdeacon Groome
recalled having seen Borrow 'reserved and solitary' haunting the
precincts of the playground; another schoolboy, William Drake,
remembered him as 'tall, spare, dark-complexioned.'[44] Here is Borrow's
account of his master and of his work:
A more respectable-looking individual was never seen; he really
looked what he was, a gentleman of the law--there was nothing
of the pettifogger about him: somewhat under the middle size,
and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a full
suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. His
face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most
remarkable thing about him was the crown of his head, which was
bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white,
smooth, and lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false
calves, probably because his black silk stockings never
exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he
waddled, because his boots creaked; for these last, which were
always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a
different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly. I cannot
say that I ever saw him walk fast.
He had a handsome practice, and might have died a very rich
man, much richer than he did, had he not been in the habit of
giving rather expensive dinners to certain great people, who
gave him nothing in return, except their company; I could never
discover his reasons for doing so, as he always appeared to me
a remarkably quiet man, by nature averse to noise and bustle;
but in all dispositions there are anomalies. I have already
said that he lived in a handsome house, and I may as well here
add that he had a very handsome wife, who both dressed and
talked exceedingly well.
So I sat behind the deal desk, engaged in copying documents of
various kinds; and in the apartment in which I sat, and in the
adjoining ones, there were others, some of whom likewise copied
documents, while some were engaged in the yet more difficult
task of drawing them up; and some of these, sons of nobody,
were paid for the work they did, whilst others, like myself,
sons of somebody, paid for being permitted to work, which, as
our principal observed, was but reasonable, forasmuch as we not
unfrequently utterly spoiled the greater part of the work
intrusted to our hands.[45]
[Illustration: WILLIAM SIMPSON
From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A.
Mr. Simpson was Chamberlain of the city of Norwich and Treasurer of the
county of Norfolk. He was Town-Clerk of Norwich in 1826, and has an
interest in connection with George Borrow in that Borrow was articled to
him as a lawyer's clerk and describes him in _Wild Wales_ as 'the
greatest solicitor in East Anglia--indeed I may say the prince of all
English solicitors.'
The portrait hangs in the Black Friars Hall, Norwich.]
And he goes on to tell us that he studied the Welsh language and later
the Danish; his master said that his inattention would assuredly make
him a bankrupt, and his father sighed over his eccentric and
impracticable son. The passion for languages had indeed caught hold of
Borrow. Among my Borrow papers I find a memorandum in the handwriting of
his stepdaughter in which she says:
I have often heard his mother say, that when a mere child of
eight or nine years, all his pocket-money was spent in
purchasing foreign Dictionaries and Grammars; he formed an
acquaintance with an old woman who kept a bookstall in the
market-place of Norwich, whose son went voyages to Holland with
cattle, and brought home Dutch books, which were eagerly bought
by little George. One day the old woman was crying, and told
him that her son was in prison. 'For doing what?' asked the
child. 'For taking a silk handkerchief out of a gentleman's
pocket.' 'Then,' said the boy, 'your son stole the pocket
handkerchief?' 'No dear, no, my son did not steal,--he only
glyfaked.'
We have no difficulty in recognising here the heroine of the Moll
Flanders episode in _Lavengro_. But it was not from casual meetings with
Welsh grooms and Danes and Dutchmen that Borrow acquired even such
command of various languages as was undoubtedly his. We have it on the
authority of an old fellow-pupil at the Grammar School, Burcham,
afterwards a London police-magistrate, that William Taylor gave him
lessons in German,[46] but he acquired most of his varied knowledge in
these impressionable years in the Corporation Library of Norwich. Dr.
Knapp found, in his most laudable examination of some of the books,
Borrow's neat pencil notes, the making of which was not laudable on the
part of his hero. One book here marked was on ancient Danish literature,
the author of which, Olaus Wormius, gave him the hint for calling
himself Olaus Borrow for a time--a signature that we find in some of
Borrow's published translations. Borrow at this time had aspirations of
a literary kind, and Thomas Campbell accepted a translation of
Schiller's _Diver_, which was signed 'O. B.' There were also
translations from the German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish, in the
_Monthly Magazine_. Clearly Borrow was becoming a formidable linguist,
if not a very exact master of words. Still he remained a vagabond, and
loved to wander over Mousehold Heath, to the gypsy encampment, and to
make friends with the Romany folk; he loved also to haunt the horse
fairs for which Norwich was so celebrated; and he was not averse from
the companionship of wilder spirits who loved pugilism, if we may trust
_Lavengro_, and if we may assume, as we justly may, that he many times
cast youthful, sympathetic eyes on John Thurtell in these years, the
to-be murderer of Weare, then actually living with his father in a house
on the Ipswich Road, Thurtell, the father, being in no mean position in
the city--an alderman, and a sheriff in 1815. Yes, there was plenty to
do and to see in Norwich, and Borrow's memories of it were nearly always
kindly:
A fine old city, truly, is that, view it from whatever side you
will; but it shows best from the east, where ground, bold and
elevated, overlooks the fair and fertile valley in which it
stands. Gazing from those heights, the eye beholds a scene
which cannot fail to awaken, even in the least sensitive bosom,
feelings of pleasure and admiration. At the foot of the heights
flows a narrow and deep river, with an antique bridge
communicating with a long and narrow suburb, flanked on either
side by rich meadows of the brightest green, beyond which
spreads the city; the fine old city, perhaps the most curious
specimen at present extant of the genuine old English town.
Yes, there it spreads from north to south, with its venerable
houses, its numerous gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its
mighty mound, which, if tradition speaks true, was raised by
human hands to serve as the grave-heap of an old heathen king,
who sits deep within it, with his sword in his hand, and his
gold and silver treasures about him. There is a grey old castle
upon the top of that mighty mound; and yonder, rising three
hundred feet above the soil, from among those noble forest
trees, behold that old Norman master-work, that cloud-encircled
cathedral spire, around which a garrulous army of rooks and
choughs continually wheel their flight. Now, who can wonder
that the children of that fine old city are proud of her, and
offer up prayers for her prosperity? I myself, who was not born
within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, that
want may never visit her cottages, vice her palaces, and that
the abomination of idolatry may never pollute her temples.
But at the very centre of Borrow's Norwich life was William Taylor,
concerning whom we have already written much. It was a Jew named Mousha,
a quack it appears, who pretended to know German and Hebrew, and had but
a smattering of either language, who first introduced Borrow to Taylor,
and there is a fine dialogue between the two in _Lavengro_, of which
this is the closing fragment:
'Are you happy?' said the young man.
'Why, no! And, between ourselves, it is that which induces me
to doubt sometimes the truth of my opinions. My life, upon the
whole, I consider a failure; on which account, I would not
counsel you, or anyone, to follow my example too closely. It
is getting late, and you had better be going, especially as
your father, you say, is anxious about you. But, as we may
never meet again, I think there are three things which I may
safely venture to press upon you. The first is, that the
decencies and gentlenesses should never be lost sight of, as
the practice of the decencies and gentlenesses is at all times
compatible with independence of thought and action. The second
thing which I would wish to impress upon you is, that there is
always some eye upon us; and that it is impossible to keep
anything we do from the world, as it will assuredly be divulged
by somebody as soon as it is his interest to do so. The third
thing which I would wish to press upon you----'
'Yes,' said the youth, eagerly bending forward.
'Is'--and here the elderly individual laid down his pipe upon
the table--'that it will be as well to go on improving yourself
in German!'
Taylor it was who, when Borrow determined to try his fortunes in London
with those bundles of unsaleable manuscripts, gave him introductions to
Sir Richard Phillips and to Thomas Campbell. It was in the agnostic
spirit that he had learned from Taylor that he wrote during this period
to his one friend in London, Roger Kerrison. Kerrison was grandson of
Sir Roger Kerrison, Mayor of Norwich in 1778, as his son Thomas was
after him in 1806. Roger was articled, as was Borrow, to the firm of
Simpson and Rackham, while his brother Allday was in a drapery store in
Norwich, but with mind bent on commercial life in Mexico. George was
teaching him Spanish in these years as a preparation for his great
adventure. Roger had gone to London to continue his professional
experience. He finally became a Norwich solicitor and died in 1882.
Allday went to Zacatecas, Mexico, and acquired riches. John Borrow
followed him there and met with an early death, as we have seen. Borrow
and Roger Kerrison were great friends at this time; but when _Lavengro_
was written they had ceased to be this, and Roger is described merely as
an 'acquaintance' who had found lodgings for him on his first visit to
London. As a matter of fact that trip to London was made easy for Borrow
by the opportunity given to him of sharing lodgings with Roger Kerrison
at Milman Street, Bedford Row, where Borrow put in an appearance on 1st
April 1824, some two months after the following letter was written:
To Mr. Roger Kerrison, 18 Milman Street, Bedford Row.
NORWICH, _Jany. 20, 1824._
DEAREST ROGER,--I did not imagine when we separated in the
street, on the day of your departure from Norwich, that we
should not have met again: I had intended to have come and seen
you off, but happening to dine at W. Barron's I got into
discourse, and the hour slipt past me unawares.
I have been again for the last fortnight laid up with that
detestable complaint which destroys my strength, impairs my
understanding, and will in all probability send me to the
grave, for I am now much worse than when you saw me last. But
_nil desperandum est_, if ever my health mends, and possibly it
may by the time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live in
London, write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get
myself prosecuted, for I would not for an ocean of gold remain
any longer than I am forced in this dull and gloomy town.
I have no news to regale you with, for there is none abroad,
but I live in the expectation of shortly hearing from you, and
being informed of your plans and projects; fear not to be
prolix, for the slightest particular cannot fail of being
interesting to one who loves you far better than parent or
relation, or even than the God whom bigots would teach him to
adore, and who subscribes himself, Yours unalterably,
GEORGE BORROW.[47]
Borrow might improve his German--not sufficiently as we shall see in our
next chapter--but he would certainly never make a lawyer. Long years
afterwards, when, as an old man, he was frequently in Norwich, he not
seldom called at that office in Tuck's Court, where five strange years
of his life had been spent. A clerk in Rackham's office in these later
years recalls him waiting for the principal as he in his youth had
watched others waiting.[48]
FOOTNOTES:
[44] _Norvicensian_, 1888, p. 177.
[45] _Lavengro_, ch. xix.
[46] The _Britannia_ newspaper, 26th June 1851.
[47] This letter is in the possession of Mr. J. C. Gould, Trap Hill
House, Loughton, Essex.
[48] Mr. C. F. Martelli of Staple Inn, London, who has so generously
placed this information at my disposal. Mr. Martelli writes:
'Old memories brought him to our office for professional advice, and
there I saw something of him, and a very striking personality he was,
and a rather difficult client to do business with. One peculiarity I
remember was that he believed himself to be plagued by autograph
hunters, and was reluctant to trust our firm with his signature in any
shape or form, and that we in consequence had some trouble in inducing
him to sign his will. I have seen him sitting over my fire in my room at
that office for hours, half asleep, and crooning out Romany songs while
waiting for my chief.'
CHAPTER IX
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS
_'That's a strange man!' said I to myself, after I had left the
house, 'he is evidently very clever; but I cannot say that I
like him much with his Oxford Reviews and Dairyman's
Daughters.'_--LAVENGRO.
Borrow lost his father on the 28th February 1824. He reached London on
the 2nd April of the same year, and this was the beginning of his many
wanderings. He was armed with introductions from William Taylor, and
with some translations in manuscript from Danish and Welsh poetry. The
principal introduction was to Sir Richard Phillips, a person of some
importance in his day, who has so far received but inadequate treatment
in our own.[49] Phillips was active in the cause of reform at a certain
period in his life, and would seem to have had many sterling qualities
before he was spoiled by success. He was born in the neighbourhood of
Leicester, and his father was 'in the farming line,' and wanted him to
work on the farm, but he determined to seek his fortune in London. After
a short absence, during which he clearly proved to himself that he was
not at present qualified to capture London, young Phillips returned to
the farm. Borrow refers to his patron's vegetarianism, and on this point
we have an amusing story from his own pen! He had been, when previously
on the farm, in the habit of attending to a favourite heifer:
During his sojournment in London this animal had been killed;
and on the very day of his return to his father's house, he
partook of part of his favourite at dinner, without his being
made acquainted with the circumstance of its having been
slaughtered during his absence. On learning this, however, he
experienced a sudden indisposition; and declared that so great
an effect had the idea of his having eaten part of his
slaughtered favourite upon him, that he would never again taste
animal food; a vow to which he has hitherto firmly adhered.[50]
Farming not being congenial, Phillips hired a small room in Leicester,
and opened a school for instruction in the three R's, a large blue flag
on a pole being his 'sign' or signal to the inhabitants of Leicester,
who seem to have sent their children in considerable numbers to the
young schoolmaster. But little money was to be made out of schooling,
and a year later Phillips was, by the kindness of friends, started in a
small hosiery shop in Leicester. Throwing himself into politics on the
side of reform, Phillips now started the _Leicester Herald_, to which
Dr. Priestley became a contributor. The first number was issued gratis
in May 1792. His _Memoir_ informs us that it was an article in this
newspaper that secured for its proprietor and editor eighteen months
imprisonment in Leicester gaol, but he was really charged with selling
Paine's _Rights of Man_. The worthy knight had probably grown ashamed of
_The Rights of Man_ in the intervening years, and hence the reticence of
the memoir. Phillips's gaoler was the once famous Daniel Lambert, the
notorious 'fat man' of his day. In gaol Phillips was visited by Lord
Moira and the Duke of Norfolk. It was this Lord Moira who said in the
House of Lords in 1797 that 'he had seen in Ireland the most absurd, as
well as the most disgusting tyranny that any nation ever groaned under.'
Moira became Governor-General of Bengal and Commander-in-Chief of the
Army in India. The Duke of Norfolk, a stanch Whig, distinguished himself
in 1798 by a famous toast at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Arundel
Street, Strand:--'Our sovereign's health--the majesty of the people!'
which greatly offended George III., who removed Norfolk from his
lord-lieutenancy. Phillips seems to have had a very lax imprisonment, as
he conducted the _Herald_ from gaol, contributing in particular a weekly
letter. Soon after his release he disposed of the _Herald_, or permitted
it to die. It was revived a few years later as an organ of Toryism. He
had started in gaol another journal, _The Museum_, and he combined this
with his hosiery business for some time longer, when an opportune fire
relieved him of an apparently uncongenial burden, and with the insurance
money in his pocket he set out for London once more. Here he started as
a hosier in St. Paul's Churchyard, lodging meantime in the house of a
milliner, where he fell in love with one of the apprentices, Miss
Griffiths, 'a native of Wales.' His affections were won, we are naïvely
informed in the _Memoir_, by the young woman's talent in the preparation
of a vegetable pie. This is our first glimpse of Lady Phillips--'a
quiet, respectable woman,' whom Borrow was to meet at dinner long years
afterwards. Inspired, it would seem, by the kindly exhortation of Dr.
Priestley, he now transformed his hosiery business in St. Paul's
Churchyard into a 'literary repository,' and started a singularly
successful career as a publisher. There he produced his long-lived
periodical, _The Monthly Magazine_, which attained to so considerable a
fame. Dr. Aikin, a friend of Priestley's, was its editor, but with him
Phillips had a quarrel--the first of his many literary quarrels--and
they separated. This Dr. Aikin was the father of the better-known Lucy
Aikin, and was a Nonconformist who suffered for his opinions in these
closing years of the eighteenth century, even as Priestley did. He was
the author of many works, including the once famous _Evenings at Home_,
written in conjunction with his sister, Mrs. Barbauld;[51] and after his
quarrel with Phillips he founded a new publication issued by the house
of Longman, and entitled _The Athenæum_. Hereupon he and Phillips
quarrelled again, because Dr. Aikin described himself in advertisements
of _The Athenæum_ as 'J. Aikin, M.D., late editor of _The Monthly
Magazine_.' Aikin's contributors to _The Monthly_ included Capell Lofft,
of whom we know too little, and Dr. Wolcot, of whom we know too much.
Meanwhile Phillips's publishing business grew apace, and he removed to
larger premises in Bridge Street, Blackfriars, an address which we find
upon many famous publications of his period. A catalogue of his books
lies before me dated 'January 1805.' It includes many works still upon
our shelves. Almon's _Memoirs and Correspondence of John Wilkes_, Samuel
Richardson's _Life and Correspondence_, for example, several of the
works of Maria Edgeworth, including her _Moral Tales_, many of the works
of William Godwin, including _Caleb Williams_, and the earlier books of
that still interesting woman and once popular novelist, Lady Morgan,
whose _Poems_ as Sydney Owenson bears Phillips's name on its title-page,
as does also her first successful novel _The Wild Irish Girl_, and other
of her stories. My own interest in Phillips commenced when I met him in
the pages of Lady Morgan's _Memoirs_.[52] Thomas Moore, Lady Morgan
tells us,
had come back to Dublin from London, where he had been 'the
guest of princes, the friend of peers, the translator of
Anacreon!' From royal palaces and noble manors, he had returned
to his family seat--a grocer's shop at the corner of Little
Longford Street, Angier Street.
Here, in a little room over the shop, Sydney heard him sing two of his
songs, and was inspired thereby to write her first novels, _St. Clair_
and _The Novice of St. Dominick_. The first was published in Dublin;
over the second she corresponded with Phillips, and his letters to her
commence with one dated from Bridge Street, 6th April 1805, in which he
wishes her to send the manuscript of _The Novice_ to him as one 'often
(undeservedly) complimented as the most liberal of my trade!' She
determined, fresh from a governess situation, to bring the manuscript
herself. Phillips was charmed with his new author, and really seems to
have treated her very liberally. He insisted, however, on having _The
Novice_ cut down from six volumes to four, and she was wont to say that
nothing but regard for her feelings prevented him from reducing it to
three.[53] _The Novice of St. Dominick_ was a favourite book with the
younger Pitt, who read it over again in his last illness. Then
followed--in 1806--Sydney Owenson's new novel, _The Wild Irish Girl_,
and it led to an amusing correspondence with its author on the part of
Phillips on the one side, and Johnson, who, it will be remembered, was
Cowper's publisher, on the other. Phillips was indignant that, having
first brought Sydney into fame, she should dare to ask more money on
that account. As is the case with every novelist to-day who scores one
success, Miss Owenson had formed a good idea of her value, and there is
a letter to Johnson in which she admitted that Phillips's offer was a
generous one. Johnson had offered her £300 for the copyright of _The
Wild Irish Girl_. Phillips had offered only £200 down and £50 each for
the second and third editions. When Phillips heard that Johnson had
outbidden him, he described the offer as 'monstrous,' and that it was
'inspired by a spirit of revenge.' He would not, he declared, increase
his offer, but a little later he writes from Bridge Street to Sydney
Owenson as his 'dear, bewitching, and deluding Syren,' and promises the
£300. A few months later he gave her a hundred pounds for a slight
volume of poems, which certainly never paid for its publication,
although Scott and Moore and many another were making much money out of
poetry in those days. In any case Phillips did not accept Miss Owenson's
next story with alacrity, in spite of the undoubted success of _The Wild
Irish Girl_. She no doubt asked too much for _Ida of Athens_. Phillips
probably thought, after reading the first volume in type, that it was
very inferior work, as indeed it was. Athens was described without the
author ever having seen the city. After much wrangling, in which the
lady said that her 'prince of publishers,' as she had once called him,
had 'treated her barbarously,' the novel went into the hands of the
Longmans, who published it, not without some remonstrance as to certain
of its sentiments. The successful Lady Morgan afterwards described _Ida_
as a bad book, so perhaps here, as usually, Phillips was not far wrong
in his judgment. A similar quarrel seems to have taken place over the
next novel, _The Missionary_. Here Phillips again received the
manuscript, discussed terms with its author, and returned it. The firm
of Stockdale and Miller were his successful rivals. Later and more
prosperous novels, _O'Donnel_ in particular, were issued by Henry
Colburn, and Phillips now disappears from Lady Morgan's life. I have
told the story of Phillips's relation with Lady Morgan at length because
at no other point do we come into so near a contact with him. In Fell's
_Memoir_ Phillips is described--in 1808--as 'certainly now the first
publisher in London,' but while he may have been this in the volume of
his trade--and school-books made an important part of it--he was not in
mere 'names.' Most of his successful writers--Sydney Owenson, Thomas
Skinner Surr, Dr. Gregory, and the rest--have now fallen into oblivion.
The school-books that he issued have lasted even to our own day, notably
Dr. Mavor's _Spelling Book_. Dr. Mavor was a Scotsman from Aberdeen, who
came to London and became Phillips's chief hack. There are no less than
twenty of Mavor's school-books in the catalogue before me. They include
Mavor's _History of England_, Mavor's _Universal History_, and Mavor's
_History of Greece_. In the _Memoir_ of 1808 it is claimed that 'Mavor'
is but a pseudonym for Phillips, and the claim is also made, quite
wrongfully, by John Timbs, who, before he became acting editor of the
_Illustrated London News_ under Herbert Ingram, and an indefatigable
author, was Phillips's private secretary.[54] It seems clear, however,
that in the case of Blair's _Catechism_ and Goldsmith's _Geography_, and
many another book for schools, Phillips was 'Blair' and 'Goldsmith' and
many another imaginary person, for the books in question numbered about
two hundred in all. For these books there must have been quite an army
of literary hacks employed during the twenty years prior to the
appearance of George Borrow in that great army. On 9th November 1807,
the Lord Mayor's procession through London included Richard Phillips
among its sheriffs, and he was knighted by George III. in the following
year. During his period of office he effected many reforms in the City
prisons. John Timbs, in his _Walks and Talks about London_, tells us
that Phillips's colleague in the shrievalty was one Smith, who
afterwards became Lord Mayor:
The _personnel_ of the two sheriffs presented a sharp contrast.
Smith loved aldermanic cheer, but was pale and cadaverous in
complexion; whilst Phillips, who never ate animal food, was
rosy and healthful in appearance. One day, when the sheriffs
were in full state, the procession was stopped by an
obstruction in the street traffic; when droll were the mistakes
of the mob: to Smith they cried, 'Here's Old Water-gruel!' to
Phillips, 'Here's Roast Beef! something like an Englishman!'
Two volumes before me show Phillips as the precursor of many of the
publishers of one-volume books of reference so plentiful in our day. _A
Million of Facts_ is one of them, and _A Chronology of Public Events
Within the Last Fifty Years from 1771 to 1821_ is another, while one of
the earliest and most refreshing guides to London and its neighbourhood
is afforded us in _A Morning Walk from London to Kew_, which first
appeared in _The Monthly Magazine_, but was reprinted in 1817 with the
name 'Sir Richard Phillips' as author on the title-page. Phillips was
now no longer a publisher. Here we have some pleasant glimpses of a
bygone era, many trite reflections, but not enough topography to make
the book one of permanent interest. It would not, in fact, be worth
reprinting.[55]
This, then, was the man to whom George Borrow presented himself in 1824.
Phillips was fifty-seven years of age. He had made a moderate fortune
and lost it, and was now enjoying another perhaps less satisfying; it
included the profits of _The Monthly Review_, repurchased after his
bankruptcy, and some rights in many of the school-books. But the great
publishing establishment in Bridge Street had long been broken up.
Borrow would have found Taylor's introduction to Phillips quite useless
had the worthy knight not at the moment been keen on a new magazine and
seen the importance of a fresh 'hack' to help to run it. Moreover, had
he not written a great book which only the Germans could appreciate,
_Twelve Essays on the Phenomena of Nature_? Here, he thought, was the
very man to produce this book in a German dress. Taylor was a thorough
German scholar, and he had vouched for the excellent German of his pupil
and friend. Hence a certain cordiality which did not win Borrow's
regard, but was probably greater than many a young man would receive
to-day from a publisher-prince upon whom he might call laden only with a
bundle of translations from the Danish and the Welsh. Here--in
_Lavengro_--is the interview between publisher and poet, with the
editor's factotum Bartlett, whom Borrow calls Taggart, as witness:
'Well, sir, what is your pleasure?' said the big man, in a
rough tone, as I stood there, looking at him wistfully--as well
I might--for upon that man, at the time of which I am speaking,
my principal, I may say my only hopes, rested.
'Sir,' said I, 'my name is So-and-so, and I am the bearer of a
letter to you from Mr. So-and-so, an old friend and
correspondent of yours.'
The countenance of the big man instantly lost the suspicious
and lowering expression which it had hitherto exhibited; he
strode forward and, seizing me by the hand, gave me a violent
squeeze.
'My dear sir,' said he, 'I am rejoiced to see you in London. I
have been long anxious for the pleasure--we are old friends,
though we have never before met. Taggart,' said he to the man
who sat at the desk, 'this is our excellent correspondent, the
friend and pupil of our excellent correspondent.'
[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOWRING in 1826
From a portrait by John King now in the National Portrait Gallery.]
[Illustration: JOHN P. HASFELD IN 1835
From a portrait by an Unknow
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