■■■f^,u-.2r-;fr.^; ^^^f^j^fiiU % If iirv--iii'ni sf|i^Kii%i^fir!ficsn(X g I f I BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1 891 AAMA^j. amm 5931 Cornell University Library PR4156.T45 George Borrow, the ""»" aijlVmfimm 3 1924 013 438 332 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013438332 GEORGE BORRO\Y GEOJ > en O O O •z o n HIS OWN HERO 13 passed several years with them, but had at last been recognised at a fair in Norfolk, and brought home to his family by an uncle. It was not to be expected that Borrow would conceal from the public " several years " of this kind. Nevertheless, in none of his books has he so much as hinted at a period of adoption with Gypsies when he was a boy. Nor has that massive sleuth-hound. Dr. Knapp, discovered any traces of such an adoption. If there is any founda- tion for the story except Borrow's wish to please the secretary, it is the escapade of his fourteenth or fifteenth year — ^when he and three other boys from Norwich Grammar School played truant, intending to make caves to dwell in among the sandhills twenty miles away on the coast, but were recognised on the road, deceitfully detained by a benevolent gentleman and within a few days brought back. Borrow himself being horsed on the back of James Martineau, according to the picturesque legend, for such a thrashing that he had to lie in bed a fort- night and must bear the marks of it while he was flesh and blood. Borrow celebrated this escapade by a ballad in dialogue called " The Wandering Children and the Benevo- lent Gentleman : An Idyll of the Roads."* There may have been another escapade of the same kind; for Dr. Knappt prints an account of how Borrow, at the age of fifteen, and two schoolfellows lived for three days in a cave at Acle when they ought to have been at school. But his companions were the same in both stories, and "three days in a cave " is a very modest increase for such a story in half-a-century. It was only fifteen years later that Borrow took revenge upon the truth and told the story of his exile with the G5^sies. Probably every man has more or less clearly and more or less constantly before his mind's eye an ideal self which * Knapp I., 62-4. t II'j 207. 14 GEORGE BORROW the real seldom more than approaches. This ideal self may be morally or in other ways inferior, but it remains the standard by which the man judges his acts. Some men prove the existence of this ideal self by announcing now and then that they are misunderstood. Or they do things which they afterwards condemn as irrelevant or un- characteristic and out of harmony. Borrow had an ideal self very clearly before him when he was writing, and it is probable that in writing he often described not what he was but what in a better, larger, freer, more Borrovian world he would have actually become. He admired the work of his Creator, but he would not affect to be satisfied with it in every detail, and stepping forward he snatched the brush and made a bolder line and braver colour. Also he ardently desired to do more than he ever did. When in Spain he wrote to his friend Hasfeldt at St. Petersburg, telling him that he wished to visit China by way of Russia or Constantinople and Armenia. When indignant with the Bible Society in 1838 he suggested retiring to "the Wilds of Tartary or the Zigani camps of Siberia." He continued to suggest China even after his engagement to Mrs. Clarke. Just as he played up to the Secretary in conversation, so he played up to the friends and the public who were allured by the stories left untold or half -told in "The Zincali " and " The Bible in Spain." Chief among his encouragers was Richard Ford, author (in 1845) of the " Handbook for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home," a man of character and style, learned and a traveller. In 1 841, before "The Bible in Spain" appeared. Ford- told Borrow how he wished that he had told more about him- self, and how he was going to hint in a review that Borrow ought to publish the whole of his adventures for the last twenty years. The publisher's reader, who saw the manu- script of "The Bible in Spain" in 1842, suggested that HIS OWN HERO 15 Borrow should prefix a short account of his birth, parentage, education and hfe. But already Borrow had taken Ford's hint and was thinking of an autobiography. By the end of 1842 he was suggesting a book on his early life, studies and adventures, Gypsies, boxers, philosophers; and he afterwards announced that "Lavengro" was planned and the characters sketched in 1842 and 1843. He saw himself as a public figure that had to be treated heroically. Read, for example, his preface to the second edition of "The Zincali," dated March i, 1843. There he tells of his astonishment at the success of " The Zincali," and of John Murray bidding him not to think too much of the book but to try again and avoid " Gypsy poetry, dry laws, and compilations from dull Spanish authors." "Borromeo," he makes Murray say to him, "Borromeo, don't believe all you hear, nor think that you have accom- plished anything so very extraordinary. . . ." And so, he says, he sat down and began " The Bible in Spain." He proceeds to make a picture of himself amidst a landscape by some raving Titanic painter's hand : "At first," he says, "I proceeded slowly, — sickness was in the land and the face of nature was overcast, — ^heavy rain-clouds swam in the heavens, — ^the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround my lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated. 'Bring lights hither, O Hayim Ben Attar, son of the miracle!' And the Jew of Fez brought in the lights, for though it was midday I could scEircely see in the little room where I was writing. . . . "A dreary summer and autumn passed by, and were succeeded by as gloomy a winter. I still proceeded with 'The Bible in Spain.' The winter passed and spring came with cold dry winds and occasional sunshine, where- upon I arose, shouted, and mounting my horse, even Sidi I 6 GEORGE BORROW Habismilk, I scoured all the surrounding district, and thought but little of ' The Bible in Spain.' "So I rode about the country, over the heaths, and through the green lanes of my native land, occasionally visiting friends at a distance, and sometimes, for variety's sake, I staid at home and amused myself by catching huge pike, which lie perdue in certain deep ponds skirted with lofty reeds, upon my land, and to which there is a com- munication from the lagoon by a deep and narrow water- course. — ^I had almost forgotten 'The Bible in Spain.' " Then came the summer with much heat and sunshine, and then I would lie for hours in the sun and recall the sunny days I had spent in Andalusia, and my thoughts were continually reverting to Spain, and at last I remem- bered that ' The Bible in Spain ' was still unfinished ; where- upon I arose and said : This loitering profiteth nothing, — and I hastened to my summer-house by the side of the lake, and there I thought and wrote, and every day I repaired to the same place, and thought and wrote until I had finished ' The Bible in Spain.' " And at the proper season ' The Bible in Spain ' was given to the world; and the world, both learned and unlearned, was delighted with 'The Bible in Spain,' and the highest authority said, ' This is a much better book than the Gypsies ; ' and the next great authority said, ' Something betwixt Le Sage and Bunyan.' 'A far more entertaining work than Don Quixote,' exclaimed a literary lady. 'Another Gil Bias,' said the cleverest writer in Europe. 'Yes,' exclaimed the cool sensible Spectator, 'a Gil Bias in water colours! "A Gil Bias in water colours" — that, he says himself, pleased him better than all the rest. He liked to think that out of his adventures in distributing Bibles in Spain, out of letters describing his work to his employers, the Bible Society, he had made a narrative to be compared HIS OWN HERO 17 with the fictitious Hfe and adventures of that gentle Spanish rogue, Gil Bias of Santillana. No wonder that he saw himself a public figmre to be treated reverently, nay! heroically. And so when he comes to consider somebody's suggestion that the Gypsies are of Jewish origin, he relates a " little adventure " of his own, bringing in Mr. Petulengro and the Jewish servant whom he had brought back with him after his last visit to Spain. He mounts the heroic figure upon an heroic horse : "So it came to pass," he says, "that one day I was scampering over a heath, at some distance from my present home : I was mounted upon the good horse Sidi Habismilk, and the Jew of Fez, swifter than the wind, ran by the side of the good horse Habismilk, when what should I see at a corner of the heath but the encampment of certain friends of mine ; and the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengito, stood before the encampment, and his adopted daughter. Miss Pinfold, stood beside him. " Myself. — ' Kosko diwus,* Mr. Petulengro ! I am glad to see you : how are you getting on ? ' "Mr. Petulengro. — 'How am I getting on? as well as I can. What will you have for that nokengro ? ' t " Thereupon I dismounted, and delivering the reins of the good horse to Miss Pinfold, I took the Jew of Fez, even Hayim Ben Attar, by the hand, and went up to Mr. Petulengro, exclaiming, ' Sure ye are two brothers.' Anon the G)^sy passed his hand over the Jew's face, and stared him in the eyes -. then turning to me, he said, ' We are not dui palor ; + this man is no Roman ; I believe him to be a Jew ; he has the face of one ; besides if he were a Rom, even from Jericho, he could rokra a few words in Rommany.' " Still more important than this equestrian figure of Borrow on Sidi Habismilk is the note on "The English Dialect * Good-day. f Glandered horse. % Two brothers. C 1 8 GEORGE BORROW of the Rommany" hidden away at the end of the second edition of "The Zincah." " ' Tachipen if I jaw 'doi, I can lei a bit of tan to hatch : N'etist I shan't puch kekomi wafu gorgies.' "The above sentence, dear reader, I heard from the mouth of Mr. Petulengro, the last time that he did me the honour to visit me at my poor house, which was the day after Mol-divvus,* 1842 : he stayed with me during the greatest part of the morning, discoursing on the affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily worse and worse. 'There is no living for the poor people, brother,' said he, '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 way side, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a lire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (justice of the peace or prime minister), I am afraid the poor persons will have to give up wandering altogether, and then what will become of them ? "'However, brother,' he continued, in a more cheerful tone : ' I am no hindity mush,t as you well know. I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen years ago, when you made horse-shoes in the little dingle by the side of the great north road, I lent you fifty cottorsj to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred. "'Well, brother, if you had wanted the two hundred, instead of the fifty, I could have lent them to you, and would have done so, for I knew you would not be long pazorrhus to me. I am no hindity mush, brother, no Irishman ; I laid * Christmas, literally Wine-day. t Irishman or beggar, literally a dirty squalid person, j: Guineas. HIS OWN HERO 19 out the other day twenty pounds, in buying ruponoe peam- engries ; * and in the Chong-gav.t have a house of my own with a yard behind it. "'And, forsooth, if I go thither, I can choose a flace to light a fire upon, and shall have no necessity to ask leave of these here Gentiles^ "Well, dear reader, this last is the translation of the Gypsy sentence which heads the chapter, and which is a very characteristic specimen of the general way of speaking of the English Gypsies." Here be mysteries. The author of " The Bible in Spain " is not only taken for a Gypsy, but once upon a time made horse-shoes in a dingle beside the great north road and trafficked in horses. When Borrow told John Murray of the Christmas meeting with Ambrose Smith, whom he now called "The Gypsy King," he said he was dressed in " true regal fashion." On the last day of that year he told Murray that he often meditated on his "life" and was arranging scenes. That reminder about the dingle and the wonderful trotting cob, and the Christmas wine, was stirring his brain. In two months time he had begun to write his " Life." He got back from the Bible Society the letters written to them when he was their representative in Russia, and these he hoped to use as he had already used those written in Spain. Ford encouraged him, saying: " Truth is great and always pleases. Never mind nimminy- pimminy peoplei thinking subjects low. Things are low in manner of handling." In the midsummer of 1843 Borrow told Murray that he was getting on — " some parts are very wild and strange," others are full of "useful information." In another place he called the pictures in it Rembrandts interspersed with Claudes. At first the book was to have been " My Life, a Drama, by George Borrow " ; at the end * Silver teapots. t The Gypsy word for a certain town (Norwich). C 2 20 GEORGE BORROW of the year it was " Lavengro, a Biography," and also " My Life." He was writing slowly "to please himself.'' Later on he called it a biography " in the Robinson Crusoe style." Nearly three years passed since that meeting with Mr. Petulengro, and still the book was not ready. Ford had been pressing him to lift a corner of the curtain which he had gradually let fall over the seven years of his life preceding his work for the Bible Society, but he made no promise. He was bent on putting in nothing but his best work, and avoiding haste. In July, 1 848, Murray announced, among his "new works in preparation," "Lavengro, an Autobiography, by George Borrow." The first volume went to press in the autumn, and there was another announcement of "Lavengro, an Autobiography," followed by one of " Life, a Drama." Yet again in 1 849 the book was announced as "Lavengro, an Autobiography," though the first volume already bore the title, " Life, a Drama." In 1850 publication was still delayed by Sorrow's ill health and his reluctance to finish and have done with the book. It was still announced as " Lavengro, an Autobiography." But at the end of the year it was " Lavengro : the Scholar — the G)^sy — the Priest," and with that title it appeared early in 1851. Borrow was then forty-six years old, and the third volume of his book left him still in the dingle beside the great north road, when he was, according to the conversation with Mr. Petulengro, a young man of twenty-one. PRESENTING THE TRUTH 21 CHAPTER III PRESENTING THE TRUTH "Life, a Draiiict," was to have been published in 1849, and proof sheets with this name and date on the title page were lately in my hands: as far as page 168 the left hand page heading is "A Dramatic History," which is there crossed out and " Life, a Drama" thenceforward substituted. Sorrow's corrections are worth the attention of anyone who cares for men and books. " Lavengro " now opens with the sentence : " 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." The proof shows that Borrow preferred "a certain dis- trict of East Anglia " to " The western division of Norfolk." Here the added shade of indefiniteness can hardly seem valuable to any but the author himself. In another place he prefers (chapter XIII.) the vague "one of the most glorious of Homer's rhapsodies" to "the enchantments of Canidia, the masterpiece of the prince of Roman poets." In the second chapter he describes how, near Pett, in Sussex, as a child less than three years old, he took up a viper without being injured or even resisted, amid the alarms of his mother and elder brother. After this description he comments : "It is my firm belief that certain individuals possess an inherent power, or fascination, over certain creatures, other- wise I should be unable to account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share in, connected with the taming of brutes and' reptiles." 22 GEORGE BORROW This was in the proof preceded by a passage at first modified and then cut out, reading thus : "In some parts of the world and more particularly in India there are people who devote themselves to the pur- suit and taming of serpents. Had I been bom in those regions I perhaps should have been what is termed a snake charmer. That I had a genius for the profession, as pro- bably all have who follow it, I gave decided proof of the above instance as in others which I shall have occasion subsequently to relate." This he cut out presumably because it was too "inform- ing" and too little '"wild and strange." A little later in the same chapter he describes how, before he was four years old, near Hythe, in Kent, he saw in a penthouse against an old village church, "skulls of the old Danes " : "'Long ago' (said the sexton, with Borrow's aid), 'long ago they came pirating into these parts : cind then there chanced a mighty shipwreck, for God was angry with them, and He sunk them ; and their skulls, as they came ashore, were placed here as a memorial. There were many more when I was young, but now they are fast disappearing. Some of them must have belonged to strange fellows, madam. Only see that one; why, the two young gentry can scarcely lift it ! ' And, incteed, my brother and myself had entered the Golgotha, and commenced handling these grim relics of mortality. One enormous skull, lying in a corner, had fixed our attention, and we had drawn it forth. Spirit of eld, what a skull was yon ! " I still seem to see it, the huge grim thing ; many of the others were large, strikingly so, and appeared fully to justify the old man's conclusion that their owners must have been stremge fellows ; but compared with this mighty mass of bone they looked small and diminutive, like those of pigmies; it must have belonged to a giant, one of those PRESENTING THE TRUTH 23 red-haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are told in the ancient chronicles of the north, and whose grave-hills, when ransacked, occasionally reveal secrets which fill the minds of puny moderns with astonishment and awe. Reader, have you ever pored days and nights over the pages of Snorro? probably not, for he wrote in a language which few of the present day under- stand, and few would be tempted to read him tamed down by Latin dragomans. A brave old book is that of Snorro, containing the histories and adventures of old northern kings and champions, who seemed to have been quite different men, if we may judge from the feats which they performed, from those of these days. One of the best of his histories is that which describes the life of Harald Haardraade, who, after manifold adventures by land and sea, now a pirate, now a mercenary of the Greek emperor, became King of Norway, and eventually perished at the battle of Stanford Bridge, whilst engaged in a gallant onslaught upon England. Now, I have often thought that the old Kemp, whose mouldering skull in the Golgotha at Hythe my brother and myself could scarcely lift, must have resembled in one respect at least this Harald, whom Snorro describes as a great and wise ruler and a determined leader, dangerous in battle, of fair presence, and measuring in height just five ells, neither more nor less." Of this incident he says he need offer no apology for relating it "as it subsequently exercised considerable influerice over his pursuits," i.e., his study of Danish literature ; but in the proof he added also that the incident, " perhaps more than anything else, tended to bring my imaginative powers into action" — this he cut out, though the skulls may have impressed him as the skeleton dis- interred by a horse impressed Richard Jefferies and haunted him in his " Gamekeeper," " Meadow Thoughts," and else- where. 24 GEORGE BORROW Sometimes he modified a showy phrase, and "when I became ambitious of the title of Lavengro and strove to deserve it" was cut down to "when I became a student." When he wrote of Cowper in the third chapter he said, to justify Cowper's melancholy, that " Providence, whose ways are not our ways, interposed, and with the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have ter- minated in fruit, noxious and lamentable " ; but he sub- stituted a mere " perhaps " for the words about Providence. In the description of young Jasper he changed his "short arms like" his father, into "long arms unlike." In the fourteenth chapter Borrow describes his father's retirement from the army after Waterloo, and his settling down at Norwich, so poor as to be anxious for his children's future. He speaks of poor of&cers who "had slight influence with the great who gave themselves very little trouble either about them or their families." Originally he went on thus, but cut out the words from the proof : "Yet I have reason for concluding that they were not altogether overlooked by a certain power still higher than even the aristocracy of England and with yet more exten- sive influence in the affairs of the world. I allude to Providence, which, it is said, never forsakes those who trust in it, as I suppose these old soldiers did, for I have known many instances in which their children have contrived to make their way gallantly in the world, unaided by the patronage of the great, whilst others who were possessed of it were most miserably shipwrecked, being suddenly overset by some unexpected squall, against which it could avail them nothing." This change is a relief to the style. The next which I shall quote is something more than that. It shows Borrow constructing the conversation of his father and mother when they were considering his prospects at the age of twelve. His father was complaining of the boy's Gypsy PRESENTING THE TRUTH 25 look, and of his ways and manners, and of the strange company he kept in Ireland— "people of evil report, of whom terrible things were said— horse-witches and the like." His mother made the excuse : " But he thinks of other things now." "Other languages, you mean," said his father. But in the proof his mother adds to her speech, " He is no longer in Ireland," and the father takes her up with, " So much the better for him ; yet should he ever fall into evil practices, I shall always lay it to the account of that melancholy sojourn in Ireland and the acquaintances he formed there." Instead of putting into his friend, the Anglo-Germanist Williams Taylor's mouth, the opinion " that as we are aware that others frequently misinterpret us, we are equally liable to fall into the same error with respect to them," he alters it to the very different one, " That there is always some eye upon us ; and that it is impossible to keep any- thing we do from the world, as it will assuredly be divulged by somebody as soon as it is his interest to do so." In the twenty-fourth chapter Borrow makes Thurtell, the friend of bruisers, hint, with unconscious tragic irony, at his famous end — ^by dying upon the gallows for the murder of Mr. William Weare. He tells the magistrate whom he has asked to lend him a piece of land for a prize- fight that his own name is no matter. "However," he continues, "a time may come — we are not yet buried — ^whensoever my hour arrives, I hope I shall prove myself equal to my destiny, however high — " Like bird that's bred amongst the Helicons." In the original Thurtell's quotation was: " No poor unminded outlaw sneaking home." This chapter now ends with the magistrate's question to -young Borrow about this man: "What is his name?" In the manuscript Borrow answered, "John Thurtell." 26 GEORGE BORROW The proof had, "John . . ." Borrow hesitated, and in the margin, having crossed out "John," he put the initial "J" as a substitute, but finally crossed that out also. He was afraid of names which other people might know and regard in a different way. Thus in the same proof he altered "the philologist Scaliger" to "a certain philo- logist " : thus, too, he would not write down the name of Dereham, but kept on calling it "pretty D " ; and when he had to refer to Cowper as buried in Dereham Church he spoke of the poet, not by name, but as " England's sweetest and most pious bard." ivniTi>.jfiiiiMva'iMir!W|ipiwiiiiiiw.iiiiiiiii»i' a. CHAPTER I. On tlic fifth day of July, 1803, atEastD . \.\ .v. a beautifuJ little town in tlin TCirifrrtL^jjj'iiTifnir' nf iiferfyiit, I fii-st saw the light, ■ . yr'\:\ \.i {-..X ] iLv fdtlitt was a Cornish mnni the' SQUii^t,, asX ievc heard him say, of seven brotIi«ivS- -^ Ho Bpifm^ fiom ftfamily of gentlemen, or, as eonle J)eoj)ip waiild callthpm, gentiUutrefe, fortheyTfea"on6t:^6y:weiblthy;; tlieyiia3 e^icoat of arms, Loweycr, anttii^'ed on tlie% own piopeiliy oi a place cfljSticl' I'i'bdimiock, Whicli being raliei^rfeVey .mcaias the hnUsc oft th&. KUt, whioh house and the- neighbouring acres bad been izam ttmtj Immemorial in their jjoyse&sion. ' I nita? titax these partioiilars tfiat -the reader jnaj ace at onoe thttflam not oltogetlier of low and plobfeiiui pnpn (^6 pi-^ent age as itigbly ari&tocratic, aflrf I am oonviaced that the public will road my pages *oi. I. B ^U; mv*._U^ 7 /if/ U J ! oberl^ PAGE I OF " LAVEN'GRO," SHOWING CORRECTIONS BORRO\\"S {Photographed from the Author's proof copy, by hifid permission ^ of Mr. KyUmann and Mr. Thos, Seccombe) WHAT IS TRUTH? 27 CHAPTER IV WHAT IS TRUTH? These changes in the proof of what was afterwards called " Lavengro " were, it need hardly be said, made in order to bring the words "hearer to a representation of the idea in Sorrow's brain, and nearer to a perfect harmony with one another. Take the case of Jasper Petulengro's arm. Borrow knew the man Ambrose Smith well enough to know whether he had a long or a short arm: for did not Jasper say to him when he was dismal, " We'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves, and I'll try tO' make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother ! " Possibly he had a short arm like his father, but in reading the proof it must somehow have seemed to Borrow that his Jasper Petulengro — ^founded on Ambrose Smith and at many points resembling him — ought to have a long arm. The short arm was true to " the facts " ; the long arm was more impressive and was truer to the created character, which was more important. It was hardly these little things that kept Borrow work- ing at "Lavengro" for nearly half of his fourth decade and a full half of his fifth. But these little things were part of the great difficulty of making an harmonious whole by changing, cutting out and inserting. When Ford and John Murray's reader asked him for his life they probably meant a plain statement of a few "important facts," such facts as there could hardly be two opinions about, such facts as fill the ordinary biography or "Who's Who." Borrow knew well enough that these facts either produce no effect in the reader's mind or they produce one effect here 28 GEORGE BORROW and a different one there, since the dullest mind cannot blankly receive a dead statement without some effort to give it life. Borrow was not going to commit himself to incontrovertible statements such as are or might be made to a Life Insurance Company. He had no command of a tombstone style and would not have himself circumscribed with full Christian name, date of birth, etc., as a sexton or parish clerk might have done for him. Twenty years later indeed — ^in 1862 — ^he did write such an account of himself to be printed as part of an appendix to a history of his old school at Norwich. It is full of dates, but they are often inaccurate, and the years 1825 to 1833 he fills with "a life of roving adventures." He cannot refrain from calling himself a great rider, walker and swimmer, or from telling the story of how he walked from Norwich to London — ^he calls it London to Norwich — in twenty- seven hours. But in 1862 he could rely on "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye"; he was an author at the end of his career, and he had written himself down to the best of his genius. The case was different in 1842. He saw himself as a man variously and mysteriously alive, very different from every other man and especially from certain kinds of man. When you look at a larch wood with a floor of fern in October at the end of twilight, you are not content to have that wood described as so many hundred poles growing on three acres of land, the property of a manufacturer of gin. Still less was Borrow content to sit down at Oulton, while the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround his lonely dwelling, and answer the genial Ford's questions one by one: "What countries have you been in? What languages do you understand ? " and so on. Ford probably divined a book as substantial and well-furnished with milestones as " The Bible in Spain," and he cheerfully told Borrow to make the broth "thick and slab." WHAT IS TRUTH ? 29 Ford, in fact, doubled the difficulty. Not only did Borrow feel that his book must create a living soul, but the soul must be heroic to meet the expectations of Ford and the public. The equestrian group had been easy enotigh — himself mounted on Sidi Habismilkj with the swift Jew and the Gypsy at his side — ^but the life of a man was a different matter. Nor was the task eased by his exceptional memory. He claimed, as has been seen, to remember the look of the viper seen in his third year. Later, in " Lavengro," he meets a tinker and buys his stock-in-trade to set himself up with. The tinker tries to put him off by tales of the Blazing Tinman who has driven him from his beat. Borrow answers that he can manage the Tinman one way or other, saying, "I know all kinds of strange words and names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when they put me out." At last the tinker consents to sell his pony and things on one condition. " Tell me what's my name," he says ; " if you can't, may I ." Borrow answers : " Don't swear, it's a bad habit, neither pleasant nor profitable. Your name is Slingsby — Jack Slingsby. There, don't stare, there's nothing in my telling you your name : I've been in these parts before, at least not very far from here. Ten years ago, when I was little more than a child, I was about twenty miles from here in a post chaise, at the door of an inn, and as I looked from the window of the chaise, I saw you standing by a gutter, with a big tin ladle in your hand, and some- body called you Jack Slingsby. I never forget anything I hear or see ; I can't, I wish I could. So there's nothing strange in my knowing your name ; indeed there's nothing strange in anything, provided you examine it to the bottom. Now what am I to give you for the things ? " (I once heard a Gypsy give a similar and equal display of memory.) Dr. Knapp has corroborated several details of "Lavengro" which confirm Borrow's opinion of his 30 GEORGE BORROW memory. Hearing the author whom he met on his walk beyond Salisbury, speak of the "wine of 1811, the compt year," Borrow said that he remembered being in the market-place of Dereham, looking at that comet. *Dr. Knapp first makes sure exactly when, Borrow was at Dere- ham in 181 1 and then that there was a comet visible during that time. He proves also from newspapers of 1820 that the fight, in the twenty-sixth chapter of "Lavengro," ended in a thunderstorm like that described by Borrow and used by Petulengro to forecast the violent end of Thurtell. Now a brute memory like that, which cannot be gainsaid, is not an entirely good servant to a man who will not put down everything he can, like a boy at an examination. The ordinary man probably recalls all that is of importance in his past life, though he may not like to think so, but a man with a memory like Borrow's or with a supply of diaries like Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff's may well ask, "What is truth?" as Borrow often did. The facts may convey a false impression which an omission or a positive " lie " may correct. Just at first, as has been seen, a month after his Christmas wine with Mr. Petulengro, Borrow saw his life as a drama, perhaps as a melodrama, full of Gypsies, jockeys and horseSj wild men of many lands and several murderers. " Capital subject," he repeated. That was when he saw himself as an adventurer and Europe craning its neck to keep him in sight. But he knew well, and after the first flush he remembered, that he was not merely a robust walker, rider and philologist. When he was only eighteen he was continually asking himself "What is truth?" "I had," he says. " involved myself imperceptibly in a dreary labyrinth of doubt, and, whichever way I turned, no reason- able prospect of extricating myself appeared. The means • Suppressed MS. of " Lavengro,'' quoted in Knapp I., 36. taa-^ »» jii**^'ith itl v't^ (> fnin l Uo; the sin.gular being who ■ v!^; Ot/fT^^A Vyvi,VJ called hitBseli' bis /iithi-rj bjs complexion was ruddy, ) / but bis I'lice was v«jyTi m i ^l> aeamed, tbougjbi it did iV (i/H li l i V - not bear tbe peculiar scar v/bich l*m}ws4Jud^0U?^ — AUTiJ'W^V-ys tbe couuteuKneoof tlie otber(Uio wore drab breeches, W^-vMWtt — '^^ff^'^'r' with certuin strings at \},e kuXTrSh^^gw^SBTf^^rV/?'^ ' "•W^'*', , and tolcruUy white sfiirt; under hjs arm hs U/r^^\\ Ityd. luMt^ a nuKbty whip of whale bone w^th a br^ V rOU^^ J I, and upon his head was a hat without either WteJi \]fj_ U^/u, A\ coat, and tolcruhly white sliirt; bore knoh, top or tjrim, h i iniuij r -tSya rt fi f h i s h ixhei-7-fartrymiig.gsJ «»r»t struok » ia thni t i m D i iprocoion «ijLluii-_eaumeBance ..wnji kn^yl uKL i j . i M tii.ili lii r uuL ' li H w l it wa n t ed ii,. iir.rta »t, ''|m4*Mlil2toJ*Mt« d mugi ' CCabli. u liajai. tei •■ r yl lK' i h tlie\» i oman pummcd -i n u yut \II ofjftp^nrk ; -'! ^j'ere,;Taspr^!-8l,al,e bands with the stip-aiigim -^ , .-'Oanhebox. father?" sidj Jasper, survevitfg-OKi rather coiucmpumusly. "l should -tliink not, be looks 80 T m wh Mm mi tti and small." " Hold your peace, fool ! " a,ii4 tl,^ „,„„ , „ ,,,. ^^^ do more Uian that— I lell you he's fly: )„, ,.„,^^ a sap about^;h would slinjj a niuny lite you to dead." \JJwMCa sap-engro ! " said the boy, witli « VOL. 1.^ — --^ vA' m I Phot,,: jr. J. Kub,rli A PAGE FROil THE AUTHOR'S PROOF COPY OF " LAYKNGRO," SHOYTNG BORROWS SIGNIFICANT CORRECTIONS {Pho!,:igraphed by kind permission of Mr. Kyllmann and Mr. Thos. Seccomtie) WHAT IS TRUTH? 31 by which I had brought myself into this situation may be very briefly told; I had inquired into many matters, in order that I might become wise, and I had read and pon- dered over the words of the wise, so called, till I had made myself master of the sum of human wisdom ; namely, that everything is enigmatical and that man is an enigma to himself ; thence the cry of ' What is truth ? ' I had ceased to believe in the truth of that in which I had hitherto trusted, and yet could find nothing in which I could put any fixed or deliberate belief. I was, indeed, in a laby- rinth! In what did I not doubt? With respect to crime and virtue I was in doubt; I doubted that the one was blameable and the other praiseworthy. Are not all things subjected to the law of necessity? Assuredly; time and chance govern all things : yet how can this be ? alas ! " Then there was myself ; for what was I born ? Are not all things bom to be forgotten ? That's incomprehensible : yet is it not so ? Those butterflies fall and are forgotten. In what is man better than a butterfly? All then is born to be forgotten. Ah ! that was a pang indeed ; 'tis at such a moment that a man wishes to die. The wise king of Jerusalem, who sat in his shady arbours beside his sunny fishpools, saying so many fine things, wished to die, when he saw that not only all was vanity, but that he himself was vanity. Will a time come when all will be forgotten that now is beneath the sun ? If so, of what profit is life ? . . . " ' Would I had never been born ! ' I said to myself ; and a thought would occasionally intrude. But was I ever born? Is not all that I see a lie — a deceitful phantom? Is there a world, and earth, and sky? . . " If he no longer articulated these doubts he was still not as sure of himself as Ford imagined. He was, by the way, seldom sure of his own age, and Dr. Knapp* gives * Knapp I., 25. 32 GEORGE BORROW four instances of his underestimating it by two and even five years. Whatever may be the explanation of this, after three years' work at "Lavengro" he "will not be hurried for anyone." He was probably finding that, with no note- books or letters to help, the work was very different from the writing of "The Bible in Spain," which was pieced together out of long letters to the Bible Society, and, more- over, was written within a few years of the events described. The events of his childhood and youth had retired into a perspective that was beyond his control : he would often be tempted to change their perspective, to bring forward some things, to set back others. In any case these things were no longer mere solid material facts. They were living a silent life of spirits within his brain. He took to calling the book his " life " or " autobiography," not " Life : a Drama." It was advertised as such; but he would not have it. At the last moment he refused to label it an autobiography, because he knew that it was inadequate, and that in any case other men would not understand or would misunderstand it. He must have felt certain that the fair figure of "Don Jorge," created in "The Bible of Spain," had been poisoned for most readers by many a passage in "Lavengro," like that where he doubted the existence of self and sky and stars, or where he told of the breakdown in his health when he was sixteen and of the gloom that followed : "But how much more quickly does strength desert the human frame than return to it ! I had become convalescent, it is true, but my state of feebleness was truly pitiable. I believe it is in that state that the most remarkable feature of human physiology frequently exhibits itself. Oh, how dare I mention the dark feeling of mysterious dread which comes over the mind, and which the lamp of reason, though burning bright the while, is unable to dispel! Art thou, as leeches say, the concomitant of disease — the result of WHAT IS TRUTH? 33 shattered nerves ? Nay, rather the principle of woe itself, the fountain head of all sorrow co-existent with man, whose influence he feels when yet unborn, and whose workings he testifies with his earliest cries, when, ' drowned in tears,' he first beholds the light; for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one, cause- less, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how frequently dost thou break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of prosperity — ^in the midst of health and wealth — how sentient is the poor human creature of thy neighbourhood! how instinctively aware that the floodgates of horror may be cast open, and the dark stream engulf him for ever and ever ! Then is it not lawful for man to exclaim, 'Better that I had never been born ! ' Fool, for thyself thou wast not born, but to fulfil the inscrutable decrees of thy Creator; and how dost thou know that this dark principle is not, after all, thy best friend; that it is not that which tempers the whole mass of thy corruption? It may be, for what thou knowest, the mother of wisdom, and of the great works : it is the dread of the horror of the night that makes the pilgrim hasten on his way. When thou feelest it nigh, let thy safety word be ' Onward ' ; if thou tarry, thou art overwhelmed. Courage! build great works — ^"tis urging thee — -it is ever nearest the favourites of God — the fool knows little of it. Thou wouldst be joyous, wouldst thou ? then be a fool. What great work was ever the result of joy, the puny one? Who have been the wise ones, the mighty ones, the conquering ones of this earth ? the joyous ? I believe not. The fool is happy, or comparatively so — ■ certainly the least sorrowful, but he is still a fool; and whose notes are sweetest, those of the nightingale, or of the silly lark ? D 34 GEORGE BORROW "'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 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, more- over, 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 ! " And if men passed over this as a youthful distemper, rather often recurring, what would they make of his saying that "Fame after death is better than the top of fashion in life"? Would they not accuse him of entertaining them, as he did his companion and half-sweetheart of the dingle, Isopel Berners, "'with strange dreams of adventure, in which he figures in opaque forests, strangling wild beasts. WHAT IS TRUTH? 35 or discovering ajid plundering the hordes of dragons; and sometimes . . . other things far more genuine — ^how he had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with ferocious publishers"? He did not simplify the matter by his preface. There he announced that the book was " a dream." He had, he said, endeavoured to describe a dream, partly of adventure, in which will be fotmd copious notices of books and many descriptions of life and manners, some in a very unusual form. A dream containing " copious notices of books " ! A dream in three volumes and over a thousand pages! A dream which he had "endeavoured to describe"! From these three words it was necessary to suppose that it was a real dream, not a narrative introduced by the machinery of a dream, like " Pilgrim's Progress," and " The Dream of Fair Women." And so it was. The book was not an autobiography but a representation of a man's life in the backward dream of memory. He had refused to drag the events of his life out of the spirit land, to turn them into a narrative on the same plane as a newspaper, leaving readers to convert them back again into reality or not, according to their choice or ability. His life seemed to him a dream, not a newspaper obituary, not an equestrian statue on a pedestal in Albemarle Street opposite John Murray's office. The result was that " the long-talked-of autobiography " disappointed those who expected more than a collection of bold picaresque sketches. "It is not," complained the "Athenaeum," "an autobiography, even with the licence of fiction ; " " the interest of autobiography is lost," and as a work of fiction it is a failure. " Fraser's Magazine " said that it was "for ever hovering between Romance and Reality, and the whole tone of the narrative inspires profound distrust. Nay, more, it will make us disbelieve the tales in 'The Zincali' and 'The Bible in Spain.'" D 2 36 GEORGE BORROW Another critic found " a false dream in the place of reality, a shadowy nothing in the place of that something all who had read ' The Bible in Spain ' craved and hoped for from his pen." His friend, William Bodham Donne, in "Tait's Edinburgh Magazine," explained how "Lavengro" was " not exactly what the public had been expecting." Another friend, Whitwell Elwin, in the " Quarterly Review," review- ing " Lavengro " and its continuation, " The Romany Rye," not only praised the truth and vividness of the descriptions, but said that "various portions of the history are known to be a faithful narrative of Mr. Sorrow's career, while we ourselves can testify, as to many other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described both men and things," and "why under these circumstances he should envelop the question in mystery is more than we can divine. There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual occurrences, and just as little that it would gain immensely by a plain avowal of the fact" I have suggested that there were good reasons for not calling the work an autobiography. Dr. Knapp has shown in his fortieth chapter that the narrative was interrupted to admit lengthy references to much later events for purposes of " occult vengeance " ; and that these interruptions helped to cause the delay and to change the title there can be little doubt. Borrow was angry at the failure of "Lavengro," and in the appendix to "The Romany Rye" he actually said that he had never called "Lavengro" an autobiography and never authorised anyone to call it such. This was not a lie but a somewhat frantic assertion that his critics were mistaken about his "dream." In later years he quietly admitted that "Lavengro" gave an account of his early life. WHATSIS TRUTH? Z1 Yet Dr. Knapp was not strictly and completely accurate in saying that the first volume of " Lavengro " is " strictly autobiographical and authentic as the whole was at first intended to be." He could give no proof that Sorrow's memory went back to his third year or that he first handled a viper at that time. He could only show that Sorrow's accounts do not conflict with other accoimts of the same matters. When they did conflict, Dr. Knapp was unduly elated by the discovery. Take, for example, the sixteenth chapter of " Lavengro," where he describes the horse fair at Norwich when he was a boy : "The reader is already aware that I had long since conceived a passion for the equine race, a passion in which circumstances had of late not permitted me to indulge. I had no horses to ride, but I took pleasure in looking at them ; and I had already attended more than one of these fairs: the present was lively enough, indeed horse fairs are seldom dull. There was shouting and whooping, neigh- ing and braying ; there was galloping and trotting ; fellows with highlows and white stockings, and with many a string dangling from the knees of their tight breeches, were run- ning desperately, holding horses by the halter, and in some cases dragging them along; there were long-tailed steeds, and dock-tailed steeds of every degree and breed ; there were droves of wild ponies, and long rows of sober cart horses ; there were donkeys and even mules : the last rare things to be seen in damp, misty England, for the mule pines in mud and rain, and thrives best with a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were — oh, the gallant creatures ! I hear their neigh upon the wind ; there were — goodliest sight of all — certain enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails 38 GEORGE BORROW curiously clubbed and balled. Ha ! ha ! — how distinctly do they say, ha ! ha ! " An old man draws nigh, he is mounted on a lean pony, and he leads by the bridle one of these animals ; nothing very remarkable about that creature, unless in being smaller than the rest and gentle, which they are not; he is not of the sightliest look ; he is almost dun, and over one eye a thick film has gathered. But stay! there is something remarkable about that horse, there is something in his action in which he differs from all the rest : as he advances, the clamour is hushed! all eyes are turned upon him — what looks of interest — of respect — and, what is this? people are taking off their hats — surely not to that steed ! Yes, verily! men, especially old men, are taking off their hats to that one-eyed steed, and I hear more than one deep-drawn ah ! '"What horse is that?' said I to a very old fellow, the counterpart of the old man on the pony, save that the last wore a faded suit of velveteen, and this one was dressed in a white frock. " ' The best in mother England,' said the very old man, taking a knobbed stick from his mouth, and looking me in the face, at first carelessly, but presently with something like interest; 'he is old like myself, but can still trot his twenty miles an hour. You won't live long, my swain; tall and overgrown ones like thee never does ; yet, if you should chance to reach my years, you may boast to thy great grand boys, thou hast seen Marshland Shales.' " Amain I did for the horse what I would neither do for earl or baron, doffed my hat; yes! I doffed my hat to the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England; and I, too, drew a deep ah! and repeated the words of the old fellows around. ' Such a horse as this we shall never see again, a pity that he is so old.' " WHAT IS TRUTH? 39 But Dr. Knapp informs us that the well-known trotting stallion, Marshland Shales, was not offered for sale by auction until 1827, when he was twenty-five years old, and ten years after the date implied in " Lavengro." And what isi more. Dr. Knapp concludes that Borrow must have been in Norwich in 1827, on the fair day, April 12. 40 GEORGE BORROW CHAPTER V HIS PREDECESSORS I do not wish to make Borrow out a suffering innocent in the hands of that learned heavy-weight and wag, Dr. Knapp. Borrow was a writing man ; he was sometimes a friend of jockeys, of Gypsies and of pugihsts, but he was always a writing man ; and the writer who is delighted to have his travels in Spain compared with the rogue romance, "Gil Bias," is no innocent. Photography, it must be remembered, was not invented. It was not in those days thought possible to get life on to the paper by copying it with ink. Words could not be the equivalents of acts. Life itself is fleeting, but words remain and are put to our account. Every action, it is true, is as old as man and never perishes without an heir. But so are words as old as man, and they are conservative and stem in their treat- ment of transitory life. Every action seems new and unique to the doer, but how rarely does it seem so when it is recorded in words, how rarely perhaps it is possible for it to seem so. A new form of literature cannot be invented to match the most grand or most lovely life. And fortunately ; for if it could, one more proof of the ancient lineage of our life would have been lost. Borrow did not sacrifice the proof. He had read many books in many languages, and he had a strong taste. He liked "Gil Bias," which is a simple chain of various and surprising adventures. He liked the lives of criminals in the "Newgate Lives and Trials" (or rather "Celebrated Trials," 1825), which he compiled for a publisher in his youth. " What struck me most," he said, "with respect to these lives was the art which the writers, whoever they were, possessed HIS PREDECESSORS 41 of telling a plain story. It is no easy thing to tell a story plainly and distinctly by mouth ; but to tell one on paper is difficult indeed, so many snares lie in the way. People are afraid to put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish their narrative, as they think, by philo- sophic speculations and reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are anxious to shine, can never tell a plain story. 'So I went with them to a music booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand,' says, or is made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before the time of which I am speaking. I have always looked upon this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so concise and yet so very clear." Borrow read Bunyan, Sterne and Smollett: he liked Byron's "Childe Harold" and his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte " ; — ^he liked that portrait with all Europe and all history for a background. Above all, he read Defoe, and in the third chapter of "Lavengro" he has described his first sight of " Robinson Crusoe " as a little child : " The first object on which my eyes rested was a picture ; it was exceedingly well executed, at least the scene which it represented made a vivid impression upon me, which would hardly have been the case had the artist not been faithful to nature. A wild scene it was — a. heavy sea and rocky shore, with mountains in the background, above which the moon was peering. Not far from the shore, upon the water, was a boat with two figures in it, one of which stood at the bow, pointing with what I knew to be a gun at a dreadful shape in the water; fire was flashing from the muzzle of the gun, and the monster appeared to be trans- fixed. I almost thought I heard its cry. I remained motionless, gazing upon the picture, scarcely daring to draw my breath, lest the new and wondrous world should vanish of which I had now obtained a glimpse. 'Who 42 GEORGE BORROW are those people, and what could have brought them into that strange situation?' I asked myself; and now the seed of curiosity, which had so long lain dormant, began to expand, and I vowed to myself to become speedily acquainted with the whole history of the people in the boat. After looking on the picture till every mark and line in it were familiar to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving ; a new source of wonder — a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows ; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue ; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves — ' Mercy upon him ! he must be drowned ! ' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore ; he was upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine ; high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for ever. 'He must be drowned! he must be drowned!' I almost shrieked, and dropped the book. I soon snatched it up again, and now my eye lighted on a third picture ; again a shore, but what a sweet and lovely one, and how I wished to be treading it ; there were beautiful shells lying on the smooth white sand, some were empty like those I had occasionally seen on marble mantelpieces, but out of others peered the heads and bodies of wondrous cra3^sh; a wood of thick green trees skirted the beach and partly shaded it from the rays of the sun, which shone hot above, while blue waves slightly crested with foam were gently curling against it; there was a human figure upon the beach, wild and uncouth, clad in the skins of animals, with a huge cap on his head, a hatchet at his girdle, and in his hand a gun; his feet and legs were bare ; he stood in an attitude of horror and surprise ; his body was bent far back, and his eyes, which seemed starting out of his headi were fixed HIS PREDECESSORS 43 upon a mark on the sand — a large distinct mark — a human footprint ! "Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand, and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely, for it was a book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence certainly greater than any other of modern times, which has been in most people's hands, and with the contents of which even those who cannot read are to a certain extent acquainted ; a book from which the most luxuriant and fertile of our modern prose writers have drunk inspiration ; a book, moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken, England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land, and no inconsiderable part of her naval glory. " Hail to thee, spirit of De Foe ! What does not my own poor self owe to thee? England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare them easier far than De Foe, 'unabashed De Foe,' as the hunchbacked rhymer styled him." It was in this manner, he declares, that he "first took to the paths of knowledge," and when he began his own "autobiography" he must have well remembered the opening of "Robinson Crusoe" -. — ^"I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kreutznaer, who first settled at Hull," though Borrow him- self would have written it : "I was born in the year 1 6 — , in the City of Y — , of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kruschen, who first settled at H — ." Probably he remem- bered also that other fictitious autobiography of Defoe's, " The Adventures of Captain Singleton," of the child who 44 GEORGE BORROW was stolen and disposed of to a Gypsy and lived with his good G3^sy mother until she happened to be hanged, a little too soon for him to be "perfected in the strolling trade." Defoe had told him long before Richard Ford that he need not be afraid of being low. He could always give the same excuse as Defoe in " Moll Flanders " — " as the best use is to be made even of the worst story, the moral, 'tis hoped, will keep the reader serious, even where the story might incline hiin to be otherwise." In fact, Borrow did afterwards claim that his book set forth in as striking a way as any "the kindness and providence of God." Even so, De Quincey suggested as an excuse in his "Confessions" the service possibly to be rendered to other opium-eaters. Borrow tells us in the twenty-second chapter of "Lavengro" how he sought for other books of adventure like "Robinson Crusoe" — ^which he will not mention by name! — and how he read many "books of singular power, but of coarse and prurient imagination." One of these, " The English Rogue," he describes as a book " written by a remarkable genius." He might have remem- bered in its preface the author lamenting that, though it was meant for the life of a "witty extravagant," readers would regard it as the author's own life, " and notwithstanding all that hath been said to the contrary many still continue in this belief." He might also have remembered that the apology for portraying so much vice was that the ugliness of it — "her vizard-mask being remov'd" — "cannot but cause in her {quondam) adorers, a loathing instead of loving." The dirty hero runs away as a boy and on the very first day tires of nuts and blackberries and longs "to taste of the -flesh-pots again." He sleeps in a bam until he is waked, pursued and caught by G3^sies. He agrees to stay with them, and they have a debauch of eating, drinking and fornication, which makes him well content to join the "Ragged Regiment." They colour his face with walnut HIS PREDECESSORS 45 juice so that he looks a " true son of an Egyptian." Hun- dreds of pages are filled thereafter by tediously dragging in, mostly from otKer books, joyless and leering adventures of low dishonesty and low lust. Another book of the kind which Borrow knew was the life of Bamfylde Moore-Carew, born in 1693 at a Devonshire rectory. He hunted the deer with some of his schoolfellows from Tiverton and they played truant for fear of punishment. They fell in with some Gypsies feasting and carousing and asked to be allowed to " enlist into their company." The Gypsies admitted them after the "requisite ceremonies" and " proper oaths." The philosophy of Carew or his historian is worth noticing. He says of the Gypsies : "There are perhaps no people so completely happy as they are, or enjoy so great a share of liberty. The king is elective by the whole people, but none are allowed to stand as candidates for that honour but such as have been long in their society, and perfectly studied the nature and institution of it; they must likewise have given repeated proofs of their personal wisdom, courage and capacity; this is better known as they always keep a public record or register of all remarkable (either good or bad) actions performed by any of their society, and they can have no temptation to make choice of any but the most worthy, as their king has no titles or legislative employments to bestow, which might influence or corrupt their judgments. " The laws; of these people are few and simple, but most exactly and punctually observed; the fundamental of which is that strong love and mutual regard for each member in particular and for the whole community in general, which is inculcated into them from the earliest infancy. . . . Experience has shown them that, by keeping up their nice' sense of honour and shame, they are always enabled to keep their community in better order 46 GEORGE BORROW than the most severe corporal punishments have been able to effect in other governments. "But what has still more tended to preserve their happiness is that they know no other use of riches than the enjoyment of them. They know no other use of it than that of promoting mirth and good humour ; for which end they generously bring their gains into a common stock, whereby they whose gains are small have an equal enjoy- ment with those whose profits are larger, excepting only that a mark or ignominy is affixed on those who do not contribute to the common stock proportionately to their abilities and the opportunities they have of gain, and this is the source of their uninterrupted happiness; fully this means they have no griping usurer to grind them, no lordly possessor to trample on them, nor any envyings to torment them; they have no settled habitations, but, like the Scythian of old, remove from place to place, as often as their convenience or pleasure requires it, which render their life a perpetual source of the greatest variety. "By what we have said above, and much more that we could add of the happiness of these people and of their peculiar attachment to each other, we may account for what has been matter of much surprise to the friends of our hero, viz., his strong attachment, for the space of about forty years, to this community, and his refusing the large offers that have been made to quit their society." Carew himself met with nothing but success in his various impersonations of Tom o' Bedlam, a rat-catcher, a non-juring clergyman, a shipwrecked Quaker, and an aged woman with three orphan grandchildren. He was elected King of the Beggars, and lost the dignity only by deliberate abdication. "The restraints of a town not suiting him after the free rambling life he had led, he took a house in the country, and having acquired some property on the decease of a relation, he was in a position to purchase a HIS PREDECESSORS 47 residence more suited to his taste, and lived for some years a quiet life ' respected best by those who knew him best' " A very different literary hero of Borrow's was William Cobbett, in spite of his radical opinions. Cobbett was a man who wrote, as it were, with his fist, not the tips of his fingers. When I begin to read him I think at once of a small country town where men talk loudly to one another at a distance or as they walk along in opposite directions, and the voices ring as their heels do on the cobbles. He is not a man of arguments, but of convictions. He is so full of convictions that, though not an indolent man, he has no time for arguments. " On this stiff ground," he says in North Wiltshire, "they grow a good many beans and give them to the pigs with whey; which makes excellent pork for ^e Londoners ; but which must meet with a pretty hungry stomach to swallow it in Hampshire." When he was being shouted down at Lewes in 1822, and someone moved that he should be put out of the room, he says : "I rose that they might see the man that they had to put out." The hand that holds the bridld holds the pen. The night after he has been hare-hunting — Friday, November the sixteenth, 1821, at Old Hall, in Herefordshire — he writes down this note of it : "A whole day most delightfully passed a hare-hunting, with a pretty pack of hounds kept here by Messrs. Palmer. They put me upon a horse that seemed to have been made on purpose for me, strong, tall, gentle and bold ; and that carried me either over or through every thing. I, who am just the weight of a four-bushel sack of good wheat, actually sat on her back from daylight in the morning to dusk (about nine hours) without once setting my foot on the ground. Our' ground was at Orcop, a place about four miles distance from this place. We found a hare in a few minutes after throwing off ; and, in the course of the day, we had to find four, and were never more than ten minutes 48 GEORGE BORROW in finding. A steep and naked ridge, lying between two flat valleys, having a mixture of pretty large fields and small woods, formed our ground. The hares crossed the ridge forward and backward, and gave us numerous views and very fine sport. I never rode on such steep ground before ; and, really, in going up and down some of the craggy places, where the rain had washed the earth from the rocks, I did think, once or twice of my neck, and how Sidmouth would like to see me. As to the cruelty, as some pretend, of this sport, that point I have, I think, settled, in one of the chapters of my ' Year's Residence in America.' As to the expense, a pack, even a full pack of harriers, like this, costs less than two bottles; of wine a day with their inseparable concomitants. And as to the time spent, hunting is inseparable from early rising ; and, with habits of early rising, who ever wanted time for any business ? " Borrow* could not resist this man's plain living and plain thinking, or his sentences that are like acts — like blows or strides. And if he had needed any encouragement in the expression of prejudices, Cobbett offered it. The following, from " Cottage Economy," will serve as an example. It is from a chapter on "Brewing": — "The practice of tea drinking must render the frame feeble and imfit to encounter hard labour or severe weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness, an effeminacy, a seeking for the fire- side, a lurking in the bed, and, in short, all the characteristics of idleness for which, in his case, real want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea drinking fills the public- house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to whom the gossip of the teatable is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. At the very least, HIS PREDECESSORS 49 it teaches them idleness. The everlasting dawdling about with the slops of the tea-tackle gives them a relish for nothing that requires strength and activity. When they go from home, they know how to do nothing that is useful, to brew, to bake, to make butter, to milk, to rear poultry ; to do any earthly thing of use they, are wholly unqualified. To shut poor young creatures up in manufactories is bad enough ; but there at any rate they do' something that is useful ; whereas the girl that has been brought up merely to boil the teakettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to fix his affections upon her. " But is it in the power of any man, any good labourer who has attained the age of fifty, to look back upon the last thirty years of his life, without cursing the day in which tea was introduced into England? Where is there such a man who cannot trace to this cause a very consider- able part of all the mortifications and sufferings of his life ? When was he even too late at his labour ; when did. he ever meet with a frown, with a turning off and with pauperism on that account, without being able to trace it to the teakettle ? When reproached with lagging in the morning, the poor wretch tells you that he will make up for it by working during his breakfast time ! I have heard this a hundred and a hundred times over. He was up time enough ; but the teakettle kept him lolling and lounging at home ; and now instead of sitting down to a breakfast upon bread, bacon and beer, which is to carry him on to the hour of dinner, he has to force his limbs along under the sweat of feebleness, and at dinner-time to swallow his dry bread, or slake his half-feverish thirst at the pump or the brook. To the wretched teakettle he has to return at night with legs hardly sufficient to maintain him; and then he makes his miserable progress towards E 50 GEORGE BORROW that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it had he made his wife brew beer instead of making tea. If he now and then gladdens his heart with the drugs of the public-house, some quarrel, some accident, some illness is the probable consequence; to the affray abroad succeeds an affray at home ; the mis- chievous example reaches the children, cramps them or scatters them, and misery for life is the consequence." As Cobbett wrote against tea so was Borrow to write against the Pope. Being a reading and a writing man who had set down all his most substantial adventures in earlier books, Borrow, says Mr. Thomas Seccombe, had no choice but "to inter- pret autobiography as ' autobiographiction.'"* Parts of the autobiography, he says, are "as accurate and veracious as John Wesley's ' Journal,' but the way in which the dingle ingredients " [in the stories of Isopel Berners, the postillion, and the Man in Black] "are mingled, and the extent to which lies — damned lies — or facts predominate, will always be a fascinating topic for literary conjecture." It must not be forgotten, however, that Borrow never called the pub- lished book his autobiography. He did something like what I believe young writers often do ; he described events in his own life with modifications for the purpose of con- cealment in some cases and of embellishment in others. If he had never labelled it an autobiography there would have been no mystery, and the conclusion of readers would be that most of it could not have been invented, but that the postillion's story, for example, is a short story written to embody some facts and some opinions, without any appearance of being the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If Borrow made a set of letters to the Bible Society into a book like " Gil Bias," he could hardly do * " Lavengro.'' HIS PREDECESSORS 51 less — especially when he had been reminded of the fact — with his remoter adventures ; and having taken out dates and names of persons and places he felt free. He produced his view of himself, as De Quincey did in his " Confessions of an English Opium Eater." This view was modified by his public reputation, by his too potent memory and the need for selection, by his artistic sense, and by his literary training. So far from suffering by the two elements, if they are to be separated, of fiction and autobiography, "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" gain immensely. The autobiographical form — ^the use of the first person singular — is no mere device to attract an interest and belief as in "Captain Singleton" and a thousand novels. Again and again we are made perfectly certain that the man could not have written otherwise. He is sounding his own depths, and out of mere sh3niess, at times, uses the trans- parent amateur trick of pretending that he was writing of someone else. Years afterwards, when Mr. Watts-Dunton asked him, " What is the real nature of autobiography ? " he answered in questions : " Is it a mere record of the incidents of a man's life ? or is it a picture of the man himself — ^his character, his soul?" E 2 52 GEORGE BORROW CHAPTER VI THE biographer's MATERIAL "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" give Barrow's character and soul by direct and indirect means. Their truth and fiction produce a consistent picture which we feel to be true. Dr. Knapp has shown, where the facts are accessible, that Borrow does not much neglect, mislay or pervert them. But neither Dr. Knapp nor anyone else has capttired facts which would be of any significance had Borrow told us nothing himself. Some of the anecdotes lap a branch here and there ; some disclose a little rotten wood or fungus ; others show the might of a great limb, perhaps a knotty protuberance with a grotesque likeness, or the height of the whole; others again are like clumsy arrogant initials carved on the venerable bark. I' shall use some of them, but for the most part I shall use Borrow's own brush both to portray and to correct. PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST 53 CHAPTER VII PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST The five works of Sorrow's maturity — from "The Zincali : or the Gypsies of Spain," written when he had turned thirty, to " Wild Wales," written when he had turned fifty — ^have this in common, and perhaps for their chief quality, that of set purpose and by inevitable accident they reveal Borrow, the body eind the spirit of the man. Together they compose a portrait, if not a small gallery of portraits. Of these the most deliberate is the one that emerges from "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." In these books, written after he had passed forty, he described the first twenty-two years of his life, without, so far as is known, using any note-books or other contemporary documents. As I have said before, the literal accuracy of such a description must have been limited by his power and his willingness to see things as they were. In some ways there is no greater stranger to the youth of twenty than the man of forty who was once that youth, and if he over- comes that strangeness it is often by the perilous process of concealing the strangeness and the difference. The result is — or is it an individual misfortune of mine ? — that the figure of "Lavengro" seems to me, more often th^i not, and on the whole, to be nearer the age of forty than of twenty. The artist, that is to say, dominates his subject, the tall overgrown youth of twenty-two, as grey as a badger. It is very different in "The Bible in Spain," where artist and subject are equally matched, and both mature. In 54 GEORGE BORROW " Lavengro " there is a roundabout method, a painful poring subtlety and minuteness, a marvellous combination of Sterne and Defoe, resulting in something very little like any book written by either man : in " The Bible in Spain " a straightforward, confident, imquali&ed revelation that seems almost unconsidered. CHILDHOOD 55 CHAPTER VIII CHILDHOOD And now for some raw bones of the life of a man who was born in 1803 and died in 1881, bones picked white and dry by the winds of thirty, forty, fifty, and a hundred years. Thomas Borrow, his father, an eighth and youngest son, was born in 1758 of a yeoman family long and still settled in Cornwall, near Liskeard. He worked for some time on his brother's farm. At nineteen he joined the Militia and was apprenticed to a maltster, but, having knocked his master down in a free fight at Menheniot Fair in 1783, disappeared and enlisted as a private in the Coldstream Guards. He was then a man of fresh complexion and light brown hair, just under five feet eight inches in height. He was a sergeant when he was transferred nine years later to the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia. In 1798 he was promoted to the office of adjutant with the rank of captain. In 1793 he had married Ann Perfrement, a tenant farmer's daughter from East Dereham, and probably of French Protestant descent, whom he had first met when she was playing a minor part as an amateur at East Dereham with a company from the Theatre Royal at Norwich. She had, says Borrow, dark brilliant eyes, oval face, olive complexion, and Grecian forehead. The first child of this marriage, John Thomas, was bom in 1800. Borrow describes this elder brother as a beau- tiful child of " rosy, angelic face, blue eyes and light chestnut hair," yet of "not exactly an Anglo-Saxon countenance," having something of "the Celtic character, particularly in 56 GEORGE BORROW the fire and vivacity which illumined it." John was his father's favourite. He entered the army and became a lieutenant, but also, and especially after the end of the war, a painter, studying under B. R. Haydon and old Crome. He went out to Mexico in the service of a mining company in 1826, and died there in 1834. George Borrow was born in 1803 at another station of the regiment, East Dereham. He calls himself a gloomy child, a " lover of nooks and retired corners . . . sitting for hours together with tny head on my breast . . . con- scious of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I could assign nq real cause what- ever." A maidservant thought him a little wrong in the head, but a Jew pedlar rebuked her for saying so, and said the child had "all the look of one of our people's children," and praised his bright eyes. With the regiment he travelled along the Sussex and Kent coast during the next four years. They were at Pett in 1806, and there he tells us that he first handled a viper, fearless and un- harmed. In 1806 also they were at Hythe, where he saw the skulls of the Danes. They were at Canterbury in 1807, and near there was the scene of his eating the "green, red, and purple" berries from the hedge and suffering convulsions. They were, says Dr. Knapp, from the regimental records, never at Winchester, but at Win- chelsea. In 1809 and 18 10 they were back at Dereham, which was then the home of Eleanor Fenn, his "Lady Bountiful," widow of the editor of the "Paston Letters," Sir John Fenn. He had " increased rapidly in size and in strength," but not in mind, and could read only imperfectly xmtil " Robinson Crusoe " drew him out. He went to church twice on Sundays, and never heard God's name without a tremor, " for I now knew that God was an awful and inscrutable being, the maker of all things ; that we ^- CHILDHOOD 57 were His children, and that we, by our sins, had justly offended Him ; that we were in very great peril from His anger, not so much in this life as in another and far stranger state of being yet to come ; that we had a Saviour withal to whom it was necessary to look for help : upon this point, however, I was yet very much in the dark, as, indeed, were most of those with whom I was connected. The power and terrors of God were uppermost in my thoughts; they fascinated though they astounded me." Later in 1810 he was at Norman Cross, in Huntingdon- shire, and was free to wander alone by Whittlesea Mere. There he met the old viper-hunter and herbalist, into whose mouth he puts the tale of the King of the Vipers. There he met the Gypsies. He answered their threats with a viper that had lain hid in his breast; they called him " Sapengro, a chap who catches snakes and plays tricks with them." He was sworn brother to Jasper, the son, who despised him for being puny. The Borrows were at Dereham again in 181 1, and George went to school "for the acquisition of Latin," and learnt the whole of Lilly's Grammar by heart. Other marches of the regiment left him time to wonder at that " stupendous erection, the aqueduct at Stockport " — ^to visit Durham and " a capital old inn '' there, where he had '' a capital dinner off roast Durham beef, and a capital glass of ale, which I believe was the cause of my being ever after fond of ale " — so he told the Durham miner whom he met on his way to the Devil's Bridge, in Cardiganshire — and to attend school at Huddersfield in 18 12 and at Edinburgh in 18 13 and 18 14. He mentions thd frequent fights at the High School and the pitched battles between the Old and the New Town. Climbing the Castle Rock was his favourite diversion, and on one " horrible edge " he came upon David Haggart sitting and thinking of William Wallace : 58 GEORGE BORROW " And why were ye thinking of him ? " Borrow says that he asked the lad. "The English hanged him long since, as I have heard say." "I was thinking," he answered, "that I should wish to be like him." " Do ye mean," Borrow says that he said, " that ye would wish to be hanged ? " This youth was a drummer boy in Captain Sorrow's regiment. Borrow describes him upsetting the New Town champion in one of the bickers. Seven years later he was condemned to death at Edinburgh, and to earn a little money for his mother he dictated an account of his life to the prison chaplain before he died. It was published in 1 82 1 with the title: "The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alias John Morison, alias Barney M'Coul, alias John M'Colgan, alias David O'Brien, alias the Switcher. Written by himself, while under sentence of death." It is worth reading, notable in itself and for its style. He was a gamekeeper's son, and being a merry boy was liberally tipped by sportsmen. Yet he ran away from home at the age of ten. One of his first exploits was the stealing of a bantam cock. It belonged to a woman at the back of the New Town of Edinburgh, says he, and he took a great fancy to it, "for it was a real beauty and I offered to buy, but mistress would not sell, so I got another cock, and set the two a fighting, and then off with my prize." This is like Mr. W. B. Yeats' Paddy Cockfight in " Where there is nothing " ; he got a fighting cock from a man below Mullingar — "The first day I saw him I fastened my eyes on him, he preyed on my mind, and next night if I didn't go back every foot of nine miles to put him in my bag." When he was twelve he got drunk at the Leith races and enlisted in the Norfolk Mihtia, which had a recruiting party for patriots at the races. " I learned," he says, " to beat the drum very well in the course of three CHILDHOOD 59 months, and afterwards made considerable progress in blowing the bugle-horn. I liked the red coat and the soldiering well enough for a while, but soon tired. We were too much confined, and there was too little pay for me ; " and so he got his discharge. " The restraining influences of military discipline," says Dr. Knapp, " gradually wore away." He went back to school even, but in vain. He was " never happier in his life " than when he " fingered all this money" — ^;^200 acquired by theft. He worked at his trade of thieving in many parts of Scotland and Ireland. As early as 1818 he was sentenced to death, but escaped, and, being recognised by a policeman, killed him and got clear away. He served one or two sentences and escaped from another. He escaped a third time, with a friend, after hitting the gaoler in such a manner that he afterwards died. The friend was caught at once, but David ran well — "never did a fox double the hounds in better style" — and got away in woman's clothes. As he was resting in a haystack after his run of ten miles in an hour, he heard a woman ask "if that lad was taken that had broken out of Dumfries Gaol," and the answer : " No ; but the gaoler died last night at ten o'clock." He got arrested in Ireland through sheer carelessness, was recognised and taken in irons to Dumfries again — and so he died. In 1 8 14 and 18 15 Borrow was for a time at the Grammar School at Norwich, but sailed with the regiment "in the autumn of the year 1815" for Ireland. "On the eighth day of our voyage," he says, "we were in sight of Ireland. The weather was now calm and serene, the sun shone brightly on the sea and on certain green hills in the distance, on which I descried what at first sight I believed to be two ladies gathering flowers, which, however, on our near approach, proved to be two tall white towers, doubtless built for some purpose or other, though I did not learn for what." He was at "the Protestant Academy" at Clonmel, and 6o GEORGE BORROW " read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman." From a schoolfellow he learnt something of the Irish tongue in exchange for a pack of cards. School, he says, had helped him to cast aside, in a great degree, his unsocial habits and natural reserve, and when he moved to Templemore, where there was no school, he roamed about the wild country, "sometimes entering the cabins of the peasantry with a ' God's blessing upon you good people!'" Here, as in. Scotland, he seems to have done as he liked. His father had other things to do than look after the child whom he was later on to upbraid for growing up in a displeasing way. Ireland made a strong impression upon the boy, if we may judge from his writing about it when he looked back on those days. He recalls, in "Wild Wales," hearing the glorious tune of " Croppies lie Down" in the barrack yard at Clonmel. Again and again he recalls Murtagh, the wild Irish boy who taught him Irish for a pack of cards. In Ireland he learnt to be "a frank rider" without a saddle, and had awakened in him his " passion for the equine race " : and here he had his cob shoed by a "fairy smith" who first roused the animal to a frenzy by uttering a strange word "in a sharp pungent tone," and then calmed it by another word " in a voice singularly modified but sweet and almost plaintive." Above all there is a mystery which might easily be called Celtic about his memories of Ireland, due chiefly to something in his own blood, but also to the Irish atmosphere which evoked that something in its per- fection. After less than a year in Ireland the regiment was back at Norwich, and war being at an end, the men were mustered out in 1815. Pliiita: Jannld !•' Sum, Norwich BORROWS rOl'R'l, NORWICH SCHOOLDAYS 6i CHAPTER IX SCHOOLDAYS The Borrows now settled at Norwich in what was then King's Court and is now Borrow's Court, off Willow Lane. George Borrow, therefore, again attended the Grammar School of Norwich. He could then, he says, read Greek. His father's dissatisfaction was apparently due to some instinctive antipathy for the child, who had neither his hair nor his eyes, but was " absolutely swarthy, God fprgive me ! I had almost said like that of a G3^sy." As in Scotland and Ireland, so now at Norwich, Captain Borrow probably let the boy do what he liked. As for Mrs. Borrow, perhaps she favoured the boy, who took after her in eyes and com- plexion, if not also in temperament. Her influence was of an unconscious kind, strengthening her prenatal influence ; unlike her husband, she had no doubt that " Providence " would tcike care of the boy. Borrow, at least, thought her like himself. In a suppressed portion of the twentieth chapter of " Lavengo " he makes his parents talk together in the garden, and the mother having a story to tell suggests their going in because it is growing dark. The father says that a tale of terror is the better for being told in the dark, and hopes she is not afraid. The mother scoffs at the mention of fear, and yet, she says, she feels a thrill as if something were casting a cold shadow on her. She wonders if this feeling is like the indescribable fear, " which he calls the shadow," which sometime^ attacks her younger child. "Never mind the child or his shadow," says the father, and bids her go on. And from what follows the mother has evidently told the story before to her son. This 62 GEORGE BORROW dialogue may very well express the contrast between husband and wife and their attitudes towards their younger son. Borrow very eloquently addresses his father as "a noble specimen of those strong single-minded Englishmen, who, without making a parade either of religion or loyalty, feared God and honoured their king, and were not par- ticularly friendly to the French," and as a pugilist who almost vanquished the famous Ben Bryan ; but he does not conceal the fact that he was " so little to thee that thou understoodst me not." At Norwich Grammar School Borrow had as school- fellows James Martineau and James Brooke, afterwards Rajah of Sarawak. The headmaster was one Edward Valpy, who thrashed Borrow, and there is nothing more to be said. The boy was fond of study but not of school. "For want of something better to do," he taught himself some French and Italian, but wished he had a master. A master was found in a French emigre, the Rev. Thomas D'Eterville, who gave private lessons to Borrow, among others, in French, Italian and Spanish. His other teachers were an old musket with which he shot bullfinches, blackbirds and linnets, a fishing rod with which he haunted the Yare, and the sporting gent, John Thurtell, who taught him. to box and accustomed him to pugilism. Something is known of Thurtell apart from Borrow. He was the son of a man who was afterwards Mayor of Norwich. He had been a soldier and he was now in business. He arranged prize fights and boxed himself. He afterwards murdered a man who had dishonestly relieved him of £^400 at gambling, and he was executed for the offence at Hertford in 1824. The trial was cele- brated. It was there that a "respectable" man was defined by a witness as one who "kept a gig." The trial was included in the "Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence" which Borrow compiled SCHOOLDAYS 63 in 1825 ; and Borrow may have written this description of the accused : "Thurtell was dressed in a plum-coloured frock coat, with a drab waistcoat and gilt buttons, and white corded breeches. His neck had a black stock on, which fitted as usual stiffly up to the bottom of the cheek and end of the chin, and which therefore pushed forward the flesh on this part of the face so as to give an additionally sullen weight to the countenance. The lower part of the face was un- usually large, muscular and heavy, and appeared to hang like a load to the head, and to make it drop like the mastiff's jowl. The upper lip was long and large, and the mouth had a severe and dogged appearance. His nose was rather small for such a face, but it was not badly shaped; his eyes, too, were small and buried deep under his pro- truding forehead, so indeed as to defy detection of their colour. The forehead was extremely strong, bony and knotted — and the eye-brows were forcibly marked though irregular — that over the right eye being nearly straight and that on the left turning up to a point so as to give a very painful expression to the whole face. His hair was of a good lightish brown, and not worn after any fashion. His frame was exceedingly well knit and athletic." An eye witness reports that seven hours before his execution, Thurtell said : " It is perhaps wrong in my situation, but I own I should like to read Pierce Egan's account of the great fight yesterday " (meaning that between Spring and Langan). He slept well through his last night, and said : " I have dreamt many odd things, but I never dreamt anything about this business since I have been in Hertford." Pierce Egan described the trial and execution, and how Thurtell bowed in a friendly and dignified manner to someone — " we believe, Mr. Pierce Egan " — ^in the crowd about the gallows. Pierce Egan did not mention the sound of his cracking neck, but Borrow is reported to have said 64 GEORGE BORROW it was a shame to hang such a man as Thurtell : " Why, when his neck broke it went off Hke a pistol." Thurtell is the second of Sorrow's friends who preceded him in fame. During his school days under Valpy, Borrow met his sworn brother again — the Gypsy Petulengro. He places this meeting at the Tombland Fair at Norwich, and Dr. Knapp fixes it, precisely, on March ig, 1818. According to Sorrow's account, which is the only one, he was shadowed and then greeted by Jasper Petulengro. They went together to the Gypsy encampment on Household Heath, and they were together there often again, in spite of the hostility of one Gypsy, Mrs. Heme, to Borrow. He says that he went with them to fairs and markets and learnt their language in spite of Mrs. Heme, so that they called him Lav-engro, or Word Master. The mighty Tawno Chikno also called him Cooro-mengro, because of his mastery with the fist. He was then sixteen. He is said to have stained his face to darken it further, and to have been asked by Valpy : " Is that jaundice or only dirt. Borrow ? " LEAVING SCHOOL 65 CHAPTER X LEAVING SCHOOL With so much Hberty Borrow desired more. He played truant and, as we have seen, was thrashed for it. He was soon to leave school for good|, though there is nothing to prove that he left on account of this escapade, or that the thrashing produced the " symptoms of a rapid decline," with a failure of strength and appetite, which he speaks of in the eighteenth chapter of "Lavengro," after the Gypsies had gone away. He was almost given over by the physicians, he tells us, but cured by an "ancient female, a kind of doctress," with a decoction of "a bitter root which grows on commons and desolate places." An attack of " the dark feeling of mysterious dread " came with convalescence. But "never during any portion of my life did time flow on more speedily," he says, than during the nexF two or three years. After some hesitation between Church and Law, he was articled in 1819 to Messrs. Simpson and Rackham, solicitors, of Tuck's Court, St. Giles', Norwich, and he lived with Simpson in the Upper Close. As a friend said, the law was an excellent profession for those who never intend to follow it. As Borrow himself said, " I have ever loved to be as explicit as possible ; on which account, perhaps, I never attained to any proficiency in the law." Borrow sat faithfully at his desk and learned a good deal of Welsh, Danish, Hebrew, Arabic, Gaelic, and Armenian, making translations from these languages in prose and verse. In "Wild Wales" he recalls translating Danish poems " over the desk of his ancient master, the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia," and learning Welsh by reading F 66 GEORGE BORROW a Welsh "Paradise Lost" side by side with the oirginal, and by having lessons on Sunday afternoons at his father's, house from a groom named Lloyd. His chief master was William Taylor, the "Anglo-Ger- manist" of "Lavengro." Taylor was born in 1765. He studied in Germany as a youth and returned to England with a great enthusiasm for German literature. He trans- lated Goethe's "Iphigenia" (1793), Lessing's "Nathan" (1791), Wieland's "Dialogues of the Gods," etc. (1795); he published "Tales of Yore," translated from several languages, and a " Letter concerning the two first chapters of Luke," in i8io, "English Synonyms discriminated" in 181 3, and an "Historical Survey of German Poetry," inter- spersed with various translations, in 1823-30. He was bred among Unitarians, read Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau, disliked the Church, and welcomed the French Revolution, though he was no friend to " the cause of national ambition and aggrandisement." He belonged to a Revolution Society at Norwich, and in 1790 wrote from Paris calling the National Assembly "that well-head of philosophical legislation, whose pure streams are now overflowing the fairest country upon earth and will soon be sluiced off into the other realms of Europe, fertilising all with the living energy of its waters." In 1791 he and his father withdrew their capital from manufacture and William Taylor devoted himself to literature. Hazlitt speaks of the "style of philosophical criticism which has been the boast of the ' Edinburgh Review,' " as first introduced into the " Monthly Review" by Taylor in 1796. Scott said that Taylor's translation Qf Burger's "Lenore" made him a poet. Sir James Mackintosh learned the Taylorian language for the sake of the man's "vigour and originality" — "As the Hebrew is studied for one book, so is the Taylorian by me for one author." WILLIAM TAYLOR, OF NORWICH LEAVING SCHOOL 67 I will give a few hints at the nature of his speculation. In one of his letters he speaks of stumbling on "the new hypothesis that the Nebuchadnezzar of Scripture is the Cyrus of Greek History," and second, that "David, the Jew, a favourite of this prince, wrote all those oracles scattered in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel relative to his enterprises, for the particularisation of which they afford cunple materials." Writing of his analysis, in the " Critical Review," of Paulus' Commentary on the New Testament, he blames the editor for a suppression — "an attempt to prove, from the first and second chapter of Luke, that Zachaxias, who wrote these chapters, meant to hold himself out as the father of Jesus Christ as well as of John the Baptist. The Jewish idea of being conceived of the Holy Ghost did not exclude the idea of human parentage. The rabbinical commentator on Genesis explains this." He was called " Godless Billy Taylor," but says he : " When I publish my other pamphlet in proof of the great truth that Jesus Christ wrote the 'Wisdom' and translated the ' Ecclesiasticus ' from the Hebrew of his grandfather Hillel, you will be convinced (that I am convinced) that I and I alone am a precise and classical Christian ; the only man alive who thinks concerning the person and doctrines of Christ what he himself thought and taught." His " Letter concerning the two first chapters of Luke " has the further title, "Who was the father of Christ?" He calls "not absolutely indefensible" the opinion of the anonymous German author of the "Natural History of Jesus of Nazareth," that Joseph of Arimathsa was the father of Jesus Christ. He mentions that " a more recent anonymous theorist, with greater plausibility, imagines that the acolytes employed in the Temple of Jerusalem were" called by the names of angels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, accordingly as they were stationed behind, beside, or before, the mercy- seat ; and that the Gabriel of the Temple found means to F 2 68 GEORGE BORROW impose on the innocence of the virgin." "This," he says, " is in many ways compatible with Mary's having faithfully given the testimony put together by Luke." He gives at great length the arguments in favour of Zacharias as the father, and tells Josephus' story of Mundus and Paulina.* Norwich was then "a little Academe among provincial cities," as Mr. Seccombe calls it ; he continues : "Among the high lights of the illuminated capital of East Anglia were the Cromes, the Opies, John Sell Cotman, Elizabeth Fry, Dr. William Enfield (of Speaker fame), and Dr. Rigby, the father of Lady Eastlake ; but pre-eminent above all reigned the twin cliques of Taylors and Martineaus, who amalgamated at impressive intervals for purposes of mutual elevation and refinement. "The salon of Susannah Taylor, the mother of SaraJi Austin, the wife of John Taylor, hymn writer and deacon of the seminal chapel, the once noted Octagon, in Norwich, included in its zenith Sir James Mackintosh, Mrs. Barbauld, Crabb Robinson, the solemn Dr. John Alderson, AmeUa Opie, Henry Reeve of Edinburgh fame, Basil Montagu, the Sewards, the Quaker Gurneys of Earlham, and Dr. Frank Sayers, whom the German critics compared to Gray, who had handled the Norse mythology in poetry, to which Borrow was introduced by Sayer's private biographer, the eminent and aforesaid William Taylor" [no relation of thz "Taylors of Norwich"] "whose 'Jail-delivery of German Studies' the jealous Thomas Carlyle stigmatized in 1830 as the work of a natural-born English Philistine." Nevertheless, in spite of the Taylors and the Mar- tineaus, says William Taylor's biographer, Robberds : " The love of society almost necessarily produces the habit of indulging in the pleasures of the table ; and, though he cannot be charged with having carried this to an * Set " Panthera" in "Time's Laughing Stocks," by Thomas Hardy. LEAVING SCHOOL 69 immoderate excess, still the daily repetition of it had taxed too much the powers of nature and exhausted them before the usual period." Taylor died in 1836 and was remem- bered best for his drinking and for his bloated appearance. Harriet Martineau wrote of him in her autobiography : "William Taylor was managed by a regular process, first of feeding, then of wine-bibbing, and immediately after of poking to make him talk: and then came his sayings, devoured by the gentlemen and making ladies and children aghast; — defences of suicide, avowals that snuff alone had rescued him from it: information given as certain that ' God Save the King ' was sung by Jeremiah in the Temple of Solomon, — that Christ was watched on the day of His supposed ascension, and observed to hide Himself till dark, and then to make His way down the other side of the mountain; and other such plagiarisms from the German Rationalists. When William Taylor began with ' I firmly believe,' we knew that something particularly incredible was coming. . . . 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 watch- fulness 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, and getting her there with her shoes as clean as if she had crossed no gutters in those flint-paved streets, we could forgive any- thing that had shocked or disgusted us at the dinner table. But matters grew worse in his old age, when his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of the ladies, and he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who thought they could set the world right by their destructive tendencies. One of his chief favourites was George Borrow. . . ." Another of " the harum-scarum young men " taken up by 70 GEORGE BORROW Taylor and introduced "into the best society the place afforded," writes Harriet Martineau, was Polidori. Borrow was introduced to Taylor in 1 820 by " Mousha," the Jew who taught him Hebrew. Taylor " took a great interest" in him and taught him German. "What I tell Borrow once," he said, "he ever remembers." In 1821 Taylor wrote to Southey, who was an early friend : " 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." Borrow was at that time a " reserved and solitary " youth, tall, spare, dark complexioned and usually dressed in black, who used to be seen hanging about the Close and talking through the railings of his garden to some of the Grammar School boys. He was a noticeable youth, and he told his father that a lady had painted him and compared his face to that of Alfieri's Saul. Borrow pleased neither his master nor his father by his knowledge of languages, though it was largely acquired in the lawyer's office. " The lad is too independent by half," Borrow makes his father say, after painting a filial portrait of the old man, "with locks of silver gray which set off so nobly his fine bold but benevolent face, his faithful consort at his side, and his trusty dog at his feet." Nor did the youth please himself. He was languid again, tired even of the Welsh poet, Ab Gwilym. He was anxious about his father, who was low spirited over his elder son's absence in London as a painter, and over his younger son's mis- conduct and the " strange notions and doctrines " — especially 5^?^i=^i^^^E^^ Pkoir, : Jw iUJ-l'i.S l^UL'Kl, iNUlCVVlLH LEAVING SCHOOL 71 the doctrine that everyone has a right to dispose as he thinks best of that which is his own, even of his Hfe — ^which he had imbibed from Taylor. Taylor was " fond of getting hold of young men and, according to orthodox accounts, doing them a deal of harm."* His views, says Dr. Knapp, sank deep "into the organism of his pupil," and "would only be eradicated, if at all, through much suffering." Dr. Knapp thought that the execution of Thurtell ought to have produced a " favourable change in his mode of thinking" — as if prize fighting and murder were not far more common among Christians than atheists. But if Borrow had never met Taylor he would have met someone else, atheist or religious enthusiast, who would have lured him from the straight, smooth, flowery path of orthodoxy ; otherwise he might have been a clergyman or he might have been Dr. Knapp, but he would not have been George Borrow. " What is truth ? " he asked. " Would that I had never been born ! " he said to himself. And it was an open air ranter, not a clergyman or unobtrusive godly man, that made him exclaim : "Would that my life had been like his — even like that man's." Then the Gypsy reminded him of " the wind on the heath " and the boxing gloves. When his father asked Borrow what he proposed to do,t seeing that he was likely to do nothing at law, he had nothing to suggest. Southey apparently could not help him to the Foreign Ofiice. The only opening that can have seemed possible to him was literature. He might, for example, produce a volume of translations like the " Speci- men of Russian Poets" (1820) of John Bowring, whom he met at Taylor's. Bowring, a man of twenty-nine in 1821, was the head of a commercial firm and afterwards a friend of Borrow and the author of many translations from * J. Ewing Ritchie. + Dr. Knapp, I., 79, connects this question with Captain Borrow's last will and testament, made on Feb, 11, 1822. 72 GEORGE BORROW Russian, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Servian, Hungarian and Bohemian song. He was, as the " Old Radical " of " The Romany Rye," Borrow's victim in his lifetime, and after his death the victim of Dr. Knapp as the supposed false friend of his hero. The mud thrown at him had long since dried, and has now been brushed off in a satisfactory manner by Mr. R. A. J. Walling.* * "George Borrow: the Man and His Work," 1908. Q LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES 73 CHAPTER XI LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES When Borrow was in his nineteenth year — according to Dr. Knapp's estimate — -he told his father what he had done : "I have learned Welsh, and have translated the songs of Ab Gwilym, some ten thousand lines, into English rhyme. I have also learnt Danish, and have rendered the old book of Ballads intO' English metre. I have learned many other tongues, and have acquired some knowledge even of Hebrew and Arabic." He read and conversed with William Taylor ; he read alone in the Guildhall of Norwich, where the Corporation Library offered him the books from which he gained " his loiowledge of Anglo-Saxon and early English, Welsh or British, Northern or Scandinavian learning" — so writes Dr. Knapp, who has seen the "neat young pencilled notes" of Borrow in Edmund Lhuyd's ' Arch^ologia Britannica ' and the ' Danica Literatura Antiquissima ' of Olaus Wormius, etc. He tells us himself that he passed entire nights in reading an old Danish book, till he was almost blind. In 1823 Borrow began to publish his translations. Taylor introduced him to Thomas Campbell, then editor of the "New Monthly," and to Sir Richard Phillips, editor and proprietor of the "Monthly Magazine." Both editors printed Borrow's works. Sir Richard Phillips was particularly flattering : he used Borrow's article on "Danish Poetry and Ballad Writing" and about six hundred lines of translation from German, Danish, Swedish and Dutch poetry in the first year of the connection, usually with the signature, "George Olaus 74 GEORGE BORROW Borrow." I will quote only one specimen, his version of Goethe's "Erl King" ("Monthly Magazine," December, 1823): Who is it that gallops so late on the wild ! it is the father that carries his child ! He presses him close in his circling arm. To save him from cold, and to shield him from harm. " Dear baby, what makes ye your countenance hide ? " " Spur, father, your courser and rowel his side ; The Erl-King is chasing us over the heath ; " " Peace, baby, thou seest a vapoury wreath? " " Dear boy, come with me, and I'll join in your sport. And show ye the place where the fairies resort ; My mother, who dwells in the cool pleasant mine Shall clothe thee in garments so fair and so fine." " My father, my father, in mercy attend. And hear what is said by the whispering fiend." " Be quiet, be quiet, my dearly -loved child ; 'Tis naught but the wind as it stirs in the wild." " Dear baby, if thou wilt but venture with me, My daughter shall dandle thy form on her knee ; My daughter, who dwells where the moon-shadows play, Shall lull ye to sleep with the song of the fay." " My father, my father, and seest thou not His sorceress daughter in yonder dark spot ? " " I see something truly, thou dear little fool, — 1 see the great alders that hang by the pool." " Sweet baby, I doat on that beautiful form. And thou shalt ride with me the wings of the storm." " O father, my father, he grapples me now. And already has done me a mischief, I vow." The father was terrified, onward he press'd. And closer he cradled the child to his breast. And reach'd the far cottage, and, wild with alarm, He found that the baby hung dead on his arm ! The only criticism that need be passed on this is that any man of some intelligence and patience can hope to do as well : he seldom wrote any verse that was either much better or much worse. At the same time it must not be LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES 75 forgotten that the success of the translation is no measure of the impression made on the young Borrow by the legend. His translations from Ab Gwilym are not interesting either to lovers of that poet or to lovers of Borrow •- some are preserved in a sort of life in death in the pages of "Wild Wales." From the German he had also translated F. M. Von Klinger's " Faustus : his life, death and descent into hell."* The preface announces that "although scenes of vice and crime are here exhibited, it is merely in the hope that they may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and unwary from the shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked." He insisted, furthermore, that the book con- tained "the highly useful advice," that everyone should bear their lot in patience and not seek " at the expense of his repose to penetrate into those secrets which the spirit of man, while dressed in the garb of mortality cannot and must not unveil. ... To the mind of man all is dark ; he is an enigma to himself ; let him live, therefore, in the hope of once seeing clearly ; and happy indeed is he who in that manner, passeth his days." From the Danish of Johannes Evald, he translated "The Death of Balder," a play, into blank verse with consistently feminine endings, as in this speech of Thor to Baldert : How long dost think, degenerate son of Odin, Unmanly pining for a foolish maiden, And all the weary train of love-sick follies, Will move a bosom that is steel'd by virtue ? Thou dotest ! Dote and weep, in tears swim ever ; But by thy father's arm, by Odin's honour, * Translation published, Norwich, 1825, anonymous, f Translation published, London, Jarrold & Sons, 1889. 76 GEORGE BORROW Haste, hide thy tears and thee in shades of alder ! Haste to the still, the peace-accustom'd valley, Where lazy herdsmen dance amid the clover. There wet each leaf which soft the west wind kisses. Each plant which breathes around voluptuous odours. With tears I There sigh and moan, and the tired peasant Shall hear thee, and, behind his ploughshare resting, Shall wonder at thy grief, and pity Balder ! There are lyrics interspersed. The following is sung by three Valkyries marching round the cauldron before Rota dips the fatal spear that she is to present to Hother : In juice of rue And trefoil too ; In marrow of bear And blood of Trold, Be cool'd the spear, Threetimes cool'd. When hot from blazes Which Nastroud raises For Valhall's May. 1st Valk. Whom it woundeth, It shall slay. 2nd Whom it woundeth. It shall slay. 3rd Whom it woundeth. It shall slay. In 1 826 he was to publish " Romantic Ballads,'' translated from the Gaehc, Danish, Norse, Swedish, and German, with eight original pieces. He "hoped shortly" to publish a complete translation of the " Kjaempe Viser " and of Gaelic songs, made by him "some years ago." Few of these are valuable or interesting, but I must quote " Svend Vonved " because Borrow himself so often refers to it. The legend haunted him of " that strange melancholy Swayne Vonved, who roams about the world propounding people riddles ; slaying those who cannot answer, and rewarding those who LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES 77 can with golden bracelets." When he was walking alone in wild weather in Cornwall he roared it aloud : Svend Vonved sits in his lonely bower ; He strikes his harp with a hand of power ; His harp returned a responsive din ; Then came his mother hurrying in : Look out, look out, Svend Vonved. In came his mother Adeline, And who was she, but a queen so fine : " Now hark, Svend Vonved ! out must thou ride And wage stout battle with knights of pride." Look out, look out, Svend Vonved. " Avenge thy father's untimely end ; To me, or another, thy gold harp lend ; This moment boune thee, and straight begone ! I rede thee, do it, my own dear son." Look out, look out, Svend Vonved. Svend Vonved binds his sword to his side ; He fain will battle with knights of pride. " When may I look for thee once more here ? When roast the heifer and spice the beer? " Look out, look out, Svend Vonved. " When stones shall take, of themselves, a flight And ravens' feathers are waxen white, Then may'st thou expect Svend Vonved home : In all my days, I will never come." Look out, look out, Svend Vonved. If we did not know that Borrow used these verses as a kind of incantation we should be sorry to have read them. But one of the original pieces in this book is as good in itself as it is interesting. I mean " Lines to Six-foot-three " : A lad, who twenty tongues can talk. And sixty miles a day can walk ; Drink at a draught a pint of rum. And then be neither sick nor dumb ; Can tune a spng, and make a verse. And deeds of northern kings rehearse ; Who never will forsake his friend. While he his bony fist can bend ; And, though averse to brawl and strife. Will fight a Dutchman with a knife. O that is just the lad for me. And such is honest six-foot three. 78 GEORGE BORROW A braver being ne'er had birth Since God first kneaded man from earth ; O, I have come to know him well, As Ferroe's blacken'd rocks can tell. Who was it did, at Suderoe, The deed no other dared to do ? Who was it, when the Boff had burst, And whelm'd me in its womb accurst, Who was it dashed amid the wave. With frantic zeal, my life to save ? Who was it flung the rope to me ? O, who, but honest six-foot three ! Who was it taught my willing tongue, The songs that Braga fram'd and sung p Who was it op'd to me the store Of dark unearthly Runic lore, And taught me to beguile my time With Denmark's aged and witching rhyme ; To rest in thought in Elvir shades, And hear the song of fairy maids ; Or climb the top of Dovrefeld, Where magic knights their muster held ! Who was it did aU this for me? O, who, but honest six-foot three ! Wherever fate shall bid me roam, Far, far from social joy and home ; 'Mid burning Afric's desert sands ; Or wild Kamschatka's frozen lands ; Bit by the poison-loaded breeze Or blasts which clog with ice the seas ; In lowly cot or lordly hall, In beggar's rags or robes of pall, 'Mong robber-bands or honest men, In crowded town or forest den, I never will unmindful be Of what I owe to six-foot three. That form which moves with giant grace- That wild, tho' not unhandsome face ; That voice which sometimes in its tone Is softer than the wood-dove's moan. At others, louder than the storm Which beats the side of old Cairn Gorm ; That hand, as white as falling snow, Which yet can fell the stoutest foe ; And, last of all, that noble heart. Which ne'er from honour's path would start, Shall never be forgot by me — So farewell, honest six-foot three. LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES 79 This is already pure Borrow, with a vigour excusing if not quite transmuting its rant. He creates a sort of hero in his own image, and it should be read as an introduction and invocation to "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." It is one of the few contemporary records of Borrow at about the age when he wrote "Celebrated Trials," made horse-shoes and fought the Blazing Tinman. So far as I know, it was more than ten years before he wrote anything so good again, and he never wrote anything better in verse, unless it is the song of the "genuine old English gentleman," in the twenty-fourth chapter of " Lavengro " : " Give me the haunch of a buck to eat, and to drink Madeira old. And a gentle wife to rest wJth, and in my arms to fold, An Arabic book to study, a Norfolk cob to ride, And a house to live in shaded with trees, and near to a river side ; With such good things around me, and blessed with good health withal, Though I should live for a hundred years, for death I would not call." The only other verse of his which can be remembered for any good reason is this song from the Romany, included among the translations from thirty languages and dialects which he published, in 1835, with the title of "Targum," and the appropriate motto ; " The raven has ascended to the nest of the nightingale." The Gypsy verses are as follows : The strength of the ox. The wit of the fox, And the leveret's speed,— Full oft to oppose To their numerous foes. The Rommany need. Our horses they take. Our waggons they break, And ourselves they seize. In their prisons to coop, Where we pine and droop. For want of breeze. 8o GEORGE BORROW When the dead swallow The fly shall follow O'er Burra-panee, Then we will forget The wrongs we have met And forgiving be. It will not be necessary to say anything more about Sorrow's verses. Poetry for him was above all declamatory sentiment or wild narrative, and so he never wrote, and perhaps never cared much for poetry, except ballads and his contemporary Byron. He desired, as he said in the note to "Romantic Ballads," not the merely harmonious but the grand, and he condemned the modern muse for " the violent desire to be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness and unmeaningness." He once said of Keats : " They are attempting to resuscitate him, I believe." He regarded Wordsworth as a soporific merely. LONDON 8 I CHAPTER XII LONDON Early in 1824, and just before George Borrow's articles with the solicitors expired. Captain Borrow died. He left all that he had to his widow, with something for the maintenance and education of the younger son during his minority. Borrow had already plarmed to go to London, to write, to abuse religion and to get himself prosecuted. A month later, the day after the expiration of his articles, before he had quite reached his majority, he went up to London. He was "cast upon the world" in no very hopeful condition. He had lately been laid up again — ^was it by the " fear " or something else ? — ^by a complaint which destroyed his strength, impaired his understanding and threatened his life, as he wrote to a, friend : he was taking mercury for a cure. But he had his translations from Ab Gwilym and his romantic ballads, and he believed in them. He took' them to Sir Richard Phillips, who did not believe in them, and had moreover given up publishing. According to his own account, which is very well known (Lavengro, chapter XXX.), Sir Richard suggested that he should write something in the style of the "Dairyman's Daughter" instead. Men of this generation, fortunate at least in this ignorance, probably think of the " Dairyman's Daughter " as a fictitious title, like the " Oxford Review " (which stood for "The Universal Review") and the "Newgate Lives" (which should have been "Celebrated Trials," etc.). But such a book really was published in 181 1. It was an " authentic narrative " by a clergyman of the Church of G 82 GEORGE BORROW England named Legh Richmond, who thought it " dehghtful to trace and discover the operations of Divine love among the poorer classes of mankind." The book was ab&ut the conversion and holy life and early death of a pale, delicate, consumptive dairyman's daughter in the Isle of Wight. It became famous, was translated into many languages, and was reprinted by some misguided or malevolent man not long ago. I will give a specimen of the book which the writer of " Six-foot-three " was asked to imitate -. "Travellers, as they pass through the coimtry, usually stop to inquire whose are the splendid mansions which they discover among the woods and plains around them. The families, titles, fortune, or character of the respective Owners, engage much attention. ... In the meantime, the lowly cottage of the poor husbandman is passed by as scarcely deserving of notice. Yet, perchance, such a cottage may often contain a treasure of infinitely more value than the sumptuous palace of the rich man ; even " the pearl of great price." If this be set in the heart of the poor cottager, it proves a jewel of unspeakable value, and will shine among the brightest ornaments of the Redeemer's crown, in that day when he maketh up his "jewels." "Hence, the Christian traveller, while he bestows, in common with others, his due share of applause on the decorations of the rich, and is not insensible to the beauties and magnificence which are the lawfully allowed appen- dages of rank and fortune, cannot overlook the humbler dwelling of the poor. And if he should find that true piety and grace beneath the thatched roof, which he has in vain looked for amidst the worldly grandeur of the rich, he remembers the word of God. . . . He sees, with admiration, that 'the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, who dwelleth in the high and holy place, dwelleth with him also that is of a contrite and Pluilo: Eimry ll\,ll;t}- SIK RICHARD PHILLIPS (From the painlDig by James Saxon in The National Portrait Gallery) LONDON 82 humble spirit,' Isaiah Ivii., 15 ; and although heaven is his throne, and the earth his footstool, yet when a home is to be built, and a place of rest to be sought for himself, he says, ' To this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word,' Isaiah Ixvi., i, 2. When a home is thus tenanted, faith beholds this inscription written on the walls, T/ie Lord lives here. Faith, therefore, cannot pass it by unnoticed, but loves to lift up the latch of the door, and sit down, and converse with the poor, though perhaps despised, inhabitant. Many a sweet interview does faith obtain when she thus takes her walks abroad. Many such a sweet interview have I myself enjoyed beneath the roof where dwelt the Dairy- man and his little family. " I soon perceived that his daughter's health was rapidly on the decline. The pale, wasting consumption, which is the Lord's instrument for removing so many thousands every year from the land of the living, made hasty strides on her constitution. The hollow eye, the distressing cough, and the often too flattering red on the cheek, foretold the approach of death. " I have often thought what a field for usefulness and affectionate attention, on the part of ministers and Christian friends, is opened by the frequent attacks and lingering progress of consumptive illness. How many such precious opportunities are daily lost, where Providence seems in so marked a way to afford time and space for serious and Godly instruction! Of how many may it be said: 'The way of peace have they not known ' ; for not one friend ever came nigh to warn them to 'flee from the wrath to come.' "But the Dairyman's Daughter was happily made acquainted with the things which belonged to her ever- lasting peace before the present disease had taken root in her constitution. In my visits to her I might be said rather G 2 84 GEORGE BORROW to receive information than to impart it. Her mind was abundantly stored with Divine truths, and her conversations truly edifying. The recollection of it still produces a thankful sensation in my heart." Nevertheless, when Borrow had bought a copy of this book he was willing to do what was asked, and to attempt also to translate into German Phillips' " Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe," or what the translator called "his tale of an apple and a pear." But Phillips changed his mind about the "Dairyman's Daughter" and commissioned a compilation of "Newgate Lives and Trials" instead. Borrow failed with the trans- lation of the "Proximate Causes" but liked very well the compiling of the " Celebrated Trials " — of Joan of Arc, Cagliostro, Mary Queen of Scots, Raleigh, the Gunpowder Plotters, Queen Caroline, Thurtell, the Cato Street Con- spirators, and many more — ^in six volumes. He alsq wrote reviews for Phillips' Magazine, and contributed more translations of poetry and many scraps of "Danish Tradi- tions and Superstitions," like the following : "At East Hessing, in the district of Calling, there was once a rural wedding ; and when the morning was near at hand, the guests rushed out of the house with much noise and tumult. When they were putting their horses to the carts, in order to leave the place, each of them boasted and bragged of his bridal present. But when the uproar was at the highest, and they were all speaking together, a maiden dressed in green, and with a bulrush plaited over her head, came from a neighboitring morass, and going up to the fellow who was noisiest and bragged most of his bridal gift, she said, 'What will you give to Lady Bee?' The boor, who was half intoxicated from the brandy and ale he had swallowed, seized a whip, and answered, ' Three strokes of my waggon-whip.' But at the same moment he fell a corpse to the ground." LONDON 85 If translation like this is journeyman's work for the journeyman, for Borrow it was of great value because it familiarised him with the marvellous and the supernatural and so helped him towards the expression of his own material and spiritual adventures. The wild and often other-worldly air of much of his work is doubtless due to his wild and other-worldly mind, but owes a considerable if uncertain debt to his reading of ballads and legends, which give a little to the substance of his work and far more to the tone of it. Among other things translated at this time he mentiona the " Saga of Burnt Njal." He was not happy in London. He had few friends there, and perhaps those he had only disturbed without sweetening his solitude. One of these was a Norwich friend, named Roger Kerrison, who shared lodgings with him at 16, Millman Street, Bedford Row. Borrow confided in Kerrison, and had written to him before leaving Norwich in terms of perhaps unconsciously worked-up affection. But Sorrow's low spirits in London were more than Kerrison could stand. When Borrow was proposing a short visit to Norwich his friend wrote to John Thomas Borrow, suggesting that he should keep his brother there for a time, or else return with him, for this reason. Borrow had " repeatedly " threatened suicide, and unable to endure his fits of desperation Kerrison had gone into separate lodgings : if his friend were to return in this state and find himself alone he would "again make some attempt to destroy himself." Nothing was done, so far as is known, and he did not commit suicide. It is a curious commentary on the work of hack writers that this youth should have written as a note to his translation of "The Suicide's Grave,"* that it was not translated for its sentiments but for its poetry ; " although the path of human life is rough * " Romantic Ballads." 86 GEORGE BORROW and thorny, the mind may always receive consolation by looking forward to the world to come. The mind which rejects a future state has to thank itself for its utter misery and hopelessness." His malady was youth, aggravated, the food reformer would say, by eating fourteen penny- worth of bread and cheese at a meal, and certainly aggravated by literary ambition. Judging from the thirty-first chapter of "Lavengro," he was exceptionally sensitive at this time to all impressions — probably both pleasant and unpleasant. He describes himself on his first day gazing at the dome of St. Paul's until his brain became dizzy, and he thought the dome would fall and crush him, and he shrank within himself, and struck yel deeper into the heart of the big city. He stood on London Bridge dazed by the mighty motion of the waters and the multitude of men and " horses as large as elephants. There I stood, just above the principal arch, looking through the balustrade at the scene that presented itself — and such a scene! Towards the left bank of the river, a forest of masts, thick and close, as far as the eye could reach; spacious wharfs, surmounted with gigantic edifices; and, far away, Caesar's Castle, with its White Tower. To the right, another forest of masts, and a maze of buildings, from which, here and there, shot up to the sky chimneys taller than Cleopatra's Needle, vomiting forth huge wreaths of that black smoke which forms the canopy — occasionally a gorgeous one — of the more than Babel city. Stretching before me, the troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately below, the main whirlpool of the Thames — the Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch — a grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of horror, fascinated me. Who knows but I should have leapt into its depths? — I have heard of such things — but for a rather startling occurrence which broke the spell. As I stood upon the bridge, gazing into the jaws of the LONDON 87 pool, a small boat shot suddenly through the arch beneath my feet. There were three persons in it; an oarsman in the middle, whilst a man and woman sat at the stem. I shall never forget the thrill of horror which went through me at this sudden apparition. What! — a boat — a small boat — ^passing beneath that arch into yonder roaring gulf! Yes, yes, down through that awful water-way, with more than the swiftness of an arrow, shot the boat, or skiff, right into the jaws of the pool. A monstrous breaker curls over the prow — there is no hope ; the boat is swamped, and all drowned in that strangling vortex. No! the boat, which appeared to have the buoyancy of a feather, skipped over the threatening horror, and the next moment was out of danger, the boatman — a true boatman of Cockaigne, that — elevating one of his skulls in sign of triumph, the man hallooing, and the woman, a true Englishwoman that — of a certain class — ^waving her shawl. Whether any one ob- served them save myself, or whether the feat was a common one, I know not ; but nobody appeared to take any notice of them. As for myself, I was so excited, that I strove to clamber up the balustrade of the bridge, in order to obtain a better view of the daring adventurers. Before I could accomplish my design, however, I felt myself seized by the body, and, tturning my head, perceived the old fruit-woman, who was clinging to me." On this very day, in his axx:ount, he first met the "fiery, enthusiastic and open-hearted," pleasure-loving young Irishman, whom he calls Francis Ardry, who took him to the theatre and to " the strange and eccentric places of London," and no doubt helped to give him the feeling of " a regular Arabian Nights' entertainment." C. G. Leland* tells a story told to him by one who might have been the original of Ardry. The story is the only independent * " The Gypsies." 88 GEORGE BORROW evidencci of Borrow's London life. This " old gentleman " had been in youth for a long time the most intimate friend of George Borrow, who was, he said, a very wild and eccentric youth. "One night, when skylarking about London, Borrow was pursued by the police, as he wished to be, even as Panurge so planned as to be chased by the night-watch. He was very tall and strong in those days, a trained shoulder-hitter, and could run like a deer. He was hunted to the Thames, and there they thought they had him. But the Romany Rye made for the edge, and leaping into the wan water, like the Squyre in the old ballad, swam to the other side, and escaped." It is no wonder he "did not like reviewing at all," especially as he "never could understand why reviews were instituted ; works of merit do not require to be reviewed, they can speak for themselves, and require no praising ; works of no merit at all will die of themselves, they require no. killing." He forgot "The Dairyman's Daughter," and he could not foresee the early fate of "Lavengro" itself. He preferred manlier crime and riskier deception to reviewing. As he read over the tales of rogues, he says, he became again what he had been as a boy, a necessitarian, and could not " imagine how, taking all circumstances into consideration, these highwaymen, these pickpockets, should have been anything else than highwaymen and pickpockets." These were the days of such books as "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Samuel Denmore Hayward, denominated the Modern Macheath, who suffered at the Old Bailey, on Tuesday, November 27, 1821, for the Crime of Burglary," by Pierce Egan, embellished with a highly-finished miniature by Mr. Smart, etched by T. R. Cruikshank ; and a facsimile of his hand-writing. London, 1822." It is a poor book, and now has descendants lower in the LONDON 89 social scale. It pretends to give " a most awful but useful lesson to the rising generation" by an account of the criminal whose appearance as a boy "was so superior to other boys of his class in life as to have the look of a gentleman's child." He naturally became a waiter, and "though the situation did not exactly accord with his ambition, it answered his purpose, because it afforded him an opportunity of studying character, and being in the company of gentlemen." He was " a generous high-minded fellow towards the ladies," and became the fancy man of someone else's mistress, living " in the style of a gentleman solely at the expense of the beautiful Miss ." His "unembarrassed and gentlemanly" behaviour survived even while he was being searched, and he entered the chapel before execution "with a firm step, accompanied with the most gentlemanly deportment." The end came nevertheless : " Bowing to the sheriffs and the few persons around him with all the manners of an accomplished gen- tleman, he ascended the drop with a firmness that astonished everyone present; and resigned his eventful life without scarce a struggle." The moral was the obvious one. "His talents were his misfortunes." The biographer pretends to believe that, though the fellow lived in luxury, he must always have had a harassed mind ; the truth being that he himself would have had a harassed mind if he had played so distinguished a part. " The chequered life of that young man," he says, " abounding with incidents and facts almost incredible, and scarcely ever before practised with so much art and delusion in so short a period, impressively points out the danger arising from the possession of great talents when perverted or misaf plied." He points out, furthermore, how vice sinks before virtue. "For instance, view the coimtenances of thieves, who are regaling themselves on the most expensive liquors, laughing 90 GEORGE BORROW and singing, how they are changed in an instant by the appearance of poHce officers entering a room in search of them. . . ." Finally, "let the youth of London bear in mind that honesty is the best policy. . . . "In this happy coimtry, where every individual has an opportunity of raising himself to the highest office in the State, what might the abilities of the unfortunate Hayward have accomplished for him if he had not deviated from the paths of virtue ? There is no place like London in the world where a man of taJents meets with so much encouragement and liberality; his society is courted, and his presence gives a weight to any company in which he appears ; if supported by a good character." But the crime was the thing. Of a different class was John Hamilton Reynolds' "The Fancy." This book, pub- lished in 1820, would have wholly delighted Borrow. I will quote the footnote to the "Lines to Philip Samson, the Brummagem Youth": " Of all the great men of this age, in poetry, philosophy, or pugilism, there is no one of such transcendent talent as Randall ; —no one who combines the finest natural powers with the most elegant and finished acquired ones. The late Professor Stewart (who has left the learned ring) is acknowledged to be clever in philosophy, but he is a left- handed metaphysical fighter at best, and cannot be relied upon at closing with his subject. Lord Byron is a powerful poet, with a mind weighing fourteen stone; but he is too sombre and bitter, and is apt to lose his temper. Randall has no defect, or at best he has not yet betrayed the appearance of one. His figure is remarkable, when peeled, for its statue-like beauty, and nothing can equal the alacrity with which he uses' either hand, or the coolness with which he receives. His goodness on his legs, Boxiana (a Lord Eldon in the skill and caution of his judgments) assures us. LONDON 91 is unequalled. He doubles up an opponent, as a friend lately declared, as easily as though he were picking a flower or pinching a girl's cheek. He is about to fight Jos. Hudson, who challenged him lately at the Royal Tennis Court. Randall declared, that 'though he had declined fighting, he would accommodate Joshua ' ; a kind and benevolent reply, which does equal honour to his head and heart. The editor of this little voltime, like Goldfinch in the ' Road to Ruin,' ' would not stay away for a thousand pounds.' He has already looked about for a tall horse and a taxed cart, and he has some hopes of compassing a drab coat and a white hat, for he has no wish to appear singular at such scenes." Reynolds, like Borrow, was an admirer of Byron, and he anticipated Borrow in the spirit of his remark to John Murray that the author's trade was contemptible compared with the jockey's. At that moment it was unquestionably so. Soon even reviewing failed. The " Universal Review " died at the beginning of 1825, and Borrow seems to have quarrelled with Phillips because some Germans had found the German of his translation as unintelligible as he had found the publisher's English. He had nothing left but his physical strength, his translations, and a very little money. When he had come down to half-a-crown, he says, he thought of accepting a patriotic Armenian's! invita- tion to translate an Armenian work into English ; only the Armenian went away. 92 GEORGE BORROW CHAPTER XIII "JOSEPH SELL" Then, on a fair day on Blackheath, he met Mr. Petulengro again who said he looked ill and offered him the loan of £^0, which he would not accept, nor his invitation to join the band. Dr. Knapp confidently gives the date of May 12 to this incident because that is the day of the annual fair. Then seeing an advertisement : " A Novel of Tale is much wanted," outside a bookseller's shop, Borrow wrote "The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller." Did he ? Dr. Knapp thinks he did, but that the story had another name, and is to be sought for in such collections of 1825 and 1826 as "Watt's Literary Souvenir." As Borrow speaks of the materials of it having come from his own brain, and as Dr. Knapp says he could not invent, why not conclude that it was autobiographical ? There is no evidence except that the account sounds true, and might very well be true. Dr. Knapp thinks that he wrote this book, and that he did many other things which he said he did, because wherever there is any evidence it corroborates Borrow's statements except in small matters of names and dates. In the earlier version of " Lavengro," represented by a manuscript and a proof, "Ardry" is "Arden," "Jasper" is "Ambrose," and the question "What is his name?" is answered by "Thurtell," instead of a blank. Now there was an Ambrose Smith whom Borrow knew, and Thurtell was such a man as he describes in search of a place for the fight. Therefore, Dr. Knapp would be inclined to say that "JOSEPH SELL" 93 Borrow did know a young man named Ard'en. And, furthermore, as Isopel is called Elizabeth in that earlier version, Isopel did exist, but her name was Elizabeth : she was, says Mr. Watts-Dunton, "really an East Angliaa road girl " (not a Gypsy) " of the finest type, known to the Boswells and remembered not many years ago." And speaking of Isopel — there is a story still to be heard at Long Melford of a girl "who lived on the green and ran away with the Gypsy," in about the year 1825. With this may possibly be connected another story: (^ a yoimg painter of dogs and horses who was living at Melford in 1805 and seduced either one or two sisters of the warden of the hospital or almshouse, and had two illegitimate children, one at any rate a girl. The Great House was one used, but not built, for a workhouse : it stood near the vicarage at Melford, but has now disappeared, and apparently its records with it. Borrow did not invent, says Knapp, which is absurd. Some of his reappearances, recognitions and coincidences must be inventions. The postillion's tale must be largely invention. But it is not fair or necessary to retort as Hindes Groome did ; " Is the Man in Black then also a reality, and the Reverend Mr. Platitude? In other words, did Tractarianism exist in 1825, eight years before it was engendered by Keble's sermon?" For Borrow was unscrupulous or careless about time and place. But it is fair and necessary to say, as Hindes Groome did, that some of the unverities in " Lavengro " and " The Romany Rye " are "probably due to forgetfulness," the rest to "love of posing, but much more to an honest desire to produce an amusing and interesting book."* Borrow was a great admirer of the " Memoirs "t of Vidocq, " principal agent of the French police till 1837 — now proprietor of the paper * " The Romany Rye," edited by F. Hindes Groome. t Translated, 1828. 94 GEORGE BORROW manufactory at St. Mande," and formerly showman, soldier, galley slave, and highwayman. Of this book the editor says: "It is not our province or intention to enter into a, discussion of the veracity of Vidocq's " Memoirs " : be they true or false, were they purely fiction from the first chapter to the last, they would, from fertility of invention, know- ledge of human nature, and easy style, rank only second to the novels of Le Sage." It was certainly with books such as this in his mind that Borrow composed his autobiography, but it goes so much deeper that it is at every point a revelation, usually of actual events and emotions, always of thought and taste. In these "Memoirs" of Vidocq there is a man named Christian, or Caron, with a reputation for removing charms cast on animals, and he takes Vidocq to his Gypsy friends at Malines : " Having traversed the city, we stopped in the Faubourg de Louvain, before a wretched looking house with blackened walls, furrowed with wide crevices, and many bundles of straw as substitutes for window glasses. It was midnight, and I had time to make my observations by the moonlight, for more than half an hour elapsed before the door was opened by one of the most hideous old hags I ever saw in my life. We were then introduced to a long room where thirty persons of both sexes were indis- criminately smoking and drinking, mingling in strange and licentious positions. Under their blue loose frocks, orna- mented with red embroidery, the men wore blue velvet waistcoats with silver buttons, like the Andalusian muleteers ; the clothing of the women was all of one bright colour; there were some ferocious countenances amongst them, but yet they were all feasting. The monotonous sound of a drum, mingled with the howling of two dogs tied under the table, accompanied the strange songs, which "JOSEPH SELL" 95 I mistook for a funeral psalm. The smoke of tobacco and wood which filled this den, scarcely allowed me' to perceive in the midst of the room a woman, who, adorned with a scarlet turban, was performing a wild dance with the most wanton postures." Dr. Knapp, on insufficient evidence, attributes the trans- lation to Borrow. But certainly Borrow might have incor- porated this passage in his own work almost word for word without justifying a charge either of plagiarism or untruth. Other men had written fiction as if it were autobiography ; he was writing autobiography as if it were fiction ; he used his own Hfe as a subject for fiction. Ford crudely said that Borrow " coloured up and poetised " his adventures. 96 GEORGE BORROW CHAPTER XIV OUT OF LONDON If Borrow is taken literally, he was at Blackheath on May 12, 1825, sold his "Life of Joseph Sell" on the 20th, and left London on the 22nd. "For some months past I had been far from well, and my original indisposition, brought on partly by the peculiajr atmosphere of the Big City, partly by anxiety of mind, had been much increased by the exertions which I had been compelled to make during the last few days. I felt that, were I to remain where I was, I should die, or become a confirmed vale- tudinarian. I would go forth into the country, travelling on foot, and, by exercise and inhaling pure air, endeavour to recover my health, leaving my subsequent movements to be determined by Providence." He says definitely in the appendix to "The Romany Rye," that he fled from London and hack-authorship for " fear of a consumption." Walking on an unknown road out of London the "poor thin lad" felt tired at the ninth milestone, and thought of putting up at an inn for the night, but instead took the coach to , i.e., Amesbury. The remaining ninety chapters of " Lavengro " and " The Romany Rye" are filled by the story of the next four months of Sorrow's life and by stories told to him during that period. The preceding fifty-seven chapters had sufficed for twenty-two years. " The novelty " of the new itinerant life, says Mr. Thomas Seccombe,* "graved every * " Isopel Berners." OUT OF LONDON 97 incident in the most vivid possible manner upon the writer's recollection." After walking for four days north- west from Salisbury he met an author, a rich man who was continually touching things to avert the evil chance, and with him he stayed the night. On the next day he bought a pony and cart from the tinker. Jack Slingsby, with the purpose of working on the tinker's beat and making horse- shoes. After some days he was visited down in a Shrop- shire dingle by a Gypsy girl, who poisoned him at the instigation of his enemy, old Mrs. Heme. Only the acci- dental appearance of the Welsh preacher, Peter Williams, saved him. Years afterwards, in 1854, it may be men- tioned here, he told a friend in Cornwall that his fits of melancholy were due to the poison of a Gypsy crone. He spent a week in the company of the preacher and his wife, and was about to cross the Welsh border with them when Jasper Petulengro reappeared, and he turned back. Jasper told him that Mrs. Heme had hanged herself out of dis- appointment at his escape from her poison. This made it a point of honour for Jasper to fight Borrow, whose bloody face satisfied him in half an hour -.^ he even offered Borrow his sister Ursula for a wife. Borrow refused, and settled alone in Mumper's Dingle, which was perhaps Mumber Lane, five miles from Willenhall in Staffordshire.* Here he fought the Flaming Tinman, who had driven Slingsby out of his beat. The Tinman brought with him his wife and Isopel Bemers, the tall fair-haired girl who struck Borrow first with her beauty and then with her right arm. Isopel stayed with Borrow after the defeat of the Tinman, and their companionship in the dingle fills a very large part of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," with interruptions and diversions from the Man in Black, the gin-drinking priest, who was then at work undermining the Protestantism * Knapp, I., 105. H 98 GEORGE BORROW of old England. Isopel stood by him when suffering from "indescribable horror," and recommended "ale, and let it be strong." Borrow makes her evidently inclined to marry him ; for example, when she says that if she goes to America she will go alone "'unless — unless that should happen which is not likely," and when he says " . . . If I had the power I would make you queen of something better than the dingle — Queen of China. Come, let us have tea," and "'Something less would content me,' said Belle, sighing, as she rose to prepare our evening meal " — and when at the postillion's suggestion of a love affair, she buries her face in her hands. "She would sigh, too," he says, "as I recounted the many slights and degradations I had received at the hands of ferocious publishers." In one place Borrow says : " I am, of course, nothing to her, but she is mistaken in thinking she is nothing to me." Borrow represents himself as tyrannically imposing himself upon the girl as teacher of Armenian, enlivening the instruction with the one mild double entendre of " I decline a mistress." At times they seem on terms of as perfect good fellowship as ever was, with a touch of post-matri- monial indifference ; but Isopel had fits of weeping and Borrow of listlessness. Borrow was uncommonly fond of prophetic tragic irony. As he made Thurtell unconsciously suggest to the reader his own execution, so he makes Isopel say one day when she is going a journey : " I shall return once more." Lavengro starts but thinks no more of it. While she was away he began to think : " I began to think, ' What was Hkely to be the profit of my present way of life; the living in dingles, making pony and donkey shoes, conversing with G)^sy-women under hedges, and extracting from them their odd secrets ? ' What was likely to be the profit of such a kind of life, even should it continue for a length of time i" — a supposition not very probable, for I was earning nothing to support me, and the funds with OUT OF LONDON 99 which I had entered upon this Ufa were gradually disappear- ing. I was living, it is! true, not unpleasantly, enjoying the healthy air of heaven ; but, upon the whole, was I not sadly misspending my time ? Surely I was ; and, as I looked back, it appeared to me that I had always been doing so. What had been the profit of the tongues which I had learned ? had they ever assisted me in the day of hunger ? No, no ! it appeared to me that I had always misspent my time, save in one instance, when by a desperate effort I had collected all the powers of my imagination, and written the ' Life of Joseph Sell ' ; but even when I wrote the ' Life of Sell,' was I not in a false position ? Provided I had not misspent my time, would it have been necessary to make that effort, which, after all, had only enabled me to leave London, and wander about the country for a time? But could I, taking all circumstances into consideration, have done better than I had? With my peculiar temperament and ideas, could I have pursued with advantage the pro- fession to which my respectable parents had endeavoured to bring me up? It appeared to me that I could not, and that the hand of necessity had guided me from my earliest years, until the present night in which I found myself seated in the dingle, staring on the brands of the fire. But ceasing to think of the past which, as irrecoveirably gone, it was useless to regret, even were there cause to regret it, what should I do in future ? Should I write another book like the ' Life of Joseph Sell ; ' take it to London, and offer it to a publisher? But when I reflected on the grisly sufferings which I had undergone whilst engaged in writing the 'Life of Sell,' I shrank from the idea of a similar attempt; moreover, I doubted whether I possessed the power to write a similar work — whether the materials for the life of another Sell lurked within the recesses of my brain? Had I not better become in reality what I had hitherto been merely playing at — a tinker or a Gj^sy? H 2 loo GEORGE BORROW But I soon saw that I was not fitted to become either in reality. It was much more agreeable to play the Gypsy or the tinker, than to become either in reality. I had seen enough of gypsying and, tinkering to be convinced of that. All of a sudden the idea of tilling the soil came into my head; tilling the soil was a healthful and noble pursuit! but my idea of tilling the soil had no connection with Britain; for I could only expect to till the soil in Britain as a serf. I thought of tilling it in America, in which it was said there was plenty of wild, unclaimed land, of which any one, who chose to clear it of its trees, might take possession. I figured myself in America, in an immense forest, clearing the land destined, by my exertions, to become a fruitful and smiling plain. Methought I heard the crash of the huge trees as they fell beneath my axe ; and then I bethought me that a man was intended to marry — -I ought to marry ; and if I married, where was I likely to be mdre happy as a husband and a father than in America, engaged in tilling the ground ? I fancied myself in America, engaged in tilling the ground, assisted by an enormous progeny. Well, why not marry, and go and till the ground in America ? I was young, and youth was the time to marry in, and to labour in. I had the use of all my faculties ; my eyes, it is true, were rather dull from early study, and from writing the ' Life of Joseph Sell ' ; but I could see tolerably well with them, and they were not bleared. I felt my arms, and thighs, and teeth — they were strong and sound enough ; so now -wis the time to labour, to marry, eat strong flesh, and beget strong children — ^the power of doing all this would pass away with youth, which was terribly transitory. I bethought me that a time would come when my eyes would be bleared, and perhaps, sight- less ; my arms and thighs strengthless and sapless ; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did not drop out. No going a wooing then — no labouring — OUT OF LONDON loi no eating strong flesh, and begetting lusty children then ; and I bethought me how, when all this should be, I should bewail the days of my youth as misspent, provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take care of myself; and thinking of these things, I became sadder and sadder, and stared vacantly upon the fire till my eyes closed in a doze." So, before going to bed, he filled the kettle in case Isopel should return during the night. He fell asleep and was dreaming hard and hearing the sound of wheels in his dream "grating amidst sand and gravel," when suddenly he awoke. "The next moment I was awake, and found myself sitting up in my tent ; there was a glimmer of light through the canvas caused by the fire ; a feeling of dread came over me, which was perhaps natural, on starting suddenly from one's sleep in that wild lone place; I half imagined that some one was nigh the tent ; the idea made me rather uncomfortable, and to dissipate it I lifted up the canvas of the door and peeped out, and, lo! I had an indistinct view of a tall figure standing by the tent. ' Who is that?' said I, whilst I felt my blood rush to my heart. 'It is I,' said the voice of Isopel Berners; 'you little expected me, I dare say; well, sleep on, I do not wish to disturb you.' ' But I was expecting you,' said I, recovering myself, 'as you may see by the fire and the kettle. I will be with you in a moment.' "Putting on in haste the articles of dress which I had flung off, I came out of the tent, and addressing myself to Isopel, who was standing beside her cart, I said — ' Just as I was about to retire to rest I thought it possible that you might come to-night, and got everything in readiness for you. Now, sit down by the fire whilst I lead the donkey and cart to the place where you stay ; I will unharness the animal, and presently come and join you.' 'I need not I02 GEORGE BORROW trouble you,' said Isopel ; ' I will go myself and see after my things.' ' We will go together,' said I, ' and then return and have some tea.' Isopel made no objection, and in about half an hour we had arranged everything at her quarters. I then hastened and prepared tea. Presently Isopel rejoined me, bringing her stool ; she had divested herself of her bonnet, and her hair fell over her shoulders; she sat down, and I poured out the beverage, handing her a cup. ' Have you made a long journey to-night ? ' said I. ' A very long one,' replied Belle, ' I have come nearly twenty miles since six o'clock.' ' I believe I heard you coming in my sleep,' said I ; ' did the dogs above bark at you ? ' ' Yes,' said Isopel, ' very violently ; did you think of me in your sleep ? ' ' No,' said I, ' I was thinking of Ursula and something she had told me.' ' When and where was that ? ' said Isopel. 'Yesterday evening,' said I, 'beneath the dingle hedge.' 'Then you were talking with her beneath the hedge ? ' 'I was,' said I, ' but only upon Gypsy matters. Do you know, Belle, that she has just been married to Sylvester, so you need not think that she and I . . .' ' She and you are quite at liberty to sit where you please,' said Isopel. 'However, young man,' she continued, drop- ping her tone, which she had slightly raised, 'I believe what you said, that you were merely talking about Gypsy matters, and also what you were going to say, if it was, as I suppose, that she and you had no particular acquain- tance.' Isopel was now silent for some time. 'What are you thinking of?' said I. 'I was thinking,' said Belle, 'how exceedingly kind it was of you to get ever3^hing in readiness for me, though you did not know that I should come.' 'I had a presentiment that you would come,' said I ; ' but you forget that I have prepared the kettle for you before, though it was true I was then certain that you would come.' 'I had not forgotten your doing so, young man,' said Belle ; ' but I was beginning to think that you OUT OF LONDON 103 were utterly selfish, caring for nothing but the gratification of your own strange whims.' 'I am very fond of having my own way,' said I, ' but utterly selfish I am not, as I dare say I shall frequently prove to you. You will often find the kettle boiling when you come home.' ' Not heated by you,' said Isopel, with a sigh. ' By whom else ? ' said I ; ' surely you are not thinking of driving me away ? ' ' You have as much right here as myself,' said Isopel, ' as I have told you before; but I must be going myself.' 'Well,' said I, ' we can go together ; to tell you the truth, I am rather tired of this place.' 'Our paths must be separate,' said Belle. ' Separate,' said I, ' what do you mean ? I shan't let you go alone, I shall go with you ; and you know the road is as free to me as to you ; besides, you can't think of parting company with me, considering how much you would lose by doing so; remember that you scarcely know anything of the Armenian language ; now, to learn Armenian from me would take you twenty years.' " Belle faintly smiled. ' Come,' said I, ' take another cup of tea.' Belle took another cup of tea, and yet another; we had some indifferent conversation, after which I arose and gave her donkey a considerable feed of corn. Belle thanked me, shook me by the hand, and then went to her own tabernacle, and I returned to mine." He torments her once more with Armenian and makes her speak in such a way that the reader sees — ^what he himself did not then see — that she was too sick with love for banter. She bade him farewell with the same transparent significance on the next day, when he was off early to a fair. " I waved my hand towards her. She slowly lifted up her right arm. I turned away and never saw Isopel Berners again." That night as he was going home he said : " Isopel Berners is waiting for me, and the first word that I shall hear from her lips is that she has made up her mind. We shall go to America, and be so happy together." She sent I04 GEORGE BORROW him a letter of farewell, and he could not follow her •, he would not try, lest if he overtook her she should despise him for running after her. I can only say that it is an extraordinary love-making, but then all love-making, when truthfully reported, is extraordinary. There can be little doubt, therefore, that this episode is truthfully reported. Borrow himself has made a comment on himself and women through the mouth of Jasper. The Gypsy had overheard him talking to his sister Ursula for three hours under a hedge, and his opinion was : " I begin to think you care for nothing in this world but old words and strange stories." When, afterwards, invited to kiss the same Ursula, he refused, "having," he says, "inherited from nature a considerable fund of modesty, to which was added no slight store acquired in the course of my Irish education," i.e., at the age of twelve. After Isopel had gone he bought a fine horse with the help of a loan of £$0 from Jasper, and travelled with it across England, meeting adventures and hearing of others. He was for a time bookkeeper at a coaching inn, still with some pounds in his purse. At Homcastle, which he men- tions more than once by name, he sold the horse for ;£'i50. As the fair at Homcastle lasted from the nth to the 2ist of August, the date of this last adventure is almost exactly fixed. Here the book ends. AN EARLY PORTRAIT 105 CHAPTER XV AN EARLY PORTRAIT At the end of these travels Borrow had turned twenty- two. His brother John painted his portrait, but it has disappeared, and Borrow himself, as if fearing lest no adequate picture of him should remain, took pains to leave the material for one. It is a peculiarity of his books that people whom he meets and converses with often remark on his appearance. He must himself have been tolerably familiar with it and used to comment on it. He told his father that a lady thought him like Alfieri's Saul ; at a later date Haydon, the painter, said he would "'make a capital Pharaoh." Years before, when he was a boy, Petulengro recognised him after a long absence, because there was something in his face to prevent people from forgetting him. Mrs. Heme, his Gypsy enemy, praised him for his "singular and outrageous ugliness." He was lean, long-limbed and tall, having reached his full height of six-feet-two probably before the end of his teens ; he had plenty of room to fill before becoming a big man, and yet he was already powerful and clearly destined to be a big man. His hair had for some time been rapidly becoming grey, and was soon to be altogether white : it had once been black, and his strongly- marked eyebrows were still dark brown. His face Wcis oval and inclining to olive in complexion ; his nose rounded, but not too large; his mouth good and well-moulded; his eyes dark brown and noticeable indescribably, either through their light or through the curve of the eyelids across them. " You have a flash about io6 GEORGE BORROW that eye of yours," says the old apple woman,; and it is she that notices the "blob of foam" on his lips, while he is musing aloud, exclaiming " Necessity ! " and cracking his finger-joints. He had an Irish look, or so thought his London acquaintance, Ardry. He looked "rather wild" at times and he had a way of clenching his fist when he was determined not to be put upon, as the bullying coach- man found who had said : " One-and-ninepence, sir, or the things which you have brought with you will be taken away from you." Yet he had small hands for his size and "long white fingers," which "would just serve for the business," said the thimble-rigger. Though ready to hit people when he is angry, " a more civil and pleasant-spoken person than yourself," says Ursula, " can't be found" His own opinion was "that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. . . . That his appearance was not particularly against him, his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox that has lost his tail." It is as a " poor thin lad " that he commends himself to us, through the mouth of the old apple woman, at his setting out from London, but as he gets on he shows himself " an excellent pedestrian." Already in London he has made one or two favourable impressions, as when he convinces the superb waiter that he is "accustomed to claret." But it is upon the roads that he wishes to shine. When the Man in Black asks how he knows him, he answers that " Gypsies have various ways of obtaining information." Later on, he makes the Man in Black address him as "Zingaro." He impresses the commercial traveller as "a confounded sensible young fellow, and not at all opinionated," and Lord Whitefeather as a highwayman in disguise, and the Gypsies as one who never spoke a bad word and never did a bad thing. This is his most impresive moment, when the jockey discovers AN EARLY PORTRAIT 107 that he is the Romany Rye and tells him there is scarcely a part of England where he has not heard the name of the Romany Rye mentioned by the Gypsies. Here he makes another praise him. Now let him mount the fine horse he has bought with ;^50 borrowed from a Gj^sy, and is about to sell for ;^I50 at Horncastle Fair. "After a slight breakfast I mounted the horse, which, decked out in his borrowed finery, really looked better by a large sum of money than on any former occasion. Making my way out of the yard of the inn, I was instantly in the principal street of the town, up and down which an immense number of horses were being exhibited, some led, and others with riders. 'A wonderful small quantity of good horses in the fair this time ! ' I heard a stout jockey- looking individual say, who was staring up the street with his side towards me. ' Halloo, young fellow ! ' said he, a few moments after I had passed, 'whose horse is that? Stop ! I want to look at him ! ' Though confident that he was addressing himself to me, I took no notice, remem- bering the advice of the ostler, and proceeded up the street. My horse possessed a good walking step ; but walking, as the reader knows, was not his best pace, which was the long trot, at which I could not well exercise him in the street, on account of the crowd of men and animals ; how- ever, as he walked along, I could easily perceive that he attracted no slight attention amongst those who, by their jockey dress and general appearance, I imagined to be connoisseurs; I heard various calls tO' stop, to none of which I paid the slightest attention. In a few minutes I found myself out of the town, when, turning round for the purpose of returning, I found I had been followed by several of the connoisseur-looking individuals, whom I had observed in the fair. 'Now would be the time for a display,' thought I ; and looking around me I observed two five-barred gates, one on each side of the road, and io8 GEORGE BORROW fronting each other. Turning my horse's head to one, I pressed my heels to his sides, loosened the reins, and gave an encouraging cry, whereupon the animal cleared the gate in a twinkhng. Before he had advanced ten yards in the field to which the gate opened, I had turned him round, and again giving him cry and rein, I caused him to leap back again into the road, and still allowing him head, I made him leap the other gate ; and forthwith turning him round, I caused him to leap once more into the road, where he stood proudly tossing his head, as much as to say, ' What more ? ' 'A fine horse ! a capital horse ! ' said several of the connoisseurs. ' What do you ask for him ? ' 'Too much for any of you to pay,' said I. 'A horse like this is intended for other kind of customers than any of you.' ' How do you know' that ? ' said one ; the very same person whom I had heard complaining in the street of the paucity of good horses in the fair. ' Come, let us know what you ask for him?' 'A hundted and fifty pounds!' said I; ■ neither more nor less.' ' Do you call that a great price ? ' said the man. 'Why, I thought you would have asked double that amount ! You do yourself injustice, young man.' 'Perhaps I do,' said I, 'but that's my affair; I do not choose to take more.' 'I wish you would let me get into the saddle,' said the man; 'the horse knows you, and therefore shows to more advantage; but I should like to see how he would move under me, who. am a stranger. Will you let me get into the saddle, young man ? ' ' No,' said I, ' I will not let you get into the saddle.' ' Why not ? ' said the man. ' Lest you should be a Yorkshireman,' said I, 'and should run away with the horse.' 'Yorkshire?' said the man ; ' I am from Suffolk ; silly Suffolk — so you need not be afraid of my running away with the horse.' ' Oh ! if that's the case,' said I, ' I should be afraid that the horse would run away with you ; so I will by no means let you mount' 'Will you let me look in his mouth?' said AN EARLY PORTRAIT 109 the man. ' If you please,' said I ; ' but I tell you, he's apt to bite.' ' He can scarcely be a worse bite than his master,' said the man, looking into^ the horse's mouth ; ' he's four off. I say, young man, will you warrant this horse ? ' ' No,' said I ; 'I never warrant horses ; the horses that I ride can always warrant themselves.' 'I wish you would let me speak a word to you,' said he. ' Just come aside. It's a nice horse,' said he, in a half whisper, after I had ridden a few paces aside with him. 'It's a nice horse,' said he, placing his hand upon the pommel of the saddle and looking up in my face, ' and I think I can find you a customer. If you would take a hundred, I think my lord would purchase it, for he has sent me about the fair to look him up a horse, by which he could hope to make an honest penny.' ' Well,' said I, ■ and could he not make an honest penny, and yet give me the price I ask?' 'Why,' said the go-between, 'a hundred and fifty pounds is as much as the animal is worth, or nearly so ; and my lord, do you see . . .' 'I see no reason at all,' said I, ' why I should sell the animal for less than he is worth, in order that his lordship may be benefited by him; so that if his lordship wants to^ make an honest penny, he must find some person who would consider the disadvantage of selling him a horse for less than it is worth, as counterbalanced by the honour of dealing with a lord, which I should never do ; but I can't be wasting my time here. I am going back to the . . . , where if you, or any person, are desirous of purchasing the horse, you must come within the next half-hour, or I shall probably not feel disposed to sell him at all' ' Another word, young man,' said the jockey; but without stajang to hear what he had to say, I put the horse to his best trot, and re-entering the town, and threading my way as well as I could through the press, I returned to the yard of the inn, where, dismounting, I stood still, holding the horse by the bridle." no GEORGE BORROW As no one else troubled to paint Borrow either at Horn- castle or any other place, and as he took advantage of the fact to such purpose, I must leave this portrait as it is, only I shall remind the reader that it is not a photograph but a portrait of the painter. A little time ago this painter wras a consumptive-looking literary haok, and is still a philologist, with eyes a bit dim from too much reading, and subject to frantic melancholy; — a liker of solitude and of men and women who do not disturb it, but a man accustomed to men and very well able to deal with them. THE VEILED PERIOD in CHAPTER XVI THE VEILED PERIOD The last words of " The Romany Rye " narrative are : " I shouldn't wonder if Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go there." This is his way of giving impressiveness to the " veiled period " of the follow- ing seven or eight years, for the benefit of those who had read " The Zincali " and " The Bible in Spain," and had been allured by the hints of earlier travel. In " The Zincali " he has spoken of seeing " Gypsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian and Turkish; and also the legitimate children of most countries of the world " : of being " in the shop of an Armenian at Constantinople," and "lately at Janina in Albania." In " The Bible in Spain " he had spoken of " an acquaintance of mine, a Tartar Khan." He had described strange things, and said : " This is not the first instance in which it has been my lot to verify the wisdom of the saying, that truth is sometimes wilder than fiction ; " he had met Baron Taylor and reminded the reader of other meetings " in the street or the desert, the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas, at Novgorod or Stambul." Before 1833 he had been in Paris and Madrid. "I have been ever5^where," he said to the simple company at a Welsh inn. Speaking to Colonel Napier in 1839 at Seville, he said that he had picked up the Gypsy tongue "some years ago in Moultan," and he gave the impression that he had visited most parts of the East. A little too much has been made of this " veiled period," not by Borrow, but by others. It would have been fair to surmise that if he chose not to write about this period of 112 GEORGE BORROW his life, either there was very little in it, or there was some- thing in it which he was unwilling — perhaps ashamed — ^to disclose ; and what has been discovered suggests that he was in an unsettled state^ — ^writing to please himself and perhaps also the booksellers, travelling' a little and perhaps meeting some of the adventures which he crammed into those few months of 1825, suffering from "the horrors" either in solitude or with no confidant but his mother. Borrow himself tool^ no great pains to preserve the veil. For instance, in the preface to his translation of " Y Bardd Cwsig" in i860, he says that it was made "in the year 1830 at the request of a little Welsh bookseller of his acquaintance" in Smithfield. In 1826 he was in Norwich: the "Romantic Ballads" were published there, and in May he received a letter from Allan Cvmningham, whose cheery commendatory verses ushered in the book. The letter suggests that Borrow was indolent from apathy. The book had no success or' notice, which Knapp puts down to his not sending out presentation copies. " I judge, however," says he, " that he sent one to Walter Scott, and that that busy writer forgot to acknow- ledge the courtesy. Borrow's lifelong hostility to Scott would thus be accounted for ; " but the hostility is his reason for supposing that the copy was sent. Some time afterwards, in 1826, he was at 26, Bryanstone Street, Portman Square, and was to sit for the artist, B. R. Haydon, before going off to the South of France. If he went, he may have paid the visits to Paris, Bayonne, Italy and Spain, which he alludes to in " The Bible in Spain " ; he may, as Dr. Knapp suggests, have covered the ground of Murtagh's alleged travels in "The Romany Rye," and have been at Pau, with Quesada's army marching to Pamplona, at Torrelodones, and at Seville. But in a letter to the Bible Society in 1838 he spoke of his earlier acquaintance with Spain being confined almost entirely to Madrid. It may THE VEILED PERIOD 113 be true, as he says in " The Zincali," that " once in the south of France, when he was weary, hungry, and penniless, he observed one of these patterans or Gypsy trails, and, follow- ing the direction pointed out, arrived at the resting place of some Gypsies, who received him with kindness and hos- pitality on the faith of no other word of recommendation than patteran." It may be true that he wandered in Italy, and rested at nightfall by a kiln "about four leagues from Genoa." But by April, 1827, he must have been back in Norwich, according to Knapp, to see Marshland Shales at the fair. Knapp gives certain proof that he was there between September and December. Thereafter, if Knapp was right, he was translating Vidocq's " Memoirs." In 1 829 again he was in London, at 17, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, and was projecting with John Bowring a collection of "Songs of Scandinavia." He applied for work to the Highland Society and to the British Museum, in 1830. In that summer he was at 7, Museum Street, Bloomsbury. He was not satisfied with his work or its remuneration. He thought of entering the French Army, of going to Greece, of getting work, with Bowring's help, under the Belgian Government. His name "had been down for several years " for the purchase of a commission in the English Army, and Bowring offered to recommend him to " a corps in one of the Eastern Colonies," where he could perfect his Arabic and Persiaji. In 1842 he wrote a letter to Bowring, printed by Mr. Walling, asking for "as many of the papers and manuscripts which I left at yours some twelve years ago, as you can find," and for advice and a loan of books, and promising that Murray will send a copy of "The Bible in Spain" to "my oldest, I may say my only friend." But whatever Bowring's help. Borrow was "drifting on the sea of the world, and likely to be so," and especially hurt because of the figure he must cut in the eyes of his own people. Was it now, or when he I 114 GEORGE BORROW was bookkeeper at the inn in 1825, that he saw so much of the ways of commercial travellers?* It is not necessary to quote from the metrical transla- tions, probably of this period, "selections from a huge, undigested mass of translation, accumulated during several years devoted to philological pursuits," published in "The Targum" of 1835. They were made from originals in the Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Tartar, Tibetian, Chinese, Mandchou, Russian, Malo-Russian, Polish, Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, Ancient Norse, Suabian, German, Dutch, Danish, Ancient Danish, Swedish, Ancient Irish, Irish, Gaelic, Ancient British, Cambrian British, Greek, Modem Greek, Latin, Provencal, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Rommany. I will, however, quote from "The Sleeping Bard, or Visions of the World, Death and Hell," his translation of Elis Wyn's "Y Bardd Cwsg." The book would please Borrow, because in the City of Perdition Rome stands at the gate of Pride, and the Pope has palaces in the streets of Pleasure and of Lucre ; because the Church of England is the fairest part of the Catholic Church, surmounted by "Queen Anne on the pinnacle of the building, with a sword in each hand " ; and because the Papist is turned away from the Catholic Church by a porter with "an exceedingly large Bible." " One fair morning," he begins : " One fair morning of genial April, when the earth was green and pregnant, and Britain, like a paradise, was wear- ing splendid liveries, tokens of the smile of the summer sun, I was walking upon the bank of the Severn, in the midst of the sweet notes of the little songsters of the wood, who appeared to be striving to break through all the measures of music, whilst pouring forth praise to the Creator. I, too, occasionally raised my voice and warbled with the feathered * Ste " Wild Wales," Chapter XXXIII THE VEILED PERIOD 115 choir, though in a manner somewhat more restrained than that in which they sang; and occasionally read a portion of the book of ' The Practice of Godliness.' " And in his vision he saw fiends drive men and women through the foul river of the Fiend to their eternal damna- tion, where " I at the first glance saw more pains and torments than the heart of man can imagine or the tongue relate ; a single one of which was sufficient to make the hair stand erect, the blood to freeze, the flesh to melt, the bones to drop from their places — ^yea, the spirit to faint What is empaling or sawing men alive, tearing off the flesh piece- meal with iron pincers, or broiling the flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth, com- pared with one of these? Mere pastime! There were a hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse cries, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing and horrible outcry answering them, Eind the howling of a dog is sweet, delicious music when compared with these sounds. When we had proceeded a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the wild place of Damnation, I perceived, by their own light, innumerable men and women here and there ; and devils without number and without rest, incessantly emplo3dng their strength in tormenting. Yes, there they were, devils and damned, the devils roaring with their own torments, and making the damned roar by means of the torments which they inflicted upon them. I paid particular observation to the corner which was nearest me. There I beheld the devils with pitchforks, tossing the damned up into the air that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchets or barbed pikes, there to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl in multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags, there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be I 2 u6 GEORGE BORROW snatched afar, to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they would be allowed to shiver for a time; thence they would be precipitated into a loath- some pool of boiling brimstone, to wallow there in con- flagration, smolEe and the suffocation of horrible stench; from the pool they would be driven to the marsh of Hell, that they might embrace and be embraced by the reptiles, many times worse than serpents and vipers ; after allowing them half an hour's dalhance with these creatures the devils would seize a bundle of rods of steel, fiery hot from the furnace, and would scourge them till their howling, caused by the horrible inexpressible pain which they endured, would fill the vast abode of darkness, and when the fiends deemed that they had scourged them enough, they would take hot irons and sear their bloody wounds. . . ." And this would have particularly pleased Borrow, who disliked and condemned smoking : " For one of late origin I will not deny, O Cerberus, that thou hast brought to us many a booty from the island of our enemies, by means of tobacco, a weed the cause of much deceit ; for how much deceit is practised in carrying it about, in mixing it, and in weighing it: a weed which entices some people to bib ale ; others to curse, sweaj:, and to flatter in order to obtain it, and others to tell lies in denying that they use it: a weed productive of maladies in various bodies, the excess of which is injurious to every man's body, without speaking of his soul: a weed, more- over, by which we get multitudes of the poor, whom we should never get did they not set their love on tobacco, allow it to master them, and pull the bread from the mouths of their children." In the preface to this book as it was finally published in i860. Borrow said that the little Welsh bookseller had rejected it for fear of being ruined — "The terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the THE VEILED PERIOD 117 genteel part of the English public out of their wits. . . . I had no idea, till I read him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow." In September, 1830, Borrow left London and returned to Norwich, having done nothing which attracted attention or deserved to. His brother's opinion was that his want of success in life was due chiefly to his being unlike other people. So far as his failure in literature went, it was due to the fact that he was doing either poorly or only moderately well work that very few people wanted to read, viz., chiefly verse translations from unfashionable languages. It may be also that his health was partly the cause and was in turn lowered by the long continued failure. When Borrow, at the age of forty or more, came to write about the first twenty-two years of his life, he not only described himself suffering from several attacks of "the horrors," but also' with almost equal vividness three men suffering from mental afflictions of different kinds : the author who lived alone and was continually touching things to avert the evil chance ; the old man who had saved himself from being overwhelmed in his terrible misfortunes by studying the inscriptions on Chinese pots, but could not tell the time ; and the Welshman who wandered over the country preaching and living piously, but haunted by the knowledge that in his boyhood he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. The most vivid description of his " horrors," which he said in 1834 always followed if they did not result from weakness, is in the eighty-fourth chapter of "Lavengro" : "Heaviness had suddenly come over me, heaviness of heart, and of body also. I had accomplished the task which I had imposed upon myself, and now that nothing more reinained to do, my energies suddenly deserted me, and I felt without strength, and without hope. Several causes, perhaps, co-operated to bring about the state in which I ii8 GEORGE BORROW then felt myself. It is not improbable that my energies had been overstrained during the work, the progress of which I have attempted to describe; and every one is aware that the results of overstrained energies are feeble- ness and IcLssitude — want of nourishment might likewise have something to do with it. During my sojourn in the dingle my food had been of the simplest and most unsatis- fying description, by no means calculated to support the exertions which the labour I had been engaged upon required ; it had consisted of coarse oaten cakes, and hajd cheese, and for beverage I had been indebted toi a neigh- bouring pit, in which, in the heat of the day, I frequently saw, not golden or silver fish, but frogs and efts swimming about. I am, however, inclined to believe that Mrs. Heme's cake had quite as much to do with the matter as insufficient nourishment. I had never entirely recovered from the effects of its poison, but had occasionally, especially at night, been visited by a grinding pain in the stomach, and my whole body had been suffused with cold sweat; and indeed these memorials of the drow have never entirely disappeajred — even at the present time they display them- selves in my* system, especially after much fatigue of body, and excitement of mind. So there I sat in the dingle upon my stone, nerveless and hopeless, by whatever cause or causes that state had been produced — there I sat with my head leaning upon my hand, and so I continued a long, long time. At last I lifted my head from my hand, and began toi cast anxious, unquiet looks about the dingle — the entire hollow was now enveloped in deep shade — I cast my eyes up ; there was a golden gleam on the tops of the trees which grew towards the upper parts of the dingle; but lower down, all was gloom and twilight — ^yet, when I first sat down on my stone, the sun was right above the dingle, illuminating all its depths by the rays which it cast perpendicularly down — so I must have sat a long, long THE VEILED PERIOD 119 time upon my stone. And now, once more, I rested my head upon my hand, but almost instantly hfted it again in a kind of fear, and began looking at the objects before me, the forge, the tools, the branches of the trees, endeavouring to follow their rows, till they were lost in the darkness of the dingle ; and now I found my right hand grasping convulsively the three forefingers of the left, first collectively, and then successively, wringing them till the joints cracked ; then I became quiet, but not for long. " Suddenly I started up, and could scarcely repress the shriek which was rising to my lips. Was it possible ? Yes, all too certain; the evil one was upon me; the inscrutable horror which I had felt in my boyhood had once more taken possession of me. I had thought that it had forsaken me ; that it would never visit me again ; that I had outgrown it; that I might almost bid defiance to it; and I had even begun to think of it without horror, as we are in the habit of doing of horrors of which we con- ceive we run no danger ; and lo ! when least thought of, it had seized me again. Every moment I felt it gathering force, and making me more wholly its own. What should I do? — resist, of course; and I did resist. I grasped, I tore, and strove to fling it from me; but of what avail were my efforts ? I could only have got rid of it by getting rid of myself ; it was a part of myself, or rather it was all myself. I rushed among the trees, and struck at them with my bare fists, and dashed my head against them, but I felt no pain. How could I feel pain with that horror upon me ! and then I flung myself on the ground, gnawed the earth, and swallowed it; and then I looked round; it was almost total darkness in the dingle, and the dark- ness added to my horror. I could no longer stay there; up I rose from the ground, and attempted to escape ; at the bottom of the winding path which led up the acclivity I fell over something which was lying on the ground ; the I20 GEORGE BORROW something moved, and gave a kind of whine. It was my httle horse, which had made that place its lair; my little horse; my only companion and friend, in that now awful solitude. I reached the mouth of the dingle; the sun was just sinking in the far west, behind me ; the fields were flooded with his last gleams. How beautiful every- thing looked in the last gleams of the sun ! I felt relieved for a moment; I wa^ no longer in the horrid dingle; in another minute the sun was gone, and a big cloud occupied the place where he had been ; in a little time it was almost as dark as it had previously been in the open part of the dingle. My horror increased ; what was I to do ? — it was of no use fighting against the horror ; that I saw ; the more I fought against it, the stronger it became. What should I do : say my prayers ? Ah ! why not ? So I knelt down under the hedge, and said, ' Our father ' ; but that was of no use ; and now I could no longer repress cries ; the horror was too great to be borne. What should I do: run to the nearest town or village, and request the assistance of my fellow-men ? No ! that I wasi ashamed to do ; notwithstanding the horror was upon me, I was ashamed to do' that. I knew they would consider me a maniac, if I went screaming amongst them; and I did not wish to be considered a maniac. Moreover, I knew that I was not a maniac, for I possessed all my reasoning powers, only the horror was upon me — the screaming horror! But how were indifferent people to distinguish between madness and this screaming horror? So I thought and reasoned ; and at last I determined not to go amongst my fellow men, whatever the result might be. I went to the mouth of the dingle, and there, placing myself on my knees, I again said the Lord's Prayer ; but it was of no use ; praying seemed to have no effect over the horror ; the unutterable fear appeared rather to increase than diminish ; and I again uttered wild cries, so loud that THE VEILED PERIOD 121 I was apprehensive they would be heard by some chance passenger on the neighbouring road ; I therefore went deeper into the dingle ; I sat down with my back against la thorn bush; the thorns entered my flesh, and when I felt them, I pressed harder against the bush; I thwght the pain of the flesh might in some degree counteract the mental agony ; presently I felt them no longer ; the power of the mental horror was so great that it was impossible, with that upon me, to feel any pain from the thorns. I continued in this posture a long time, undergoing what I cannot describe, and would not attempt if I were able. Several times I was on the point of starting up and rushing an)^where ; but I restrained myself, for I knew I could not escape from myself, so why should I not remain in the dingle ? So I thought and said to myself, for my reason- ing powers were still uninjured. At last it appeared to me that the horror was not so strong, not quite so strong upon me. Was it possible that it was relaxing its grasp, releasing its prey? O what a mercy! but it could not be — and yet I looked up to heaven, and clasped my hands, and said ' Our Father.' I said no more ; I was too agitated ; and now I was almost sure that the horror had done its worst. "After a little time I arose, and staggered down yet farther into the dingle. I again found my little horse on the same spot as before, I put my hand to his mouth ; he licked my hand. I flung myself down by him and put my arms round his neck, the creature whinnied, and appeared to sympathise with me ; what a comfort to have any one, even a dumb brute, to sympathise with me at such a moment! I clung to my little horse, as if for safety and protection. I laid my head on his neck, and felt almost calm; presently the fear returned, but not so wild as before ; it subsided, came again, again subsided ; then drowsiness came over me, and at last I fell asleep, my head 122 GEORGE BORROW supported on the neck of the little horse. I awoke ; it was dark, dark night — not a star was to be seen — ^but I felt no fear, the horror had left me. I arose from the side of the little horse, and went into my tent, lay down, and again went to sleep. . . ." It may be said that the man who had gone through this, and could describe it, would find it easy enough to depict other sufferings of the same kind, though in later or less violent stages. It is certain, however, that for such a one to acquire the habit of touching was easy. He says him- self, that after the night with the author who had this habit and who feared ideas more than thunder and lightning, he himself touched things and wondered if "the long-forgotten influence" had returned. Mr. Walling says that "he has been informed" that Borrow "suffered in his youth from the touching mania," and like many other readers probably, I had concluded the same. But Mr. Watts-Dunton had already told us that "in walking through Richmond Park," when an old man. Borrow " would step out of his way constantly to touch a tree and was offended if observed." The old man diverting himself with Chinese inscriptions on teapots would be an easy invention for Borrow ; he may not have done this very thing, but he had done similar things. Here again, Mr. Walling says that " he has been told " the incident was drawn from Borrow's own experience. As to Peter Williams and the sin against the Holy Ghost, Borrow hinted to him that his case was not exceptional : "'Dost thou then imagine,' said Peter, 'the sin against the Holy Ghost to be so common an occurrence?' "'As you have described it,' said I, 'of very common occurrence, especially amongst children, who are, indeed, the only beings likely to commit it.' "'Truly,' said Winifred, 'the young man talks wisely.' THE VEILED PERIOD 123 " Peter was silent for some moments, and appeared to be reflecting ; at last, suddenly raising his head, he looked me full in the face, and, grasping my hand with vehemence, he said, 'Tell me, young man, only one thing, hast thou, too, committed the sin against the Holy Ghost ? ' '"I am neither Papist nor Methodist,' said I, 'but of the Church, and, being so, confess myself to no one, but keep my own counsel ; I will tell thee, however, had I committed at the same age, twenty such sins as that which you committed, I should feel no uneasiness at these years — but I am sleepy, and must go to rest.' " This is due to probably something more than a desire to make himself and his past impressive. The man's story in severed places reminds me of Borrow, where, for instance, after he has realised his unpardonable sin, he runs wild through Wales, "climbing mountains and wading streams, burnt by the sun, drenched by the rain," so that for three years he hardly knew what befel him, living with robbers and Gypsies, and once about to fling himself into the sea from a lofty rock. If it be true, as it is likely, that Borrow suffered in a more extended manner than he showed in his accounts of the horrors, the time of the suffering is still uncertain. Was it before his first escape from London, as he says in "Lavengro"? Was it during his second long stay in London or after his second escape ? Or was it really not long before the actual narrative was written in the 'forties ? There is some reason for thinking so. The most vivid description of " the horrors," and the account of the touch- ing gentleman and of Peter Williams, together with a second reference to "the horrors" or the "evil one," all occur in a section of " Lavengro " equal to hardly more than a sixth of the whole. And further, when Borrow was writing " Wild Wales," or when he met the sickly young man at 124 GEORGE BORROW the " Castle Inn " of Caernarvon, he thought of himself as always having had "the health of an elephant." I should be inclined to conclude at least that when he was forty great mental suffering was still fresh in his mind, some- thing worse than the heavy melancholy which returned now and then when he was past fifty. THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA 125 CHAPTER XVII THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA From the phrase, "He said in '32," which Borrow uses of himself in Chapter X. of the Appendix to " The Romany- Rye," it was to be concluded that he was writing political articles in 1832; and Dr. Knapp was able to quote a manuscript of the time where he says that "there is no Radical who would not rejoice to see his native land invaded by the bitterest of her foreign enemies," etc., and also a letter, printed in the "Norfolk Chronicle," on August 18, 1832, on the origin of the word "Tory." At the end of this year he became friendly with the family of Skepper, including the widowed Mrs. Mary Clarke, then 36 years old, who lived at Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft, in Suffolk. With or through them he met the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of St. Margaret's, Lowestoft, who had married a sister of the Quaker banker, Joseph John Gurney, and through the offices of these two. Borrow was invited to go before the British and Foreign Bible Society, as a candidate for employment in some branch of the Society's work where his knowledge of languages would be useful. He walked to London for the purpose in December, 1832. The Society was satisfied and sent him back to Norwich to learn the Manchu-Tartar language. There he wrote a letter, which, if we take Dr. Knapp's word for it, was "a sort of recantation of the Taylorism of 1824." Being now near thirty, and perhaps having his worst "horrors" behind him, or at least having reason to think so if he was already fond of Mrs. Clarke, whom he afterwards married, it was easy for him to fall into the 126 GEORGE BORROW same way of speaking as these good and kindly people, and to abuse Buddhism, which he did not understand, for their delectation. Mrs. Clarke had four or five hundred pounds a year of her own, and one child, a daughter, then about fourteen years old. Perhaps it was natural that he should remember then, as he did later, the words of the cheerful and forgetful wise man : " I have been young and now am grown old, yet never have I seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread." From a gloomily fanatical atheist Borrow changed to a cheerfully fanatical Protestant, described as "of the middle order in society, and a very produceable person."* He was probably never a good atheist of the reasonable critical type like William Taylor, whose thinking was too dull and too difficult for him. Above all it was too negative and unrelated to anything but the brain for the man who wrote "Lines to Six-foot-three" and consorted with Gypsies. He had taken atheism along with Taylor's literary and linguistic teaching, perhaps with some eagerness at first as a form of protest against conventionally pious and respectable Norwich life. The Bible Society and Mrs. Clarke and her friends came radiant and benevolent to his "looped and windowed" atheism. They gave him friends and money : they gave him an occupation on which he felt, and afterwards found, that he could spend his hesitating energies. He gathered up all his powers to serve the Bible Society. He suffered hunger, cold, im- prisonment, wounded feet, long hours of indoor labour and long hours of dismal attendance upon inexorable official delay. Personally he irritated Mr. Brandram, the secre- tary, and his bold and unexpected ways gave the Society something to put up with, but he was always a faithful and enthusicistic servant. He had many reasons for being * Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society : Introduction, p. 2. THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA 127 grateful to them. He, who was going to get himself imprisoned for atheism, had already become, as Mr. Cun- ningham thought, a man "of certain Christian principle," if "of no very exactly defined denomination of Christians." He certainly did become an unquestioning wild missionary — ^though not merely wild, for he was discreet in his bold- ness ; he was careful to save the Society money ; he made himself respected by the highest English and Spanish officials in Spain; so that in 1837, for the first time in the Society's history, an English ambassador made their cause a national one. He wanted to shout and the Bible Society gave him something to shout for. He wanted to fight and they gave him something to fight for. Twenty years afterwards, in writing the Appendix to "The Romany Rye," he looked back on his travels in Spain as on a campaign: "It is true he went to Spain with the colours of that Society on his hat — oh ! the blood glows in his veins ! oh ! the marrow awakes in his old bones when he thinks of what he accomplished in Spain in the cause of religion and civilisation with the colours of that Society on his hat, and its weapon in his hand, even the sword of the word of God ; how with that weapon he hewed left and right, making the priests fly before him, and run away squeaking : ' Vaya ! que demonio es este ! ' Ay, and when he thinks of the plenty of bible swords which he left behind him, destined to prove, and which have already proved, pretty calthrops in the heels of Popery. 'Hallo! Batuschca,' he exclaimed the other night, on reading an article in a news- paper ; ■ what do you think of the present doings in Spain ? Your old friend the zingaro, the gitano who rode about Spain, to say nothing of Galicia, with the Greek Buchini behind him as his squire, had a hand in bringing them about; there are many brave Spaniards connected with 128 GEORGE BORROW the present movement who took Bibles from his hands, and read them and profited by them." He' was as sure in 1839 s-s in 1857 of the diabolic power and intention of Popery, that "unrelenting fiend," whose secrets few, he said, knew more than himself.* In the gladness of his now fully exerted powers of body and mind, travelling in wild country and observing and conflicting with men, he adopted not merely the unctuous phraseology of "I am at present, thanks be to the Lord, comfortable and happy,"t but a more attractive religious arrogance. "That I am an associate of Gypsies and fortune-tellers I do not deny," he says, "and why should I be ashamed of their company when my Master mingled with publicans and thieves."* He painted himself as a possible martyr among the wild Catholics, a St. Stephen. When he suffered at the same time from hardship and the Society's disfavour, he exclaimed : " It was God's will that I, who have risked all and lost almost all in the cause, be taunted, suspected, and the sweat of agony and tears wliich I have poured out be estimated at the value of the water of the ditch or the moisture which exudes from rotten dung. But I murmur not, and hope I shall at all times be willing to bow to the dispensations of the Almighty."§ He exulted in melodramatic nature, in the sublime of Salvator Rosa, in the desperate, wild, and strange. His very prayers, as reported by himself to the Secretary, distressed the Society because they were "passionate." True, he could sometimes, under the iilspiration of the respectable Secretary, write like a perfect middle-class English Christian. He condemned the Sunday amuse- ments of Hamburg, for example, remarking that " England, with all her faults, has still seme regard to decency, and * Sorrow's Letters to the Bible Society, p. 469. tibid., p. 27. + Ibid., p. 280. § Ibid., p. 342. THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA 129 will not tolerate such a shameful display of vice " (as rope- dancing) "in so sacred a season, when a decent cheer- fulness is the freest form in which the mind or countenance ought to invest themselves."* He argued against the translator of the Bible into Manchu that concessions should not be made to a Chinese way of thought, because it was the object of the Society to wean the Chinese from their own customs and observances, not to encourage them. But the opposite extreme was more congenial to Borrow. He would go to the market place in a remote Spanish village and display his Testaments on the outspread' horse- cloth, crying: "Peasants, peasants, I bring you the Word of God at a cheap price."t He would disguise himself, travelling with a sack of Testaments on his donkey; and when a woman asked if it was soap he had, he answered : " Yes ; it is soap to wash souls clean." This was the man to understand Peter Williams, the Welsh preacher who had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost and wan- dered about preaching and refusing a roof. Neither must it be forgotten that this was the man who, in a conversation not) reported to the Bible Society, said -. " What befalls my body or soul was written in a gahicote a thousand years before the foundation of the world." Borrow was only seven weeks in getting so far as to be able to translate from Manchu, though it had been said, as he pointed out, that the language took five or six years to acquire. It cost him an even shorter time to acquire the dialect of his employers, for in less than a month after he had retired to Norwich to learn Manchu, he was writing thus : "Revd. and Dear Sir, — I have just received your com- munication, and notwithstanding it is Sunday morning, * Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society, p. 20. t Ihid., p. 364. K I30 GEORGE BORROW and the bells with their loud and clear voices are calling me to church, I have sat down to answer it by return of post. . . . " Return my kind and respected friend, Mr. Brandram, my best thanks for his present of 'The G)TDsies' Advocate,' and assure him that, next to the acquirement of Mandchou, the conversion and enlightening of those interesting people occupy) the principal place in my mind. . . .* Never had his linguistic power a greater or more profit- able triumph than in this acquisition. As this was probably a dialect not unknown at Earlham, Norwich, and Oulton, among people whom he loved, respected, or beheld successful, the difficulty of the task was a little decreased. Thurtell and Haggart had passed away, Petulengro had not yet reappeared. There was no one to tell him that he was living in a country and an age that were after- wards to appear among the most ignorant and cruel on record. He himself had not yet discovered the "gentility- nonsense," nor did he ever discover that gentility was of the same family, if it was not an albinism of the same species, as pious and oily respectability. So delighted was he with the new dialect that he rolled it on his tongue to the confusion of habitues, who had to rap him over the knuckles for speaking of becoming "useful to the Deity, to man, and to himself." In July, 1833, Borrow was appointed, with a salary of :£'200 a year and expenses, to go to St. Petersburg, to help in editing a Manchu translation of the New Testament, or transcribing and collating a translation of the Old, accom- panied by a warning against "a tone of confidence in speaking of yourself" in such a phrase as "useful to the Deity, to man, and to yourself." Borrow accepted the correction, and Norwich laughed at him in his new suit. * Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society, p. 8. THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA 131 At the end of July he sailed, and as at this time he had no objection to gentility he regretted the end of his passage with so many "genteel, well-bred and intelligent pas- sengers," though he had suffered from sea-sickness, followed by "the horrors." St. Petersburg he thought the finest of the many capitals he had seen. He made the acquaintance of several men who could help him with their learning and their books, and above all he gained the friendship of John P. Hasfeldt, a Dane, a little older than himself, who was interpreter to the Danish Legation and teacher of European languages, evidently a man after Borrow's own heart, with his opinion that " The greater part of those products of Eirt, called ' the learned,' would not be able to earn a living if our Lord were not a guardian of fools." The copying of the Old Testament was finished by the end of the year, without having prevented Borrow from profiting by his unusual facilities for the acquisition of languages. He had then to superintend, or as it fell out, to help largely with his own hands, the printing of the first Manchu translation of the New Testament, with type which had first to be cleansed of ten years' rust and with compositors who knew nothing of Manchu. Lacking almost in time to eat or to sleep he impressed the Bible Society by his prodigious labours under " the blessing of a kind and gracious Providence watching over the execution of a work in which the wide extension of the Saviour's glory is involved." He was living cheaply, suffering sometimes from "the horrors," and curing them with port wine — sending money home to his mother, bidding her to employ a maid and to read and "think as much of God as possible." Nor was he doing merely what he was bound to do. For example, he translated some of the "Homilies of the Church of England" into Russian and into Manchu. He also pub- lished in St. Petersburg his "Targum" and "Tahsman," K 2 132 GEORGE BORROW a short further collection of translations from Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and from Russian national songs. The work was finished and formally and kindly approved by the Bible Society. He had proposed long before that he should distribute the books himself, wandering overland with them by Lake Baikal and Kiakhta right to Pekin; but the Russian Government refused a passport. Dr. Knapp believes that this intention of going among the Tartars and overland from Russia to Pekin was the sole ground for his crediting himself with travels in the Far East. In the flesh he had to content himself with a journey to Novgorod and Moscow. As he had visited the Jews at Hamburg so he did the Gypsies at Moscow. This adventure moved him to his first characteristic piece of prose, in a letter to the Society. This letter, which was afterwards printed in the "Athenaeum,"* and incorporated in "The Zincali," mentions the Gypsies who have become successful singers and married noblemen, but continues : "It is not, however, to be supposed that all the female Gypsies are of this high, talented and respectable order ; amongst them are many low and profligate females, who sing at taverns or at the various gardens in the neighbour- hood, and whose husbands and male connexions subsist by horse jobbing and like kinds of traffic. The principal place of resort of this class is Marina Rotche, lying about two versts from Moscow, and thither I drove, attended by a vaht de -place. Upon my arriving there, the Gypsies swarmed out from their tents, and from the little tradeer, or tavern, and surrounded me ; standing on the seat of the caleche, I addressed them in a loud voice in the dialect of the English Gypsies, with which I have some slight acquaintance. A scream of wonder instantly arose, and welcomes and. greetings were poured forth in torrents of * August 20, 1836. THE BIBLE SOCIETY: RUSSIA 133 musical Rommany, amongst which, however, the most prominent air was, 'Ah kak mi toute karmama,' 'Oh, how we love you ' ; for at first they supposed me to be one of their brothers, who they said, were wandering about in Turkey, China, and other parts, and that I had come over the great pawnee, or water, to visit them. ... I visited this place several times during my sojourn at Moscow, and spoke to them upon their sinful manner of living, upon the advent .and suffering of Christ Jesus, and expressed, upon my taking leave of them, a hope that they would be in a short period furnished with the word of eternal life in their own language, which they seemed to value and esteem much higher than the Russian." The tone of this letter suggests that it was meant for the Bible Society — and a copy was addressed to them — but at this date it is possible to see in it an outline of the Gypsy gentleman, very much the gentleman, the "colossal clergyman " of later days. Borrow liked the Russians, and for some reasons was sorry to leave them and Hasfeldt in September, 1835. But for other reasons he was glad. He would see his mother and comfort her for the loss of her elder son in November, 1833, as he had already done to some extent by telling her that he would "endeavoxu: to get ordained." He also would see Mrs. Clarke, with whom he had been corres- ponding for the past two years. Both she and his mother had been unwilling for him to go to Pekin. 134 GEORGE BORROW CHAPTER XVIII THE BIBLE SOCIETY : SPAIN Borrow's chief regret at leaving Russia was that his active life was interrupted, perhaps at an end. He was dreading the old life of unprofitable study with no complete friends. But luckily, when he had only been a month in England, the Bible Society resolved to send him to Lisbon and Oporto, to look for openings for circulating the Bible in Portugal and perhaps in Spain. After this they had thoughts of sending him to China by sea. In November, 1835, he sailed for Lisbon. Spain was at this time the victim of private quarrels which had been allowed to assume public importance. King Ferdinand VII. had twice been restored to an un- loving people by foreign, especially English, aid. This King had for heir his brother Carlos, until his fourth wife, Maria Christina, bore him a daughter, Isabella, in 1830; and tOi secure her succession he set aside the Salic law. In 1833 he died. Isabella II. was proclaimed Queen, and Christina Regent. Christinists and Carlists were soon at war, and very bloody war. The English intervened, once diplomatically, once with a foreign legion. The war wavered, with success now to the Carlist Generals Zumala- carregui and Cabrera and now to the Christinist Espajtero. There were new Prime Ministers about twice yearly. The parties were divided amongst themselves, and treachery was common. The only result that could always be fore- seen was that the people and the country would suffer. Not until 1 84 1 did Espartero finally defeat Cabrera. Portugal, in 1835, had just had its eight years of civil THE BIBLE SOCIETY: SPAIN 135 war between the partisans of a child — Maria II. — aged seven, and her uncle, Miguel, ending in the departure of Miguel. Borrow made a preliminary journey in the forlorn country and decided for Spain instead. Escaping the bullets of Portuguese soldiers, he crossed the boundary at the beginning of 1836 and entered Badajoz. There he met the Gypsies, and put off his journey to Madrid to see more of them and translate the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke into their tongue. At Merida he stopped again for a Gypsy wedding. His guide was the Gypsy, Antonio Lopez, who sold him the donkey which he rode as far as TaJavera. At Madrid his business was to print the New Testament in a Spanish Catholic translation. He had to wait; but with a new Cabinet permission was obtained and arrangements for the printing were made. The Revolution of La Granja, which he describes in " The Bible in Spain," caused another delay. Then, in October, after a visit to the Gypsies of Granada, he returned to London. He had written long letters to the Bible Society, and one which was combined and published in the "Athensum" with that written from Moscow. It is dated, Madrid, July 19, 1836, but describes his visit to Badajoz on January 6. He says, on entering Badajoz : " I instantly returned thanks to God, who had protected me during a journey of five days through the wilds of the Alemtejo, the province of Portugal the most infested by robbers and desperate characters, and which I had traversed with no other human companion than a lad, nearly idiotic, who was to convey back the mules which carried myself and luggage." Two men were passing him in the street, and seeing the face of one he touched his arm : "I said a certain word, to which, after an exclamation of surprise, he responded in the manner I expected." They were Gypsies. He continues : 136 GEORGE BORROW "They left me in haste and went about the town informing the rest that a stranger had arrived who spoke Rommany as well as themselves, who had the eyes and face of a Gitano, and seemed to be of the 'cratti' or blood. In less than half an hour the street before the inn was filled with the men, women and children of Egypt. I went out amongst them, and my heart sank within me as I surveyed them; so much squalidness, dirt and misery I had never before seen amongst a similar number of human beings; but the worst of all was the evil expression of their countenances, denoting that they were famihar with every species of crime, and it was not long before I found that their countenances did not belie them. After they had asked me an infinity of questions, and felt my hands, face, and clothes, they returned to their homes." He stayed with them nearly three weeks, he- says ; about ten days, says Dr. Knapp. Borrow continues : "The result of my observations was a firm belief that the Spanish Gitanos are the most vile, degraded and wretched people upon the earth. The great wickedness of these outcasts may, perhaps, be attributed to their having abandoned their wandering life and become inmates of the towns, where, to the original bad traits of their character, they have superadded the evil and vicious habits of the rabble. . . . They Hstened with admiration, but alas, not of the truths, the eternal truths I was telling them, but at finding that their broken jargon could be written and read; the only words of assent to the heavenly doctrine which I ever obtained, and which were rather of the negative kind, were the following, from a woman — 'Brother! you tell us strange things, though perhaps you do not lie ; a month since I would sooner have believed these tales than that I should this day have seen one who could write Rommany.' . . ." THE BIBLE SOCIETY: SPAIN 137 He preserves the clergyman, but deepens the Gypsy stain. The "Athenaeum" was "not at hberty on this occasion" to publish the name of this man whom Gypsies called " Brother," but, apparently it would not be the name of any writer hitherto known to readers of the "Athenaeum." He was a month in England, and then left for Spain to print and distribute Testaments. He had hardly put his feet on Spanish soil than, said the Marquis of Santa Colona,* he "looked round, saw some Gypsies lounging there, said something that the Marquis could not under- stand, and immediately 'that man became une graffe de Gitanos! They hung round his neck, clung to his knees, seized his hands, kissed his feet, so that the Marquis hardly liked to join his comrade again, after such close embraces by so dirty a company." At Cordova he was very well received by the Gj^sies "on the supposition that he was one of their own race." He says in "The Gypsies of Spain " : "As for myself, I was admitted without scruple to their private meetings, and| was made a participator of their most secret thoughts. During our intercourse, some remarkable scenes occurred : one night more than twenty of us, men and women, were assembled in a long low room on the ground floor, in a dark alley or court in the old gloomy town of Cordova. After the Gitanos had discussed several jockey plans, and settled some private bargains amongst themselves, we all gathered round a huge brasero of flaming charcoal, and began conversing sobre las cosas de Egypto, when I proposed that, as we had no better means of amusing ourselves, we should endeavour to turn into the Calo language some piece of devotion, that we might see whether this language, the gradual decay of which I had frequently heard them lament, was capable * Wentworth Webster, in " Journal of Gypsy Lore Society." 138 GEORGE BORROW of expressing any other matters than those which related to horses, mules, and Gypsy traffic. It was in this cautious manner that I first endeavoured to divert the attention of these singular people to matters of eternal importance. My suggestion was received with acclamations, and we forthwith proceeded to the translation of the Apostle's Creed. I first recited in Spanish, in the usual manner and without pausing, this noble confession, and then repeated it again, sentence by sentence, the Gitanos translatii^ as I proceeded. They exhibited the greatest eagerness and interest in their unwonted occupation, and frequently broke into loud disputes as to the best rendering — ^many being offered at the same time. In the meanwhile, I wrote down from their dictation, and at the conclusion I read aloud the translation, the result of the united wisdom of the assembly, whereupon they all raised a shout of exultation, and appeared not a little proud of the composition." In his desire to see the Gypsies, and the ways of the people he more than doubled his difficulties, and suffered from cold and the rudeness of the roads and of the people. But in spite of the internecine civil war he got safe to Madrid. Printing was begun in 1837, and when copies were ready Borrow advertised them and arranged fo:; their distribution. He himself set out with his servant, Antonio Buchini, a Greek of Constantinople, who had served an infinity of masters, and once been a cook to the overbearing General Cordova, and answered the General's sword with a pistol. They travelled to Salamanca, Valladolid, Leon, Astorga, Villafranca, Lugo, Coruiia, to Santiago, Vigo, and again to Corufia, to Ferrol, Oviedo, Santander, Burgos, Valladolid, and so back to Madrid in October. He had suffered from fever, dysentery and ophthalmia on the journey. According to Dr. Knapp it was the most unpropitious country possible. If chosen by anything but ignorance, it must have been by whim and the unconscious THE BIBLE SOCIETY: SPAIN 139 desire to delight posterity and amaze Dr. Knapp. Borrow had met, among others, Benedict Mol, the Swiss seeker after treasure hidden in the earth under the Church of San Roque at St. James' of Compostella. This traveller was not his only acquaintance. He formed a friendship at Madrid with the Spanish scholar^ Luis de Usoz, afterwards editor of " The Early Spanish Reformers," who became a member of the Bible Society, helped Borrow in editing the Spanish Testament, and looked after his interests while he was away from Madrid. At St. James' itself he made a friend and a co-operator of the old bookseller, Rey Romero, who knew Benedict Moll. Borrow returned to the sale of Testaments at Madrid, and to his own favourite project of printing his Spanish Gypsy translation of the Gospel of St. Luke. To adver- tise his Testaments he posted up and sent about flaming tricoloured placards. This was too much for the Moderate Government which had followed the Liberals : the sale of Testaments was stopped, and that for thirty years after. The ofiicials had been irritated by the far graver indiscre- tions of another but irregular agent of the Bible Society, Lieutenant Graydon, R.N., "a fervid Irish Protestant."* Apparently this man had advertised Bibles in Valencia as to be sold at very low prices and even given away; had printed abuse of the Spanish clergy and Government, and had described himself as co-operating with Borrow. Except at Madrid, the Bibles and Testaments in Borrow's depots throughout Spain were seized by the Government. The books had at last to be sent out of the country, British Consuls were forbidden to countenance religious agents ; and in the opinion of the Consul at Seville, J. M. Brackenbury, this was directly due to Graydon's indiscre- tions. The Society were kind to him. They cautioned him not to attack Popery, but to leave the Bible to speak * " Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society," p. 271. 140 GEORGE BORROW for itself. The caution was vain, but in spite of the harm done to Borrow and themselves they recalled Graydon with but a qualified disavowal of his conduct. Borrow did not conceal from the Society his opinion that this man, with his "lunatic vagaries," had been the "evil genius" of the Bible cause and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between Borrow and the Rev. A. Brandram, the Secretary. Evidently Borrow's character jarred upon Brandram, who took revenge by a tone of facetious cavil and several criticisms upon Borrow's ways, upon his confident masculine tone, for example, his " passionate " prayer, and his confession of superstitious obedience to an ominous dream. Brandram even took the trouble to remind Borrow that when it came to distribution in Russia his success had ended : which was true but not through any fault of his. Borrow took, the criticism as if applied to his Spanish work also, saying : " It was unkind and unjust to taunt me with having been unsuccessful in distributing the Scriptures. Allow me to state that no other person under the same circumstances would have distributed the tenth part. Yet had I been utterly un- successful, it would have been wrong to charge me with being so, after all I have undergone — and with how little of tha± are you acquainted."* If Borrow had been as revengeful as Dr. Knapp believed him, he would not have allowed Brandram to escape an immortality of hate in "Lavengro" or "The Romany Rye." Borrow irritated the Spanish Government yet a little more by issuing his Gypsy "Luke," and in May, 1838, he was illegally imprisoned in the Carcel de Corte, where he insisted upon staying until he was set free with honour and the payment of his expenses. He vindicated his position by a letter to a newspaper, pointing out that his Society was neither sectarian nor political, and that he was their * " Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society," p. 334. THE BIBLE SOCIETY : SPAIN 141 sole authorised agent. This led directly to the breaking of his connection with the Bible Society, who reprimanded him for his letter and virtually recalled him from Spain. Nevertheless Borrow made a series of excursions into the country to sell his Testaments, until in August he was definitely recalled. He returned to England, as he says himself, for "change of scene and air" after an attack of fever. He obtained a new lease from the Bible Society and was back in Spain at the end of 1838. Early in 1839 he made further excursions with Antonio Lopez to sell his Testaments, until he had to stop. Thereupon he went to Seville. He was still forming plans on behalf of the Society. He wished to go to La Mancha, the worst part of Spain, then through Saxagossa and into France. At Seville it was, in May, 1 839, that Colonel Napier met him. Nobody knew who, or of what nationality, he was — this "mysterious Unknown," the white-haired young man, with dark eyes of almost supernatural penetration and lustre, who gave himself out to be thirty instead of thirty- five, who spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, GermaJi, and Romaic to those who best understood these lan- guages. Borrow and Napier rode out together to the ruins of Italica : " We sat down," he says, " on a fragment of the walls ; the " Unknown " began to feel the vein of poetry creeping through his inward soul, and gave vent to it by reciting, with great emphasis and effect, the following well-known and beautiful lines: " Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower, grown Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep'd In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, Deeming it midnight : — Temples, baths, or halls — Pronounce who can ; for all that Learning reap'd From her research hath been, that these are walls." "I had been too much taken up with the scene, the 142 GEORGE BORROW verses, and the strange being who was repeating them with so much feeling, to notice the approach of a slight female figure, beautiful in the extreme, but whose tattered garments, raven hair, swarthy complexion, and flashing eyes, proclaimed her to be of the wandering tribe of Gitanos. From an intuitive sense of politeness she stood with crossed arms and a slight smile on her dark and hand- some countenance, until my companion had ceased, and then addressed us in the usual whining tone of supplication — ' Gentlemen, a little charity ; God will repay it to you ! ' The Gypsy girl was so pretty and her voice so sweet, that I involuntarily put my hand in my pocket. "'Stop!* said the 'Unknown.' 'Do you remember what I told you of the Eastern origin of these people? You shall see I am correct.' ' Come here, my pretty child,' said he in Moultanee, 'and tell me where are the rest of your tribe.' The girl looked astounded, and replied in the same tongue, but in broken language ; when, taking him by the arm, she said in Spanish : ' Come, Caballero, come to one who will be able to answer you ' ; and she led the way down among the ruins towards one of the dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts, and disclosed to us a set of beings scarcely less savage. The sombre walls of this gloomy abode were illumined by a fire, the smoke from which escaped through a deep fissure in the mossy roof, whilst the flickering flames threw a blood-red glare on the bronzed features of a group of children, two men, and a decrepit old hag who appeared busily engaged in some culinary operations. "On our entrance, the scowling glance of the males of the party, and a quick motion of the hand towards the folds of the faja (where the clasp-knife is concealed), caused in me, at least, anything but a comfortable sensation ; but their hostile intentions were immediately removed by a wave of the hand from our conductress, who, leading my THE BIBLE SOCIETY: SPAIN 143 companion towards the sibyl, whispered something in her ear. The old crone appeared incredulous. The 'Unknown' uttered one word; but that word had the effect of magic. She prostrated herself at his feet, and in an instant, from an object of suspicion, he became one of worship to the whole family, to whom on taking leave he made a handsome present, and departed with jtheir united blessings. " I was, as the phrase goes, dying with curiosity, and as soon as we mounted our horses, exclaimed : 'Where, in the name of goodness, did you pick up your acquaintance with the language of these extraordinary people ? ' ' Some years ago, in Moultan,' he replied. 'And by what means do you possess such apparent influence over them?' But the 'Unknown' had already said more than he perhaps wished on the subject. He dryly replied that he had more than once owed his life to Gypsies and had reason to know them well; but this was said in a tone which precluded all further queries on my part." This report is a wonderful testimony to Sorrow's power, for he seems to have made the Colonel write almost like himself and produce a picture exactly like those which he so often draws of himself. From Seville Borrow took a journey of a few weeks to Tangier and Barbary. There he met the strongest man in Tangier, one of the old Moors of Granada, who waved a barrel of water over his head as if it had been a quart pot. There he and his Jewish servant, Hayim Ben Attar, sold Testaments, and, says he, "with humble gratitude to the Lord," the blessed Book was soon in the hands of most of the Christians in Tangier. But with an account of his first day in the city he concluded " The Bible in Spain." When he was back again in Seville he had the society of Mrs. Clarke and her daughter Henrietta, who had come to Spain to avoid some legal diSiculties and presumably 144 GEORGE BORROW to see Borrow. Before the end of 1839 the engagement of Borrow and Mrs. Clarke was announced without sur- prising old Mrs. Borrow at Norwich. In November Borrow wrote almost his last long letter to the Bible Society. He had the advantage of a singular address, being for the moment in the prison of Seville, where he had been illegally thrown, after a quarrel with the Alcalde over the matter of a passport. He told them how this "ruffian" quailed before his gaze of defiance. He told them how well he was treated by his fellow prisoners : " The black-haired man who is now looking over my shoulder is the celebrated thief Palacio, the most expert housebreaker and dexterous swindler in Spain — in a word, the modern Guzman Dalfarache. The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal, is Salvador, the highway- man of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders. A fashionably dressed man, short and slight in person, is walking about the room : he wears immense whiskers and mustachios; he is one of that most singular race of Jews of Spain ; he is imprisoned for counterfeiting money. He is an atheist, but like a true Jew, the name which he most hates is that of Christ. . . ."* So well did Borrow choose his company, even in prison. Some of his letters to the Society went astray at this time and he was vainly expected in England. He was able to send them a very high testimony to his discretion from the English Consul at Seville, and he himself reminded them that he had been "fighting with wild beasts" during this last visit. The Society several times repeated his recall, but he did not return, apparently because he wished to remain with Mrs. Clarke in Seville, and because he no longer felt himself at their beck and call. He was also at work on " The Gj^sies of Spain." Nevertheless he wrote to the Society in March, * Letter to the Bible Society, 2Sth Nov., 1839. 1 ^ THE BIBLE SOCIETY: SPAIN 145 1840, a letter which would have been remarkable from another man about to marry a wife; for he said that he wished to spend the remaining years of his life in the northern parts of China, as he thought he had a call, and still hoped "to die in the cause of my Redeemer." In April he left Spain with Mrs. and Miss Clarke. Fifty or sixty years later Mrs. Joseph Pennell " saw the sign, ' G. Borrow, Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society,' high upon a house in the Plaza de la Constitucion, in Seville." Borrow was never again in Spain. After reporting himself for the last time to the Society, and making a suggestion which Brandram answered by saying, "the door seems shut," he married Mrs. Clarke on April 23, 1840. She had £4$^ ^ year and a home at Oulton. Fifteen or sixteen years later he spoke of his wife and daughter thus : " Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives — can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia — of my step-daughter — for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me — that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and play- ing remarkably well on the guitar — not the trumpery German thing so-called — ^but the real Spanish guitar." His wife wrote letters for him, copied his manuscripts, and helped to correct his proofs. She remained at Oulton, or Yarmouth, while he went about; if he went to Wales or Ireland she sometimes accompanied him to a convenient centre and there remained while he did as he pleased. She admired him, and she appears to have become essential to his life, apart from her income, and not to have resented her position at any time, though grieved by his unconcealed melancholy. L 146 GEORGE BORROW A second time he praised her in print, saying that he had an exceedingly clever wife, and allowed her "to buy and sell, carry money to the bank, draw cheques, inspect and pay tradesmen's bills, and transact all my real business, whilst I myself pore over old books, walk about the shires, discoursing with Gypsies, under hedgerows, or with sober bards — in hedge alehouses." "THE ZINCALI" i47 CHAPTER XIX "THE ZINCALI" Borrow and his wife and stepdaughter settled at Oulton Cottage before the spring of 1840 was over. This house, the property of Mrs. Borrow, was separated from Oulton Broad only by a slope of lawn, at the foot of which was a private boat. Away from the house, but equally near lawn and water stood Borrow's library — a little peaked octagonal summer house, with toplights and windows. The cottage is gone, but the summer house, now mantled with ivy, where he wrote "The Bible in Spain" and " Lavengro," is still to be seen. Here, too, he arranged and completed the book written "at considerable intervals during a period of nearly live years passed in Spain — in moments snatched from more important pursuits — chiefly in ventas and posadas (inns), whilst wandering through the country in the arduous and xmthankful task of distributing the Gospel among its children " — " The Zincali : or the Gypsies of Spain." It was published in April, 1841. This book is a description of Gypsies in Spain and wherever else he has met them, with some history, and, as Borrow says himself, with "more facts than theories." It abounds in quotations from out of the way Spanish books, but was by far " less the result of reading than of close obser- vation." It is patched together from scattered notes with little order or proportion, and czmnot be regarded as a whole either in intention or effect. Nor is this wholly due to the odd times and places in which it was written. Borrow had never before written a continuous original work of any length. Me had formed no clear idea of L 2 148 George;;. BORROW himself, his public, or his purpose. Personality was strong in him and it had to be expressed. He was full also of extraordinary observation, and this he could not afford to conceal. It was not easy to satisfy the two needs in one coherent book ; he hardly tried, and he certainly did not succeed. Ford described it well in his review of " The Bible in Spain " : * The Gypsies of Spain ' was a Spanish olla — a hotch- potch of the jockey tramper, philologist, and missionary. It was a thing of shreds and patches — a true book of Spain ; the chapters, like her bundle of unamalgamating provinces, were just held together, and no more, by the common tie of religion; yet it was strange and richly flavoured with genuine borracha. It was the first work of a diffident, in- experienced man, who, mistrusting his own powers, hoped to conciliate critics by leaning on Spanish historians and Gypsy poets." Nevertheless, "The Zincali" is a book that is still valuable for these two sei>arate elements of personality and extraordinary observation. Probably Borrow, his publisher, and the public, regarded it chiefly as a work of information, picturesquely diversified, and this it still is, though the increase and systematization of Gypsy studies are said to have superseded it. A book of spirit cannot be superseded. But pure information does not live long, and the fact that its information is inaccurate or incom- plete does not rot a book like " The Compleat Angler " or the " Georgics." Thus it may happen that the first book on a subject is the best, and its successors mere treatises destined to pave the way for other treatises. " The Gypsies of Spain" is still read as no other book on the Gypsy is read. It is still read, not only by those just infected with Gypsy fever, but by men as men. It does not, indeed, * " Edinburgh Review," February. 1843.I ["THE ZINCALI" 149 survive as a whole, because it never was a whole, but there is a spirit in the best parts sufficiently strong to carry the reader on over the rest. To-day very few will do more than smile when Borrow says of the Gypsies, that there can be no doubt " they are human beings and have immortal souls," and thai) the chief object of his book is to " draw the attention of the Christian philanthropist towards them, especially that degraded and unhappy portion of them, the Gitanos of Spain." In 1841 many of the Christian public probably felt a slight glow of satisfaction at starting on a book that brought the then certain millenium, of a Christian and English cast, definitely nearer. Probably they liked to know that this missionary called pugilistic combats "disgraceful and brutalising exhibitions '' ; and they were almost as certainly, as we are to-day, delighted with the descriptions that followed, because it brought for the first time clearly before them a real prize-fighting scene, and the author, a terrible child of four- teen, looking on — " why should I hide the truth ? " says he. This excellent moral tone accompanied the reader of 1841 with satisfaction to the end. For example, Borrow describes the Gj^psies at Tarifa swindling a country man and woman out of their donkey. When he sees them being treated and fondled by their intending robbers, he exclaims: "Behold, poor humanity, thought I to myself, in the hands of devils ; in this manner are human souls ensnared to destruction by the fiends of the pit." When he sees them departing penniless and without their donkey, the woman bitterly lamenting it, he comments -. " Upon the whole, however, I did not much pity them. The woman was certainly not the man's wife. The labourer had probably left his village with some strolling harlot, bringing with him the animal which had previously served to support himself and a family." Borrow was a man who pronounced the Bible to be "the wonderful Book which I50 GEORGE BORROW is capable of resolving every mystery." He was a man, furthermore, who called sorcery simply " a thing impossible," and thus addressed a writer on chiromancy : " We . . . believe that the lines of the hand have as little connection with the events of life as with the liver and stomach, not- withstanding Aristotle, who you forget was a heathen and cared as little for the Scriptures as the Gitanos, whether male or female." Another satisfactory side to Sorrow's public character, as revealed in " The Zincali," was his contempt for " other nations," such as Spain — " a country whose name has long and justly been considered as synonymous with every species of ignorance and barbarism." His voice rises when he says that " avarice has always been the dominant passion in Spanish minds, their rage for money being only to be compared to the wild hunger of wolves for horse-flesh in the time of winter; next to avarice, envy of superior talent and accomplishment is the prevailing passion." These were the people whom he had gone to convert. His contempt for those who were not middle-class English- men seemed unmitigated. Speaking of the Gypsies, to whom the schools were open and the laws kinder, he points out that, nevertheless, they remain jockeys and blacksmiths, though it is true they have in part given up their wandering life. But " much," he says, " will have been accomplished if, after the lapse of a hundred years, one hundred human beings shall have been evolved from the Gypsy stock who shall prove sober, honest, and useful members of society," i.e., resembling the Spaniards whom he so condemned. But if men love a big fellow at the street corner bellow- ing about sin and the wrath to come, they love him better if he was a black sinner before he became white as the driven snow. Borrow reprimanded Spaniard and Gypsy, but he also knew them : there is even a suspicion that he "THE ZINCALI" 151 liked them, though in his public black-coated capacity he had to condemn them and regret that their destiny was perdition. Had he not said, in his preface, that he had known the Gypsies for twenty years and that they treated him well because they thought him a Gypsy? and in another place referred to the time when he lived with the English Gypsies ? Had he not, in his introductions, spoken of "my brethren, the Smiths," a phrase then crjrptic and only to be explained by revealing his sworn brotherhood with Ambrose Smith, the Jasper Petulengro of later books ? He had said, moreover, in a perfectly genuine tone, with no trace of missionary declamation : "After the days of the great persecution in England against the Gypsies, there can be little doubt that they lived a right merry and tranquil life, wandering about and pitching their tents wherever inclination led them : indeed, I can scarcely conceive any human condition more enviable than Gypsy life must have been in England during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth century, which were likewise the happy days for Englishmen in general; there was peace and plenty in the land, a contented population, and everything went well." If a man wishes to condemn the seven deadly sins we tolerate him if in the process they are sufficiently well described. If Borrow described the tinker family as wretched, and their donkey as miserable, he added, " though life, seemingly so wretched, has its charms for these out- casts, who live without care and anxiety, without a thought beyond the present hour, and who sleep as sound in ruined posadas and ventas, or in ravines amongst rocks and pines, as the proudest grandee in his palace at Seville or Madrid." If he condemned superstition, he yet thought it possi- bly " founded on a physical reality " ; he regarded the moon as the true "evil eye," and bade men "not sleep 152 GEORGE BORROW uncovered beneath the smile of the moon, for her glance is poisonous, and produces insupportable itching in the eye, and not infrequently blindness." If he believed in the immortality of the soul, he did not disdain to know the vendor of poisons who was a Gypsy. If he stayed three weeks in Badajoz because he knew he should never meet any people " more in need of a little Christian exhortation " than the G)^sies, he did not fill his pages with three weeks of Christian exhortation, but told the story of the Gypsy soldier, Antonio — ^how he recognised as a Gypsy the enemy who was about to kill him, and saved himself from the uplifted bayonet by crying " Zincalo, Zincalo ! " and then, having been revived by him, sat for hours with his late enemy, who said : " Let the dogs fight and tear each other's throats till they are all destroyed, what matters it to the Zincali ? they are not of our blood, and shall that be shed for them ? " This man who, if he had his way, would have washed his face in the blood of the Busne (those who are not G5^sies), this man called Borrow " brother ! " If Borrow distributed Testaments, he knew little more of the recipients than a bolt from the blue, or if he did he cared to tell but little. That little is the story of the G3'psy soldier, Chaleco, who came to him at Madrid in 1838 with a copy of the Testament. He told his story from his cradle up; he imposed himself on Borrow's hospitality, eating " like a wolf of the Sierra," and drinking in propor- tion. Borrow could only escape from him by dining out. When Borrow was imprisoned the fellow drew his sword at the news and vowed to murder the Prime Minister " for having dared to imprison his brother." In what follows. Borrow reveals in a consummate manner his power of drawing into his vicinity extraordinary events : " On my release, I did not revisit my lodgings for some days, but lived at an hotel. I returned late one afternoon, with my servant Francisco, a Basque of Hernani, who had "THE ZINCALI" 153 served me with the utmost fidehty during my imprisonment, which he had voluntarily shared with me. The first person I saw on entering was the Gypsy soldier, seated by the table, whereon were several bottles of wine which he had ordered from the tavern, of course on my account. He was smoking, and looked savage and sullen ; perhaps he was not much pleased with the reception he had experienced. He had forced himself in, and the woman of the house sat in a corner looking upon him with dread. I addressed him, but he would scarcely return an answer. At last he commenced discoursing with great volubility in Gypsy and Latin. I did not understand much of what he said. His words were wild and incoherent, but he repeatedly threatened some person. The last bottle was now exhausted — he demanded more. I told him in a gentle manner that he had drunk enough. He looked on the ground for some time, then slowly, and somewhat hesitatingly, drew his sword and laid it on the table. It was become dark. I was not afraid of the fellow, but I wished to avoid any thing unpleasant. I called to Fran- cisco to bring lights, and obeying a sign which I made him^ he sat down at the table. The Gypsy glared fiercely upon him — Francisco laughed, and began with great glee to talk in Basque, of which the G3^sy understood not a word. The Basques, like all Tartars, and such they are, are paragons of fidelity and good nature; they are only dangerous when outraged, when they are terrible indeed. Francisco to the strength of a giant joined the disposition of a lamb. He was beloved even in the patio of the prison, where he used to pitch the bar and wrestle with the mur- derers and felons, always coming off victor. He continued speaking Basque. The Gypsy was incensed; and, for- getting the languages in which, for the last hour, he had been speaking, complained to Francisco of his rudeness in speaking any tongue but Castilian. The Basque 154 GEORGE BORROW replied by a loud carcajada, and slightly touched the Gypsy on the knee. The latter sprang up like a mine discharged, seized his sword, and, retreating a few steps, made a desperate lunge at Francisco. " The Basques, next to the Pasiegos, are the best cudgel- players in Spain, and in the world. Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, which he had broken in the stable, whence he had just ascended. With the swiftness of lightning he foiled the stroke of Chaleco, and, in another moment, with a dexterous blow, struck the sword out of his hand, sending it ringing against the wall. "The Gypsy resumed his seat and his cigar. He occa- sionally looked at the Basque. His glances were at first atrocious, but presently changed their expression, and appeared to me to become prying and eagerly curious. He at last arose, picked up his sword, sheathed it, and walked slowly to the door, when there he stopped, turned round, advanced close to Francisco, and looked him stead- fastly in the face. ' My good fellow,' said he, ' I am a Gypsy, and can read baji. Do you know where you will be this time to-morrow ? '* Then laughing like a hyena, he departed, and I never saw him again. "At that time on the morrow, Francisco was on his death-bed. He had caught the jail fever, which had long raged in the Carcel de la Corte, where I was imprisoned. In a few days he was buried, a mass of corruption, in the Campo Santo of Madrid." Having attracted the event, he recorded it with a vivid- ness well set off by his own nonchalance. Again and again he was to repeat this triumph of depicting the wild, and the wild in a condition of activity and often fury. His success is all the greater because it is unexpected. He sets out "to direct the attention of the public towards * The hostess, Maria Diaz, and her son Juan Jos6 Lopez, were present when the outcast uttered these prophetic words. "THE ZINCALI" 155 the Gypsies; but he hopes to be able to do so without any romantic appeals on their behalf." He is far from having a romantic tone. He wields, as a rule, with any amount of dignity the massive style of the early Victorian "Quarterly Review" and Lane's so-called "Arabicin Nights." Thus, speaking of Gypsy fortune-tellers, he says : " Their practice chiefly lies among females, the portion of the human race most given to curiosity and credulity." Sentences like this always remind me of Lord Melbourne's indignation at the thought of religion intruding on private life. His indignation is obviously of of the same period as the sentence : " Among the Zingari are not a few who deal in precious stones, and some who vend poisons; and the most remarkable individual whom it has been my fortune to encounter amongst the Gypsies, whether of the Eastern or Western world, was a person who dealt in both these articles." A style like this resembles a paunchy man who can be relied on not to pick the daisies. At times Borrow writes as if he were trans- lating, as in "The anvil rings beneath the thundering stroke, hour succeeds hour, and still endures the hard sullen toil." He adds a little vjmity of no value by a Biblical echo now and again, as in the clause : " And it came to pass, moreover, that the said Fajardo . . . "or in " And the chief of that camp, even Mr. Petulengro, stood before the encampment. . . ." This is a style for information, instruction, edification, and intervals of sleep. It is the style of an age, a class, a sect, not of an individual. Deeds and not words are what count in it. Only by big, wild, or extraordinary things can it be compelled to a semblance of life. Borrow gives it such things a hundred times, and they help one another to be effective. The reader does not forget the Gypsies of Granada : " Many of them reside in caves scooped in the sides of 156 GEORGE BORROW the ravines which lead to the higher regions of the Alpujarras, on a skirt of which stands Granada. A common occupation of the Gitanos of Granada is working in iron, and it is not infrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy smiths and their famihes, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of the earth. To one standing at the mouth of the cave, especially at night, they afford a picturesque spectacle. Gathered round the forge, their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appeeir like figures of demons ; while the cave, with its flinty sides and uneven roof, blackened by the charcoal vapours which hover about it in festoons, seems to offer no inadequate representation of fabled purgatory." The picture of the Gitana of Seville hands on some of its own power to the quieter pages, and at length, with a score of other achievements of the same solid kind, kindles well-nigh every part of the shapeless book. I shall quote it at length : "If there be one being in the world who, more than another, deserves the title of sorceress (and where do you find a word of greater romance and more thrilling interest ?), it is the Gypsy female in the prime and vigour of her age and ripeness of her understanding — the Gipsy wife, the mother of two or three children. Mention to me a point of devilry with which that woman is not acquainted. She can at any time, when it suits her, show herself as expert a jockey as her husband, and he appears to advan- tage in no other character, and is only eloquent when descanting on the merits of some particular animal ; but she can do much more ; she is a prophetess, though she believes not in prophecy; she is a physician, though she will not taste her own philters ; she is a procuress, though she is not to be procured ; she is a singer of obscene songs, though she will suffer no obscene hands to touch her ; and though no one is more tenacious of the little she possesses, THE ZINCALI" 157 she is a cutpurse and a shoplifter whenever opportunity shall offer. . . . Observe, for example, the Gitana, even her of Seville. "She is standing before the portals of a large house in one of the narrow Moorish streets of the capital of Andalusia ; through the grated iron door, she looks in upon the court; it is paved with small marble slabs of almost snowy whiteness ; in the middle is a fountain dis- tilling limpid water, and all around there is a profusion of macetas, in which flowering plants and aromatic shrubs are growing, and at each corner there is an orange tree, and the perfume of the azahar may be distinguished ; you hear the melody of birds from a small aviary beneath the piazza which surrounds the court, which is surrounded by a toldo or linen awning, for it is the commencement of May, and the glorious sun of Andalusia is burning with a splendour too intense for its rays to be borne with impunity. It is a fairy scene such as nowhere meets the eye but at Seville, or perhaps at Fez and Shiraz, in the palaces of the Sultan and the Shah. The Gypsy looks through the iron-grated door, and beholds, seated near the fountain, a richly dressed dame and two lovely delicate maidens ; they are busied at their morning's occupation, intertwining with their sharp needles the gold and silk on the tambour ; several female attendants are seated behind. The Gypsy pulls the bell, when is heard the soft cry of ' Quien es ' ; the door, unlocked by means of a string, recedes upon its hinges, when in walks the Gitana, the witch-wife of Multan, with a look such as the tiger-cat casts when she steaJeth from her jungle into the plain. "Yes, well may you exclaim, 'Ave Maria purissima,' ye dames and maidens of Seville, as she advances towards you ; she is not of yourselves, she is not of your blood, she or her fathers have walked to your clime from a distance of three thousand leagues. She has come from the far 158 GEORGE BORROW East, like the three enchanted kings to Cologne; but unlike them she and her race have come with hate and not with love. She comes to flatter, and to deceive, and to rob, for she is a lying prophetess, and a she-Thug; she will greet you with blessings which will make your heart rejoice, but your heart's blood would freeze, could you hear the curses which to herself she murmurs against you ; for she says, that in her children's veins flows the dark blood of the 'husbands,' whilst in those of yours flows the pale tide of the 'savages,' and therefore she would gladly set her foot on all your corses first poisoned by her hands. For all her love — and she can love — is for the Romas ; and all her hate — and who can hate like her? — ^is for the Busnees ; for she says that the world would be a fair world were there no Busnees, and if the Romamiks could heat their kettles undisturbed at the foot of the olive trees ; and therefore she would kill them all if she could and if she dared. She never seeks the houses of the Busnees but for the purpose of prey ; for the wild animals of the sierra do not more abhor the sight of man than she abhors the countenances of the Busnees. She now comes to prey upon you and to scofif at you. Will you believe her words ? Fools! do you think that the being before ye has any sympathy for the like of you ? " She is of the middle stature, neither strongly nor slightly built, and yet her every movement denotes agility and vigour. As she stands erect before you, she appears like a falcon about to soar, and you are almost tempted to believe that the power of volation is hers ; and were you to stretch forth your hand to seize her, she would spring above the house-tops like a bird. Her face is oval, and her features are regular but somewhat hard and coarse, for she was bom amongst rocks in a thicket, and she has been wind-beaten and sun-scorched for many a year, even like her parents before her; there is memy a speck upon her cheek, and "THE ZINCALI" i59 perhaps a scar, but no dimples of love; and her brow is wrinkled over, though she is yet young. Her complexion is more than dark, for it is almost that of a Mulatto ; and her hair, which hangs in long locks on either side of her face, is black as coal, and coarse as the tail of a horse, from which it seems to have been gathered. " There is no female eye in Seville can support the glance of hers, so fierce and penetrating, and yet so artful and sly, is the expression of their, dark orbs ; her mouth is fine and almost delicate, and there is not a queen on the proudest throne between Madrid and Moscow who might not, and would not, envy the white and even rows of teeth which adorn it, which seem not of pearl but of the purest elephant's bone of Multan. She comes not alone ; a swarthy two-year old bantling clasps her neck with one arm, its naked body half extant from the coarse blanket which, drawn round her shoulders, is secured at her bosom by a skewer. Though tender of age it looks wicked and sly, like a veritable imp of Roma. Huge rings of false gold dangle fronij wide slits in the lobes of her ears ; her nether garments are rags, and her feet are cased in hempen sandals. Such is the wan- dering Gitana, such is the witch-wife of Multan, who has come to spae the forttme of the Sevillian countess and her daughters. "'O may the blessing of Egypt light upon your head, you high-bom Lady! (May an evil end overtake your body, daughter of a Busnee harlot!) and may the same blessing await the two fair roses of the Nile here flowering by your side ! (May evil Moors seize them and carry them across the water!) O listen to the words of the poor woman who is come from a distant country; she is of a wise people, though it has pleased the God of the sky to pimish them for their sins by sending them to wander through the world. They denied shelter to the Majari, whom you call the queen of heaven, and to the Son of God, i6o GEORGE BORROW when they flew to the land of Eg5^t, before the wrath of the wicked king ; it is said that they even refused them a draught of the sweet waters of the great river when the blessed two were athirst O you will say that it was a heavy crime ; and truly so it was, and heavily has the Lord punished the Egyptians. He has sent us a-wandering, poor as you see, with scarcely a blanket to cover us. O blessed lady (accursed be thy dead as many as thou mayest have), we have no money to purchase us bread; we have only our wisdom with which to support ourselves and our poor hungry babes ; when God took away their silks from the Egyptians, and their gold from the Egyptians, he left them their wisdom as a resource that they might not starve. O who can read the stars like the Eg3^tians ? and who can read the lines of the palm like the Egyptians ? The poor woman read in the stars that there was a rich ventura for all of this goodly house, so she followed the bidding of the stars and came to declare it. O blessed lady (I de&le thy dead corse), yotir husband is at Granada, fighting with King Ferdinand against the wild Corahai ! (May an evil ball smite him and split his head !) Within three months he shall return with twenty captive Moors, round the neck of each a chain of gold. (God grant that when he enter the house a beam may fall upon him and crush him!) And within nine months after his return God shall bless you with a fair chabo, the pledge for which you have sighed so long! (Accursed be the salt placed in its mouth in the church when it is baptised !) Your palm, blessed lady, your palm, and the palms of all I see here, that I may tell you all the rich ventura which is hanging over this good house ; (May evil, lightning fall upon it and consume it !) but first let me sing you a song of Egypt, that the spirit of the Chowahanee may descend more plenteously upon the poor woman.' "Her demeanour now instantly undergoes a change. Hitherto she has been pouring forth a lying and wild "THE ZINCALI" i6i harangue, without much flurry or agitation of manner. Her speech, it is true, has been rapid, but her voice has never been raised to a very high key; but she now stamps on the ground, and placing her hands on her hips, she moves quickly to the right and left, advancing and retreating in a sidelong direction. Her glances become more fierce and fiery, and her coarse hair stands erect on her head, stiff as the prickles of the hedgehog ; and now she commences clapping her hands, and uttering words of an unknown tongue, to a strange and uncouth tune. The tawny bantling seems inspired with the same fiend, and, foaming at the mouth, utters wild sounds, in imitation of its dam. Still more rapid become the sidelong movements of the Gitana. Movements ! she springs, she bounds, and at every bound she is a yard above the ground. She no longer bears the child in her bosom; she plucks it from thence, and fiercely brandishes it aloft, till at last, with a yell, she tosses it high into the air, like a ball, and then, with neck and head thrown back, receives it, as it falls, on her hands and breast, extracting a cry from the terrified beholders. Is it possible she can be singing? Yes, in the wildest style of her people ; and here is a snatch of the song, in the lan- guage of Roma, which she occasionally screams: " En los sastos de yesque plai me diqudlo, Doscusanas de sonacai ter61o,— Corojai diqu^lo abillar, Y ne asislo ehapescar, chapescar." " On the top of a mountain I stand, With a crown of red gold in my hand, — Wild Moors come trooping o'er the lea, O how from their fury shall I flee, flee, flee ? how from their fury shall I flee ? Such was the Gitana in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, and much the same is she now in the days of Isabel and Christina. . . ." Here, it is true, there is a substantial richly-coloured and M 162 GEORGE BORROW strange subject matter, such as could hardly be set down in any way or by anyone without attracting the attention. Borrow makes it do more than this. The word "extant" may offend a little, but the writer can afford many such blemishes, for he has life in his pen. He is, as it were himself substantial, richly-coloured, strange and with big strokes and splashes he suggests the thing itself. There have been writers since Borrow's day who have thought to use words so subtly that they are equivalent to things, but in the end their words remain nothing but words. Borrow uses language like a man, and we forget his words on account of the vividness of the things which they do not so much create as evoke. I do not mean that it can be called unconscious art, for it is naively conscious and delighting in itself. The language is that of an orator, a man standing up and addressing a mass in large and emphatic terms. He succeeds not only in evoking things that are very much alive, but in suggesting an artist that is their equal, instead of one, who like so many more refined writers, is a more or less pathetic admirer of living things. In this he resembles Byron. It may not be the highest form of art, but it is the most immediate and disturbing and genial in its effect. Finally, the whole book h' 3 body. It can be browsed on. It does not ask a particular mood, being itself the result of no one mood, but of a great part of one man's life. Turn over half a dozen pages and a story, or a picture, or a bit of costume, or of superstition, will invariably be the reward. It reads already like a book rather older than it really is, but not because it has faded. There was nothing in it to fade, being too hard, massive and unvarnished. It remains alive, capable of surviving the Gypsies except in so far as they live within it and its fellow books. "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 163 CHAPTER XX "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" In "The Zincali" Borrow used some of his private notes and others supplied by Spanish friends, together with parts of letters to the Bible Society. It used to be sup- posed that "The Bible in Spain" was made up almost entirely from these letters. But this has now been dis- proved by the newly published "Letters of George Borrow to the Bible Society."* These letters are about half the length of "The Bible in Spain," and yet only about a third part of them was used by Borrow in writing that book. Some of his letters were never received by the Society and had probably been lost on the way. But this was more of a disaster to the Society than to Borrow. He kept journalst from which his letters were probably copied or composed; and he was able, for example, in July, 1836, to send the Society a detailed and dated account of his entry into Spain in January, and his intercourse with the Gypsies of Badajoz. It is also possible that the letters lent to him by the Society were far more numerous than those returned by him. He missed little that could have been turned to account, unless it was the suggestion that if he knew the country his safest way from Seville to Madrid was to go afoot in the dress of beggar or Gypsy, and the remark that in Tangier one of his principal associates was a black slave, whose country was! only three days journey from Timbuctoo.J He had already in 1835 * Edited by T. H. Darlow, Hodder and Stoughton. f See, e.g., "Bible in Spain," ChapterXIII. " I shall have frequent occasion to mention the Swiss in the course of these jfournals ...."; also the preface. X Ibid., p. 445. M 2 1 64 GEORGE BORROW planned to write "a small volume" on what he was about to see and hear in Spain, and it must have been from notes or full journals kept with this view that he drew for "The Zincali" and still more for "The Bible in Spain." He wrote his journals and letters very much as Cobbett his "Rural Rides," straight after days in the saddle. Except when he was presenting a matter of pure business he was not much troubled by the fact that he was addressing his employers, the Bible Society. He did not always begin "Bible" with a capital B, an error corrected by Mr. Darlow, his editor. He prefixed "Revd. and dear sir," and thought little more about them unless to add such a phrase as: "A fact which I hope I may be permitted to mention with gladness and with decent triumph in the Lord." He did not, however, scorn to make a favourable misrepresentation of his success, as for example in the interview with Mendizabal, which was reduced proba- bly to the level of the facts in its book form. The Society were not always pleased with his frankness and confidence, and the Secretary complained of things which were incon- venient to be read aloud in a pious assembly, less concerned with sinners than with repentance, and not easily convinced by the improbable. He sent them, for example, after a specimen G)'psy translation of the Gospel of St. Luke and of the Lord's Prayer, "sixteen specimens of the horrid curses in use amongst the Spanish Gypsies," with translations into English. These do not re-appear either in " The Bible in Spain " or in the edition of Barrow's letters to the) Society. He spared them, apparently, the story of Benedict Moll and many another good thing that was meant for mankind. I should be inclined to think that a very great part of " The Bible in Spain " was written as the letters were, on the spot. Either it was not sent to the Society for fear of loss, or if copied and sent to them, it was lost on the way or never returned by Borrow after he had used it in writing the "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 165 book, for the letters are just as careful in most parts as the book, and the book is just as fresh as the letters. When he wrote to the Society, he said that he told the schoolmaster " the Almighty would never have inspired His saints with a desire to write what was unintelligible to the great mass of mankind " ; in " The Bible in Spain " he said : " It [i.e., the Bible] would never have been written if not calculated by itself to illume the minds of all classes of mankind." Continuous letters or journals would be more likely to suit Borrow's purpose than notes such as he took in his second tour to Wales and never used. Notes made on the spot are very likely to be dispropor- tionate, to lay undue stress on something that should be allowed to recede, and would do so if left to memory ; and once made they are liable to misinterpretation if used after intervals of any length. But the flow and continuity of letters insist on some proportion and on truth at least to the impression of the day, and a balance is ensured between the scene or the experience on the one hand and the observer on the other. " The Zincali " was not published before Borrow realised what a treasure he had deposited with the Bible Society, and not long afterwards he obtained the loan of his letters to make a new book on his travels in Spain. Borrow's own account, in his preface to the second edition of "The Zincali," is that the success of that book, and "the voice not only of England but of the greater part of Europe" proclaiming it, astonished him in his "humble retreat" at Oulton. He was, he implies, inclined to be too much elated. Then the voice of a critic — ^whom we know to have been Richard Ford — told him not to believe all he heard, but to try again and avoid all his second hand stuff, his "Gypsy poetry, dry laws, and compilations from dull Spanish authors." And so, he says, he began work in the winter, but slowly, and on through summer and autumn and another 1 66 GEORGE BORROW winter, and into another spring and summer, loitering and being completely idle at times, until at last he went to his summer house daily and finished the book. But as a matter of fact " The Zincali " had no great success in either public or literary esteem, and Ford's criticism was passed on the manuscript, not the printed book. Borrow and his wife took about six months to prepare the letters for publication as a book. He took great pains with the writing and only worked when he was in the mood. His health was not quite good, as he implies in the preface to "The Zincali," and he tried "the water system" and also "lessons in singing," to cure his indigestion and sleeplessness. He had the advantage of Ford's advice, to avoid fine writing, mere description, poetry and learned books, and to give plenty of "racy, real, genuine scenes, and the more out of the way the better," stories of adventure, extraordinary things, prisons, low life, Gypsies, and so on. He was now drawing entirely from "his own well," and when the book was out Ford took care to remark that the author had cast aside the learned books which he had used as swimming corks in the "Zincali," and now "leaped boldly into the tide " unaided. John Murray's reader sent back the manu- script to be revised and augmented, and after this was done, "The Bible in Spain" was published, at the end of 1842, when Borirow was thirty-nine. "The Bible in Spain" was praised and moreover pur- chased by everyone. It was translated into French, American, Russian, and printed in America. The " Athenaeum " found it a " genuine book " ; the " Examiner " said that "apart from its adventurous interest, its literary merit is extraordinary." Ford compared it with an old Spanish ballad, "going from incident to incident, bang, bang, bang ! " and with Gil Bias, and with Bunyan. Ford, it must be remembered, had ridden over the same tracks as Borrow in Spain, but before him, and had written his own *"THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 167 book with a, combination of learning and gusto that is one of the rarest of Hterary virtues. Like Borrow he wrote fresh from the thing itself when possible, asserting for example that the fat of the hams of Montanches, when boiled, " looked like melted topazes, and the flavour defies language, although we have dinfrd on one this very day, in order to secure accuracy and undeniable prose." For the benefit of the public Ford pointed out that " the Bible and its distribution have been i/ie business of his existence ; whenever moral darkness brooded, there, the Bible in his hand, he forced his way." When Borrow was actually in Spain he was much in- fluenced by the conditions of the moment. The sun of Spain would shine so that he prized it above English civilization. The anarchy and wildness of Spain at another time would make him hate both men and land. But more lasting than joy in the sun and misery at the sight of misery was the feeling that he was " adrift in Spain, the land of old renown, the land of wonder and mystery, with better opportunities of becoming acquainted with its strange secrets and peculiarities than, perhaps, ever yet were afforded to any individual, certainly to a foreigner." When he entered it, by crossing a brook, out of Portugal, he shoutled the Spanish battle-cry in ecstasy, and in the end he described his five years in Spain as, "if not the most eventful" — he cannot refrain from that vainglorious dark hint — ^yet " the most happy years " of his existence. Spain was to him " the most magnificent country in the world " : it was also "'one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is not treated with contempt, and I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly idolized." His book is a song of wild Spain when Spain was Spain. Borrow, as we already know, had in him many of the powers that go to make a great book, yet "The Zincali" was not a great book. The important power developed 1 68 GEORGE BORROW or employed later which made "The Bible in Spain" a great book was the power of narrative. The writing of those letters from Spain to the Bible Society had taught him or discovered in him the instinct for proportion and connection which is the simplest, most inexplicable and most essential of literary gifts. With the help of this he could write narrative that should suggest and represent the continuity of life. He could pause for description or dialogue or reflection without interrupting this stream of life. Nothing need be, and nothing was, alien to the narrator with this gift ; for his writing would now assimilate everything and enrich itself continually. The reader could follow, as he preferred, the Bible dis- tribution in particular, or the Gypsies, or Borrow himself, through thfe long ways and dense forests of the book, and through the moral darkness of Spain. Jt could be treated as a pious book, and as such it was attacked by Catholics, as "Lavengro" still is. For certainly Borrow made no secret of his piety. When "a fine young man of twenty- seven, the only son of a widowed mother . . . the best sailor on board, and beloved by all who were acquainted with him" was swept off the ship in which Borrow was sailing, and drowned, as he had dreamed he would be, the author exclaimed : " Truly wonderful are the ways of Providence!" When a Spanish schoolmaster suggested that the Testament was unintelligible witiiout notes, Borrow informed him that on the contrary the notes were far more difficult, and " it would never have been written if not calculated of itself to illume the minds of all classes of mankind." The Bible was, in his published words, " the well-head of all that is useful and conducive to the happi- ness of society " ; and he told the poor Catalans that their souls' welfare depended on their being acquainted with the book he was selling at half the cost price. He could write not unlike the author of " The Dairyman's Daughter," "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 169 as when he exclaimed : " Oh man, man, seek not to dive into the mystery of moral good and evil ; confess thyself a worm, cast thyself on the earth, and murmur with thy lips in the dust, Jesus, Jesus ! " He thought the Pope " the head minister of Satan here on earth," and inspired partly by contempt of Catholics, he declared that "no people in the world entertain sublimer notions of the uncreated eternal God than the Moors . . . and with respect to Christ, their ideas even of Him are much more just than those of the Papists." And he said to the face of the Spanish Prime Minister : " It is a pleasant thing to be persecuted for the Gospel's sake." Nor was this pure cant ; for he meant at least this, that he loved conflict and would be fearless and stubborn in battle ; and, as he puts it, he was " cast into prison for the Gospel's sake." In 1843, no doubt, what first recommended this book to so many thousands was the Protestant fervour and purpose of the book, and the romantic reputation of Spain. At this day Sorrow's Bible distribution is mainly of antiquarian and sectarian interest. We should not estimate the dark- ness of Madrid by the number of Testaments there in circulation and daily use, nor on the other hand should we fear, like Borrow, to bring them into contempt by making them too common. Yet his missionary work makes the necessary backbone of the book. He was, as he justly said, " no tourist, no writer of books of travels." His work brought him adventure as no mere wandering could have done. What is more, the man's methods are still entertaining to those who care nothing about the distribution itself. Where he found the remains of a robber's camp he left a New Testament and some tracts. To carry the Bibles over the flinty hills of Galicia and the Asturias he bought " a black Andalusian stallion of great power and strength, . . . unbroke, savage and furious " : the cargo, he says, would tame the animal. He fixed his advertisement on the I70 GEORGE BORROW church porch at Pitiegua, announcing the sale of Testa- ments at Salamanca. He had the courage without the ferocity of enthusiasm, and in the cause of the Bible Society he saw and did things which httle concerned it, which in fact displeased it, but keep this book alive with a great stir and shout of life, with a hundred pages where we are shown what the poet meant by "forms more real than living men." We are shown the unrighteous to the very life. What matters it then if the author professes the opinion that "the friendship of the unrighteous is never of long duration"? Nevertheless, these pious ejaculations are not without their value in the composition of the author's amazing character. Borrow came near to being a perfect traveller. For he was, on the one hand, a man whose individuality was carved in clear bold lines, who had a manner and a set of opinions as remarkable as his appearance. Thus he was bound to come iiito conflict with men wherever he went: he would bring out their manners and opinions, if they had any. But on the other hand he had abounding curiosity. He was bold but not rude : on the contrary he was most vigilantly polite. He took snuff, though he detested it; he avoided politics as much as possible : " No, no ! " he said, "I have lived too long with Romany chals and Petulengres to be of any politics save Gypsy politics," in spite of what he had said in '32 and was to say again in '57. When he and the Gypsy Antonio came to Jaraicejo they separated by Antonio's advice. The Gypsy got through the town unchallenged by the guard, though not unnoticed by the townspeople. But Borrow was stopped and asked by a man of the National Guard whether he came with the Gypsy, to which he answered, "Do I look a person likely to keep company with Gypsies?" though, says he, he probably did. Then the National asked for his pass- port: "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 171 " I remembered having read that the best way to win a Spaniard's heart is tO' treat him with ceremonious civility. I therefore dismounted, and taking off my hat, made a low bow to the constitutional soldier, saying, ' Senor Nacional, you must know that I am an English gentleman travelling in this country for my pleasure. I bear a passport, which on inspecting you will find to be perfectly regular. It was given me by the great Lord Palmerston, Minister of Eng- land, whom you of course have heard of here. At the bottom you will see his own handwriting. Look at it and rejoice ; perhaps you will never have another opportunity. As I put unbounded confidence in the honour of every gentleman, I leave the passport in your hands whilst I repair to the posada to refresh myself. When you have inspected it, you will perhaps oblige me so far as to bring it to me. Cavalier, I kiss your hands.' " I then made him another low bow, which he returned with one still lower, and leaving him now staring at the passport and now looking at myself, I went into a posada, to which I was directed by a beggar whom I met. " I fed the horse, and procured some bread and barley, as the Gypsy had directed me. I likewise purchased three fine partridges of a fowler, who was drinking wine in the posada. He was satisfied with the price I gave him, and offered to treat me with a copita, to which I made no objection. As we sat discoursing at the table, the National entered with the passport in his hand, and sat down by us. "National. — 'Caballero, I return you your passport; it is quite in form. I rejoice much to have made your acquaintance. I have no doubt that you can give me some information respecting the present war.' "Myself. — ^'I shall be very happy to afford so polite and honourable a gentleman any information in my power.' " He won tiie hearts of the people of Villa Seca by the " formality " of his behaviour and language ; for he tells us 172 GEORGE BORROW that in such remote places might still be found the gravity of deportment and the grandiose expressions which are scoffed at as exaggerations in the romances. He speaks of himself in one place as strolling about a town or neigh- bourhood, entering into conversation with several people whom he met, shopkeepers, professional men, and others. Near Evora he sat down daily at a fountain and talked with everyone who came to it. He visited the College of the English Catholics at Lisbon, excusing himself, indeed, by saying that his favourite or his only study was man. His knowledge of languages and his un-English appear- ance made it easier for him to become familiar with many kinds of men. He introduced himself among some Jews of Lisbon, and pronounced a blessing : they took him for a powerful rabbi, and he favoured their mistake so that in a few days he knew all that related to these people and their traffic. On his journey in Galicia, when he was nearing Finisterra, the men of the cabin where he rested took him for a Catalan, and " he favoured their mistake and began with a harsh Catalan accent to talk of the fish of Galicia, and the high duties on salt." When at this same cabin he found there was no bed, he went up into the loft and lay down on the boards without complaint. So in the prison at Madrid he got on so well with the prisoners that on the third day he spoke their language as if he were "a son of the prison." At Gibraltar he talked to the man of Mogador in Arabic and was taken for "a holy man from the kingdoms of the East," especially when he produced the shekel which had been given him by Hasfeldt ; a Jew there believed him to be a Salamancan Jew. At Villafranca a woman mistook his voice in the dark for that of "the German clockmaker from Pontevedra." For some time in 1839 he went among the villages dressed in a peasant's leather helmet, jacket and trousers, and resembhng "a person between sixty and "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 173 seventy years of age," so that people addressed him as Uncle, and bought his Testaments, though the Bible Society, on hearing it, "began to inquire whether, if the old man were laid up in prison, they could very con- veniently apply for his release in the proper quarter."* He saw men and places, and with his pen he created a land as distinct, as wild, as vast, and as wonderful as the Spain of Cervantes. He did this with no conscious pre- conceived design. His creation was the effect of a multitude of impressions, all contributory because all genuine and true to the depth of Sorrow's own nature. He had seen and felt Spain, and "The Bible in Spain" shows how; nor probably could he have shown it in any other way. Not but what he could speak of Spain as the land of old renown, and of himself — in a letter to the Bible Society in 1837 — as an errant knight, and of his servant Francisco as his squire. He did not see himself as he was, or he would have seen both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in one, now riding a black Andalusian stalHon, now driving an ass before him. Only a power as great as Sorrow's own could show how this wild Spain was built up. For it was not done by this and that, but by a great man and a noble country in a state of accord continually vibrating. Thus he drew near to Finisterra with his wild Gallegan guide : "It was a beautiful autumnal morning when we left the choza and pursued our way to Corcuvion. I satisfied our host by presenting him with a couple of pesetas ; and he requested as a favour that if on our return we passed that way, and were overtaken by the night, we would again take up our abode beneath his roof. This I promised, at the same time determining to do my best to guard against * Borrow's Letters to the Bible Society, p. 391. 174 GEORGE BORROW the contingency, as sleeping in the loft of a Gallegan hut, though preferable to passing the night on a moor or mountain, is anything but desirable. " So we again started at a rapid pace along rough bridle- ways and footpaths, amidst furze and brushwood. In about an hour we obtained a view of the sea, and directed by a lad, whom we found on the moor employed in tending a few miserable sheep, we bent our course to the north-west, and at length reached the brow of an eminence, where we stopped for some time to survey the prospect which opened before us. " It was not without reason that the Latins gave the name of Finisterrae to this district. We had arrived exactly at such a place as in my boyhood I had pictured to myself as the termination of the world, beyond which there was a wild sea, or abyss, or chaos. I now saw far before me an immense ocean, and below me a long and irregular line of lofty and precipitous coast. Certainly in the whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan shore, from the debouchement of tlie Minho to Cape Finisterra. It consists of a granite wall of savage mountains, for the most part serrated at the top, and occasionally broken, where bays and firths like those of Vigo and Pontevedra intervene, running deep into the land. These bays and firths are invariably of an immense depth, and sufficiently capacious to shelter the navies of the proudest maritime nations. " There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in every- thing around which strongly captivates the imagination. This savage coast is the first glimpse of Spain which the voyager from the north catches, or he who has ploughed his way across the wide Atlantic; and well does it seem to reaHze all his visions of this strange land. 'Yes,' he exclaims, 'this is indeed Spain — stern, flinty Spain — land emblematic of those spirits to which she has given birth. From what land but that before me could have proceeded "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN " 175 those portentous beings who astounded the Old World and filled the New with horror and blood — ^Alba emd Philip, Cortez and Pizarro — stern colossal spectres looming through the gloom of bygone years, like yonder granite mountains through the haze, upon the eye of the mariner? Yes, yonder is indeed Spain — ^flinty, indomitable Spain — land emblematic of its sons ! ' "As for myself, when I viewed that wide ocean and its savage shore, I cried, ' Such is the grave, and such are its terrific sides ; those moors and wilds over which I have passed are the rough and dreary journey of life. Cheered with hope, we struggle along through all the difficulties of moor, bog, and mountain, to arrive at — ^what ? The grave and its dreary sides. Oh, may hope not desert us in the last hour — hope in the Redeemer and in God ! ' " We descended from the eminence, and again lost sight of the sea amidst ravines and dingles, amongst which patches of pine were occasionally seen. Continuing to descend, we at last came, not to the sea, but to the extremity of a long, narrow firth, where stood a village or hamlet; whilst at a small distance, on the western side of the firth, appeared one considerably larger, which was indeed almost entitled to the appellation of town. This last was Cor- cuvion ; the first, if I forget not, was called Ria de Silla. We hastened on to Corcuvion, where I bade my guide make inquiries respecting Finisterra. He entered the door of a wine-house, from which proceeded much noise and vocifera- tion, and presently returned, informing me that the village of Finisterra was distant about a league and a half. A man, evidently in a state of intoxication, followed him to the door. 'Are you bound for Finisterra, cavalheiros ? ' he shouted. '"Yes, my friend,' I replied; 'we are going thither.' "'Then you are going amongst a flock of drunkards' 176 GEORGE BORROW ifato dt borrachos), he answered. 'Take care that they do not play you a trick.' " We passed on, and striking across a sandy peninsula at the back of the town, soon reached the shore of an immense bay, the north-westernmost end of which was formed by the far-famed cape of Finisterra, which we now saw before us stretching far into the sea. "Along the beach of dazzling white sand we advanced towards the cape, the bourne of our journey. The sun was shining brightly, and every object was illumined by his beams. The sea lay before us like a vast mirror, and the waves which broke upon the shore were so tiny as scarcely to produce a murmur. On we sped along the deep winding bay, overhung by gigantic hills and mountains. Strange recollections began to throng upon my mind. It Wcis upon this beach that, according to the tradition of all ancient Christendom, St. James, the patron saint of Spain, preached the gospel to the heathen Spaniards. Upon this beach had once stood an immense commercial city, the proudest in all Spain. This now desolate bay had once resounded with the voices, of myriads, when the keels and commerce of all the then known world were wafted to Duyo. " ' What is the name of this village ? ' said I to a woman, as we passed by five or six ruinous houses at the bend of the bay, ere we entered upon the peninsula of Finisterra. "'This is no village,' said the Gallegan — ^'this is no village, Sir Cavaher ; this is a city — this is Duyo.' " So much for the glory of the world ! These huts were all that the roaring sea and the tooth of time had left of Duyo, the great city ! Onward now to Finisterra." He spends little time on such declamatory description, but it is essential to the whole effect. This particular piece is followed by the difficulty of a long ascent, by a sleep of exhaustion on a rude and dirty bed, by BorroVs arrest as the Pretender, Don Carlos, in disguise, by an escape from "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 177 immediate execution into the hands of an Alcalde who read "Jeremy Bentham" day and night; all this in one short chapter. Equally essential is the type of landscape represented by the solitary ruined fort in the monotonous waste between Estremoz and Elvas, which he climbed to over stones that cut his feet: " Being about to leave the place, I heard a strange cry behind a part of the wall which I had not visited ; and hastening thither, I foimd a miserable object in rags seated upon a stone. It was a maniac — a man about thirty years of age, and I believe deaf and dumb. There he sat, gibber- ing and mowing, and distorting his wild features into various dreadful appearances. There wanted nothing but this object to render the scene complete ; banditti amongst such melancholy desolation would have been by no means so much in keeping. But the manaic on his stone, in the rear of the wind-beaten ruin overlooking the blasted heath, above which scowled the leaden heaven, presented such a picture of gloom and misery as I believe neither painter nor poet ever conceived in the saddest of their musings. This is not the first instance in which it has been my lot to verify the wisdom of the saying that truth is sometimes wilder than fiction." At Oropesa he heard from the barber-surgeon of the mysterious Guadarrama mountains, and of the valley that lay undiscovered and unknown for thousands of years until a hunter found there a tribe of people speaking a language unknown to anyone else and ignorant of the rest of men. Rough wild ways intersect the book. Thunder storms overhang it. Immense caverns echo beneath it. The travellers left behind a mill which "stood at the bottom of a valley shaded by large trees, and its wheels were turning with a dismal and monotonous noise," and they emerged, by the light of "a corner of the mooni," on N 178 GEORGE BORROW to the wildest heath of the wildest province of Spain, ignorant of their way, making for a place which the guide believed not to exist. They passed a defile where the carrier had been attacked on his last journey by robbers, who burnt the coach by means of the letters in it, and butchered all except the carrier, who had formerly been the master of one of the gang : as they passed, the ground was still saturated with the blood of one of the murdered soldiers and a dog was gnawing a piece of his skulk Borrow was told of an old viper catcher caught by the robbers, who plundered and stripped him and then tied his hands behind him and thrust his head into his sack, " which con- tained several of these horrible reptiles alive," and so he ran mad through the villages until he fell dead. As a background, he had again and again a scene like that one, whose wild waters and mountains, and the " Convent of the Precipices " standing out against the summit, reminded him at once of Salvator Rosa and of Stolberg's lines to a moun- tain torrent: "The pine trees are shaken. . . ." Describing the cave at Gibraltar, he spoke of it as always having been " a den for foul night birds, reptiles, and beasts of prey," of precipice after precipice, abyss after abyss, in apparently endless succession, and of an explorer who perished there and lay "even now rotting in the bowels of the mountain, preyed upon by its blind and noisome worms." When he saw a peaceful rich landscape in a bright sunny hour, as at Monte Moro, he shed tears of rapture, sitting on and on in those reveries which, as he well knew, only enervate the mind : or he felt that he would have desired " no better fate than that of a shepherd on the prairies or a hunter on the hills of Bembibre " : or looking through an iron-grated door at a garden court in Seville he sighed that his fate did not permit him to reside in such an Eden for the remainder of his days. For as he delights -in the "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 179 dismal, grand, or wild, so he does with equal intensity in the sweetness of loveliness, as in the country about Seville -. " Oh how pleasant it is, especially in springtide, to stray along the shores of the Guadalquivir! Not far from the city, down the river, lies a grove called Las DeHcias, or the Delights. It consists of trees of various kinds, but more especially of poplars and elms, and is traversed by long, shady walks. This grove is the favourite promenade of the Sevillians, and there one occasionally sees assembled whatever the town produces of beauty or gallantry. There wander the black-eyed Andalusian dames and damsels, clad in their graceful silken mantillas ; and there gallops the Andalusian cavalier on his long-tailed, thick-maned steed of Moorish ancestry. As the sun is descending, it is enchanting to glance back from this place in the direction of the city ; the prospect is inexpressibly beautiful. Yonder in the distance, high and enormous, stands the Golden Tower, now used as a toll-house, but the principal bulwark of the city in the time of the Moors. It stands on the shore of the river, like a giant keeping watch, and is the first edifice which attracts the eye of the voyager as he moves up the stream to Seville. On the other side, opposite the tower, stands the noble Augustine Convent, the ornament of the faubourg of Triana; whilst between the two edifices rolls the broad Guadalquivir, bearing on its bosom a flotilla of barks from Catalonia and Valencia. Farthep up is seen the bridge of boats which traverses the water. The principal object of this prospect, however, is the Golden Tower, where the beams of the setting sun seem to be concentrated as in the focus, so that it appears built of pure gold, and probably from that circumstance received the name which it now bears. Cold, cold must the heart be which can remain insensible to the beauties of this magic scene, to do justice to which the pencil of Claude himself were barely equal. Often have I shed tears of rapture N 2 i8o GEORGE BORROW whilst I beheld it, and listened to the thrush and the nightin- gale piping forth their melodious songs in the woods, and inhaled the breeze laden with the pferfume of the thousand orange gardens of Seville. ' Kennst du das land wo die citrot^en bluhen ? ' " If a scene was not in fact superlative his creative memory would furnish it with what it lacked, giving the cathedral of Palencia, for example, windows painted by Murillo. "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" i8i CHAPTER XXI "the bible in SPAIN": THE CHARACTERS In such scenes, naturally, Borrow placed nothing common and nothing mean. He must have a madman among the ruins, or by a pool a peasant woman sitting, who has been mad ever since her child was drowned there, or a mule and a stallion fighting with hoofs and teeth. The clergy, in their ugly shovel hats and long cloaks, glared at him askance as he passed by their whispering groups in Sala- manca : at the English College in Valladolid, he thought of " those pale, smiling, half-foreign priests who, like stealthy grimalkins, traversed green England in all direc- tions" under the persecution of Elizabeth. If he painted an archbishop plainly dressed in black cassock and silken cap, stooping, feeble, pale and emaciated, he set upon his finger a superb amethyst of a dazzling lustre — Borrow never saw a finer, except one belonging to an acquaintance of his own, a Tartar Khan. The day after his interview with the archbishop he had a visit from Benedict Mol. This man is proved to have existed by a letter from Rey Romero to Borrow mentioning " The German of the Treasure."* " True, every word of it ! " says Knapp : " Remember our artist never created ; he painted from models." Because he existed, therefore every word of Borrow's concerning him is true. As Borrow made him, "He is a bulky old man, somewhat above the middle height, and with white hair and ruddy features ; his eyes were large and blue, and, whenever he fixed them * Knapp, I., p. 270. 1 82 GEORGE BORROW on anyone's countenance, were full bi an expression of great eagerness, as if he were expecting the communication of some important tidings. He was dressed commonly enough, in a jacket and trousers of coarse cloth of a russet colour ; on his head was an immense sombrero, the brim of which had been much cut and mutilated, so as in some places to resemble thq; jags or denticles of a saw." And thus, at Madrid in 1836, he told his story on the first meeting, as men had to do when they were interrogated by Borrow : "Upon my asking him who he was, the following con- versation ensued between us : " ' I am a Swiss of Lucerne, Benedict Mol by name, once a soldier in the Walloon Guard, and now a soap-boiler, para servir usted.' '"You speak the language of Spain very imperfectly,' said I ; ' how long have you been in the country ? ' "'Forty-five years,' replied Benedict. 'But when the guard was broken up I went to Minorca, where I lost the Spanish language without acquiring the Catalan.' " ' You have been a soldier of the King of Spain,' said I ; ' how did you like the service .' ' " ' Not so well but that I should have been glad to leave it forty years a^o; the pay was bad, and the treatment worse. I will now speak Swiss to you ; for, if I am not much mistaken, you are a German man, and understand the speech of Lucerne. I should soon have deserted from the service of Spain, as I did from that of the Pope, whose soldier I was in my early youth before I came here ; but I had married a woman of Minorca, by whom I had two children: it was this that detained me in these parts so long. Before, however, I left Minorca, my wife died ; and as for my children, one went east, the other west, and I know not what became of them. I intend shortly to return to Lucerne, and live there like a duke.' "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 183 "'Have you then realized a large capital in Spain?' said I, glancing at his hat and the rest of his apparel. Not a cuart, not a cuart ; these two wash-balls are all that r possess.' "'Perhaps you are the son of good parents, and have lands and money in your own country wherewith to support yourself.' '"Not a heller, not a heller. My father was hangman of Lucerne, and when he died, his body was seized to pay his debts.' Then doubtless,' said I, ' you intend to ply your trade of soap-boiling at Lucerne. You are quite right, my friend ; I know of no occupatioii more honourable or useful.' "'I have no thoughts of plying my trade at Lucerne,' replied Benedict. 'And now, as I see you are a German man, Lieber Herr, and as I like your countenance and your manner of speaking, I will tell you in confidence that I know very little of my trade, and have already been turned out of several fabriques as an evil workman ; the two wash- balls that I carry in my pocket are not of my own making. In kurtzen, I know little more of soap-boiling than I do of tailoring, horse-farriery, or shoe-making, all of which I have practised.' " ' Then I know not how you can hope to live like a hertzog in your native canton, unless you expect that the men of Lucerne, in consideration of your services to the Pope and to the King of Spain, will maintain you in splendour at the public expense.' " ' Lieber Herr,' said Benedict, ' the men of Lucerne are by no means fond of maintaining the soldiers of the Pope and the King of Spain at their own expense ; many of the guard who have returned thither beg their bread in the streets : but when I go, it shall be in a coach drawn by six mules with a treasure, a mighty schatz which lies in the church of St. James of Compostella, in Galicia.' 1 84 GEORGE BORROW "'I hope you do not intend to rob the church,' said I. 'If you do, however, I believe you will be disappointed. Mendizabal and the Liberals have been beforehand with you. I am informed that at present no other treasure is to be found in the cathedrals of Spain than a few paltry ornaments and plated utensils.' " ' My good German Herr,' said Benedict, ' it is no church schatz; and no person living, save myself, knows of its existence. Nearly thirty years ago, amongst the sick soldiers who were brought to Madrid, was one of my com- rades of the Walloon Guard, who had accompanied the French to Portugal ; he was very sick, and shortly died. Before, however, he breathed his last, he sent for me, and upon his death-bed told me that himself and two other soldiers, both of whom had since been killed, had buried in a certain church in Compostella a great booty which they had made in Portugal ; it consisted of gold moidores and of a packet of huge diamonds from the Brazils : the whole was contained in a large copper kettle. I listened with greedy ears, and from that moment, I may say, I have known no rest, neither by day nor night, thinking of the schatz. It is very easy to find, for the dying man was so exact in his description of the place where it lies, that were I once at Compostella I should have no difficulty in putting my hand upon it. Several times I have been on the point of setting out on the journey, but something has always happened to stop me. When my wife died, I left Minorca with a determination to go to St. James ; but on reaching Madrid, I fell into the hands of a Basque woman, who persuaded me to live with her, which I have done for several years. She is a great hax,* and says that if I desert her she will breathe a spell which shall cling to me for ever. Dem Got sey dank, she is now in the hospital, * Witch. Ger. Hexe. "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 185 and daily expected to die. This is my history, Lieber Herr."' Notice that Borrow continues : " I have been the more careful in relating the above con versation, as I shall have frequent occasion to mention the Swiss in the course of these journals." Benedict Mol had the faculty of re-appearance. In the next year at Compostella the moonlight fell on his grey locks and weatherbeaten face and Borrow recognised him. " Och" said the man, " mein Gott, es ist der Herr!" (it is that gentleman). "Och, what good fortune, that the Herr is the first person I meet in Compostella." Even Borrow could scarcely believe his eyes. Benedict had come to dig for the treasure, and in the meantime proposed to live at the best hotel and pay his score when the digging was done. Borrow gave him a dollar, which he paid to a witch for telling him where exactly the treasure lay. A third time, to his own satisfaction and Borrow's astonishment, he re-appeared at Oviedo. He had, in fact, followed Borrow to Corunna, having been despitefully used at Com- postella, met highwaymen on the road, and suffered hunger so that he slaughtered a stray kid and devoured it raw. From Oviedo he trod in Borrow's footsteps, which was "a great comfort in his horrible journeys." "A strange life has he led," said Borrow's Greek servant, "and a strange death he will die — it is written on his countenance." He re-appeared a fourth time at Madrid, in light green coat and pantaloons that were almost new, and a glossy Anda- lusian hat "of immense altitude of cone," and leaning not on a ragged staff but " a huge bamboo rattan, surmounted by the grim head of either a bear or lion, ciuriously cut out of pewter." He had been wandering after Borrow in misery that almost sent him mad : " Oh, the horror of wandering about the savage hills and wide plains of Spain without money and without hope! 1 86 GEORGE BORROW Sometimes I became desperate, when I found myself amongst rocks and barrancos, perhaps after having tasted no food from sunrise to sunset, and then I would raise my staff towards the sky and shake it, crying, Lieber herr Gott, ach lieber herr Gott, you must help me now or never. If you tarry, I am lost. You must help me now, now! And once when I was raving in this manner, methought I heard a voice — nay, I am sure I heard it — sounding from the hollow of a rock, clear and strong ; and it cried, ' Der schatz, der schatz, it is not yet dug up. To Madrid, to Madrid ! The way to the schatz is through Madrid.' " But now he had met people who supported him with an eye to the treasure. Borrow tried to persuade him to circulate the Gospel instead of risking failure and the anger of his clients. Luckily Benedict went on to Compostella : "He went, and I never saw him more. What I heard, however, was extraordinary enough. It appeared that the government had listened to his tale, and had been so struck with Benedict's exaggerated description of the buried treasure, that they imagined that, by a little trouble and outlay, gold and diamonds might be dug up at St. James sufficient to enrich themselves and to pay off the national debt of Spain. The Swiss returned to Compostella 'like a duke,' to use his own words. The affair, which had at first been kept a profound secret, was speedily divulged. It was, indeed, resolved that the investigation, which involved consequences of so much importance, should take place in a manner the most public and imposing. A solemn festival was drawing nigh, and it was deemed expedient that the search should take place upon that day. The day arrived. All the bells in Compostella pealed. The whole populace thronged from their houses ; a thousand troops were drawn up in a square ; the expectation of all was wound up to the highest pitch. A procession directed its course to the church of San Roque. At its head were "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 187 the captain-general and the Swiss, brandishing in his hand the magic rattan ; close behind walked the meiga, the Gallegan witch-wife, by whom the treasure-seeker had been originally guided in the search ; numerous masons brought up the rear, bearing implements to break up the ground. The procession enters the church;, they pass through it in solemn march; they find themselves in a vaulted passage. The Swiss looks around. 'Dig here,' said he suddenly. 'Yes, dig here,' said the meiga. The masons labour ; the floor is broken up — a horrible and fetid odour arises. . . . " Enough, no treasure was found, and my warning* to the unfortunate Swiss turned out but too prophetic. He was forthwith seized and flung into the horrid prison of St. James, amidst the execrations of thousands, who would have gladly torn him limb from limb. " The afEair did not terminate here. The political oppo- nents of the government did not allow so favourable an opportunity to escape for launching the shafts of ridicule. The Moderados were taunted in the cortes for their avarice and credulity, whilst the Liberal press wafted on its wings through Spain the story of the treasure-hunt at St. James. " ' After all, it was a *tramfa of Don Jorge's,' said one of my enemies. 'That fellow is at the bottom of half the picardias which happen in Spain.' " Eager to learn the fate of the Swiss, I wrote to my old friend Rey Romero, at Compostella. In his answer he states : ' I saw the Swiss in prison, to which place he sent for me, craving my assistance, for the sake of the friendship which I bore to you. But how could I help him ? He was speedily after removed from St. James, I know not whither. It is said that he disappeared on the road.' " Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Where in the * Fake. i88 GEORGE BORROW whole cycle of romance shall we find anything more wild, grotesque, and sad than the easily authenticated history of Benedict Mol, the treasure-digger of St. James ? " Knapp, by the way, prints this very letter from Rey Romero. It was his son who saw Benedict in prison, and he simply says that he does not know what has become of him. _ As Dr. Knapp says, Borrow painted from a model." That is to say, he did like everybody else. Of course he did not invent. Why should a man with such a life invent for the purpose of only five books? But there is no such thing as invention (in the popular sense), except in the making of bad nonsense rhymes or novels. A writer composes out of his experience, inward, outward and histrionic, or along the protracted lines of his experience. Borrow felt that adventures and unusual scenes were his due, and when they were not forthcoming he revived an old one or revised the present in the weird light of the past. Is this invention .? Pictures like that of Benedict Mol are not made out of nothing by Borrow or anybody else. Nor are they copies. The man who could merely copy nature would never have the eyes tO' see such beauties as Benedict Mol. It must be noticed how effective is the re-appearance, the intermingling of such a man with "ordinary life," and then finally the suggestion of one of Sorrow's enemies that he was put up to it by Don Jorge — -"That fellow is at the bottom of half the ficardias which happen in Spain." What glory for Don Jorge. The story would have been entertaining enough as a mere isolated short story: thus scattered, it is twice as effective as if it were a mere fiction, whether labelled "a true story" or introduced by an ingenious variation of the same. It is one of Sorrow's triumphs never to let us escape from the spell of actuality into a languid acquiescence in what is "only pretending.'' The "THE BIBLE IN SPAIN" 189 form never becomes a fiction, even to the same extent as that of Turgenev's " Sportsman's Sketches '' ; for Borrow is always faithful to the form of a book of travel in Spain during the 'thirties. In "Don Quixote" and "Gil Bias," the lesser narratives are as a rule introduced without much attempt at probability, but as mere diversions. They are never such in "The Bible in Spain," though they are in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." The Gypsy hag of Badajoz, who proposed to poison all the Busne in Madrid, and then away with the London Caloro to the land of the Moor — his Greek servant Antonio, even though he begins with " Je vais vous raconter mon histoire du commencement jusqu'igi" — the Italian whom he had met as a boy and who now regretted leaving England, the toasted cheese and bread, the Suffolk ale, the roaring song and merry jests of the labourers, — ^and Antonio again, telling him "the history of the young man of the inn," — these story-tellers are not merely consummate variations upon those of the "Decameron" and "Gil Bias." The book never ceases to be a book of travel by an agent of the Bible Society. It is to its very great advantage that it was not written all of a piece with one conscious aim. The roughness, the merely accurate irrelevant detail here and there, the mention of his journal, and the references to well-known and substantial people, win from us an openness and sim- plicity of reception which ensure a success for it beyond that of most fictions. I cannot refuse complete belief in the gigantic Jew, Abarbanel, for example, when Borrow has said: "I had now a full view of his face and figure, and those huge featured and Herculean form still occasion- ally revisit me in my dreams. I see him standing in the moonshine, staring me in the face with his deep calm eyes." I do not feel bound to believe that he had met the Italian of Corunna twenty years before at Norwich, though to a man with his memory for faces such re-appearances are I90 GEORGE BORROW likely to happen many times as often as to an ordinary man. But I feel no doubt about Judah Lib, who spoke to him at Gibraltar: he was "about to exclaim, 'I know you not,' when one or two lineaments struck him, and he cried, though somewhat hesitatingly, 'surely this is Judah Lib.' " He continues : " It was in a steamer in the Baltic in the year '34, if I mistake not." That he had this strong memory is certain ; but that he knew it, and was proud of it, and likely to exaggerate it, is almost equally certain. It was natural that such a knight should have squires of high degree, as Francisco the Basque and the two Antonios, Gypsy and Greek. Antonio the Greek left Borrow to serve a count as cook, but the count attacked him with a rapier, whereupon he gave notice in the following manner : " Suddenly I took a large casserole from the fire in which various eggs were frying; this I held out at arm's length, peering at it along my arm as if I were curiously inspecting it — ^my right foot advanced, and the other thrown back as far as possible. All stood still, imagining, doubtless, that I was about to perform some grand operation ; and so I was : for suddenly the sinister leg advancing, with one rapid coup de fied I sent the casserole and its contents flying over my head, so that they struck the wall far behind me. This was to let them know that I had broken my staff and had shaken the dust off my feet. So casting upon the count the peculiar glance of the Sceirote cooks when they feel themselves insulted, and extending my mouth on either side nearly as far as the ears, I took down my haversack and departed, singing as I went the song of the ancient Demos, who, when dying, asked for his supper, and water wherewith to lave his hands : ' O ijXtor e^ao-iXwe, kI 6 Afjuos biard^et. Supre, jrmSia juou, *