Dear Carreta,—I hope you received my last letter written on Tuesday. I am glad that I came to London. I find myself much the better for having done so. I was going on in a very spiritless manner. Everybody I have met seems very kind and glad to see me. Murray seems to be thoroughly staunch. Cooke, to whom I mentioned the F.T., says that Murray was delighted with the idea, and will be very glad of the 4th of Lavengro. I am going to dine with Murray to-day, Thursday. W. called upon me to-day. I wish you would send me a blank cheque, in a letter so that if I want money I may be able to draw for a little. I shall not be long from home, but now I am here I wish to do all that's necessary. If you send me a blank cheque, I suppose W. or Murray would give me the money. I hope you got my last letter. I received yours, and Cooke has just sent the two copies of Lavengro you wrote for, and I believe some engravings of the picture. I shall wish to return by the packet if possible, and will let you know when I am coming. I hope to write again shortly to tell you some more news. How is mother and Hen., and how are all the creatures? I hope all well. I trust you like all I propose—now I am here I want to get two or three things, to go to the Museum, and to arrange matters. God bless you. Love to mother and Hen.
George Borrow.
To Mrs. George Borrow
No. 58 Jermyn Street, St. James.
Dear Carreta,—I got here safe, and upon the whole had not so bad a journey as might be expected. I put up at the Spread Eagle for the night for I was tired and hungry; have got into my old lodgings as you see, those on the second floor, they are very nice ones, with every convenience; they are expensive, it is true, but they are cheerful, which is a grand consideration for me. I have as yet seen nobody, for it is only now a little past eleven. I can scarcely at present tell you what my plans are, perhaps to-morrow I shall write again. Kiss Hen., and God bless you.
G. B.
It was in the year 1843 that Borrow, on a visit to London following upon the success of The Bible in Spain, sat to Henry Wyndham Phillips for his portrait at the instigation of Mr. Murray, who gave Borrow a replica, retaining for himself Phillips's more finished picture, which has been reproduced again and again in the present Mr. Murray's Borrow productions.[230]
Borrow was in London in 1845 and again in 1848. There must have been other occasional visits on the way to this or that starting point of his annual holiday, but in 1860 Borrow took a house in London, and he resided there until 1874, when he returned to Oulton. In a letter to Mr. John Murray, written from Ireland in November 1859, Mrs. Borrow writes to the effect that in the spring of the following year she will wish to look round 'and select a pleasant holiday residence within three to ten miles of London.' There is no doubt that a succession of winters on Oulton Broad had been very detrimental to Mrs. Borrow's health, although they had no effect upon Borrow, who bathed there with equal indifference in winter as in summer, having, as he tells us in Wild Wales, 'always had the health of an elephant.' And so Borrow and his wife arrived in London in June, and took temporary lodgings at 21 Montagu Street, Portman Square. In September they went into occupation of a house in Brompton—22 Hereford Square, which is now commemorated by a County Council tablet. Here Borrow resided for fourteen years, and here his wife died on January 30, 1869. She was buried in Brompton Cemetery, where Borrow was laid beside her twelve years later. For neighbour, on the one side, the Borrows had Mr. Robert Collinson and, on the other, Miss Frances Power Cobbe and her companion, Miss M. C. Lloyd. From Miss Cobbe we have occasional glimpses of Borrow, all of them unkindly. She was of Irish extraction, her father having been grandson of Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin. Miss Cobbe was an active woman in all kinds of journalistic and philanthropic enterprises in the London of the 'seventies and 'eighties of the last century, writing in particular in the now defunct newspaper, the Echo, and she wrote dozens of books and pamphlets, all of them forgotten except her Autobiography,[231] in which she devoted several pages to her neighbour in Hereford Square. Borrow had no sympathy with fanatical women with many 'isms,' and the pair did not agree, although many neighbourly courtesies passed between them for a time. Here is an extract from Miss Cobbe's Autobiography:
George Borrow, who, if he were not a gypsy by blood, ought to have been one, was for some years our near neighbour in Hereford Square. My friend[232] was amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, and cultivated his acquaintance. I never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite. His missions, recorded in The Bible in Spain, and his translations of the Scriptures into the out-of-the-way tongues, for which he had a gift, were by no means consonant with his real opinions concerning the veracity of the said Bible.
One only needs to quote this by the light of the story as told so far in these pages to see how entirely Miss Cobbe misunderstood Borrow, or rather how little insight she was able to bring to a study of his curious character. The rest of her attempt at interpretation is largely taken up to demonstrate how much more clever and more learned she was than Borrow. Altogether it is a sorry spectacle this of the pseudo-philanthropist relating her conversations with a man broken by misfortune and the death of his wife. Many of Miss Cobbe's statements have passed into current biographies and have doubtless found acceptance.[233] I do not find them convincing. Archdeacon Whately on the other hand tells us that he always found Borrow 'most civil and hospitable,' and his sister gives us the following 'impression':
When Mr. Borrow returned from this Spanish journey, which had been full, as we all know, of most entertaining adventures, related with much liveliness and spirit by himself, he was regarded as a kind of 'lion' in the literary circles of London. When we first saw him it was at the house of a lady who took great pleasure in gathering 'celebrities' in various ways around her, and our party was struck with the appearance of this renowned traveller—a tall, thin, spare man with prematurely white hair and intensely dark eyes, as he stood upright against the wall of one of the drawing-rooms and received the homage of lion-hunting guests, and listened in silence to their unsuccessful attempts to make him talk.'[234]
Another reminiscence of Borrow in London is furnished by Mr. A. T. Story, who writes:[235]
I had the pleasure of meeting Borrow on several occasions in London some forty years ago. I cannot be quite certain of the year, but I think it was either in 1872 or '73. I saw him first in James Burns's publishing office in Southampton Row. I happened to call just as a tall, strongly-built man with an unforgettable face was leaving. When he had gone, Mr. Burns asked: 'Do you know who that gentleman was?' and when I said I did not, he said: 'He is the man whose book, The Bible in Spain, I saw you take down from the shelf there the other day and read.' 'What, George Borrow?' I exclaimed. He nodded, and then said Borrow had called several times.
A few days later I had an opportunity of making the good man's acquaintance and hearing a conversation between him and Mr. Burns. They talked about Spiritualism, with which Borrow had very little patience, though, after some talk he consented to attend a séance to be held that evening in Burns's drawing-room. We sat together, and I had the pleasure of hearing from time to time his grunts of disapproval. When the discourse—'in trance'—was over, he asked me if I believed in 'this sort of thing,' and when I said I was simply an investigator he remarked, 'That's all right, I, too, am an investigator—of things in general—and it would not take me long to sum up that little man (the medium) as a humbug, but a very clever humbug.'
That evening I had a long walk and a talk with him, and after that several other opportunities of talk, the last being one night when I chanced upon him on Westminster Bridge. It was a superb starlight night, and he was standing about midway over the bridge gazing down into the river. When I approached him he said: 'I have been standing here for twenty minutes looking round and meditating. There is not another city like this in the world, nor another bridge like this, nor a river, nor a Parliament House like that—with its little men making little laws—which the Lawgiver that made yonder stars—look at them!—is continually confounding—and will confound. O, we little men! How long before we are dust? And the stars there, how they smile at our puny lives and tricks—here to-day, gone to-morrow. And yet to-night how glorious it is to be here!'
So he rhapsodised. And then it was, 'Where can we get a bite and sup? I've been footing it all day among the hills there—the Surrey Hills—for a breath of fresh air.'
In appearance, at the time I knew him, Borrow was neither thin nor stout, but well proportioned and apparently of great strength.
During this sojourn in London, which was undertaken because Oulton and Yarmouth did not agree with his wife, Borrow suffered the tragedy of her loss. Borrow dragged on his existence in London for another five years, a much broken man. It is extraordinary how little we know of Borrow during that fourteen years' sojourn in London; how rarely we meet him in the literary memoirs of this period. Happily one or two pleasant friendships relieved the sadness of his days; and in particular the reminiscences of Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton assist us to a more correct appreciation of the Borrow of these last years of London life. Of Mr. Watts-Dunton's 'memories,' we shall write in our next chapter. Here it remains only to note that Borrow still continued to interest himself in his various efforts at translation, and in 1861 and 1862 the editor of Once a Week printed various ballads and stories from his pen. The volumes of this periodical are before me, and I find illustrations by Sir John Millais, Sir E. J. Poynter, Simeon Solomon and George Du Maurier; stories by Mrs. Henry Wood and Harriet Martineau, and articles by Walter Thornbury.
In 1862 Wild Wales was published, as we have seen. In 1865 Henrietta married William MacOubrey, and in the following year, Borrow and his wife went to visit the pair in their Belfast home. In the beginning of the year 1869 Mrs. Borrow died, aged seventy-three. There are few records of the tragedy that are worth perpetuating.[236] Borrow consumed his own smoke. With his wife's death his life was indeed a wreck. No wonder he was so 'rude' to that least perceptive of women, Miss Cobbe. Some four or five years more Borrow lingered on in London, cheered at times by walks and talks with Gordon Hake and Watts-Dunton, and he then returned to Oulton—a most friendless man:—
What face belovèd hides from him away?
A dreamer outcast from some world of dreams,
He goes for ever lonely on his way.
Torn by the winds and bent beneath the snow
Half overthrown by icy avalanche,
The lone of soul throughout the world must go.
Torn by the passions of his own strange heart,
Stoned by continual wreckage of his dreams,
He in the crowd for ever is apart.
Swings no young birds to sleep upon the bough,
But where the raven only comes to croak—
'There lives no man more desolate than thou!'
FOOTNOTES:
[230] The frontispiece to the present volume is from the replica in the possession of Borrow's executor, who has kindly permitted me to have it photographed for the purpose. There are slight and interesting variations from Mr. Murray's portrait. Phillips (1820-1868), the artist of these pictures, is often confused with his father, Thomas (1770-1845), the Royal Academician and a much superior painter, who, by the way, painted many portraits of authors for Mr. John Murray. Henry Phillips was never an R.A. A letter from Phillips to Borrow in my possession shows that he visited the latter at Oulton. The portrait of Borrow is pronounced by Henry Dalrymple, his schoolfellow, from whose manuscript we have already quoted, to be 'very like him.' This fact is the more remarkable as the only photograph of Borrow that is known, one taken in a group with Mrs. Simms Reeve of Norwich in 1848—five years later—has many points of difference. The reader will here be able to compare the two portraits in this book. A third portrait of Borrow—a crude painting by his brother John taken in his early years, is now in the London National Portrait Gallery.
[231] Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by Herself. With Additions by the Writer and Introduction by Blanche Atkinson. 2 vols., 1904. Frances Power Cobbe was born in Dublin in 1822, and died at Hengwrt in 1904.
[232] Miss Lloyd, who was a Welshwoman. Miss Cobbe lived with her and was doubtless a jealous woman. There are many kindly letters from Miss Lloyd to Borrow in my collection. She seems always to be anxious to invite him to her house.
[233] About three months before her death Miss Cobbe replied to an inquiry made by Mr. James Hooper of Norwich concerning her estimate of Borrow. As it is all but certain that Borrow was never intoxicated in his life, we may find the letter of interest only as giving a point of view:
'Hengwrt, Dolgelley, N. Wales, Jan. 26, 1904.
'I can have no objection to your asking me if my little sketch of George Borrow in my Life is my dernier mot about him. If I were to give my dernier mot, it would be much more to his disadvantage than anything I liked to insert in my biography. I see his American biographer has accused me of 'bitterness.' I do not think that what is contained in my book is 'bitter' at all. But if I were to have told my last interview with him,—when I was driven practically to drive him out of our house, more or less drunk, or mad with some opiate—the charge might have had some colour. He was not a good man, and not a true or honourable one, by any manner of means.'
Here assuredly we miss the fine charity which led Goethe's friend, the Duchess of Weimar, to urge that there was a special moral law for poets. Not for one moment does it occur to Miss Cobbe that her neighbour was a man of genius who had written four imperishable contributions to English literature. To her he was merely a conceited, brusque old man. Concerning the adage that 'no man is a hero to his valet,' well may Carlyle remark that that is more often the fault of the valet than of the hero.
[234] Personal and Family Glimpses of Remarkable People. By Edward W. Whately. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1889.
[235] London Daily Chronicle, July 9, 1913.
[236] There is an interview between Borrow and his wife's medical attendant, Dr. Playfair, recorded in Herbert Jenkins's Life, that is full of poignancy.
CHAPTER XXXIV
FRIENDS OF LATER YEARS
We should know little enough of George Borrow's later years, were it not for his friendship with Thomas Gordon Hake and Theodore Watts-Dunton. Hake was born in 1809 and died in 1895. In 1839 he settled at Bury St. Edmunds as a physician, and he resided there until 1853. Here he was frequently visited by the Borrows. We have already quoted his prophecy concerning Lavengro that 'its roots will strike deep into the soil of English letters.' In 1853 Dr. Hake and his family left Bury for the United States, where they resided for some years. Returning to England they lived at Roehampton and met Borrow occasionally in London. During these years Hake was, according to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, 'the earthly Providence of the Rossetti family,' but he was not, as his Memoirs show, equally devoted to Borrow. In 1872, however, he went to live in Germany and Italy for a considerable period. Concerning the relationship between Borrow and Hake, Mr. Watts-Dunton has written:
After Hake went to live in Germany, Borrow told me a good deal about their intimacy, and also about his own early life: for, reticent as he naturally was, he and I got to be confidential and intimate. His friendship with Hake began when Hake was practising as a physician in Norfolk. It lasted during the greater part of Borrow's later life. When Borrow was living in London his great delight was to walk over on Sundays from Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll with him over Richmond Park. They both had a passion for herons and for deer. At that time Hake was a very intimate friend of my own, and having had the good fortune to be introduced by him to Borrow I used to join the two in their walks. Afterwards, when Hake went to live in Germany, I used to take those walks with Borrow alone. Two more interesting men it would be impossible to meet. The remarkable thing was that there was between them no sort of intellectual sympathy. In style, in education, in experience, whatever Hake was, Borrow was not. Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake's writings, either in prose or in verse. His ideal poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into, Hake's World's Epitaph, he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by saying, 'there are lines here and there that are nigh as good as Pope'!
On the other hand, Hake's acquaintance with Borrow's works was far behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the flesh, such as Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell. Borrow was shy, angular, eccentric, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to shine generally in any society.
So far as Hake was concerned the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of earlier days and adventures in Borrow's beloved East Anglia. Among many proofs I would adduce of this I will give one. I am the possessor of the MS. of Borrow's Gypsies of Spain, written partly in a Spanish notebook as he moved about Spain in his colporteur days. It was my wish that Hake would leave behind him some memorial of Borrow more worthy of himself and his friend than those brief reminiscences contained in Memoirs of Eighty Years. I took to Hake this precious relic of one of the most wonderful men of the nineteenth century, in order to discuss with him differences between the MS. and the printed text. Hake was writing in his invalid chair,—writing verses. 'What does it all matter?' he said. 'I do not think you understand Lavengro,' I said. Hake replied, 'And yet Lavengro had an advantage over me, for he understood nobody. Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had, as no one knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his own before he could see it at all.' That, of course, was true enough; and Hake's asperities when speaking of Borrow in Memoirs of Eighty Years,—asperities which have vexed a good many Borrovians,—simply arose from the fact that it was impossible for two such men to understand each other. When I told him of Mr. Lang's angry onslaught upon Borrow in his notes to the Waverley Novels, on account of his attacks upon Scott, he said, 'Well, does he not deserve it?' When I told him of Miss Cobbe's description of Borrow as a poseur, he said to me, 'I told you the same scores of times. But I saw Borrow had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in Richmond Park. It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled you.' Borrow's affection for Hake, however, was both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone to Germany and in a way dropped out of Borrow's ken. Yet Hake was as good a man as ever Borrow was, and for certain others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine affection as Borrow was himself.[237]
Mr. Watts-Dunton refers here to Hake's asperities when speaking of Borrow. They are very marked in the Memoirs of Eighty Years, and nearly all the stories of Borrow's eccentricities that have been served up to us by Borrow's biographers are due to Hake. It is here we read of his snub to Thackeray. 'Have you read my Snob Papers in Punch?' Thackeray asked him. 'In Punch?' Borrow replied. 'It is a periodical I never look at.' He was equally rude, or shall we say Johnsonian, according to Hake, when Miss Agnes Strickland asked him if she might send him her Queens of England. He exclaimed, 'for God's sake don't, madam; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them.' Hake is responsible also for that other story about the woman who, desirous of pleasing him, said, 'Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!' On which he exclaimed, 'Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?'[238] Dr. Johnson was guilty of many such vagaries, and the readers of Boswell have forgiven him everything because they are conveyed to them through the medium of a hero-worshipper. Borrow never had a Boswell, and despised the literary class so much that he never found anything in the shape of an apologist until he had been long dead. The most competent of these, because writing from personal knowledge, was Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton, who is known in literature as Theodore Watts, the author of Aylwin and The Coming of Love, and the writer of many acute and picturesque criticisms. Mr. Watts-Dunton—who added his mother's name of Dunton to his own in later life—was the son of a solicitor of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire. In early life he was himself a solicitor, which profession he happily abandoned for literature. His friendship with Algernon Charles Swinburne is one of the romances of the Victorian era. His affectionate solicitude doubtless kept that great poet alive for many a year beyond what would otherwise have been his lot. Watts-Dunton was, as we have seen, introduced to Borrow by Hake. He has written a romance which, if he could be persuaded to publish it, would doubtless command the same attention as Aylwin, in which Borrow is introduced as 'Dereham' and Hake as 'Gordon,' and here he tells the story of that introduction:
One day when I was sitting with him in his delightful home, near Roehampton, whose windows at the back looked over Richmond Park, and in front over the wildest part of Wimbledon Common, one of his sons came in and said that he had seen Dereham striding across the common, evidently bound for the house.
'Dereham,' I said, 'is there a man in the world I should so like to see as Dereham?'
And then I told Gordon how I had seen him years before swimming in the sea off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him.
'Why do you want so much to see him?' asked Gordon.
'Well, among other things, I want to see if he is a true Child of the Open Air.'[239]
I find no letter from Hake to Borrow among my papers, but three to his wife:
Bury St. Edmunds, Jan. 27, '48. Evening.
My dear Mrs. Borrow,—It gave me great pleasure, as it always does, to see your handwriting; and as respects the subject of your note you may make yourself quite easy, for I believe the idea has crossed no other mind than your own. How sorry I am to learn that you have been so unwell since your visit to us. I hope that by care you will get strong during this bracing weather. I wish that you were already nearer to us, and cannot resign the hope that we shall yet enjoy the happiness of having you as our neighbours. I have felt a strong friendship for Mr. Borrow's mind for many years, and have ardently wished from time to time to know him, and to have realised my desire I consider one of the most happy events of my life. Until lately, dear Mrs. Borrow, I have had no opportunity of knowing you and your sweet simple-hearted child; but now I hope nothing will occur to interrupt a regard and friendship which I and Mrs. Hake feel most truly towards you all. Tell Mr. Borrow how much we should like to be his Sinbad. I wish he would bring you all and his papers and come again to look about him. There is an old hall at Tostock, which, I hear to-day, is quite dry; if so it is worthy of your attention. It is a mile from the Elmswell station, which is ten minutes' time from Bury. This hall has got a bad name from having been long vacant, but some friends of mine have been over it and they tell me there is not a damp spot on the premises. It is seven miles from Bury. Mrs. Hake has written about a house at Rougham, but had no answer. The cottage at Farnham is to let again. I know not whether Mr. Harvey will make an effort for it. A little change would do you all good, and we can receive Miss Clarke without any difficulty. Give our kindest regards to your party, and believe me, dear Mrs. Borrow, sincerely yours,
T. G. Hake.
Bury St. Edmunds, January 19th, '49.
My dear Mrs. Borrow,—The sight of your handwriting is always a luxury—but you say nothing about coming to see us. We are pleased to get good accounts of your party, and only wish you could report better of yourself. I must take you fairly in hand when you come again to the ancient quarters, for such they are becoming now from your long absence. You might try bismuth and extract of hop, which is often very strengthening to the stomach. Five grains of extract of hop and five grains of trisnitrate of bismuth made into two pills, which are to be taken at eleven and repeated at four—daily. I am so pleased to learn that Miss Clarke is better, as well as Mr. Borrow. I hope that on some occasion, the morphia may be of great comfort to him should his night watchings return. It is good news that the proofs are advancing—I hope towards a speedy end. Messrs. Oakes and Co.'s Bank is as safe as any in the kingdom and more substantial than any in this county. It must be safe, for the partners are men of large property, and of careful habits. I am happy to say we are all well here, but my brother's house in town is a scene of sad trouble. He is himself laid up with bad scarlet fever as well as five children, all severely attacked. One they have lost of this fearful complaint.
Give our kindest regards to Mr. Borrow and accept them yourselves. Ever, dear Mrs. Borrow, sincerely yours,
T. G. Hake.
I send Beethoven's epitaph for Miss Clarke's album according to promise. It is not by Wordsworth.
Bury St. Edmunds, June 24, '51.
My dear Mrs. Borrow,—I am very sorry to hear that you are not feeling strong, and that these flushes of heat are so frequent and troublesome. I will prescribe a medicine for you which I hope may prove serviceable. Let me hear again about your health, and be assured you cannot possibly give me any trouble.
I am also glad to hear of Mr. Borrow. I envy him his bath. I am looking out anxiously for the new quarterly reviews. I wonder whether the Quarterly will contain anything. Is there a prospect of vol. iv.? I really look to passing a day and two half days with you, and to bringing Mrs. Hake to your classic soil some time in August—if we are not inconveniencing you in your charming and snug cottage. I hope Miss Clarke is well. Our united kind regards to you all. George is quite brisk and saucy—Lucy and the infant have not been well. Mrs. Hake has better accounts from Bath. Believe me, dear Mrs. Borrow, very sincerely yours,
T. G. Hake.
Mr. Donne was pleased that Mr. Borrow liked his notice in Tait. You can take a little cold sherry and water after your dinner.
Mr. A. Egmont Hake, one of Dr. Hake's sons, has also given us an interesting reminiscence of Borrow:[240]
Though he was a friend of my family before he wrote Lavengro, few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow. His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval, beardless face, his loud rich voice, and bold heroic air, were such as to impress the most indifferent of lookers-on. Added to this there was something not easily forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates, singing some gipsy song, and as suddenly depart. His conversation, too, was unlike that of any other man; whether he told a long story or only commented on some ordinary topic, he was always quaint, often humorous.... It was at Oulton that the author of The Bible in Spain spent his happiest days. The ménage in his Suffolk home was conducted with great simplicity, but he always had for his friends a bottle or two of wine of rare vintage, and no man was more hearty than he over the glass. He passed his mornings in his summer-house, writing on small scraps of paper, and these he handed to his wife who copied them on foolscap. It was in this way and in this retreat that the manuscript of Lavengro as well as of The Bible in Spain was prepared, the place of which he says, '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.' In this outdoor studio, hung behind the door, were a soldier's coat and a sword which belonged to his father; these were household gods on which he would often gaze while composing.
To Mr. Watts-Dunton we owe by far the best description of Borrow's personal appearance:
What Borrow lacked in adaptability was in great degree compensated by his personal appearance. No one who has ever walked with him, either through the streets of London or along the country roads, could fail to remark how his appearance arrested the attention of the passers-by. As a gypsy woman once remarked to the present writer, 'Everybody as ever see'd the white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him.' When he chanced to meet troops marching along a country road, it was noticeable that every soldier, whether on foot or horseback, would involuntarily turn to look at Borrow's striking figure. He stood considerably above six feet in height, was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his practice of athletic exercises gave his every movement the easy elasticity of an athlete under training. Those East Anglians who have bathed with him on the east coast, or others who have done the same in the Thames or the Ouse, can vouch for his having been an almost faultless model of masculine symmetry, even as an old man. With regard to his countenance, 'noble' is the only word which can be used to describe it. When he was quite a young man his thick crop of hair had become of a silvery whiteness.[241] There was a striking relation between the complexion, which was as luminous and sometimes rosy as an English girl's, and the features—almost perfect Roman-Greek in type, with a dash of Hebrew. To the dark lustre of the eyes an increased intensity was lent by the fair skin. No doubt, however, what most struck the observer was the marked individuality, not to say singularity, of his expression. If it were possible to describe this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a self-consciousness that was both proud and shy.[242]
Here is another picture by Mr. Watts-Dunton of this London period:[243]
At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o'clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards, like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter Scott's eyes good to see. Finally, he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour, the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, and odd as to draw them. This was the humour of Borrow.
And there is yet another description, equally illuminating, in which Mr. Watts-Dunton records how he won Borrow's heart by showing a familiarity with Douglas Jerrold's melodrama Ambrose Gwinett:
From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London. I could have seen much more of him than I did had not the whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time, borne me away from this most original of men; and this is what I so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it was said of a greater man still, that 'after Nature made him she forthwith broke the mould.' The last time I ever saw him was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West-End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun, and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with 'the last of Borrow' I shall never forget it.[244]
Mr. Watts-Dunton concludes his reminiscences—the most valuable personal record that we have of Borrow—with a sonnet that now has its place in literature:
Who once in Orient valleys lived aloof,
Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof
Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair,
Till, on a day, across the mystic bar
Of moonrise, came the 'Children of the Roof,'
Who find no balm 'neath Evening's rosiest woof,
Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star.
We looked o'er London where men wither and choke,
Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies,
And lore of woods and wild wind-prophecies—
Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke:
And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke
Leave never a meadow outside Paradise.
FOOTNOTES:
[237] Theodore Watts-Dunton's memoir of Thomas Gordon Hake in the Athenæum, January 19, 1895.
An interesting letter that I have received from Mr. Watts-Dunton clears up several points and may well have place here:—
'The Pines, 11 Putney Hill, S.W., 31st May 1913.
'You ask me what I have written upon George Borrow. When Borrow died (26th July 1881), the first obituary notice of him in the Athenæum was not by me, but by W. Elwin. This appeared on the 6th August 1881. At this time the general public had so forgotten that Borrow was alive that I remember once, at one of old Mrs. Procter's receptions, it had been discussed, as Lowell and Browning afterwards told me, as to whether I was or was not "an archer of the long bow" because I said that on the previous Sunday I had walked with Borrow in Richmond Park, and was frequently seeing him, and that on the Sunday before I had walked in the same beautiful park with Dr. Gordon Latham, another celebrity of the past "known to be dead." The fact is, Borrow's really great books were Lavengro and The Romany Rye, and the latter had fallen almost dead from the press, smothered by Victorian respectability and philistinism. He was thoroughly soured and angry, and no wonder! He fought shy of literary society. He quite resented being introduced to strangers.
'Elwin's article was considered very unsatisfactory. Knowing that the most competent man in England to write about Borrow was my old friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, I suggested that MacColl should ask the doctor (one of the few men whom Borrow really loved) to furnish the Athenæum with another article. This was agreed to, and another article was written, either by Dr. Hake himself, or by one of his sons—I don't quite remember at this distance of time. It appeared in the Athenæum of the 13th August 1881. But even this article did not seem to MacColl to vitalise one of the most remarkable personalities of the 19th century; and as I was then a leading writer in the literary department of the Athenæum, MacColl asked me to give him an article upon Borrow whom I had known so well. I did so, and the article "caught on," as MacColl said, more than had any Athenæum article for a long time. This appeared 3rd September 1881. When MacColl read the article he was so much pleased with it that he urged me to follow it up with an article on Borrow in connection with the Children of the Open Air—a subject upon which I had previously written a good deal in the Athenæum. This appeared on the 10th September 1881, and became still more popular, and the Athenæum containing it had quite an exceptional sale.
'The Hake whom you inquire about, Egmont Hake, has drifted out of my ken. He at one time lived in Paris, and wrote a book called Paris Originals. I know that he did, at one time, contemplate writing upon Borrow, and corresponded with Mrs. MacOubrey with this view; but the affair fell through. As a son of Dr. Hake's he could not fail to know Borrow. He wrote a brief article about him, in the Dictionary of National Biography. But the two Hakes who were thrown across Borrow most intimately were Thomas Hake and George Hake, the latter of whom lately died in Africa. Thomas Hake, the eldest of the family, knew Borrow in his own childhood, which the other members of the family did not. After Dr. Gordon Hake went to live in Germany, after the Roehampton home was broken up, I saw a good deal of Borrow. He always thought that no one sympathised with him and understood him so thoroughly as I did,—Ever most cordially yours,
'Theodore Watts-Dunton.'
Since receiving this letter I have been in communication with Mr. Egmont Hake, who generously offered to place his Borrow material at my disposal, but this offer came too late to be of service. Mr. Hake will, however, shortly publish his Memoirs in which he will include some interesting impressions of George Borrow which it has been my privilege to read in manuscript.
[238] Dr. Hake was equally severe in his references to Thackeray, of whom scarcely any one has spoken ill. 'Thackeray spent a good deal of his time on stilts,' he says. ' ... He was a very disagreeable companion to those who did not want to boast that they knew him.'—Memoirs, p. 86. 'Thackeray,' he says elsewhere, 'as if under the impression that the party was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure.... Borrow knew better how to behave in good company.'—Memoirs, p. 166.
[239] Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic. By James Douglas. Hodder and Stoughton, 1904, p. 96.
[240] 'Recollections of George Borrow,' by A. Egmont Hake in The Athenæum, Aug. 13, 1881.
[241] Borrow's hair was black until he was about twenty years of age, when it turned white.
[242] Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. iii. p. 430.
[243] The Athenæum, September 3, 1881.
[244] The Athenæum, September 10, 1881. I am indebted to my friend Mr. John Collins Francis., of The Athenæum newspaper, for generously placing the columns of that journal at my disposal for the purposes of this book.
CHAPTER XXXV
BORROW'S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
To many in our day, less utilitarian than those of an earlier era, Borrow must have been an interesting man of letters had he not written his four great books. Single-minded devotion to the less commercially remunerative languages has now become respectable and even estimable. Students of the Scandinavian languages, and of the Celtic, abound in our midst. Borrow was a forerunner with Bowring of much of this 'useless' learning. Borrow came to consider Bowring's apparent neglect of him to be unforgivable. But that time had not arrived, when in 1842 he wrote to him as follows:
To Dr. John Bowring
Oulton, Lowestoft, Suffolk, July 14th, 1842.