A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow to purchase the whole of Borrow’s manuscripts, library, and papers for the Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a thousand pounds, was considered too high, and they passed into the possession of another. Eventually they found their way into the reverent hands of the man who subsequently made Borrow his hero, and who devoted years of his life to the writing of his biography—Dr W. J. Knapp.
It was Borrow’s fate, a tragic fate for a man so proud, to outlive the period of his fame. Not only were his books forgotten, but the world anticipated his death by some seven or eight years. His was a curiously complex nature, one that seems specially to have been conceived by Providence to arouse enmity among the many, and to awaken in the hearts of the few a sterling, unwavering friendship. It is impossible to reconcile the accounts of those who hated him with those whose love and respect he engaged.
He was in sympathy with vagrants and vagabonds—a taste that was perhaps emphasised by the months he spent in preparing Celebrated Trials. If those months of hack work taught him sympathy with pariahs, it also taught him to write strong, nervous English.
He was one of the most remarkable characters of his century—whimsical, eccentric, lovable, inexplicable; possessed of an odd, dry humour that sometimes failed him when most he needed it. He lived and died a stranger to the class to which he belonged, and was the intimate friend and associate of that dark and mysterious personage, Mr Petulengro. He hated his social equals, and admired Tamerlane and Jerry Abershaw. It has been said [473] that he was born three centuries too late, and that he belonged to the age when men dropped mysteriously down the river in ships, later to return with strange stories and great treasure from the Spanish Main. Mr Watts-Dunton has said:—
“When Borrow was talking to people in his own class of life there was always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism. What Carlyle called the ‘armed neutrality’ of social intercourse oppressed him. He felt himself to be in the enemy’s camp. In his eyes there was always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his interlocutor and weighing him against himself. He seemed to be observing what effect his words were having, and this attitude repelled people at first. But the moment he approached a gypsy on the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by the wayside, he became another man. He threw off the burden of restraint. The feeling of the ‘armed neutrality’ was left behind, and he seemed to be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that could give him pleasure. This it was that enabled him to make friends so entirely with the gypsies. Notwithstanding what is called ‘Romany guile’ (which is the growth of ages of oppression), the basis of the Romany character is a joyous frankness. Once let the isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from the ‘Gorgio’ be broken through, and the communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins to show itself. The gypsies are extremely close observers; they were very quick to notice how different was Borrow’s bearing towards themselves from his bearing towards people of his own race, and Borrow used to say that ‘old Mrs Herne and Leonora were the only gypsies who suspected and disliked him.’” [474a]
This convincing character sketch seems to show the real Borrow. It accounts even for that high-piping, artificial voice (a gypsy trait) that he assumed when speaking with those who were not his intimate friends, and which any sudden interest in the conversation would cause him to abandon in favour of his own deep, rich tones. Mr F. J. Bowring, himself no friend of Borrow’s for very obvious reasons, has described this artificial intonation as something between a beggar’s whine and the high-pitched voice of a gypsy—in sort, a falsetto. He tells how, on one occasion, when in conversation with Borrow, he happened to mention to him something of particular interest concerning the gypsies, Borrow became immensely interested, immediately dropped the falsetto and spoke in his natural voice, which Mr Bowring describes as deep and manly.
Even his friends were led sometimes into criticisms that appear unsympathetic. [474b] He was, Dr Hake has said, “essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the prince that he felt himself in its midst.” [474c] It is the son who shows the better understanding, although there is no doubt about Dr Hake’s loyalty to Borrow. There is a faithful presentation of a man such as Borrow really seems to have been, in the following words:—
“Few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow. His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval beardless face, his loud rich voice and bold heroic air were such as to impress the most indifferent lookers-on. Added to this there was something not easily forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart.” [475a]
If Borrow wrote that he was ashamed of being an Englishman and referred to their “pinched and mortified expressions,” if he found the virtues of the Saxons “uncouth and ungracious,” he never permitted others to make disparaging remarks about his country or his countrymen. [475b] He was typically English in this: agree with his strictures, add a word or two of dispraise of the English, and there appeared a terrifying figure of a patriot; “not only an Englishman but an East Englishman,” which in Borrow’s vocabulary meant the finest of the breed. He might with more truth have said a Cornishman. “I could not command myself when I heard my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner,” [475c] he once exclaimed. He permitted to himself, and to himself only, a certain latitude in such matters.
That Borrow exaggerated is beyond all question, but it must not be called deliberate. He desired to give impressions of scenes and people, and he was inclined to emphasize certain features. Isopel Berners he wished it to be known was a queenly creature, and he described her as taller than himself (he was 6 feet 2 inches without his shoes). Exaggeration is colour, not form. A disbelief in his having encountered the convict son of the old apple-woman near Salisbury does not imply that the old woman herself is a fiction. Borrow insisted upon Norfolk as his county, “where the people eat the best dumplings in the world, and speak the purest English.” He even spoke with a strong, if imperfect, East Anglian accent. As a matter of fact his father was Cornish and his mother of Huguenot stock. It would be absurd to argue from this obvious exaggeration of the actual facts that Borrow was a myth.
Then he has been taken to task for not being a philologist as well as a linguist. He may have used the word philologist somewhat loosely on occasion. “Think what the reader would have lost,” says one eminent but by no means prejudiced critic [476] with real sympathy and insight, “had Borrow waited to verify his etymologies.” In all probability Nature will never produce a Humboldt-Le Sage combination of intellect. Language was to Borrow merely the key that permitted him access to the chamber of men’s minds. It must be confessed that sometimes he invaded the sacred precincts of philology. His chapter on the Basque language in The Bible in Spain has been described as “utterly frantic,” and German philologists, speechless in their astonishment, have expressed themselves upon his conclusions in marks of exclamation! He was not qualified to discourse upon the science of language.
He was a staunch member of the Church of England, because he believed there was in it more religion than in any other Church; but this did not hinder him from consorting with the godless children of the tents, or contributing towards the upkeep of Nonconformist-schools. The gypsies honoured and trusted him because, crooked themselves, they appreciated straightness and clean living in another. They had never known him use a bad word or do a bad thing. He was, on occasion, arrogant, overbearing, ungracious, in short all the unattractive things that a proud and masterful man can be; but his friendship was as strong as the man himself; his charity above the narrow prejudices of sect. When he threw his tremendous power into any enterprise or undertaking, it was with the determination that it should succeed, if work and self-sacrifice could make it. “The wisest course,” he thought, was, “ . . . to blend the whole of the philosophy of the tombstone with a portion of the philosophy of the publican and something more, to enjoy one’s pint and pipe and other innocent pleasures, and to think every now and then of death and judgment.” [477]
Borrow loved mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able quite to penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality. Those who came nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men. Of all Borrow’s friends it is probable that none understood him so well as Hasfeldt. He recognised the strength of character of the white-haired man who sang when he was happy, and he refused to be affected by his gloomy moods. “Write and tell me,” he requests, “if you have not fallen in love with some nun or Gypsy in Spain, or have met with some other romantic adventure worthy of a roaming knight.” On another occasion (June 1845) he boasts with some justification, “Heaven be praised, I can comprehend you as a reality, while many regard you as an imaginary, fantastic being. But they who portray you have not eaten bread and salt with you.”
Borrow’s contemporary recognition was a chance; he was writing for another generation, and some of the friends that he left behind have loyally striven to erect to him the only monument an artist desires—the proclaiming of his works.
Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of magnificence, and, lest he should be enticed away from her, had instilled into his soul a hatred of all things artificial and at variance with her august decrees. He was shy and suspicious with the men and women who regulated their lives by the narrow standards of civilisation and decorum; but with the children of the tents and the vagrants of the wayside he was a single-minded man, eager to learn the lore of the open air. He recognised in these vagabonds the true sons and daughters of “the Great Mother who mixes all our bloods.”
THE END
LIST OF BORROW’S WORKS
1825
Celebrated Trials, and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence, from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825. Six volumes, with plates. London.
Faustus: His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell. Translated from the German [of F. M. von Klinger]. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, London.
1826
Romantic Ballads. Translated from the Danish: and Miscellaneous Pieces. S. Wilkin, Norwich.
1835
Targum: or, Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects. St Petersburgh. Reprinted later by Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.
The Talisman. From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. With Other Pieces. St Petersburg.
1841
The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain. With an Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary of their Language. Two volumes. John Murray, London.
1842
The Bible in Spain; or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. Three volumes. John Murray, London.
Lavengro: The Scholar—The Gypsy—The Priest. Three volumes. John Murray, London.
The Romany Rye: a Sequel to Lavengro. Two volumes. John Murray, London.
The Sleeping Bard; or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell. By Elis Wyn. Translated from the Cambrian British. John Murray, London.
1862
Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery. Three volumes. John Murray, London.
Romano Lavo-Lil: Word-Book of Romany; or, English Gypsy Language. With Many Pieces in Gypsy, Illustrative of the Way of Speaking and Thinking of the English Gypsies; with Specimens of Their Poetry, and an Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England. John Murray, London.
1884
The Turkish Jester; or, the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi. Translated from the Turkish. Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.
1892
The Death of Balder. Translated from the Danish of Evald. Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.
From the foregoing list has been omitted the mysterious Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller, and those works that Borrow edited or translated for the British and Foreign Bible Society.
FOOTNOTES
[3] Afterwards General Morshead and friend of the Duke of York. Captain Morshead, himself a Cornishman, is credited with doing everything in his power to dissuade Thomas Borrow from enlisting, but without result.
[4a] Lavengro, page 2. References to Borrow’s works throughout this volume are to the Standard Edition, published by John Murray.
[4b] Ann, the third of eight children born to Samuel Perfrement and Mary his wife, 23rd January 1772.
[4c] Locally, the name is pronounced “Parfrement.” This is quite in accordance with the Norfolk dialect, which changes “e” into “a.” Thus “Ernest” becomes “Arnest”; “Earlham,” “Arlham”; “Erpingham,” “Arpingham,” and so on. In Norfolk there are grave peculiarities of pronunciation, which have caused many a stranger to wish that he had never enquired his way, so puzzling are the replies hurled at him in an incomprehensible vernacular.
[5] Married the Rev. Wm. Holland, rector of Walmer and afterwards rector of Brasted, Kent.
[6a] Lavengro, page 5.
[6b] Lavengro, page 5.
[7a] George in honour of the King, it is said, and Henry after his father’s eldest brother.
[7b] Lavengro, page 6.
[7c] Lavengro, page 6.
[7d] Lavengro, page 6.
[7e] Lavengro, page 7.
[7f] Lavengro, page 7.
[9a] Lavengro, page 16.
[9b] The widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the Paston Letters.
[9c] Lavengro, page 15.
[10a] Lavengro, pages 398–9.
[10b] “Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those which I can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, pass away, and become forgotten, except by myself, who, in spite of all my endeavours, never can forget anything.”—Lavengro, page 166.
[10c] Lavengro, page 16.
[11a] Lavengro, pages 19–20.
[11b] Lavengro, page 22.
[12a] The gypsies “have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family having a public and private name, one by which they are known to the Gentiles, and another to themselves alone . . . There are only two names of trades which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper names, Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English gypsy dialect by Vardo-mescro and Petulengro (Romano Lavo-Lil, page 185). Thus the Smiths are known among themselves as the Petulengros. Petul, a horse shoe, and engro a “masculine affix used in the formation of figurative names.” Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes from Bosh a fiddle, Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor = to fight.
[12b] The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard narrated at a provincial Bible Society’s meeting that when Borrow first called at Earl Street “he said that he had been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had passed several years with them, but had been recognised at a fair in Norfolk and brought home to his family by his uncle.” There is, however, nothing to confirm this story.
[13a] Lavengro, page 164.
[13b] The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait making; but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of the English that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.
[13c] Lavengro, page 45.
[14] David Haggart, born 24th June 1801, was an instinctive criminal, who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the West Norfolks. Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his career of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, he was hanged at Edinburgh.
[15a] Lavengro, page 138.
[15b] John Crome (1768–1821), landscape painter. Apprenticed 1783 as sign-painter; introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded the Norwich School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy 1806.
[17] Borrow was always a magnificent horseman. “Vaya! how you ride! It is dangerous to be in your way!” said the Archbishop of Toledo to him years later. In The Bible in Spain he wrote that he had “been accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a saddle.” The Rev. Wentworth Webster states that in Madrid “he used to ride with a Russian skin for a saddle and without stirrups.”
[20] Letter from “A School-fellow of Lavengro” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.
[21a] “It is probable, that had I been launched about this time into some agreeable career, that of arms, for example, for which, being the son of a soldier, I had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I might have thought nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any kind; but, having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to my genius which appeared open to me.”—Lavengro, page 89.
[21b] The Rev. Thomas D’Eterville, M.A., “Poor Old Detterville,” as the Grammar School boys called him, of Caen University, who arrived at Norwich in 1793. He acquired a small fortune by teaching languages. There were rumours that he was engaged in the contraband trade, an occupation more likely to bring fortune than teaching languages.
[21c] Letter from “A School-fellow of Lavengro” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.
[22] It was here, in 1827, that he saw the world’s greatest trotter, Marshland Shales, and in common with other lovers of horses lifted his hat to salute “the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother England.” In Lavengro Borrow antedated this event by some nine years.
[23] Manuscript autobiographical notes supplied by Borrow to Mr John Longe, 1862.
[24] Lavengro, page 134.
[25a] This account is taken from a letter by “A Schoolfellow of Lavengro” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.
[25b] In a letter to Borrow, dated 15th October 1862, John Longe, J.P., of Spixworth Park, Norwich, in acknowledging some biographical particulars that Borrow had sent him for inclusion in Burton’s Antiquities of the Royal School of Norwich, wrote:—
“You have omitted an important and characteristic anecdote of your early days (fifteen years of age). When at school you, with Theodosius and Francis W. Purland, absented yourself from home and school and took up your abode in a certain ‘Robber’s Cave’ at Acle, where you resided three days, and once more returned to your homes.”
[26] According to the original manuscript of Lavengro, it appears that Roger Kerrison, a Norwich friend of Borrow’s, strongly advised the law as “an excellent profession . . . for those who never intend to follow it.”—Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp, i., 66.
[27a] The Rev. Wm. Drake of Mundesley, in a letter which appeared in The Eastern Daily Press, 22nd September 1892:—
“ . . . I was at the Norwich Grammar School nine years, from 1820 to 1829, and during that time (probably in 1824 and 1825) George Borrow was lodging in the Upper Close . . . The house was a low old-fashioned building with a garden in front of it, and the fact of Borrow’s residence there is fixed in my memory because I had spent the first five or six years of my own life in the same house, from 1811 to 1816 or 1817. My father occupied it in virtue of his being a minor canon in Norwich Cathedral. I remember Borrow very distinctly, because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who used to gather round the railings of his garden, and occasionally he would ask one or two of them to have tea with him. I have a faint recollection that he gave us some of our first notions of chess, but I am not sure of this. I . . . remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, usually dressed in black. In person he was not unlike another Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different notoriety from that which now belongs to Borrow’s name. I mean John Thurtell, who murdered Mr Weare.”
[27b] Wild Wales, page 3.
[28a] Wild Wales, page 157.
[28b] Forty years later Borrow wrote of these days:—“‘How much more happy, innocent, and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I translated Iolo’s ode than I am at the present time!’ Then covering my face with my hands I wept like a child.”—Wild Wales, page 448.
[30a] There is no doubt that Borrow became possessed of a copy of Kiæmpe Viser, first collected by Anders Vedel, which may or may not have been given to him, with a handshake from the old farmer and a kiss from his wife, in recognition of the attention he had shown the pair in his official capacity. He refers to the volume repeatedly in Lavengro, and narrates how it was presented by some shipwrecked Danish mariners to the old couple in acknowledgment of their humanity and hospitality. It is, however, most likely that he was in error when he stated that “in less than a month” he was able “to read the book.”—Lavengro, pages 140–4.
[30b] Wild Wales, page 2.
[30c] Wild Wales, page 374.
[30d] Wild Wales, page 9. There is an interesting letter written to Borrow by the old lawyer’s son on the appearance of Lavengro, in which he says: “With tearful eyes, yet smiling lips, I have read and re-read your faithful portrait of my dear old father. I cannot mistake him—the creaking shoes, the florid face, the polished pate—all serve as marks of recognition to his youngest son!”
[31a] Wild Wales, page 374.
[31b] During the five years that he was articled to Simpson & Rackham, Borrow, according to Dr Knapp, studied Welsh, Danish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Gaelic, and Armenian. He already had a knowledge of Latin, Greek, Irish, French, Italian, and Spanish.
[31c] Lavengro, page 235.
[32a] Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), the historical painter.
[32b] Lavengro, page 166.
[33a] William Taylor (1765–1836) was an admirer of German literature and a defender of the French Revolution. He is credited with having first inspired his friend Southey with a liking for poetry. He travelled much abroad, met Goethe, attended the National Assembly debates in 1790, translated from the German and contributed to a number of English periodicals.
[33b] Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 1877.
[33c] Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 1877.
[33d] Letter from “A School-fellow of Lavengro” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.
[34a] Memoir of Wm. Taylor, by J. W. Robberds.
[34b] Memoir of Wm. Taylor, by J. W. Robberds.
[34c] Letter from “A School-fellow of Lavengro” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.
[35a] The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in a letter, 17th February 1887.
[35b] Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 1877.
[35c] Lavengro, page 355.
[36a] John Bowring, F.R.S. (1792–1872), began life in trade, went to the Peninsula for Milford & Co., army contractors, in 1811, set up for himself as a merchant, travelled and acquired a number of languages. He was ambitious, energetic and shrewd. He became editor of The Westminster Review in 1824, and LL.D., Grönigen, in 1829. He was sent by the Government upon a commercial mission to Belgium, 1833; to Egypt; Syria and Turkey, 1837–8; M.P. for Clyde burghs, 1835–7, and for Bolton, 1841; was instrumental in obtaining the issue of the florin as a first step toward a decimal system of currency; Consul of Canton, 1847; plenipotentiary to China; governor, commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral of Hong Kong, 1854; knighted 1854; established diplomatic and commercial relations with Siam, 1855. He published a number of volumes of translations from various languages. He died full of years and honours in 1872.
[36b] The Romany Rye, page 368, et seq.
[38] Lavengro, pages 177–8.
[39] Lavengro, pages 179–80. Captain Borrow was in his sixty-sixth year at his death; b. December 1758, d. 28th February 1824. He was buried in St Giles churchyard, Norwich, on 4th March 1824.
[40a] The Romany Rye, page 302.
[40b] In his will Captain Borrow bequeathed to George his watch and “the small Portrait,” and to John “the large Portrait” of himself; his mother to hold and enjoy them during her lifetime. Should Mrs Borrow die or marry again, elaborate provision was made for the proper distribution of the property between the two sons.
[41] In particular Borrow believed in Ab Gwilym “the greatest poetical genius that has appeared in Europe since the revival of literature” (Wild Wales, page 6). “The great poet of Nature, the contemporary of Chaucer, but worth half-a-dozen of the accomplished word-master, the ingenious versifier of Norman and Italian Tales.” (Wild Wales, page xxviii.).
[42a] Lines to Six-Foot-Three. Romantic Ballads. Norwich 1826.
[42b] Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840) before becoming a publisher was a schoolmaster, hosier, stationer, bookseller, and vendor of patent medicines at Leicester, where he also founded a newspaper. In 1795 he came to London, was sheriff in 1807, and received his knighthood a year later.
[43] It has been urged against Borrow’s accuracy that Sir Richard Phillips had retired to Brighton in 1823, vide The Dictionary of National Biography. In the January number (1824) of The Monthly Magazine appeared the following paragraph: “The Editor [Sir Richard Phillips], having retired from his commercial engagements and removed from his late house of business in New Bridge Street, communications should be addressed to the appointed Publishers [Messrs Whittakers]; but personal interviews of Correspondents and interested persons may be obtained at his private residence in Tavistock Square.” This proves conclusively that Sir Richard was to be seen in London in the early part of 1824.
[44a] Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825, 6 vols., with plates. London, 1825.
[44b] Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe. By Sir Richard Phillips. London, 1821.
[45a] Dr Knapp identified the editor as “William Gifford, editor of The Quarterly Review from 1809 to September 1824.” (Life of George Borrow, i. 93.) The late Sir Leslie Stephen, however, cast very serious doubt upon this identification, himself concluding that the editor of The Universal Review was John Carey (1756–1826), whose name was actually associated with an edition of Quintilian published in 1822. Carey was a known contributor to two of Sir Richard Phillips’ magazines.
[45b] The Monthly Magazine, July 1824.
[46a] It appeared in six volumes.
[46b] The work when completed contained accounts of over 400 trials.
[46c] It appeared on 19th March following.
[46d] Lavengro, page 210.
[47] The picture was duly painted in the Heroic manner, the artist lending to the ex-mayor, for some reason or other, his own unheroically short legs. Haydon received his fee of a hundred guineas, and the picture now hangs in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich.
[48a] Letter from Roger Kerrison to John Borrow, 28th May 1824.
[48b] Memoirs, C. G. Leland 1893.
[49a] Borrow himself gave the sum as “eighteen-pence a page.” The books themselves apparently did not become the property of the reviewer.—The Romany Rye, page 324.
[49b] Borrow says that he demanded lives of people who had never lived, and cancelled others that Borrow had prepared with great care, because be considered them as “drugs.”—Lavengro, pages 245–6.
[50a] “‘Sir,’ said he, ‘you know nothing of German; I have shown your translation of the first chapter of my Philosophy to several Germans: it is utterly unintelligible to them.’ ‘Did they see the Philosophy?’ I replied. ‘They did, sir, but they did not profess to understand English.’ ‘No more do I,’ I replied, ‘if the Philosophy be English.’”—Lavengro, page 254.
[50b] A German edition of the work appeared in Stuttgart in 1826.
[52a] This sentence is quoted in The Gypsies of Spain as a heading to the section “On Robber Language,” page 335.
[52b] Lavengro, pages 216–7.
[52c] Lavengro, page 271.
[53a] Faustus: His Life, Death and Descent into Hell. Translated from the German. London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825, pages xxii., 251. Coloured Plate.
[53b] A letter from Borrow to the publishers, which Dr Knapp quotes, and dates 15th September 1825, but without giving his reasons, was written from Norwich, and runs:
Dear Sir,—
As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to take thirty copies of Faustus instead of the money. The book has been burnt in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked about, I may, perhaps, be able to dispose of some in the course of a year or so.—Yours, G. Borrow.
[55a] Lavengro, page 310.
[55b] The Romany Rye, Appendix, page 303.
[57] Probably it was only a portion of the whole amount of £50 that Borrow drew after the completion of the work. One thing is assured, that Sir Richard Phillips was too astute a man to pay the whole amount before the completion of the work.
[58] Dr Knapp’s Life of George Borrow, i., page 141.
[60] Dr Knapp gives the date as the 22nd; but Mr John Sampson makes the date the 24th, which seems more likely to be correct.
[61a] The Athenæum, 25th March 1899.
[61b] Lavengro, page 362.
[62a] Lavengro, page 362.
[62b] Lavengro, page 374.
[63a] Lavengro, pages 431–2.
[64a] Lavengro, page 451.
[64b] Mr Watts-Dunton in a review of Dr Knapp’s Life of Borrow says that she “was really an East-Anglian road-girl of the finest type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not many years ago.”—Athenæum, 25th March 1899.
[66a] Mr Petulengro is made to say the “Flying Tinker.”
[66b] Dr Knapp sees in the account of Murtagh’s story of his travels Barrow’s own adventures during 1826–7, but there is no evidence in support of this theory. Another contention of Dr Knapp’s is more likely correct, viz., that the story of Finn MacCoul was that told him by Cronan the Cornish guide during the excursion to Land’s End.
[67a] It will be remembered that in The Romany Rye Borrow takes his horse to the Swan Inn at Stafford, meets his postilion friend and is introduced by him to the landlord, with the result that he arranges to act as “general superintendent of the yard,” and keep the hay and corn account. In return he and his horse are to be fed and lodged. Here Borrow encounters Francis Ardry, on his way to see the dog and lion fight at Warwick, and the man in black.
[67b] The Gypsies of Spain, page 360.
[68] Introduction to The Romany Rye in The Little Library, Methuen & Co., Ltd.
[69a] The Romany Rye, page 162.
[69b] The Romany Rye, page 162.
[69c] The Romany Rye, page 50.
[69d] “Let but the will of a human being be turned to any particular object, and it is ten to one that sooner or later he achieves it.”—Lavengro, page 16.
[73] They appeared as Romantic Ballads, translated from the Danish, and Miscellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow. Norwich. S. Wilkin, 1826. Included in the volume were translations from the Kiæmpe Viser and from Oehlenschlæger.
[74] Correspondence and Table-Talk of B. R. Haydon. London, 1876. The position of the letter in the Haydon Journal is between November 1825 and January 1826; but it is more likely that it was written some months later. Unfortunately, Borrow’s portrait cannot be traced in any of Haydon’s pictures.
[75a] Lavengro, page 9.
[75b] There was a tradition that Borrow became a foreign correspondent for the Morning Herald, and it was in this capacity that he travelled on the Continent in 1826–7; but Dr Knapp clearly showed that such a theory was untenable.
[75c] The Gypsies of Spain, page 11.
[75d] The Bible in Spain, page 219.
[75e] Letter to his mother, August 1833.
[75f] The Bible in Spain, page 172.
[75g] The Gypsies of Spain, page 31.
[76a] The Bible in Spain, page 703.
[76b] The Bible in Spain, page 67.
[76c] The Gypsies of Spain, page 19.
[76d] Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, by Lt.-Col. E. H. D. E. Napier. London, 1842.
[76e] The Gypsies of Spain, pages 10–11.
[76f] Patteran, or Patrin; a gypsy method of indicating by means of grass, leaves, or a mark in the dust to those behind the direction taken by the main body.
[76g] The Gypsies of Spain, page 31.
[77a] If he went abroad, he certainly did so without obtaining a passport from the Foreign Office. The only passports issued to him between the years 1825–1840 were:
27th July 1833, to St Petersburg;
2nd November 1836 and 20th December 1838, to Spain,
as far as the F. O. Registers show.
[77b] Dr Knapp takes Borrow’s statement, made 29th March 1839, “I have been three times imprisoned and once on the point of being shot,” as indicating that he was imprisoned at Pamplona in 1826. The imprisonments were September 1837, Finisterre; May 1838, Madrid; and another unknown. The occasion on which he was nearly shot, which may be assumed to be connected with one of the imprisonments (otherwise he was more than “once nearly shot”), was at Finisterre, when he, with his guide, was seized as a Carlist spy “by the fishermen of the place, who determined at first on shooting us.” (Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th September 1837.)
[78] The incident is given in Lavengro under date of 1818, when Marshland Shales was fifteen years old. It was not, however, until 1827 that he appeared at the Norwich Horse Fair and was put up for auction. “Such a horse as this we shall never see again; a pity that he is so old,” was the opinion of those who lifted their hats as a token of respect.
[79] This and subsequent letters from Borrow to Sir John Bowring not specially acknowledged have been courteously placed at the writer’s disposal by Mr Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring’s grandson.
[81] In The Monthly Review, March 1830, there appeared among the literary announcements a paragraph to the same effect.
[83] From the original draft of his letter of 20th May to Dr Bowring, omitted from the letter itself.
[86a] Mr Thomas Seccombe in Bookman, February 1902.
[86b] It is only fair to add that Mr Seccombe wrote without having seen the correspondence quoted from above. His words have been given as representing the opinion held by most people regarding the Borrow-Bowring dispute. It has been said that Bowring sought to suck Borrow’s brains; it would appear, however, that Borrow strove rather to make every possible use that he could of Bowring.
[87a] Preface to The Sleeping Bard, 1860.
[87b] Ibid.
[88a] The Bible in Spain, page 201.
[88b] Dr Knapp gives the date as during the early days of September, but without mentioning his authority.
[90] The Romany Rye, page 362.
[91a] Lavengro, page 403.
[91b] Lavengro, page 446.
[92] Vicar of Pakefield, in Norfolk, 1814–1830; Lowestoft, 1830–63. He married a sister of J. J. Gurney of Earlham Hall.
[93a] Dr Knapp was in error when he credited J. J. Gurney with the introduction. In a letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 10th Feb. 1833, Borrow wrote, “I must obtain a letter from him [Rev. F. Cunningham] to Joseph Gurney.”
[93b] T. Pell Platt, formerly the Hon. Librarian of the Society; W. Greenfield, its lately deceased Editorial Superintendent.
[94a] S. V. Lipovzoff (1773–1841) had studied Chinese and Manchu at the National College of Pekin, and had lived in China for 20 years; belonged to the Russian Foreign Office (Asiatic section); head of Board of Censors for books in Eastern languages printed in Russia: Corresponding member of Academy of Sciences for department of Oriental Literature and Antiquities. “A gentleman in the service of the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs, who has spent the greater part of an industrious life in Peking and the East.”—J. P. H[asfeldt] in the Athenæum, 5th March 1836.
[94b] Asmus, Simondsen & Co., Sarepta House.
[95] Borrow’s report upon Puerot’s translation, 23rd September 5th October, 1835.
[96a] The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, vol. i., July 1888 to October 1899. In the MS. autobiographical note he wrote later for Mr John Longe, Borrow stated that he walked from London to Norwich in November 1825. He may have performed the journey twice.
[96b] Letter from Borrow to the Rev. Francis Cunningham, to whom he wrote on his return home, circa January, acquainting him with what had transpired in London, assuring him that “I am returned with a firm determination to exert all my energies to attain the desired end [the learning of Manchu]; and I hope, Sir, that I shall have the benefit of your prayers for my speedy success, for the language is one of those which abound with difficulties against which human skill and labour, without the special favour of God, are as blunt hatchets against the oak; and though I shall almost weary Him with my own prayers, I wish not to place much confidence in them, being at present very far from a state of grace and regeneration, having a hard and stony heart, replete with worldy passions, vain wishes, and all kinds of ungodliness; so that it would be no wonder if God to prayers addressed from my lips were to turn away His head in wrath.”
[97] Borrow always writes Mandchow, but, for the sake of uniformity his spelling is corrected throughout.
[98] Letter to Rev. Francis Cunningham, circa January 1833.
[99a] Dr Knapp ascribes the translation to Dr Pazos Kanki, who undertook it at the instance of the Bishop of Puebla, but gives no authority. Dr Kanki was a native of La Paz, Peru, and translated St Luke into his native dialect Aimará. He had no more connection with Mexico than “stout Cortez” with “a peak in Darien.”
[99b] Life of George Borrow, by Dr Knapp, i., page 157.
[100a] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
[100b] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
[100c] Letter to Rev J. Jowett, 18th March 1833.
[101] Caroline Fox wrote in her Memories of Old Friends (1882): “Andrew Brandram gave us at breakfast many personal recollections of curious people. J. J. Gurney recommended George Borrow to their Committee [!]; so he stalked up to London, and they gave him a hymn to translate into the Manchu language, and the same to one of their own people to translate also. When compared they proved to be very different. When put before their reader, he had the candour to say that Borrow’s was much the better of the two. On this they sent him to St Petersburg, got it printed [!] and then gave him business in Portugal, which he took the liberty greatly to extend, and to do such good as occurred to his mind in a highly executive manner [22nd August 1844].”
[102] Mr Lipovzoff’s unfortunate name was a great stumbling-block. Borrow spelt it many ways, varying from Lipoffsky to Lipofsoff. It has been thought advisable to adopt Mr Lipovzoff’s own spelling of his name, in order to preserve some uniformity.
[104] Minutes of the Editorial Sub-Committee, 29th July 1833.
[105] Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography.
[106] Letter to his mother, 30th July 1833.
[107a] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th August 1833.
[107b] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th August 1833.
[108a] Borrow is always puzzling when concerned with dates. He writes to his mother telling her that he left on the 7th, and later gives the date, in a letter to Mr Jowett, as 24th July, O.S. (5th August). The 7th seems to be the correct date.
[108b] Letter to his mother.
[109] “If I had my choice of all the cities of the world to live in, I would choose Saint Petersburg.”—Wild Wales, page 665.
[110] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, undated: received 26th September 1833.
[111] In a letter dated 3rd/15th August, the Prince wrote to Mr Venning at Norwich, “On returning thence, your son came to introduce to me the Englishman who has come over here about the translation of the Manchu Bible, and who brought with him your letter.”—Memorials of John Venning, 1862.
[112a] Best known for his Grammar, written in German.
[112b] Nephew of J. C Adelung, the philologist.
[113] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, undated, but received 26th September 1833.
[114a] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
[114b] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
[114c] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
[115a] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834.
[115b] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 20th January/1st February 1834. Probably this means the New Testament only, as there was no intention of printing the Old Testament at that date.
[116] In a letter to his mother, dated 1st/13th Feb., Borrow writes: “The Bible Society depended upon Dr Schmidt and the Russian translator Lipovzoff to manage this business [the obtaining of the official sanction], but neither the one nor the other would give himself the least trouble about the matter, or give me the slightest advice how to proceed.”
[117] Letter to Rev. J. Jowett, 4th/16th February 1834.
[118a] Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.
[118b] Letter to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Jan./1st Feb. 1834.
[118c] Letter to the Rev. F. Cunningham, 17th/29th Nov. 1834.