The next most interesting figure in the Borrow gallery of this period is Don Luis de Usóz y Rio, who was a good friend to Borrow during the whole of his sojourn in Spain. It was he who translated Borrow's appeal to the Spanish Prime Minister to be permitted to distribute Scio's New Testament. He watched over Borrow with brotherly solicitude, and wrote him more than one excellent letter, of which the two following from my Borrow Papers, the last written at the close of the Spanish period, are the most interesting:

To Mr. George Borrow

(Translated from the Spanish)

Piazza di Spagna 17, Rome, 7 April 1838.

Luis de Usóz Y Rio.

To Mr. George Borrow

(Translated from the Spanish)

Naples, 28 August 1839.

Eleutheros.

Yet another acquaintance of these Spanish days was Baron Taylor—Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor, to give him his full name—who had a career of wandering achievement, with Government pay, that must have appealed to Borrow. Although his father was an Englishman he became a naturalised Frenchman, and he was for a time in the service of the French Government as Director of the Théâtre Français, when he had no little share in the production of the dramas of Victor Hugo and Dumas. Later he was instrumental in bringing the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris. He wrote books upon his travels in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.[133] He wandered all over Europe in search of art treasures for the French Government, and may very well have met Borrow again and again. Borrow tells us that he had met Taylor in France, in Russia, and in Ireland, before he met him in Andalusia, collecting pictures for the French Government. Borrow's description of their meetings is inimitable:—

The last and most distinguished of Borrow's colleagues while in Spain was George Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, whom we judge to have been in private life one of the most lovable men of his epoch. George Villiers was born in London in 1800, and was the grandson of the first Earl, Thomas Villiers, who received his title when holding office in Lord North's administration, but is best known from his association in diplomacy with Frederick the Great. His grandson was born, as it were, into diplomacy, and at twenty years of age was an attaché to the British Embassy in St. Petersburg. Later he was associated with Sir John Bowring in negotiating a commercial treaty with France. In August 1833 he was sent as British Minister—'envoy extraordinary' he was called—to Madrid, and he had been two years in that seething-pot of Spanish affairs, with Christinos and Carlists at one another's throats, when Borrow arrived in the Peninsula. His influence was the greater with a succession of Spanish Prime Ministers in that in 1838 he had been largely instrumental in negotiating the quadruple alliance between England, France, Spain, and Portugal. In March 1839—exactly a year before Borrow took his departure—he resigned his position at Madrid, having then for some months exchanged the title of Sir George Villiers for that of Earl of Clarendon through the death of his uncle;[135] Borrow thereafter having to launch his various complaints and grievances at his successor, Mr.—afterwards Sir George—Jerningham, who, it has been noted, had his home in Norfolk, at Costessey, four miles from Norwich. Villiers returned to England with a great reputation, although his Spanish policy was attacked in the House of Lords. In that same year, 1839, he joined Lord Melbourne's administration as Lord Privy Seal, O'Connell at the time declaring that he ought to be made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, so sympathetic was he towards concession and conciliation in that then feverishly excited country. This office actually came to him in 1847, and he was Lord-Lieutenant through that dark period of Ireland's history, including the Famine, the Young Ireland rebellion, and the Smith O'Brien rising. He pleased no one in Ireland. No English statesman could ever have done so under such ideals of government as England would have tolerated then, and for long years afterwards. The Whigs defended him, the Tories abused him, in their respective organs. He left Ireland in 1852 and was more than once mentioned as possible Prime Minister in the ensuing years. He was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Lord Aberdeen's Administration during the Crimean War, and he held the same office under Lord Palmerston, again under Earl Russell in 1865, and under Mr. Gladstone in 1868. He might easily have become Prime Minister. Greville in his Diary writes of Prince Albert's desire that he should succeed Lord John Russell, but Clarendon said that no power on earth would make him take that position. He said he could not speak, and had not had parliamentary experience enough. He died in 1870, leaving a reputation as a skilful diplomatist and a disinterested politician, if not that of a great statesman. He had twice refused the Governor-Generalship of India, and three times a marquisate.

Sir George Villiers seems to have been very courteous to Borrow during the whole of the time they were together in Spain. It would have been easy for him to have been quite otherwise. Borrow's Bible mission synchronised with a very delicate diplomatic mission of his own, and in a measure clashed with it. The government of Spain was at the time fighting the ultra-clericals. Physical and moral strife were rife in the land. Neither Royalists nor Carlists could be expected to sympathise with Borrow's schemes, which were fundamentally to attack their church. But Villiers was at all times friendly, and, as far as he could be, helpful. Borrow seems to have had ready access to him, and he answered his many letters. He gave Borrow an opportunity of an interview with the formidable Prime Minister Mendizábal, and he interviewed another minister and persuaded him to permit Borrow to print and circulate his Bibles. He intervened successfully to release Borrow from his Madrid prison. But Villiers could not have had any sympathy with Borrow other than as a British subject to be protected on the Roman citizen principle. We do not suppose that when The Bible in Spain appeared he was one of those who were captivated by its extraordinary qualities. When Borrow crossed his path in later life he received no special consideration, such as would be given very promptly in our day by a Cabinet minister to a man of letters of like distinction. We find him on one occasion writing to the ex-minister, now Lord Clarendon, asking his help for a consulship. Clarendon replied kindly enough, but sheltered himself behind the statement that the Prime Minister was overwhelmed with applications for patronage. Yet Clarendon, who held many high offices in the following years, might have helped if he had cared to do so. Some years later—in 1847—there was further correspondence when Borrow desired to become a Magistrate of Suffolk. Here again Clarendon wrote three courteous letters, and appears to have done his best in an unenthusiastic way. But nothing came of it all.

CHAPTER XX

The death of his wife saddened Borrow, and assisted to transform him into the unamiable creature of Norfolk tradition. But it is well to bear in mind, when we are considering Borrow on his domestic and personal side, that he was unquestionably a good and devoted husband throughout his married life of twenty-nine years. It was in the year 1832 that Borrow and his wife first met. He was twenty-nine; she was a widow of thirty-six. She was undeniably very intelligent, and was keenly sympathetic to the young vagabond of wonderful adventures on the highways of England, now so ambitious for future adventure in distant lands. Her maiden name was Mary Skepper. She was one of the two children of Edmund Skepper and his wife Anne, who lived at Oulton Hall in Suffolk, whither they had removed from Beceles in 1805. Mary's brother inherited the Oulton Hall estate of three hundred acres, and she had a mortgage the interest of which yielded £450 per annum. In July 1817 Mary married, at Oulton Church, Henry Clarke,[136] a lieutenant in the Navy, who died eight months later of consumption. Two months after his death their child Henrietta Mary, the 'Hen' who was Borrow's life companion, was born. There is a letter among my Borrow Papers addressed to the widow by her husband's father at this time. It is dated 17th June 1818, and runs as follows:

Mary Skepper was certainly a bright, intelligent girl, as I gather from a manuscript poem before me written to a friend on the eve of leaving school. As a widow, living at first with her parents at Oulton Hall, and later with her little daughter in the neighbouring cottage, she would seem to have busied herself with all kinds of philanthropies, and she was clearly in sympathy with the religious enthusiasms of certain neighbouring families of Evangelical persuasion, particularly the Gurneys and the Cunninghams. The Rev. Francis Cunningham was Rector of Pakefield, near Lowestoft, from 1814 to 1830. He married Richenda, a sister of the distinguished Joseph John Gurney and of Elizabeth Fry, in 1816. In 1830 he became Vicar of St. Margaret's, Lowestoft. His brother, John William Cunningham, was Vicar of Harrow, and married a Verney of the famous Buckinghamshire family. This John William Cunningham was a great light of the Evangelical Churches of his time, and was for many years editor of The Christian Observer. His daughter Mary Richenda married Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the well-known judge, and the brother of Sir Leslie Stephen. But to return to Francis Cunningham, whose acquaintance with Borrow was brought about through Mrs. Clarke. Cunningham was a great supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and was the founder of the Paris branch. It was speedily revealed to him that Borrow's linguistic abilities could be utilised by the Society, and he secured the co-operation of his brother-in-law, Joseph John Gurney, in an effort to find Borrow work in connection with the Society. There is a letter of Borrow's to Mrs. Clarke of this period in my Borrow Papers which my readers will already have read.[137]

We do not meet Mary Clarke again until 1834, when we find a letter from her to Borrow addressed to St. Petersburg, in which she notifies to him that he has been 'mentioned at many of the Bible Meetings this year,' adding that 'dear Mr. Cunningham' had spoken so nicely of him at an Oulton gathering. 'As I am not afraid of making you proud,' she continues, 'I will tell you one of his remarks. He mentioned you as one of the most extraordinary and interesting individuals of the present day.' Henceforth clearly Mary Clarke corresponded regularly with Borrow, and one or two extracts from her letters are given by Dr. Knapp. Joseph Jowett of the Bible Society forwarded Borrow's letters from Russia to Cunningham, who handed them to Mrs. Clarke and her parents. Borrow had proposed to continue his mission by leaving Russia for China, but this Mary Clarke opposed:

In 1835 Borrow was back in England at Norwich with his mother, and on a visit to Mary Clarke and the Skeppers at Oulton. Mrs. Skepper died just before his arrival in England—that is, in September 1835—while her husband died in February 1836. Mary Clarke's only brother died in the following year.[139]

Thus we see Mary Clarke, aged about forty, left to fight the world with her daughter, aged twenty-three, and not only to fight the world but her own family, particularly her brother's widow, owing to certain ambiguities in her father's will which are given forth in dreary detail in Dr. Knapp's Life.[140] It was these legal quarrels that led Mary Clarke and her daughter to set sail for Spain, where Mary had had the indefatigable and sympathetic correspondent during the previous year of trouble. Borrow and Mary Clarke met, as we have seen, at Seville and there, at a later period, they became 'engaged.' Mrs. Clarke and her daughter Henrietta sailed for Spain in the Royal Tar, leaving London for Cadiz in June 1839. Much keen correspondence between Borrow and Mrs. Clarke had passed before the final decision to visit Spain. His mother was one of the few people who knew of Mrs. Clarke's journey to Seville, and must have understood, as mothers do, what was pending, although her son did not. When the engagement is announced to her—in November 1839—she writes to Mary Clarke a kindly, affectionate letter:

There is no reason whatever to accept Dr. Knapp's suggestion,[141] strange as coming from so pronounced a hero-worshipper, that Borrow married for money. And this because he had said in one of his letters, 'It is better to suffer the halter than the yoke,' the kind of thing that a man might easily say on the eve of making a proposal which he was not sure would be accepted. Nor can Dr. Knapp's further discovery of a casual remark of Borrow's—'marriage is by far the best way of getting possession of an estate'—be counted as conclusive. That Borrow was all his life devoted to his wife I think is proved by his many letters to her that are given in this volume, letters, however, which Dr. Knapp had not seen. Borrow's further tribute to his wife and stepdaughter in Wild Wales is well known:

Borrow belonged to the type of men who would never marry did not some woman mercifully take them in hand. Mrs. Clarke, when she set out for Spain, had doubtless determined to marry Borrow. It is clear that he had no idea of marrying her. Yet he was certainly 'engaged,' as we learn from a letter to Mr. Brackenbury, to be given hereafter, when he wrote a letter from Seville to Mr. Brandram, dated March 18, in which he said: 'I wish very much to spend the remaining years of my life in the northern parts of China, as I think I have a call to those regions.... I hope yet to die in the cause of my Redeemer.' Surely never did man take so curious a view of the responsibilities of marriage. He must have known that his proposal would be declined—as it was.

Very soon after the engagement Borrow experienced his third term of imprisonment in Spain, this time, however, only for thirty hours, and all because he had asked the Alcalde, or mayor of the district in which he lived, for his passport, and had quarrelled with his worship over the matter. Borrow gave up the months of this winter of 1839 rather to writing his first important book, The Gypsies of Spain, than to the concerns of the Bible Society. Finally Borrow, with Mrs. Clarke and her daughter, sailed from Cadiz on the 3rd April 1840, as we have already related. He had with him his Jewish servant, Hayim Ben Attar, and his Arabian horse, Sidi Habismilk, both of which were to astonish the natives of the Suffolk broads. The party reached London on 16th April and stayed at the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street. The marriage took place at St. Peter's Church, Cornhill, on 23rd April 1840.

There are only two letters from Mrs. Borrow to her husband extant. Dr. Knapp apparently discovered none in the Borrow Papers in his possession. The two before me were written in the Hereford Square days between the years 1860 and 1869—the last year of Mrs. Borrow's life. The pair had been married some twenty-five years at least, and it is made clear by these letters alone that at the end of this period they were still a most happily assorted couple. Mrs. Borrow must have gone to Brighton for her health on two separate occasions, each time accompanied by her daughter. Borrow, who had enjoyed many a pleasant ramble on his own account, as we shall see—rambles which extended as far away as Constantinople—is 'keeping house' in Hereford Square, Brompton, the while. It will be noted that Mrs. Borrow signed herself 'Carreta,' the pet name that her husband always gave her. Dr. Knapp points out that 'carreta' means a Spanish dray-cart, and that 'carita,' 'my dear,' was probably meant. But, careless as was the famous word-master over the spelling of words in the tongues that he never really mastered scientifically, he could scarcely have made so obvious a blunder as this, and there must have been some particular experience in the lives of husband and wife that led to the playful designation.[142] Here are the two letters:

To George Borrow, Esq.

Grenville Place, Brighton, Sussex.

Carreta.

Sunday morning, 10 o'clock.

To George Borrow, Esq.

33 Grenville Place, Brighton, Sussex.
Thursday morning.

Carreta.

There is one letter from Borrow to his wife, written from London in 1843, in which he says:

Assuredly no reader can peruse the following pages without recognising the true affection for his wife that is transparent in his letters to her. Arthur Dalrymple's remark that he had frequently seen Borrow and his wife travelling:

is clearly a travesty. 'Mrs. Borrow was devoted to her husband, and looked after business matters; and he always treated her with exceeding kindness,' is the verdict of Miss Elizabeth Jay, who was frequently privileged to visit the husband and wife at Oulton.

CHAPTER XXI