Whilst Borrow was industriously occupied in collecting vagabonds and imbibing the dangerous beliefs of William Taylor, there sat in an easy-chair in the small front-parlour of the little house in Willow Lane, in a faded regimental coat, a prematurely old man, whose frame still showed signs of the magnificent physique of his vigorous manhood. “Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in meditation, and sometimes in reading the Scriptures,” with his dog beside him, Captain Thomas Borrow, now sixty-five, was preparing for the end that he felt to be approaching. He frequently meditated upon what was to become of his younger son George, who held his father in such awe as to feel ill at ease when alone with him.
One day the inevitable interrogation took place. “What do you propose to do?” and the equally inevitable reply followed, “I really do not know what I shall do.” In the course of a somewhat lengthy cross-examination, Captain Borrow discovered that his son knew the Armenian tongue, for which he very cunningly strove to enlist his father’s interest by telling him that in Armenia was Mount Ararat, whereon the ark rested. Captain Borrow also discovered that his son could not only shoe a horse, but also make the shoes; but, what was most important, he found that George had learned “very little” law. When asked if he thought he could support himself by Armenian or his “other acquirements,” the younger man was not very hopeful, and horrified the old soldier by suggesting that if all else failed there was always suicide.
The dying man was thus left to yearn for the return of his elder son, in whom all his hopes lay centred. John appears to have been by no means dutiful to his parents in the matter of letters. For six months he left them unacquainted even with his address in Paris, where he was still copying Old Masters in the Louvre.
After their talk the father and younger son seem to have come to a better understanding. George would frequently read aloud from the Bible, whilst Captain Borrow would tell about his early life. His son “had no idea that he knew and had seen so much; my respect for him increased, and I looked upon him almost with admiration. His anecdotes were in general highly curious; some of them related to people in the highest stations, and to men whose names are closely connected with some of the brightest glories of our native land.” [38]
At last John arrived, apparently a little disillusioned with the world; but the coming of his favourite son produced no change for the better in Captain Borrow’s health. He was content and happy that God had granted his wish. There remained nothing now to do but “to bless my little family and go.” George learned “that it is possible to feel deeply and yet make no outward sign.”
The end came on the morning of 28th February 1824. It was by a strange chance that the old man should die in the arms of his younger son, who had run down on hearing his mother’s anguished screams. Borrow has given a dramatic account of his father’s last moments:—
“At the dead hour of night, it might be about two, I was awakened from sleep by a cry which sounded from the room immediately below that in which I slept. I knew the cry, it was the cry of my mother, and I also knew its import; yet I made no effort to rise, for I was for the moment paralysed. Again the cry sounded, yet still I lay motionless—the stupidity of horror was upon me. A third time, and it was then that, by a violent effort bursting the spell which appeared to bind me, I sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs. My mother was running wildly about the room; she had awoke and found my father senseless in the bed by her side. I essayed to raise him, and after a few efforts supported him in the bed in a sitting posture. My brother now rushed in, and snatching a light that was burning, he held it to my father’s face. ‘The surgeon, the surgeon!’ he cried; then dropping the light, he ran out of the room followed by my mother; I remained alone, supporting the senseless form of my father; the light had been extinguished by the fall, and an almost total darkness reigned in the room. The form pressed heavily against my bosom—at last methought it moved. Yes, I was right, there was a heaving of the breast, and then a gasping. Were those words which I heard? Yes, they were words, low and indistinct at first, and then audible. The mind of the dying man was reverting to former scenes. I heard him mention names which I had often heard him mention before. It was an awful moment; I felt stupified, but I still contrived to support my dying father. There was a pause, again my father spoke: I heard him speak of Minden, and of Meredith, the old Minden sergeant, and then he uttered another name, which at one period of his life was much on his lips, the name of—but this is a solemn moment! There was a deep gasp: I shook, and thought all was over; but I was mistaken—my father moved and revived for a moment; he supported himself in bed without my assistance. I make no doubt that for a moment he was perfectly sensible, and it was then that, clasping his hands, he uttered another name clearly, distinctly—it was the name of Christ. With that name upon his lips, the brave old soldier sank back upon my bosom, and, with his hands still clasped, yielded up his soul.” [39]
On 2nd April 1824, George Borrow was cast upon the world of London by the death of his father, “with an exterior shy and cold, under which lurk much curiosity, especially with regard to what is wild and extraordinary, a considerable quantity of energy and industry, and an unconquerable love of independence.” [40a]
It had become necessary for him to earn his own livelihood. Captain Borrow’s pension had ceased with his death, and the old soldier’s savings of a lifetime were barely sufficient to produce an income of a hundred pounds a year for his widow. The provision made in the will for his younger son during his minority would operate only for about four months, as he would be of age in the following July. [40b] The clerkship with Simpson & Rackham would expire at the end of March. Borrow had outlined his ambitions in a letter written on 20th January 1824, when he was ill and wretched, to Roger Kerrison, then in London: “If ever my health mends [this has reference to a very unpleasant complaint he had contracted], and possibly it may by the time my clerkship is expired, I intend to live in London, write plays, poetry, etc., abuse religion and get myself prosecuted,” for he was tired of the “dull and gloomy town.” It was therefore with a feeling of relief that, on the evening of 1st April, he took his seat on the top of the London coach, his hopes centred in a small green box that he carried with him. It contained his stock-in-trade as an author: his beloved manuscripts, “closely written over in a singular hand.”
Among the bundles of papers were:
(i.) The Ancient Songs of Denmark, heroic and romantic, translated by himself, with notes philological, critical and historical.
(ii.) The Songs of Ab Gwilym, the Welsh Bard, also translated by himself, with notes critical, philological and historical. [41]
(iii.) A romance in the German style.
In addition to his manuscripts, Borrow had some twenty or thirty pounds, his testimonials, and a letter from William Taylor to Sir Richard Phillips, the publisher, to whose New Magazine he had already contributed a number of translations of poems. He had also printed in The Monthly Magazine and The New Monthly Magazine translations of verse from the German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish and Spanish, and an essay on Danish ballad writing.
On the morning of 2nd April there arrived at 16 Milman Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C.,
“A lad who twenty tongues can talk,
And sixty miles a day can walk;
Drink at a draught a pint of rum,
And then be neither sick nor dumb;
Can tune a song and make a verse,
And deeds of Northern kings rehearse;
Who never will forsake his friend
While he his bony fist can bend;
And, though averse to broil and strife,
Will fight a Dutchman with a knife;
O that is just the lad for me,
And such is honest six-foot-three.” [42a]
It was through the Kerrisons that Borrow went to 16 Milman Street, where Roger was lodging. His apartments seem to have been dismal enough, consisting of “a small room, up two pair of stairs, in which I was to sit, and another, still smaller, above it, in which I was to sleep.” After the first feeling of loneliness had passed, dispelled largely by a bright fire and breakfast, he sallied forth, the contents of the green box under his arm, to present his letter of introduction to Sir Richard Phillips, [42b] in whom centred his hopes of employment.
Sir Richard Phillips. From the painting by James Saxon in the National Portrait Gallery
On arriving at the publisher’s house in Tavistock Square, he was immediately shown into Sir Richard’s study, where he found “a tall, stout man, about sixty, dressed in a loose morning gown,” and with him his confidential clerk Bartlett (the Taggart of Lavengro). Sir Richard was at first enthusiastic and cordial, but when he learned from William Taylor’s letter that Borrow had come up to earn his livelihood by authorship, his manner underwent a marked change. The bluff, hearty expression gave place to “a sinister glance,” and Borrow found that within that loose morning gown there was a second Sir Richard.
He learned two things—first, that Sir Richard Phillips had retired from publishing and had reserved only The Monthly Magazine; [43] secondly, that literature was a drug upon the market. With airy self-assertiveness, the ex-publisher dismissed the contents of the green box that Borrow had brought with him, which had already aroused considerable suspicion in the mind of the maid who had admitted him to the publisher’s presence.
When he had thoroughly dashed the young author’s hopes of employment, Sir Richard informed him of a new publication he had in preparation, The Universal Review [The Oxford Review of Lavengro], which was to support the son of the house and the wife he had married. With a promise that he should become a contributor to the new review, an earnest exhortation to write a story in the style of The Dairyman’s Daughter, and an invitation to dinner for the following Sunday, the first interview between George Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips ended, and Borrow left the great man’s presence to begin his exploration of London, first leaving his manuscripts at Milman Street. During the rest of the day he walked “scarcely less than thirty miles about the big city.” It was late when he returned to his lodgings, thoroughly tired, but with a copy of The Dairyman’s Daughter, for “a well-written tale in the style” of which Sir Richard Phillips “could afford as much as ten pounds.” The day had been one of the most eventful in Borrow’s life.
On the following Sunday Borrow dined at Tavistock Square, and met Lady Phillips, young Phillips and his bride. He learned that Sir Richard was a vegetarian of twenty years’ standing and a total abstainer, although meat and wine were not banished from his table. When publisher and potential author were left alone, the son having soon followed the ladies into the drawing-room, Borrow heard of Sir Richard’s amiable intentions towards him. He was to compile six volumes of the lives and trials of criminals [the Newgate Lives and Trials of Lavengro], each to contain not less than a thousand pages. [44a] For this work he was to receive the munificent sum of fifty pounds, which was to cover all expenses incurred in the purchase of books, papers and manuscripts necessary to the compilation of the work. This was only one of the employments that the fertile brain of the publisher had schemed for him. He was also to make himself useful in connection with the forthcoming Universal Review. “Generally useful, sir—doing whatever is required of you”; for it was not Sir Richard’s custom to allow young writers to select their own subjects.
With impressive manner and ponderous diction, Sir Richard Phillips unfolded his philanthropic designs regarding the young writer to whom his words meant a career. He did not end with the appointment of Borrow as general utility writer upon The Universal Review; but proceeded to astonish him with the announcement that to him, George Borrow, understanding German in a manner that aroused the “strong admiration” of William Taylor, was to be entrusted the translating into that tongue of Sir Richard Phillips’ book of Philosophy. [44b] If translations of Goethe into English were a drug, Sir Richard Phillips’ Proximate Causes was to prove that neither he nor his book would be a drug in Germany. For this work the remuneration was to be determined by the success of the translation, an arrangement sufficiently vague to ensure eventual disagreement.
When Sir Richard had finished his account of what were his intentions towards his guest, he gave him to understand that the interview was at an end, at the same time intimating how seldom it was that he dealt so generously with a young writer. Borrow then rose from the table and passed out of the house, leaving his host to muse, as was his custom on Sunday afternoons, “on the magnificence of nature and the moral dignity of man.”
For the next few weeks Borrow was occupied in searching in out-of-the-way corners for criminal biography. If he flagged, a visit from his philosopher-publisher spurred him on to fresh effort. He received a copy of Proximate Causes, with an injunction that he should review it in The Universal Review, as well as translate it into German. He was taken to and introduced to the working editor [45a] of the new publication, which was only ostensibly under the control of young Phillips.
In the provision that he should purchase at his own expense all the necessary materials for Celebrated Trials, Borrow found a serious tax upon his resources; but a harder thing to bear with patience and good-humour were the frequent visits he received from Sir Richard himself, who showed the keenest possible interest in the progress of the compilation. He had already caused a preliminary announcement to be made [45b] to the effect that:
“A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is printing, in five volumes. [46a] It will include all famous cases, from that of Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of John Thurtell: and those connected with foreign as well as English jurisprudence. Mr Borrow, the editor, has availed himself of all the resources of the English, German, French, and Italian languages; and his work, including from 150 to 200 [46b] of the most interesting cases on record, will appear in October next.” [46c]
Sir Richard’s visits to Milman Street were always accompanied by numerous suggestions as to criminals whose claims to be included in this literary chamber of horrors were in his, Sir Richard’s, opinion unquestionable. The English character of the compilation was soon sacrificed in order to admit notable malefactors of other nationalities, and the drain upon the editor’s small capital became greater than ever.
The leisure that he allowed himself, Borrow spent in exploring the city, or in the company of Francis Arden (Ardrey in Lavengro), whom he had met by chance in the coffee-room of a hotel. The two appear to have been excellent friends, perhaps because of the dissimilarity of their natures. “He was an Irishman,” Borrow explains, “I an Englishman; he fiery, enthusiastic and opened-hearted; I neither fiery, enthusiastic, nor open-hearted; he fond of pleasure and dissipation, I of study and reflection.” [46d]
They went to the play together, to dog-fights, gaming-houses, in short saw the sights of London. The arrival of Francis Arden at 16 Milman Street was a signal for books and manuscripts to be thrown aside in favour either of some expedition or an hour or two’s conversation. Borrow, however, soon tired of the pleasures of London, and devoted himself almost entirely to work. Although he saw less of Francis Arden in consequence, they continued to be excellent friends.
After being some four weeks in London, Borrow received a surprise visit (29th April) from his brother, whom he found waiting for him one morning when he came down to breakfast. John told him of his mother’s anxiety at receiving only one letter from him since his departure, of her fits of crying, of the grief of Captain Borrow’s dog at the loss of his master. He also explained the reason for his being in London. He had been invited to paint the portrait of Robert Hawkes, an ex-mayor of Norwich, for a fee of a hundred guineas. Lacking confidence in his own ability, he had declined the honour and suggested that Benjamin Haydon should be approached. At the request of a deputation of his fellow citizens, which had waited upon him, he had undertaken to enter into negotiations with Haydon. He even undertook to come up to London at his own expense, that he might see his old master and complete the bargain. Borrow subsequently accompanied his brother when calling upon Haydon, and was enabled to give a thumbnail-sketch of the painter of the Heroic at work that has been pronounced to be photographic in its faithfulness.
John returned to Norwich about a fortnight later accompanied by Haydon, who was to become the guest of his sitter, [47] and George was left to the compilation of Celebrated Trials. Sir Richard Phillips appears to have been a man as prolific of suggestion as he was destitute of tact. He regarded his authors as the instruments of his own genius. Their business it was to carry out his ideas in a manner entirely congenial to his colossal conceit. His latest author he exposed “to incredible mortification and ceaseless trouble from this same rage for interference.”
The result of all this was an attack of the “Horrors.” Towards the end of May, Roger Kerrison received from Borrow a note saying that he believed himself to be dying, and imploring him to “come to me immediately.” The direct outcome of this note was, not the death of Borrow, but the departure from Milman Street of Roger Kerrison, lest he should become involved in a tragedy connected with Borrow’s oft-repeated threat of suicide. Kerrison became “very uneasy and uncomfortable on his account, so that I have found it utterly impossible to live any longer in the same lodgings with him.” [48a] Looked at dispassionately it seems nothing short of an act of cowardice on Kerrison’s part to leave alone a man such as Borrow, who might at any moment be assailed by one of those periods of gloom from which suicide seemed the only outlet. On the other hand, from an anecdote told by C. G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”), there seems to be some excuse for Kerrison’s wish to live alone. “I knew at that time [about 1870],” he writes, [48b] “a Mr Kerrison, who had been as a young man, probably in the Twenties, on intimate terms with Borrow. He told me that one night Borrow acted very wildly, whooping and vociferating so as to cause the police to follow him, and after a long run led them to the edge of the Thames, ‘and there they thought they had him.’ But he plunged boldly into the water and swam in his clothes to the opposite shore, and so escaped.”
A serious misfortune now befell Borrow in the premature death of The Universal Review, which expired with the sixth number (March 1824—January 1825). It is not known what was the rate of pay to young and impecunious reviewers [49a] certainly not large, if it may be judged by the amount agreed upon for Celebrated Trials. Still, its end meant that Borrow was now dependent upon what he received for his compilation, and what he merited by his translation into German of Proximate Causes.
There appears to have been some difficulty about payment for Borrow’s contributions to the now defunct review, which considerably widened the breach that the Trials had created. Sir Richard became more exacting and more than ever critical. [49b] The end could not be far off. Borrow had come to London determined to be an author, and by no juggling with facts could his present drudgery be considered as authorship. Occasionally his mind reverted to the manuscripts in the green box, his faith in which continued undiminished. He made further efforts to get his translations published, but everywhere the answer was the same, in effect, “A drug, sir, a drug!”
At last he determined to approach John Murray (the Second), “Glorious John, who lived at the western end of the town”; but he called many times without being successful in seeing him. Another seventeen years were to elapse before he was to meet and be published by John Murray.
Yet another dispute arose between Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips. Neither appeared to have realised the supreme folly of entrusting to a young Englishman the translation into German of an English work. A novel would have presented almost insurmountable difficulties; but a work of philosophy! The whole project was absurd. The diction of philosophy in all languages is individual, just as it is in other branches of science, and a very thorough knowledge of, and deep reading in both languages are necessary to qualify a man to translate from a foreign tongue into his own. To expect an inexperienced youth to reverse the order seems to suggest that Sir Richard Phillips must have been a publisher whose enthusiasm was greater than his judgment.
One day when calling at Tavistock Square, Borrow found Sir Richard in a fury of rage. He had submitted the first chapter of the translation of Proximate Causes to some Germans, who found it utterly unintelligible. This was only to be expected, as Borrow confesses that, when he found himself unable to comprehend what was the meaning of the English text, he had translated it literally into German!
The result of the interview was that Borrow, after what appears to be a tactless, not to say impertinent, rejoinder, [50a] relapsed into silence and finally left the house, ordered back to his compilation by Sir Richard, as soon as he became sufficiently calm to appear coherent, and Borrow walked away musing on the “difference in clever men.”
The discovery of the inadequacy of the German translation apparently urged Borrow to hasten on with Celebrated Trials. The Universal Review was dead, the German version of Proximate Causes [50b] had passed out of his hands. It was desirable, therefore, that the remaining undertaking should be completed as soon as possible, that the two might part. The last of the manuscript was delivered, the proofs passed for press, and on 19th March the work appeared, the six volumes, running to between three and four thousand pages, containing accounts of some four hundred trials, including that of Borrow’s old friend Thurtell for the murder of Mr Weare.
Borrow’s name did not appear. He was “the editor,” and as such was referred to in the preface contributed by Sir Richard himself. Among other things he tells of how, in some cases, “the Editor has compressed into a score of pages the substance of an entire volume.” Sir Richard was a philosopher as well as a preface-writing publisher, and it was only natural that he should speculate as to the effect upon his editor’s mind of months spent in reading and editing such records of vice. “It may be expected,” he writes, “that the Editor should convey to his readers the intellectual impressions which the execution of his task has produced on his mind. He confesses that they are mournful.” Sir Richard was either a master of irony, or a man of singular obtuseness.
One effect of this delving into criminal records had been to raise in Borrow’s mind strange doubts about virtue and crime. When a boy, he had written an essay in which he strove to prove that crime and virtue were mere terms, and that we were the creatures of necessity or circumstance. These broodings in turn reawakened the theory that everything is a lie, and that nothing really exists except in our imaginations. The world was “a maze of doubt.” These indications of an overtaxed brain increased, and eventually forced Borrow to leave London. His work was thoroughly uncongenial. He disliked reviewing; he had failed in his endeavours to render Proximate Causes into intelligible German; and it had taken him some time to overcome his dislike of the sordid stories of crime and criminals that he had to read and edit. He became gloomy and depressed, and prone to compare the real conditions of authorship with those that his imagination had conjured up.
The most important result of his labours in connection with Celebrated Trials was that upon his literary style. There is a tremendous significance in the following passage. It tells of the transition of the actual vagabond into the literary vagabond, with power to express in words what proved so congenial to Borrow’s vagabond temperament:
“Of all my occupations at this period I am free to confess I liked that of compiling the Newgate Lives and Trials [Celebrated Trials] the best; that is, after I had surmounted a kind of prejudice which I originally entertained. The trials were entertaining enough; but the lives—how full were they of wild and racy adventures, and in what racy, genuine language were they told. What struck me most with respect to these lives was the art which the writers, whoever they were, possessed of telling a plain story. It is no easy thing to tell a story plainly and distinctly by mouth; but to tell one on paper is difficult indeed, so many snares lie in the way. People are afraid to put down what is common on paper, they seek to embellish their narratives, as they think, by philosophic speculations and reflections; they are anxious to shine, and people who are anxious to shine can never tell a plain story. ‘So I went with them to a music booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin, and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand,’ [52a] says, or is made to say, Henry Simms, executed at Tyburn some seventy years before the time of which I am speaking. I have always looked upon this sentence as a masterpiece of the narrative style, it is so concise and yet so clear.” [52b]
By the time the work was published and Borrow had been paid his fee, all relations between editor and publisher had ceased, and there was “a poor author, or rather philologist, upon the streets of London, possessed of many tongues,” which he found “of no use in the world.” [52c] A month after the appearance of Celebrated Trials (18th April), and a little more than a year after his arrival in London, Borrow published a translation of Klinger’s Faustus. [53a] He himself gives no particulars as to whether it was commissioned or no. It may even have been “the Romance in the German style” from the Green Box. It is known that he received payment for it by a bill at five or six months, [53b] but there is no mention of the amount. It would appear that the translation had long been projected, for in The Monthly Magazine, July 1824, there appeared, in conjunction with the announcement of Celebrated Trials, the following paragraph: “The editor of the preceding has ready for the press, a Life of Faustus, his Death and Descent into Hell, which will also appear the next winter.”
Faustus did not meet with a very cordial reception. The Literary Gazette (16th July 1825) characterised it as “another work to which no respectable publisher ought to have allowed his name to be put. The political allusion and metaphysics, which may have made it popular among a low class in Germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and coarse descriptions for British palates. We have occasionally publications for the fireside,—these are only fit for the fire.”
Borrow had apparently been in some doubt about certain passages, for in a note headed “The Translator to the Public,” he defends the work as moral in its general teaching:
“The publication of the present volume may at first sight appear to require some brief explanation from the Translator, inasmuch as the character of the incidents may justify such an expectation on the part of the reader. It is, therefore, necessary to state that, although scenes of vice and crime are here exhibited, it is merely in the hope that they may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and unwary from the shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked. The work, when considered as a whole, is strictly moral.”
It must be confessed that Faustus does not err on the side of restraint. Many of its scenes might appear “lewd . . . and coarse” to anyone who for a moment allowed his mind to wander from the morality of “its general teaching.” The attacks upon the lax morals of the priesthood must have proved particularly congenial to the translator.
The more Borrow read his translations of Ab Gwilym, the more convinced he became of their merit and the profit they would bring to him who published them. The booksellers, however, with singular unanimity, declined the risk of introducing to the English public either Welsh or Danish ballads; and their translator became so shabby in consequence, that he refrained from calling upon his friend Arden, for whom he had always cherished a very real friendship. He began to lose heart. His energy left him and with it went hope. He was forced to review his situation. Authorship had obviously failed, and he found himself with no reasonable prospect of employment.
There is no episode in Borrow’s life that has so exercised the minds of commentators and critics as his account of the book he terms in Lavengro, The Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller. Some dismiss the whole story as apocryphal; others see in it a grain of truth distorted into something of vital importance; whilst there are a number of earnest Borrovians that accept the whole story as it is written. Dr Knapp has said that Joseph Sell “was not a book at all, and the author of it never said that it was.” This was obviously an error, for the bookseller is credited with saying, “I think I shall venture on sending your book to the press,” [55a] referring to it as a “book” four times in nine lines. Again, in another place, Borrow describes how he rescued himself “from peculiarly miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original book, within a week, even as Johnson is said to have written his Rasselas and Beckford his Vathek.” [55b] This removes all question of the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell being included in a collection of short stories. The title would not be the same, the date is most probably wrongly given, as in the case of Marshland Shales; but the general accuracy of the account as written seems to be highly probable. Many efforts have been made to trace the story; but so far unsuccessfully. It must be remembered that Borrow loved to stretch the long arm of coincidence; but he loved more than anything else a dramatic situation. He was always on the look out for effective “curtains.”
In favour of the story having been actually written, is the knowledge that Borrow invented little or nothing. Collateral evidence has shown how little he deviated from actual happenings, although he did not hesitate to revise dates or colour events. The strongest evidence, however, lies in the atmosphere of truth that pervades Chapters LV.–LVII. of Lavengro. They are convincing. At one time or another during his career, it would appear that Borrow wrote against time from grim necessity; otherwise he must have been a master of invention, which everything that is known about him clearly shows that he was not.
Joseph Sell has disappeared, a most careful search of the Registers at Stationers’ Hall can show no trace of that work, or any book that seems to suggest it, and the contemporary literary papers render no assistance.
According to Borrow’s own account, one morning on getting up he found that he had only half a crown in the world. It was this circumstance, coupled with the timely notice that he saw affixed to a bookseller’s window to the effect that “A Novel or Tale is much wanted,” that determined him to endeavour to emulate Dr Johnson and William Beckford. He had tired of “the Great City,” and his thoughts turned instinctively to the woods and the fields, where he could be free to meditate and muse in solitude.
When he returned to Milman Street after seeing the bookseller’s advertisement, he found that his resources had been still further reduced to eighteen-pence. He was too proud to write home for assistance, he had broken with Sir Richard Phillips, and he had no reasonable expectation of obtaining employment of any description; for his accomplishments found no place in the catalogue of everyday wants. He was a proper man with his hands, and knew some score or more languages. No matter how he regarded the situation, the facts were obvious. Between him and actual starvation there was the inconsiderable sum of eighteen-pence and the bookseller’s advertisement. The gravity of the situation banished the cloud of despondency that threatened to settle upon him, and also the doubts that presented themselves as to whether he possessed the requisite ability to produce what the bookseller required. The all-important question was, could he exist sufficiently long on eighteen-pence to complete a story? Sir Richard Phillips had told him to live on bread and water. He now did so.
For a week he wrote ceaselessly at the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller. He wrote with the feverish energy of a man who sees the shadow of actual starvation cast across his manuscript. When the tale was finished there remained the work of revision, and after that, worst of all, fears lest the bookseller were already suited.
Fortune, however, was kind to him, and he was successful in extracting for his story the sum of twenty pounds. Borrow had not mixed among gypsies for nothing. He, a starving and unknown author, succeeded in extracting from a bookseller twenty pounds for a story, twice the amount offered by Sir Richard Phillips for a novel on the lines of The Dairyman’s Daughter. It was an achievement.
The first argument against the story, as related by Borrow, is that he was not without resources at the time. Why should he be so impoverished a few weeks after receiving payment for Celebrated Trials? [57] Above all, why did he not realise upon Simpkin & Marshall’s bill for Faustus? He would have experienced no difficulty in discounting a bill accepted by such a firm. It seems hardly conceivable that he should preserve this piece of paper when he had only eighteen-pence in the world. Everything seems to point to the fact that in May 1825 Borrow was not in want of money, and if he were not, why did he almost kill himself by writing the Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell? Again, at that period he had met with no adventures such as might be included in the life of a “Great Traveller,” and Borrow was not an inventive writer. Later he possessed plenty of material; for there can be no question that he roamed about the world for a considerable portion of those seven mysterious years of his life that came to be known as the “Veiled Period.” His accuracy as to actual occurrences has been so emphasised that this particular argument holds considerable significance.
The strongest evidence against Joseph Sell having been written in 1825, however, lies in the fact that Greenwich Fair was held on 23rd May, and not 12th May, as given by Dr Knapp. By his error Dr Knapp makes Borrow leave London a day before the Fair took place that he describes. Borrow must have left London on the day following Greenwich Fair (24th May). If he left later, then those things which tend to confirm his story of the life in the Dingle do not fit in, as will be seen. He certainly could not have left before Greenwich Fair was held.
In one of his brother John’s letters, written at the end of 1829, there is a significant passage, “Let me know how you sold your manuscript.” [58] What manuscript is it that is referred to? There is no record of George having sold a manuscript in the autumn of 1829. The passage can scarcely have reference to some article or translation; it seems to suggest something of importance, an event in George’s life that his brother is anxious to know more about. If this be Joseph Sell, then it explains where Borrow got the money from to go up to London at the end of 1829, when he entered into relations with Dr Bowring. It is merely a theory, it must be confessed; but there is certain evidence that seems to support it. In the first place, Borrow was a chronicler before all else. He possessed an amazing memory and a great gift for turning his experiences into literary material. If he coloured facts, he appears to have done so unconsciously, to judge from those portions of The Bible in Spain that were covered by letters to the Bible Society. Not only are the facts the same, but, with very slight changes, the words in which he relates them. He never hesitated to change a date if it served his purpose, much as an artist will change the position of a tree in a landscape to suit the exigencies of composition. His five volumes of autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they were actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius on record for attracting to himself strange adventures. He met the sailor son of the old Apple-Woman returning from his enforced exile; Murtagh tells him of how the postilion frightened the Pope at Rome by his denunciation, a story Borrow had already heard from the postilion himself; the Hungarian at Horncastle narrates how an Armenian once silenced a Moldavian, the same Moldavian whom Borrow had encountered in London; the postilion meets the man in black again. There are scores of such coincidences, which must be accepted as dramatic embellishments.
Fourteen months in London had shown Borrow how hard was the road of authorship. He confessed that he was not “formed by nature to be a pallid indoor student.” “The peculiar atmosphere of the big city” did not agree with him, and this fact, together with the anxiety and hard work of the past twelve months, caused him to flag, and his first thought was how to recover his health. He was disillusioned as to the busy world, and the opportunities it offered to a young man fired with ambition to make a stir in it. He determined to leave London, which he did towards the end of May, [60] first despatching his trunk “containing a few clothes and books to the old town [Norwich].” He struck out in a south-westerly direction, musing on his achievements as an author, and finding that in having preserved his independence and health, he had “abundant cause to be grateful.”
Throughout his life Borrow was hypnotised by independence. Like many other proud natures, he carried his theory of independence to such an extreme as to become a slave to it and render himself unsociable, sometimes churlish. It was this virtue carried to excess that drove Borrow from London. He must tell men what was in his mind, and his one patron, Sir Richard Phillips, he had mortally offended in this manner.
Finding that he was unequal to much fatigue, after a few hours’ walking he hailed a passing coach, which took him as far as Amesbury in Wiltshire. From here he walked to Stonehenge and on to Salisbury, “inspecting the curiosities of the place,” and endeavouring by sleep and good food to make up the wastage of the last few months. The weather was fine and his health and spirits rapidly improved as he tramped on, his “daily journeys varying from twenty to twenty-five miles.” He encountered the mysterious stranger who “touched” against the evil eye. F. H. Groome asserts, on the authority of W. B. Donne, that this was in reality William Beckford. Borrow must have met him at some other time and place, as he had already left Fonthill in 1825. It is, however, interesting to recall that Borrow himself “touched” against the evil eye. Mr Watts-Dunton has said:
“There was nothing that Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr Johnson, to touch the objects along his path in order to save himself from the evil chance. He never conquered the superstition. In walking through Richmond Park he would step out of his way constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he was with seemed to observe it.” [61a]
The chance meeting with Jack Slingsby (in fear of his life from the Flaming Tinman, and bound by oath not to continue on the same beat) gave Borrow the idea of buying out Slingsby, beat, plant, pony and all. “A tinker is his own master, a scholar is not,” [61b] he remarks, and then proceeds to draw tears and moans from the dispirited Slingsby and his family by a description of the joys of tinkering, “the happiest life under heaven . . . pitching your tent under the pleasant hedge-row, listening to the song of the feathered tribes, collecting all the leaky kettles in the neighbourhood, soldering and joining, earning your honest bread by the wholesome sweat of your brow.” [62a]
By the expenditure of five pounds ten shillings, plus the cost of a smock-frock and some provisions, George Borrow, linguist, editor and translator, became a travelling tinker. With his dauntless little pony, Ambrol, he set out, a tinkering Ulysses, indifferent to what direction he took, allowing the pony to go whither he felt inclined. At first he experienced some apprehension at passing the night with only a tent or the stars as a roof. Rain fell to mar the opening day of the adventure, but the pony, with unerring instinct, led his new master to one of Slingsby’s usual camping grounds.
In the morning Borrow fell to examining what it was beyond the pony and cart that his five pounds ten shillings had purchased. He found a tent, a straw mattress and a blanket, “quite clean and nearly new.” There were also a frying-pan, a kettle, a teapot (broken in three pieces) and some cups and saucers. The stock-in-trade “consisted of various tools, an iron ladle, a chafing-pan, and small bellows, sundry pans and kettles, the latter being of tin, with the exception of one which was of copper, all in a state of considerable dilapidation.” The pans and kettles were to be sold after being mended, for which purpose there was “a block of tin, sheet-tin, and solder.” But most precious of all his possessions was “a small anvil and bellows of the kind which are used in forges, and two hammers such as smiths use, one great, and the other small.” [62b] Borrow had learned the blacksmith’s art when in Ireland, and the anvil, bellows and smith’s hammers were to prove extremely useful.
A few days after pitching his tent, Borrow received from his old enemy Mrs Herne, Mr Petulengro’s mother-in-law, a poisoned cake, which came very near to ending his career. He then encountered the Welsh preacher (“the worthiest creature I ever knew”) and his wife, who were largely instrumental in saving him from Mrs Herne’s poison. Having remained with his new friends for nine days, he accompanied them as far as the Welsh border, where he confessed himself the translator of Ab Gwilym, giving as an excuse for not accompanying them further that it was “neither fit nor proper that I cross into Wales at this time, and in this manner. When I go into Wales, I should wish to go in a new suit of superfine black, with hat and beaver, mounted on a powerful steed, black and glossy, like that which bore Greduv to the fight of Catraeth. I should wish, moreover,” he continued, “to see the Welshmen assembled on the border ready to welcome me with pipe and fiddle, and much whooping and shouting, and to attend me to Wrexham, or even as far as Machynllaith, where I should wish to be invited to a dinner at which all the bards should be present, and to be seated at the right hand of the president, who, when the cloth was removed, should arise, and amidst cries of silence, exclaim—‘Brethren and Welshmen, allow me to propose the health of my most respectable friend the translator of the odes of the great Ab Gwilym, the pride and glory of Wales.’” [63a]
He returned with Mr Petulengro, who directed him to Mumber Lane (Mumper’s Dingle), near Willenhall, in Staffordshire, “the little dingle by the side of the great north road.” Here Borrow encamped and shod little Ambrol, who kicked him over as a reminder of his clumsiness.
He had refused an invitation from Mr Petulengro to become a Romany chal and take a Romany bride, the granddaughter of his would-be murderess, who “occasionally talked of” him. He yearned for solitude and the country’s quiet. He told Mr Petulengro that he desired only some peaceful spot where he might hold uninterrupted communion with his own thoughts, and practise, if so inclined, either tinkering or the blacksmith’s art, and he had been directed to Mumper’s Dingle, which was to become the setting of the most romantic episode in his life.
In the dingle Borrow experienced one of his worst attacks of the “Horrors”—the “Screaming Horrors.” He raged like a madman, a prey to some indefinable, intangible fear; clinging to his “little horse as if for safety and protection.” [64a] He had not recovered from the prostrating effects of that night of tragedy when he was called upon to fight Anselo Herne, “the Flaming Tinman,” who somehow or other seemed to be part of the bargain he had made with Jack Slingsby, and encounter the queen of road-girls, Isopel Berners. The description of the fight has been proclaimed the finest in our language, and by some the finest in the world’s literature.
Isopel Berners is one of the great heroines of English Literature. As drawn by Borrow, with her strong arm, lion-like courage and tender tearfulness, she is unique. However true or false the account of her relations with Borrow may be, she is drawn by him as a living woman. He was incapable of conceiving her from his imagination. It may go unquestioned that he actually met an Isopel Berners, [64b] but whether or no his parting from her was as heart-rendingly tragic as he has depicted it, is open to very grave question.
With this queen of the roads he seems to have been less reticent and more himself than with any other of his vagabond acquaintance, not excepting even Mr Petulengro. To the handsome, tall girl with “the flaxen hair, which hung down over her shoulders unconfined,” and the “determined but open expression,” he showed a more amiable side of his character; yet he seems to have treated her with no little cruelty. He told her about himself, how he “had tamed savage mares, wrestled with Satan, and had dealings with ferocious publishers,” bringing tears to her eyes, and when she grew too curious, he administered an antidote in the form of a few Armenian numerals. If his Autobiography is to be credited, Isopel loved him, and he was aware of it; but the knowledge did not hinder him from torturing the poor girl by insisting that she should decline the verb “to love” in Armenian.
Borrow’s attitude towards Isopel was curiously complex; he seemed to find pleasure in playing upon her emotions. At times he appeared as deliberately brutal to her, as to the gypsy girl Ursula when he talked with her beneath the hedge. He forced from Isopel a passionate rebuke that he sought only to vex and irritate “a poor ignorant girl . . . who can scarcely read or write.” He asked her to marry him, but not until he had convinced her that he was mad. How much she had become part of his life in the dingle he did not seem to realise until after she had left him. Isopel Berners was a woman whose character was almost masculine in its strength; but she was prepared to subdue her spirit to his, wished to do so even. With her strength, however, there was wisdom, and she left Borrow and the dingle, sending him a letter of farewell that was certainly not the composition of “a poor girl” who could “scarcely read or write.” The story itself is in all probability true; but the letter rings false. Isopel may have sent Borrow a letter of farewell, but not the one that appears in The Romany Rye.
Among Borrow’s papers Dr Knapp discovered a fragment of manuscript in which Mr Petulengro is shown deliberating upon the expediency of emulating King Pharaoh in the number of his wives. Mrs Petulengro desires “a little pleasant company,” and urges her husband to take a second spouse. He proceeds:—
“Now I am thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the kind of person both for my wife and myself. My wife wants something gorgiko, something genteel. Now Bess is of blood gorgious; if you doubt it, look at her face, all full of pawno ratter, white blood, brother; and as for gentility, nobody can make exceptions to Bess’s gentility, seeing she was born in the workhouse of Melford the Short.”
Mr Petulengro sees in Bess another advantage. If “the Flaming Tinman” [66a] were to descend upon them, as he once did, with the offer to fight the best of them for nothing, and Tawno Chikno were absent, who was to fight him? Mr Petulengro could not do so for less than five pounds; but with Bess as a second wife the problem would be solved. She would fight “the Flaming Tinman.”
This proves nothing, one way or the other, and can scarcely be said to “dispel any allusions,” as Dr Knapp suggests, or confirm the story of Isopel. Why did Borrow omit it from Lavengro? Not from caprice surely. It has been stated that those who know the gypsies can vouch for the fact that no such suggestion could have been made by a gypsy woman.
It would appear that Isopel Berners existed, but the account of her given by Borrow in Lavengro and The Romany Rye is in all probability coloured, just as her stature was heightened by him. If she were taller than he, she must have appeared a giantess. Borrow was an impressionist, and he has probably succeeded far better in giving a faithful picture of Isopel Berners than if he had been photographically accurate in his measurements.
According to Borrow’s own account, he left Willenhall mounted upon a fine horse, purchased with money lent to him by Mr Petulengro, a small valise strapped to the saddle, and “some desire to meet with one of those adventures which upon the roads of England are generally as plentiful as blackberries.” From this point, however, The Romany Rye becomes dangerous as autobiography. [66b]
For one thing, it was unlike Borrow to remain in debt, and it is incredible that he should have ridden away upon a horse purchased with another man’s money, without any set purpose in his mind. Therefore the story of his employment at the Swan Inn, Stafford, where he found his postilion friend, and the subsequent adventures must be reluctantly sacrificed. They do not ring true, nor do they fit in with the rest of the story. That he experienced such adventures is highly probable; but it is equally probable that he took some liberty with the dates.
Up to the point where he purchases the horse, Borrow’s story is convincing; but from there onwards it seems to go to pieces, that is as autobiography. The arrival of Ardry (Arden) at the inn, [67a] passing through Stafford on his way to Warwick to be present at a dog and lion fight that had already taken place (26th July), is in itself enough to shake our confidence in the whole episode of the inn. In The Gypsies of Spain Mr Petulengro is made to say:
“I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen years ago, when you made horseshoes in the little dingle by the side of the great north road, I lent you fifty cottors [guineas] to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred. Well, brother, if you had wanted the two hundred instead of the fifty, I could have lent them to you, and would have done so, for I knew you would not be long pazorrhus [indebted] to me.” [67b]
It seems more in accordance with Borrow’s character to repay the loan within three days than to continue in Mr Petulengro’s debt for weeks, at one time making no actual effort to realise upon the horse. The question as to whether Borrow received a hundred and fifty (as he himself states) or two hundred pounds is immaterial. It is quite likely that he sold the horse before he left the dingle, and that the adventures he narrates may be true in all else save the continued possession of his steed, that is, with the exception of the Francis Ardry episode, the encounter with the man in black, and the arrival at Horncastle during the fair. If Borrow left London on 24th May, and he could not have left earlier, as has been shown, he must have visited the Fair (Tamworth) with Mr Petulengro on 26th July, and set out from Willenhall about 2nd August.
It has been pointed out by that distinguished scholar and gentleman-gypsy, Mr John Sampson, [68] that as the Horse Fair at Horncastle was held 12th–21st August, if Borrow took the horse there it could not have been in the manner described in The Romany Rye, where he is shown as spending some considerable time at the inn, if we may judge by the handsome cheque (£10) offered to him by the landlord as a bonus on account of his services. Then there was the accident and the consequent lying-up at the house of the man who knew Chinese, but could not tell what o’clock it was. To confirm Borrow’s itinerary all this must have been crowded into less than three weeks, fully a third of which Borrow spent in recovering from his fall. This would mean that for less than a fortnight’s work, the innkeeper offered him ten pounds as a gratuity, in addition to the bargain he had made, which included the horse’s keep.
Mr Sampson has supported his itinerary with several very important pieces of evidence. Borrow states in Lavengro that “a young moon gave a feeble light” as he mounted the coach that was to take him to Amesbury. The moon was in its first quarter on 24th May. There actually was a great thunderstorm in the Willenhall district about the time that Borrow describes (18th July). It is Mr Sampson also who has identified the fair to which Borrow went with the gypsies as that held at Tamworth on 26th July.
Whatever else Borrow may have been doing immediately after leaving the dingle, he appears to have been much occupied in speculating as to the future. Was he not “sadly misspending his time?” He was forced to the conclusion that he had done nothing else throughout his life but misspend his time. He was ambitious. He chafed at his narrow life. “Oh! what a vast deal may be done with intellect, courage, riches, accompanied by the desire of doing something great and good!” [69a] he exclaims, and his thoughts turned instinctively to the career of his old school-fellow, Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. [69b] He was now, by his own confession, “a moody man, bearing on my face, as I well knew, the marks of my strivings and my strugglings, of what I had learnt and unlearnt.” [69c] He recognised the possibilities that lay in every man, only awaiting the hour when they should be called forth. He believed implicitly in the power of the will. [69d] He possessed ambition and a fine workable theory of how success was to be obtained; but he lacked initiative. He expected fortune to wait for him on the high-road, just as he knew adventures awaited him. He would not go “across the country,” to use a phrase of the time common to postilions. He was too independent, perhaps too sensitive of being patronised, to seek employment. That he cared “for nothing in this world but old words and strange stories,” was an error into which his friend Mr Petulengro might well fall. The mightiness of the man’s pride could be covered only by a cloak of assumed indifference. He must be independent of the world, not only in material things, but in those intangible qualities of the spirit. It was this that lost him Isopel Berners, whose love he awakened by a strong right arm and quenched with an Armenian noun. Again, his independence stood in the way of his happiness. A man is a king, he seemed to think, and the attribute of kings is their splendid isolation, their godlike solitude. If his Ego were lonely and crying out for sympathy, Borrow thought it a moment for solitude, in which to discipline his insurgent spirit. The “Horrors” were the result of this self-repression. When they became unbearable, his spirit broke down, the yearning for sympathy and affection overmastered him, and he stumbled to his little horse in the desolate dingle, and found comfort in the faithful creature’s whinny of sympathy and its affectionate licking of his hand. The strong man clung to his dumb brute friend as a protection against the unknown horror—the screaming horror that had gripped him.
One quality Borrow possessed in common with many other men of strange and taciturn personality. He could always make friends when he chose. Ostlers, scholars, farmers, gypsies; it mattered not one jot to him what, or who they were. He could earn their respect and obtain their good-will, if he wished to do so. He demanded of men that they should have done things, or be capable of doing things. They must know everything there was to be known about some one thing; and the ostler, than whom none could groom a horse better, was worthy of being ranked with the best man in the land. He demanded of every man that he should justify his existence, and was logical in his attitude, save in the insignificant particular that he applied the same rule to himself only in theory.
He was shrewd and a good judge of character, provided it were Protestant character, and could hold his own with a Jew or a Gypsy. He was fully justified in his boast of being able to take “precious good care of” himself, and “drive a precious hard bargain”; yet these qualities were not to find a market until he was thirty years of age.
Sometime during the autumn (1825) Borrow returned to Norwich, where he busied himself with literary affairs, among other things writing to the publishers of Faustus about the bill that was shortly to fall due. The fact of the book having been destroyed at both the Norwich libraries, gave him the idea that he might make some profit by selling copies of the suppressed volume. Hence his offer to Simpkin & Marshall to take copies in lieu of money.