The Romany Rye is a puzzling book. The latter portion, at least, seems to suggest “spiritual autobiography.” It reveals the man, his atmosphere, his character, and nowhere better than among the jockeys at Horncastle. It gives a better and more convincing picture of Borrow than the most accurate list of dates and occurrences, all vouched for upon unimpeachable authority. It is impressionism applied to autobiography, which has always been considered as essentially a subject for photographic treatment. Borrow thought otherwise, with the result that many people decline to believe that his picture is a portrait, because there is a question as to the dates.
Among the reviews, which were on the whole unfriendly, was the remarkable notice in The Quarterly Review, by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin:—[435]
“Nobody,” he wrote, “sympathises with wounded vanity, and the world only laughs when a man angrily informs it that it does not rate him at his true value. The public to whom he appeals must, after all, be the judge of his pretensions. Their verdict at first is frequently wrong, but it is they themselves who must reverse it, and not the author who is upon his trial before them. The attacks of critics, if they are unjust, invariably yield to the same remedy. Though we do not think that Mr Borrow is a good counsel in his own cause, we are yet strongly of the opinion that Time in this case has some wrongs to repair, and that Lavengro has not obtained the fame which was its due. It contains passages which in their way are not surpassed by anything in English Literature.”
The value of these prophetic words lies in the fine spirit of fatherly reproof in which the whole review was written. It is the work of a critic who regarded literature as a thing to be approached, both by author and reviewer, with grave and deliberate ceremony, not with enthusiasm or prejudice. From any other source the following words would not have possessed the significance they did, coming from a man of such sane ideas with the courage to express them:—
“Various portions of the history are known to be a faithful narrative of Mr Borrow’s career, while we ourselves can testify, as to many other parts of his volumes, that nothing can excel the fidelity with which he has described both men and things. Far from his showing any tendency to exaggeration, such of his characters as we chance to have known, and they are not a few, are rather within the truth than beyond it. However picturesquely they may be drawn, the lines are invariably those of nature. Why under these circumstances he should envelop the question in mystery is more than we can divine. There can be no doubt that the larger part, and possibly the whole, of the work is a narrative of actual occurrences.” [436]
The Appendix itself, which had drawn from Elwin the grave declaration that “Mr Borrow is very angry with his critics,” is a fine piece of rhetorical denunciation. It opens with the deliberate restraint of a man who feels the fury of his wrath surging up within him. It tells again the story of Lavengro, pointing morals as it goes. Then the studied calm is lost—Priestcraft, “Foreign Nonsense,” “Gentility Nonsense,” “Canting Nonsense,” “Pseudo-Critics,” “Pseudo-Radicals” he flogs and pillories mercilessly until, arriving at “The Old Radical,” he throws off all restraint and lunges out wildly, mad with hate and despair. As a piece of literary folly, the Appendix to The Romany Rye has probably never been surpassed. It alienated from Borrow all but his personal friends, and it sealed his literary fate as far as his own generation was concerned. In short, he had burnt his boats.
Borrow had sent a copy of The Romany Rye to FitzGerald, which is referred to by him in a letter written from Gorleston to Professor Cowell (5th June 1857):—
“Within hail almost lives George Borrow who has lately published, and given me, two new Volumes of Lavengro called Romany Rye, with some excellent things, and some very bad (as I have made bold to write to him—how shall I face him!). You would not like the Book at all, I think.” [437a]
Borrow was bitterly disappointed at the effect produced by The Romany Rye. On someone once saying that it was the finest piece of literary invective since Swift, he replied, “Yes, I meant it to be; and what do you think the effect was? No one took the least notice of it!” [437b]
The Romany Rye was not a success. The thousand copies lasted a year. When it appeared likely that a second edition would be required, Borrow wrote to John Murray urging him not to send the book to the press again until he “was quite sure the demand for it will at least defray all attendant expenses.” He saw that whatever profits had resulted from the publication of the first edition, were in danger of being swallowed up in the preparation of a second. When this did eventually make its appearance in 1858, it was limited to 750 copies, which lasted until 1872.
Borrow’s own attitude with regard to the work and his wisdom in publishing it is summed up in a letter to John Murray (17th Sept. 1857):—
“I was very anxious to bring it out,” he writes; “and I bless God that I had the courage and perseverance to do so. It is of course unpalatable to many; for it scorns to foster delusion, to cry ‘peace where there is no peace,’ and denounces boldly the evils which are hurrying the country to destruction, and which have kindled God’s anger against it, namely, the pride, insolence, cruelty, covetousness, and hypocrisy of its people, and above all the rage for gentility, which must be indulged in at the expense of every good and honourable feeling.”
The writing of the Appendix had aroused in Borrow all his old enthusiasm, and he appears to have come to the determination to publish a number of works, including a veritable library of translations. At the end of The Romany Rye appeared a lengthy list of books in preparation. [438]
In August 1857 Borrow paid a second visit to Wales, walking “upwards of four hundred miles.” Starting from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, he visited Tenby, Pembroke, Milford Haven, Haverford, St David’s, Fishguard, Newport, Cardigan, Lampeter; passing into Brecknockshire, he eventually reached Mortimer’s Cross in Hereford and thence to Shrewsbury. In October he was at Leighton, Donnington and Uppington, where he found traces of Gronwy Owen, the one-time curate and all-time poet.
Throughout his life Borrow had shown by every action and word written about her, the great love he bore his mother. When his wife wrote to her and he was too restless to do so himself, he would interpolate two or three lines to “My dear Mamma.” She was always in his thoughts, and he never wavered in his love for her and devotion to her comfort; whilst she looked upon him as only a mother so good and so tender could look upon a son who had become her “only hope.”
For many years of her life it had been ordained that this brave old lady should live alone. [439] In the middle of August 1858 the news reached Borrow that his mother had been taken suddenly ill. She was in her eighty-seventh year, and at such an age all illnesses are dangerous. Borrow hastened to Oulton, and arrived just in time to be with her at the last.
Thus on 16th August 1858, of “pulmonary congestion,” died Anne Borrow, who had followed her husband about with his regiment, and had reared and educated her two boys under circumstances of great disadvantage. She had lost one; but the other, her youngest born, whom she had so often shielded from his father’s reproaches, had been spared to her, and she had seen him famous. Upon her grave in Oulton Churchyard the son caused to be inscribed the words, “She was a good wife and a good mother,” than which no woman can ask more. [440a]
The death of his mother was a great shock to Borrow. “He felt the blow keenly,” Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray, “and I advised a tour in Scotland to recruit his health and spirits.” Accordingly he went North early in October, leaving his wife and Henrietta at Great Yarmouth. He visited the Highlands, walking several hundred miles. Mull struck him as “a very wild country, perhaps the wildest in Europe.” Many of its place-names reminded him strongly of the Isle of Man. At the end of November he finished up the tour at Lerwick in Shetland, where he bought presents for his “loved ones,” having seen Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Wick, Thurso among other places. His impressions were not altogether favourable to the Scotch. “A queerer country I never saw in all my life,” he wrote later . . . “a queerer set of people than the Scotch you would scarcely see in a summer’s day.” [440b]
In the following year (1859) an excursion was made to Ireland by Borrow and his family. Making Dublin his headquarters, where he left his wife and Henrietta comfortably settled, he tramped to Connemara and the Giant’s Causeway, the expedition being full of adventure and affording him “much pleasure,” in spite of the fact that he was “frequently wet to the skin, and indifferently lodged.”
Borrow had inherited from his mother some property at Mattishall Burgh, one and a half miles from his birth-place, consisting of some land, a thatched house and outbuildings, now demolished. This was let to a small-holder named Henry Hill. Borrow thought very highly of his tenant, and for hours together would tramp up and down beside him as he ploughed the land, asking questions, and hearing always something new from the amazing stores of nature knowledge that Henry Hill had acquired. This Norfolk worthy appears to have been possessed of a genius for many things. He was well versed in herbal lore, a self-taught ’cellist, playing each Sunday in the Congregational Chapel at Mattishall, and an equally self-taught watch-repairer; but his chief claim to fame was as a bee-keeper, local tradition crediting him with being the first man to keep bees under glass. He would solemnly state that his bees, whom he looked upon as friends, talked to him. On Sundays the country folk for miles round would walk over to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill’s bees, and hear him expound their lore. It was perforce Sunday, there was no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who seemed always to live on the verge of starvation. Borrow himself expressed regret to Henry Hill that it had not been possible to add the education of the academy to that of the land. He saw that the combination would have produced an even more remarkable man.
In Norfolk all strangers are regarded with suspicion. Lifelong friendships are not contracted in a day. The East Anglian is shrewd, and requires to know something about those whom he admits to the sacred inner circle of his friendship. Borrow was well-known in the Mattishall district, and was looked upon with more than usual suspicion. He was unquestionably a strange man, in speech, in appearance, in habits. He could and would knock down any who offended him; but, worst of all, he was the intimate of gypsies, sat by their fires, spoke in their tongue. The population round about was entirely an agricultural one, and all united in hating the gypsies as their greatest enemies, because of their depredations. Add to this the fact that Borrow was a frequenter of public-houses, of which there were seven in the village, and was wont to boast that you could get at the true man only after he had been mellowed into speech by good English ale. Then he would open his heart and unburden his mind of all the accumulated knowledge that he possessed, and add something to the epic of the soil. Borrow’s overbearing manner made people shy of him. On one occasion he told John, the son and successor of Henry Hill, that he ought to be responsible for the debt of his half-brother; the debt, it may be mentioned, was to Borrow.
There is no better illustration of the suspicion with which Borrow was regarded locally, than an incident that occurred during one of his visits to Mattishall. He called upon John Hill at Church Farm to collect his rent. The evening was spent very agreeably. Borrow recited some of his ballads, quoted Scripture and languages, and sang a song. He was particularly interested on account of Mrs Hill being from London, where she knew many of his haunts. He remained the whole evening with the family and partook of their meal; but was allowed to go to one of the seven public-houses for a bed, although there were spare bedrooms in the house that he might have occupied. Such was the suspicion that Borrow’s habits created in the minds of his fellow East Anglians. [442]
After his second tour in Wales, Borrow had submitted to John Murray the manuscript of his translation of The Sleeping Bard, which in 1830 had so alarmed the little Welsh bookseller of Smithfield. “I really want something to do,” Borrow wrote, “and seeing the work passing through the press might amuse me.” Murray, however, could not see his way to accept the offer, and the manuscript was returned. Borrow decided to publish the book at his own expense, and accordingly commissioned a Yarmouth man to print him 250 copies, upon the title-page of which John Murray permitted his name to appear.
In the note in which he tells of the Welsh bookseller’s doubts and fears, Borrow goes on to assure his readers that there is no harm in the book.
“It is true,” he says, “that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. Indeed can we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in ’60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which Smithfield shrank from in ’30.”
The edition was very speedily exhausted, largely on account of an article entitled, The Welsh and Their Literature, written years before, that Borrow adapted as a review of the book, and published anonymously in The Quarterly Review (Jan. 1861). The Sleeping Bard was not reprinted.
The next event of importance in Borrow’s life was his removal to London with Mrs Borrow and Henrietta. Towards the end of the Irish holiday (4th Nov. 1859), Mrs Borrow had written to John Murray: “If all be well in the Spring, I shall wish to look around, and select a pleasant, healthy residence within from three to ten miles of London.” Borrow may have felt more at liberty to make the change now that his mother was dead, although whilst she was at Oulton he was as little company for her at Great Yarmouth as he would have been in London. Whatever led them to the decision to take up their residence in London, Borrow and his wife left Great Yarmouth at the end of June, and immediately proceeded to look about them for a suitable house. Their choice eventually fell upon number 22 Hereford Square, Brompton, which had the misfortune to be only a few doors from number 26, where lived Frances Power Cobbe. The rent was £65 per annum. The Borrows entered upon their tenancy at the Michaelmas quarter, and were joined by Henrietta, who had remained behind at Great Yarmouth during the house-hunting.
Miss Cobbe has given in her Autobiography a very unlovely picture of George Borrow during the period of his residence in Hereford Square. No woman, except his relatives and dependants, will tolerate egoism in a man. Borrow was an egoist. If not permitted to lead the conversation, he frequently wrapped himself in a gloomy silence and waited for an opportunity to discomfit the usurper of the place he seemed to consider his own. Among his papers were found after his death a large number of letters from poor men whom Borrow had assisted. His friend the Rev. Francis Cunningham once wrote to him a letter protesting against his assisting Nonconformist schools. He gave to Church and Chapel alike. This disproves misanthropy, and leaves egoism as the only explanation of his occasional lapses into bitterness or rudeness. When in happy vein, however, “his conversation . . . was unlike that of any other man; whether he told a long story or only commented on some ordinary topic, he was always quaint, often humorous.” [445a]
Miss Cobbe would not humour an egoist, because constitutionally women, especially clever women, dislike them, unless they wish to marry them. When she heard it said, as it very frequently was said, that Borrow was a gypsy by blood, she caustically remarked that if he were not he “ought to have been.” Miss Cobbe had living with her a Miss Lloyd who, “amused by his quaint stories and his (real or sham) enthusiasm for Wales, . . . cultivated his acquaintance. I,” continued Miss Cobbe frankly, “never liked him, thinking him more or less of a hypocrite.” [445b]
On one occasion Borrow had accepted an invitation from Miss Cobbe to meet some friends, but subsequently withdrew his acceptance “on finding that Dr Martineau was to be of the party . . . nor did he ever after attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining that Dr Martineau would not be present!” This she explained by the assertion that Dr Martineau had “horsed” Borrow when he was punished for running away from school at Norwich. It appeared “irresistibly comic” to her mind.
There is an amusing account given by Miss Cobbe of how she worsted Borrow, which is certainly extremely flattering to her accomplishments. Once when talking with him she happened to say
“something about the imperfect education of women, and he said it was right they should be ignorant, and that no man could endure a clever wife. I laughed at him openly,” she continues, “and told him some men knew better. What did he think of the Brownings? ‘Oh, he had heard the name; he did not know anything of them. Since Scott, he read no modern writer; Scott was greater than Homer! What he liked were curious, old, erudite books about mediæval and northern things.’ I said I knew little of such literature, and preferred the writers of our own age, but indeed I was no great student at all. Thereupon he evidently wanted to astonish me; and, talking of Ireland, said, ‘Ah, yes; a most curious, mixed race. First there were the Firbolgs,—the old enchanters, who raised mists.’ . . . ‘Don’t you think, Mr Borrow,’ I asked, ‘it was the Tuatha-de-Danaan who did that? Keatinge expressly says that they conquered the Firbolgs by that means.’ (Mr B. somewhat out of countenance), ‘Oh! Aye! Keatinge is the authority; a most extraordinary writer.’ ‘Well, I should call him the Geoffrey of Monmouth of Ireland.’ (Mr B. changing the venue), ‘I delight in Norse-stories; they are far grander than the Greek. There is the story of Olaf the Saint of Norway. Can anything be grander? What a noble character!’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘what do you think of his putting all those poor Druids on the Skerry of Shrieks, and leaving them to be drowned by the tide?’ (Thereupon Mr B. looked at me askant out of his gipsy eyes, as if he thought me an example of the evils of female education!) ‘Well! Well! I forgot about the Skerry of Shrieks. Then there is the story of Beowulf the Saxon going out to sea in his burning ship to die.’ ‘Oh, Mr Borrow! that isn’t a Saxon story at all. It is in the Heimskringla! It is told of Hakon of Norway.’ Then, I asked him about the gipsies and their language, and if they were certainly Aryans? He didn’t know (or pretended not to know) what Aryans were; and altogether displayed a miraculous mixture of odd knowledge and more odd ignorance. Whether the latter were real or assumed I know not!” [446]
These were some of the neighbourly little pleasantries indulged in by Miss Cobbe, regarding a man who was a frequent guest at her house.
“His has indeed been a fantastic fate!” writes Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton. “When the shortcomings of any illustrious man save Borrow are under discussion, ‘les défauts de ses qualités’ is the criticism—wise as charitable—which they evoke. Yes, each one is allowed to have his angularities save Borrow. Each one is allowed to show his own pet unpleasant facets of character now and then—allowed to show them as inevitable foils to the pleasant ones—save Borrow. His weaknesses no one ever condones. During his lifetime his faults were for ever chafing and irritating his acquaintances, and now that he and they are dead, these faults of his seem to be chafing and irritating people of another generation. A fantastic fate, I say, for him who was so interesting to some of us!” [447a]
On occasion Borrow could be inexcusably rude, as he was to a member of the Russian Embassy who one day called at Hereford Square for a copy of Targum for the Czar, when he told him that his Imperial master could fetch it himself. Again, no one can defend him for affronting the “very distinguished scholar” with whom he happened to disagree, by thundering out, “Sir, you’re a fool!” Such lapses are deplorable; but why should we view them in a different light from those of Dr Johnson?
What would have been regarded in another distinguished man as a pleasant vein of humour was in Borrow’s case looked upon as evidence of his unveracity. A contemporary tells how, on one occasion, he went with him into “a tavern” for a pint of ale, when Borrow pointed out
“a yokel at the far end of the apartment. The foolish bumpkin was slumbering. Borrow in a stage whisper, gravely assured me that the man was a murderer, and confided to me with all the emphasis of honest conviction the scene and details of his crime. Subsequently I ascertained that the elaborate incidents and fine touches of local colour were but the coruscations of a too vivid imagination, and that the villain of the ale-house on the common was as innocent as the author of The Romany Rye.” [447b]
If Borrow had been called upon to explain this little pleasantry he would in all probability have replied in the words of Mr Petulengro, that he had told his acquaintance “things . . . which are not exactly true, simply to make a fool of you, brother.”
It is strange how those among his contemporaries who disliked him, denied Borrow the indulgence that is almost invariably accorded to genius. Those who were not for him were bitterly against him. In their eyes he was either outrageously uncivil or insultingly rude. Dr Hake, although a close friend, saw Borrow’s dominant weakness, his love of the outward evidences of fame. Dr Hake’s impartiality gives greater weight to his testimony when he tells of Borrow’s first meeting with Dr Robert Latham, the ethnologist, philologist and grammarian. Latham much wanted to meet Borrow, and promised Dr Hake to be on his best behaviour. He was accordingly invited to dinner with Borrow. Latham as usual began to show off his knowledge. He became aggressive, and finally very excited; but throughout the meal Borrow showed the utmost patience and courtesy, much to his host’s relief. When he subsequently encountered Latham in the street he always stopped “to say a kind word, seeing his forlorn condition.”
Dr Hake had settled at Coombe End, Roehampton, and now that the Borrows were in London, the two families renewed their old friendship. Borrow would walk over to Coombe End, and on arriving at the gate would call out, “Are you alone?” If there were other callers he would pass by, if not he would enter and frequently persuade Dr Hake, and perhaps his sons, to accompany him for a walk.
“There was something not easily forgotten,” writes Mr A. Egmont Hake, “in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart.” [448] They had many pleasant tramps together, mostly in Richmond Park, where Borrow appeared to know every tree and showed himself very learned in deer. He was
“always saying something in his loud, self-asserting voice; sometimes stopping suddenly, drawing his huge stature erect, and changing the keen and haughty expression of his face into the rapt and half fatuous look of the oracle, he would without preface recite some long fragment from Welsh or Scandinavian bards, his hands hanging from his chest and flapping in symphony. Then he would push on again, and as suddenly stop, arrested by the beautiful scenery, and exclaim, ‘Ah! this is England, as the Pretender said when he again looked on his fatherland.’ Then on reaching any town, he would be sure to spy out some lurking gypsy, whom no one but himself would have known from a common horse-dealer. A conversation in Romany would ensue, a shilling would change hands, two fingers would be pointed at the gypsy, and the interview would be at an end.” [449a]
One day he asked Dr Hake’s youngest boy if he knew how to fight a man bigger than himself, and on being told that he didn’t, advised him to “accept his challenge, and tell him to take off his coat, and while he was doing it knock him down and then run for your life.” [449b]
Once Borrow arrived at Dr Hake’s house to find another caller in the person of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, and they “went through a pleasant trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took the first fiddle . . . Borrow made himself agreeable to Watts [-Dunton], recited a fairy tale in the best style to him, and liked him.” [449c] Borrow did not recognise in Mr Watts-Dunton the young man whom he had seen bathing on the beach at Great Yarmouth, pleased to be near his hero, but too much afraid to venture to address him. Writing of this meeting at Coombe End, Mr Watts-Dunton says: “There is however no doubt that Borrow would have run away from me had I been associated in his mind with the literary calling. But at that time I had written nothing at all save poems, and a prose story or two of a romantic kind.” [450] Borrow hated the literary man, he was at war with the whole genus.
Mr Watts-Dunton confesses that he made great efforts to enlist Borrow’s interest. He touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, beer, bruisers, philology, “gentility nonsense,” the “trumpery great”; but without success. Borrow was obviously suspicious of him. Then with inspiration he happened to mention what proved to be a magic name.
“I tried other subjects in the same direction,” Mr Watts-Dunton continues, “but with small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett, . . . the man who, after having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night, escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor, and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had been hanged for murdering. The truth was that Gwinett’s supposed victim, having been attacked on the night in question by a violent bleeding of the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes’ walk in the sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to sea, where he had been in service ever since. The story is true, and the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on what authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett’s dictation for a platter of cow-heel.
“To the bewilderment of Dr Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of ‘Achilles’ wrath,’ and appealed to Dr Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the pamphlet had gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story. Borrow was caught at last. ‘What?’ said he, ‘you know that pamphlet about Ambrose Gwinett?’ ‘Know it?’ said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked me if I knew ‘Macbeth’; ‘of course I know Ambrose Gwinett, Mr Borrow, don’t you?’ ‘And you know the play?’ said he. ‘Of course I do, Mr Borrow,’ I said, in a tone that was now a little angry at such an insinuation of crass ignorance. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘it’s years and years since it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I did go to see that.’ ‘Well I should rather think you did, Mr Borrow,’ said I. ‘But,’ said he, staring hard at me, ‘you—you were not born!’ ‘And I was not born,’ said I, ‘when the “Agamemnon” was produced, and yet one reads the “Agamemnon,” Mr Borrow. I have read the drama of “Ambrose Gwinett.” I have it bound in morocco, with some more of Douglas Jerrold’s early transpontine plays, and some Æschylean dramas by Mr Fitzball. I will lend it to you, Mr Borrow, if you like.’ He was completely conquered, ‘Hake!’ he cried, in a loud voice, regardless of my presence, ‘Hake! your friend knows everything.’ Then he murmured to himself. ‘Wonderful man! Knows Ambrose Gwinett!’
“It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause me to have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for the memory of George Borrow.” [451a]
After this, intercourse proved easy. At Borrow’s suggestion they walked to the Bald-Faced Stag, in Kingston Vale, to inspect Jerry Abershaw’s sword. This famous old hostelry was a favourite haunt of Borrow’s, where he would often rest during his walk and drink “a cup of ale” (which he would call “swipes,” and make a wry face as he swallowed) and talk of the daring deeds of Jerry the highwayman.
Many people have testified to the pleasure of being in the company of the whimsical, eccentric, humbug-hating Borrow.
“He was a choice companion on a walk,” writes Mr A. Egmont Hake, “whether across country or in the slums of Houndsditch. His enthusiasm for nature was peculiar; he could draw more poetry from a wide-spreading marsh with its straggling rushes than from the most beautiful scenery, and would stand and look at it with rapture.” [451b]
Since the tour in Wales in 1854, from which he returned with the four “Note Books,” Borrow had been working steadily at Wild Wales. In 1857 the book had been announced as “ready for the press”; but this was obviously an anticipation. The manuscript was submitted to John Murray early in November 1861. On the 20th of that month he wrote the following letter, addressing it, not to Borrow, but to his wife:—
Dear Mrs Borrow,—The MS. of Wild Wales has occupied my thoughts almost ever since Friday last.
I approached this MS. with some diffidence, recollecting the unsatisfactory results, on the whole, of our last publication—Romany Rye. I have read a large part of this new work with care and attention, and although it is beautifully written and in a style of English undefiled, which few writers can surpass, there is yet a want of stirring incident in it which makes me fearful as to the result of its publication.
In my hands at least I cannot think it would succeed even as well as Romany Rye—and I am fearful of not doing justice to it. I do not like to undertake a work with the chance of reproach that it may have failed through my want of power to promote its circulation, and I do wish, for Borrow’s own sake, that in this instance he would try some other publisher and perhaps some other form of publication.
In my hands I am convinced the work will not answer the author’s expectations, and I am not prepared to take on me this amount of responsibility.
I will give the best advice I can if called upon, and shall be only too glad if I can be useful to Mr Borrow. I regret to have to write in this sense, but believe me always, Dear Mrs Borrow,
Your faithful friend,
John Murray.
The reply to this letter has not been preserved. It would appear that some “stirring incidents” were added, among others most probably the account of Borrow blessing the Irish reapers, who mistook him for Father Toban. This anecdote was one of John Murray’s favourite passages. It is evident that some concession was made to induce Murray to change his mind. In any case Wild Wales appeared towards the close of 1862 in an edition of 1000 copies. The publisher’s misgivings were not justified, as the first edition produced a profit, up to 30th June 1863, of £531, 14s., which was equally divided between author and publisher. The second, and cheap, edition of 3000 copies lasted for thirteen years, and the deficiency on this absorbed the greater part of the publisher’s profit.
In a way it is the most remarkable of Borrow’s books; for it shows that he was making a serious effort to regain his public. It is an older, wiser and chastened Borrow that appears in its pages, striding through the land of the bards at six miles an hour, his satchel slung over his shoulder, his green umbrella grasped in his right hand, shouting the songs of Wales, about which he knew more than any man he met. There are no gypsies (except towards the end of the book a reference to his meeting with Captain Bosvile), no bruisers, the pope is scarcely mentioned, and “gentility-nonsense” is veiled almost to the point of elimination. It seems scarcely conceivable that the hand that had written the appendix to The Romany Rye could have so restrained itself as to write Wild Wales. Borrow had evidently read and carefully digested Whitwell Elwin’s friendly strictures upon The Romany Rye. Instead of the pope, the gypsies and the bruisers of England, there were the vicarage cat, the bards and the thousand and one trivial incidents of the wayside. There were occasional gleams of the old fighting spirit, notably when he characterises sherry, [453] as “a silly, sickly compound, the use of which will transform a nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of sketchers, scribblers, and punsters,—in fact, into what Englishmen are at the present day.” He has created the atmosphere of Wales as he did that of the gypsy encampment. He shows the jealous way in which the Welsh cling to their language, and their suspicion of the Saesneg, or Saxon. Above all, he shows how national are the Welsh poets, belonging not to the cultured few; but to the labouring man as much as to the landed proprietor. Borrow earned the respect of the people, not only because he knew their language; but on account of his profound knowledge of their literature, their history, and their traditions. No one could escape him, he accosted every soul he met, and evinced a desire for information as to place-names that instantly arrested their attention.
The most curious thing about Wild Wales is the omission of all mention of the Welsh Gypsies, who, with those of Hungary, share the distinction of being the aristocrats of their race. Several explanations have been suggested to account for the curious circumstance. Had Borrow’s knowledge of Welsh Romany been scanty, he could very soon have improved it. The presence of his wife and stepdaughter was no hindrance; for, as a matter of fact, they were very little with him, even when they and Borrow were staying at Llangollen; but during the long tours they were many miles away. In all probability the Welsh Gypsies were sacrificed to British prejudice, much as were pugilism and the baiting of the pope.
In spite of its simple charm and convincing atmosphere, Wild Wales did not please the critics. Those who noticed it (and there were many who did not) either questioned its genuineness, or found it crowded with triviality and self-glorification. It was full of the superfluous, the superfluous repeated, and above all it was too long (some 250,000 words). The Spectator notice was an exception; it did credit to the critical faculty of the man who wrote it. He declined “to boggle and wrangle over minor defects in what is intrinsically good,” and praised Wild Wales as “the first really clever book . . . in which an honest attempt is made to do justice to Welsh literature.”
Borrow had much time upon his hands in London, which he occupied largely in walking. He visited the Metropolitan Gypsyries at Wandsworth, “the Potteries,” and “the Mounts,” as described in Romano Lavo-Lil. Sometimes he would be present at some sporting event, such as the race between the Indian Deerfoot and Jackson, styled the American Deer—tame sport in comparison with the “mills” of his boyhood. He did very little writing, and from 1862, when Wild Wales appeared, until he published The Romano Lavo-Lil in 1874, his literary output consisted of only some translations contributed to Once a Week (January 1862 to December 1863).
In 1865 he was to lose his stepdaughter, who married a William MacOubrey, M.D., described in the marriage register as a physician of Sloane Street, London, and subsequently upon his tombstone as a barrister. In the July of 1866 Borrow and his wife went to Belfast on a visit to the newly married pair. From Belfast Borrow took another trip into Scotland, crossing over to Stranraer. From there he proceeded to Glen Luce and subsequently to Newton Stewart, Castle Douglas, Dumfries, Ecclefechan, Gretna Green, Carlisle, Langholm, Hawick, Jedburgh, Yetholm (where he saw Esther Blyth of Kirk Yetholm), Kelso, Abbotsford, Melrose, Berwick, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and so back to Belfast, having been absent for nearly four weeks.
Mrs Borrow’s health had been the cause of the family leaving Oulton for Great Yarmouth, and about the time of the Irish visit it seems to have become worse. When Borrow was away upon his excursion he received a letter at Carlisle in which his wife informed him that she was not so well; but urging him not to return if he were enjoying his trip and it were benefiting his health.
In the autumn of the following year (1867) they were at Bognor, Mrs Borrow taking the sea air, her husband tramping about the country and penetrating into the New Forest. On their return to town Mrs Borrow appears to have become worse. There was much correspondence to be attended to with regard to the Oulton Estate, and she had to go down to Suffolk to give her personal attention to certain important details. Miss Cobbe throws a little light on the period in a letter to a friend, in which she says:
“Mr Borrow says his wife is very ill and anxious to keep the peace with C. (a litigious neighbour). Poor old B. was very sad at first, but I cheered him up and sent him off quite brisk last night. He talked all about the Fathers again, arguing that their quotations went to prove that it was not our gospels they had in their hands. I knew most of it before, but it was admirably done. I talked a little theology to him in a serious way (finding him talk of his ‘horrors’) and he abounded in my sense of the non-existence of Hell, and of the presence and action on the soul of a Spirit, rewarding and punishing. He would not say ‘God’; but repeated over and over again that he spoke not from books but from his own personal experience.” [456]
On 24th January (1869) Mrs Borrow was taken suddenly ill and the family doctor being out of town, Borrow sent for Dr W. S. Playfair of 5 Curzon Street. A letter from Dr Playfair, 25th January, to the family doctor is the only coherent testimony in existence as to what was actually the matter with Mrs Borrow. It runs:—
“I found great difficulty in making out the case exactly,” he writes, “since Mr Borrow himself was so agitated that I could get no very clear account of it. I could detect no marked organic affection about the heart or lungs, of which she chiefly complained. It seemed to me to be either a very aggravated form of hysteria, or, what appears more likely, some more serious mental affection. In any case, the chief requisite seemed very careful and intelligent nursing or management, and I doubt very much, from what I saw, whether she gets that with her present surroundings. If it is really the more serious mental affection, I should fancy that the sooner means are taken to have her properly taken care of, the better.”
Dr Playfair saw in Borrow’s highly nervous excitable nature, if not the cause of his wife’s breakdown, at least an obstacle to her recovery, and was of opinion that Mrs Borrow’s disorder had been greatly aggravated by her husband’s presence.
Mrs Borrow never rallied from the attack, and on the 30th she died of “valvular disease of the heart and dropsy,” being then in her seventy-seventh year. On 4th February she was buried in Brompton Cemetery, and the lonely man, her husband, returned to Hereford Square. The grave bears the inscription, “To the Beloved Memory of My Mother, Mary Borrow, who fell asleep in Jesus, 30th January 1869.” It is strange that this should be in Henrietta’s and not Borrow’s name.
Mrs Borrow evidently made over her property to her husband during her lifetime, as there is no will in existence, and no application appears to have been made either by Borrow or anyone else for letters of administration.
The death of his wife was a last blow to Borrow, and he soon retired from the world. At first he appears to have sought consolation in books, to judge from the number of purchases he made about this time; but it was, apparently, with pitiably unsuccessful results. In a letter to a friend Miss Cobbe gives a picture in his lonliness:
“Poor old Borrow is in a sad state,” she wrote. “I hope he is starting in a day or two for Scotland. I sent C. with a note begging him to come and eat the Welsh mutton you sent me to-day, and he sent back word, ‘Yes.’ Then, an hour afterwards, he arrived, and in a most agitated manner said he had come to say ‘he would rather not. He would not trouble anyone with his sorrows.’ I made him sit down, and talked as gently to him as possible, saying: ‘It won’t be a trouble Mr. Borrow, it will be a pleasure to me.’ But it was all of no use. He was so cross, so rude, I had the greatest difficulty in talking to him. I asked about his servant, and he said I could not help him. I asked him about Bowring, and he said: ‘Don’t speak of it.’ (It was some dispute with Sir John Bowring, who was an acquaintance of mine, and with whom I offered to mediate.) ‘I asked him would he look at the photos of the Siamese,’ and he said: ‘Don’t show them to me!’ So, in despair, as he sat silent, I told him I had been at a pleasant dinner-party the night before, and had met Mr L—, who told me of certain curious books of mediæval history. ‘Did he know them?’ ‘No, and he dare said Mr L— did not, either! Who was Mr L—?’ I described that obscure individual, (one of the foremost writers of the day), and added that he was immensely liked by everybody. Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times, ‘Immensely liked! As if a man could be immensely liked!’ quite insultingly. To make a diversion (I was very patient with him as he was in trouble), ‘I said I had just come home from the Lyell’s and had heard—’ . . . But there was no time to say what I had heard! Mr Borrow asked: ‘Is that old Lyle I met here once, the man who stands at the door (of some den or other) and bets?’ I explained who Sir Charles was, [459a] (of course he knew very well), but he went on and on, till I said gravely: ‘I don’t think you will meet those sort of people here, Mr Borrow. We don’t associate with blacklegs, exactly.’” [459b]
In the Autumn of 1870 Borrow became acquainted with Charles G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”) as the result of receiving from him the following letter:—
Brighton, 24th October 1870.
Dear Sir,—During the eighteen months that I have been in England, my efforts to find some mutual friend who would introduce me to you have been quite in vain. As the author of two or three works which have been kindly received in England, I have made the acquaintance of many literary men and enjoyed much hospitality; but I assure you very sincerely that my inability to find you out or get at you has been a source of great annoyance to me. As you never published a book which I have not read through five times—excepting The Bible in Spain and Wild Wales, which I have only read once—you will perfectly understand why I should be so desirous of meeting you.
As you have very possibly never heard of me before, I would state that I wrote a collection of Ballads satirising Germany and the Germans under the title of Hans Breitmann.
I never before in my life solicited the favour of any man’s acquaintance, except through the regular medium of an introduction. If my request to be allowed the favour of meeting and seeing you does not seem too outré, I would be to glad to go to London, or wherever you may be, if it can be done without causing you any inconvenience, and if I should not be regarded as an intruder. I am an American, and among us such requests are parfaitment (sic) en régle.
I am, . . .
Charles G. Leland.
Borrow replied on 2nd Nov.:
Sir,
I have received your letter and am gratified by the desire you express to make my acquaintance.
Whenever you please to come I shall be happy to see you.
Truly yours,
George Borrow. [460a]
The meeting unquestionably took place at Hereford Square, and Leland found Borrow “a tall, large, fine-looking man who must have been handsome in his youth.” [460b] The result of the interview was that Leland sent to Borrow a copy of his Ballads and also The Music Lesson of Confucius, then about to appear. At the same time he wrote to Borrow drawing his attention to one of the ballads written in German Romany jib, and enquiring if it were worth anything. Whilst deprecating his “impudence” in writing a Romany gili and telling, as a pupil might a master, of his interest in and his association with the gypsies, he continues: “My dear Mr Borrow, for all this you are entirely responsible. More than twenty years ago your books had an incredible influence on me, and now you see the results.” After telling him that he can never thank him sufficiently for the instructions he has given in The Romany Rye as to how to take care of a horse on a thirty mile ride, he concludes—“With apologies for the careless tone of this letter, and with sincere thanks for your kindness in permitting me to call on you and for your courteous note,—I am your sincere admirer.”
The account that Leland gives of this episode in his Memoirs is puzzling and contradictory in the light of his first letter. He writes:
“There was another hard old character with whom I became acquainted in those days, and one who, though not a Carlyle, still, like him, exercised in a peculiar way a great influence on English literature. This was George Borrow. I was in the habit of reading a great deal in the British Museum, where he also came, and there I was introduced to him. [461a] [Leland seems to be in error here; see ante, page 460.] He was busy with a venerable-looking volume in old Irish, and made the remark to me that he did not believe there was a man living who could read old Irish with ease (which I now observe to myself was ‘fished’ out of Sir W. Betham). We discussed several Gypsy words and phrases. I met him in the same place several times.” [461b]
Leland states that he sent a note to Borrow, care of John Murray, asking permission to dedicate to him his forthcoming book, The English Gypsies and Their Language; but received no reply, although Murray assured him that the letter had been received by Borrow. “He received my note on the Saturday,” Leland writes—“never answered it—and on Monday morning advertised in all the journals his own forthcoming work on the same subject.” [461c] Had Borrow asked him to delay publishing his own book, Leland says he would have done so, “for I had so great a respect for the Nestor of Gypsyism, that I would have been very glad to have gratified him with such a small sacrifice.” [462a]
However Borrow may have heard that Leland had in preparation a book on the English Gypsies, he seemed to feel that it was a trespass upon ground that was peculiarly his own. Having revised and prepared for the press the new edition of the Gypsy St Luke for the Bible Society (published December 1872), and the one-volume editions of Lavengro and The Romany Rye, he set to work to forestall Leland with his own Romano Lavo-Lil.
In spite of his haste, however, Borrow was beaten in the race, and Leland got his volume out first. When the Romano Lavo-Lil [462b] appeared in March 1874, Borrow found what, in all probability he had not dreamed of, that the thirty-three years intervening between its publication and that of The Zincali, had changed the whole literary world as regards “things of Egypt.” In 1841 Borrow had produced a unique book, such as only one man in England could have written, and that man himself [462c]; but in 1874 he found himself not only out of date, but out-classed.
The title very thoroughly explains the scope of the work. The Vocabulary had existed in manuscript for many years. For some reason, difficult to explain, Borrow had omitted from this Vocabulary a number of the gypsy words that appeared in Lavengro and The Romany Rye. In spite of this “Mr Borrow’s present vocabulary makes a goodly show,” wrote F. H. Groome, “. . . containing no fewer than fourteen hundred words, of which about fifty will be entirely new to those who only know Romany in books.” [463a]
After praising the Gypsy songs as the best portion of the book, Groome proceeds:
“Of his prose I cannot say so much. It is the Romany of the study rather than of the tents [!] Mr Borrow has attempted to rehabilitate English Romany by enduing it with forms and inflections, of which some are still rarely to be heard, some extinct, and others absolutely incorrect; while Mr Leland has been content to give it as it really is. Of the two methods I cannot doubt that most readers will agree with me in thinking that Mr Leland’s is the more satisfactory.” [463b]
The Athenæum sternly rebuked Borrow for seeming “to make the mistake of confounding the amount of Rommanis which he has collected in this book with the actual extent of the language itself.” The reviewer pays a somewhat grudging tribute to other portions of the book, the accounts of the Gypsyries and the biographical particulars of the Romany worthies, but the work suffers by comparison with those of Paspati and Leland. He acknowledges that Borrow was one of the pioneers of those who gave accounts of the Gypsies in English, who gave to many their present taste for Gypsy matters,
“but,” he proceeds, “we cannot allow merely sentimental considerations to prevent us from telling the honest truth. The fact is that the Romano Lavo-Lil is nothing more than a réchauffé of the materials collected by Mr Borrow at an early stage of his investigations, and nearly every word and every phrase may be found in one form or another in his earlier works. Whether or not Mr Borrow has in the course of his long experience become the deep Gypsy which he has always been supposed to be, we cannot say; but it is certain that his present book contains little more than he gave to the public forty years ago, and does not by any means represent the present state of knowledge on the subject. But at the present day, when comparative philology has made such strides, and when want of accurate scholarship is as little tolerated in strange and remote languages as in classical literature, the Romano Lavo-Lil is, to speak mildly, an anachronism.”
This notice, if Borrow read it, must have been very bitter to him. All the loyalty to, and enthusiasm for, Borrow cannot disguise the fact that his work, as far as the Gypsies were concerned, was finished. He had first explored the path, but others had followed and levelled it into a thoroughfare, and Borrow found his facts and theories obsolete—a humiliating discovery to a man so shy, so proud, and so sensitive.
The Romano Lavo-Lil was Borrow’s swan song. He lived for another seven years; but as far as the world was concerned he was dead. In an obituary notice of Robert Latham, Mr Watts-Dunton tells a story that emphasizes how thoroughly his existence had been forgotten. At one of Mrs Procter’s “at homes” he was talking of Latham and Borrow, but when he happened to mention that both men were still alive, that is in the early Seventies, and that quite recently he had been in the company of each on separate occasions, he found that he had lost caste in the eyes of his hearers for talking about men as alive “who were well known to have been dead years ago.” [464]
There is an interesting picture of Borrow as he appeared in the Seventies, given by F. H. Groome, who writes:
“The first time I ever saw him was at Ascot, the Wednesday evening of the Cup week in, I think, the year 1872. I was stopping at a wayside inn, half-a-mile on the Windsor road, just opposite which inn there was a great encampment of Gypsies. One of their lads had on the Tuesday affronted a soldier; so two or three hundred redcoats came over from Windsor, intending to wreck the camp. There was a babel of cursing and screaming, much brandishing of belts and tent-rods, when suddenly an arbiter appeared, a white-haired, brown-eyed, calm Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of ale—in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were sworn friends over a loving-quart. “Mr Burroughs,” said one of the Gypsies (it is the name by which Gypsies still speak of him), and I knew that at last I had met him whom of all men I most wished to meet. Matty Cooper, the ‘celebrated Windsor Frog’ (vide Leland), presented me as ‘a young gentleman, Rya, a scholard from Oxford’; and ‘H’m,’ quoth Colossus, ‘a good many fools come from Oxford.’ It was a bad beginning, but it ended well, by his asking me to walk with him to the station, and on the way inviting me to call on him in London. I did so, but not until nearly a twelve-month afterwards, when I found him in Hereford Square, and when he set strong ale before me, as again on the occasion of my third and last meeting with him in the tent of our common acquaintance, Shadrach Herne, at the Potteries, Notting Hill. Both these times we had much talk together, but I remember only that it was partly about East Anglia, and more about ‘things of Egypt.’ Conversations twenty years old are easy to imagine, hard to reproduce . . . Probably Borrow asked me the Romany for ‘frying-pan,’ and I modestly answered, ‘Either maasalli or tasseromengri’ (this is password No. 1), and then I may have asked him the Romany for ‘brick,’ to which he will have answered, that ‘there is no such word’ (this is No. 2). But one thing I do remember, that he was frank and kindly, interesting and interested; I was only a lad, and he was verging on seventy. I could tell him about a few ‘travellers’ whom he had not recently seen—Charlie Pinfold, the hoary polygamist, Plato and Mantis Buckland, Cinderella Petulengro, and Old Tom Oliver (‘Ha! so he has seen Tom Oliver,’ I seem to remember that).” [466a]
There was nothing now to keep Borrow in London. Nobody wanted to read his books, other stars had risen in the East. His publisher had exclaimed with energy, as Borrow himself would relate, “I want to meet with good writers, but there are none to be had: I want a man who can write like Ecclesiastes.” There is something tragic in the account that Mr Watts-Dunton gives of his last encounter with Borrow:
“The last time I ever saw him,” he writes, “was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West-End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it . . . I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with ‘the last of Borrow,’ I shall never forget it.” [466b]
In 1874 Borrow withdrew to Oulton, there to end his lonely life, his spirit seeming to enjoy the dreary solitude of the Cottage, with its mournful surroundings. His stepdaughter, the Henrietta of old, remained in London with her husband, and Borrow’s loneliness was complete. Sometimes he was to be seen stalking along the highways at a great pace, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a Spanish cloak, a tragic figure of solitude and despair, speaking to no one, no one daring to speak to him, who locally was considered as “a funny tempered man.”
In a fragment of a letter from Edward FitzGerald to W. B. Donne (June 1874), there is an interesting reference to Borrow:—
“Wait!” he writes. “I have one little thing to tell you, which, little as it is, is worth all the rest, if you don’t know already.
“Borrow—has got back to his own Oulton Lodge. My Nephew, Edmund Kerrich, now Adjutant to some Volunteer Battalion, wants a house near, not in, Lowestoft: and got some Agent to apply for Borrow’s—who sent word that he is himself there—an old Man—wanting Retirement, etc. This was the account Edmund got.
“I saw in some Athenæum a somewhat contemptuous notice of G. B.’s ‘Rommany Lil’ or whatever the name is. I can easily understand that B. should not meddle with science of any sort; but some years ago he would not have liked to be told so, however Old Age may have cooled him now.” [467]
Borrow sent a message to FitzGerald through Edmund Kerrich of Geldeston, asking him to visit Oulton Cottage. The reply shows all the sweetness of the writer’s nature:—
Little Grange, Woodbridge,
Jan. 10/75.Dear Borrow,—My nephew Kerrich told me of a very kind invitation that you sent to me, through him, some while ago. I think the more of it because I imagine, from what I have heard, that you have slunk away from human company as much—as I have! For the last fifteen years I have not visited any one of my very oldest friends, except the daughters of my old [?friend] George Crabbe, and Donne—once only, and for half a day, just to assure myself by—my own eyes how he was after the severe illness he had last year, and which he never will quite recover from, I think; though he looked and moved better than I expected.
Well—to tell you all about why I have thus fallen from my company would be a tedious thing, and all about one’s self too—whom, Montaigne says, one never talks about without detriment to the person talked about. Suffice to say, ‘so it is’; and one’s friends, however kind and ‘loyal’ (as the phrase goes), do manage to exist and enjoy themselves pretty reasonably without one.
So with me. And is it not much the same with you also? Are you not glad now to be mainly alone, and find company a heavier burden than the grasshopper? If one ever had this solitary habit, it is not likely to alter for the better as one grows older—as one grows old. I like to think over my old friends. There they are, lingering as ineffaceable portraits—done in the prime of life—in my memory. Perhaps we should not like one another so well after a fifteen-years separation, when all of us change and most of us for the worse. I do not say that would be your case; but you must, at any rate, be less inclined to disturb the settled repose into which you, I suppose, have fallen. I remember first seeing you at Oulton, some twenty-five years ago; then at Donne’s in London; then at my own happy home in Regent’s Park; then ditto at Gorleston—after which, I have seen nobody, except the nephews and nieces left me by my good sister Kerrich.
So shall things rest? I could not go to you, after refusing all this while to go to older—if not better—friends, fellow Collegians, fellow schoolfellows; and yet will you still believe me (as I hope they do)
Yours and theirs sincerely,
Edward FitzGerald.
Borrow was still a remarkably robust man. Mr Watts-Dunton tells how,
“At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o’clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter Scott’s eyes good to see. Finally, he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchetty, and odd as to draw them. This was the humour of Borrow.” [469a]
He was seventy years of age when, one March day during a bitterly-cold east wind, he stripped and plunged into one of the Fen Ponds in Richmond Park, which was covered with ice, and dived and swam under the water for a time, reappearing some distance from the spot where he had entered the water. [469b]
The remaining years of Borrow’s life were spent in Suffolk. He would frequently go to Norwich, however; for the old city seemed to draw him irresistibly from his hermitage. He would take a lodging there, and spend much of his time occupying a certain chair in the Norfolk Hotel in St Giles. There were so many old associations with Norwich that made it appear home to him. He was possessed of sentiment in plenty, it had caused his old mother to wish that “dear George would not have such fancies about the old house” in Willow Lane.
Later, Dr and Mrs MacOubrey removed to Oulton (about 1878), and Borrow’s life became less dismal and lonely; but he was nearing his end. Sometimes there would be a flash of that old unconquerable spirit. His stepdaughter relates how,
“on the 21st of November [1878], the place [the farm] having been going to decay for fourteen months, Mr Palmer [the tenant] called to demand that Mr Borrow should put it in repair; otherwise he would do it himself and send in the bills, saying, ‘I don’t care for the old farm or you either,’ and several other insulting things; whereupon Mr Borrow remarked very calmly, ‘Sir, you came in by that door, you can go out by it’—and so it ended.” [470a]
It was on an occasion such as this that Borrow yearned for a son to knock the rascal down. He was an infirm man, his body feeling the wear and tear of the strenuous open-air life he had led. In 1879, according to Mrs MacOubrey, he was “unable to walk as far as the white gate,” the boundary of his estate. He was obviously breaking-up very rapidly. The surroundings appear to have reflected the gloomy nature of the master of the estate. The house was dilapidated, “with everything about it more or less untidy,” [470b] although at this period his income amounted to upwards of five hundred pounds a year.
“During his latter years,” writes Mr W. A. Dutt, “his tall, erect, somewhat mysterious figure was often seen in the early hours of summer mornings or late at night on the lonely pathways that wind in and out from the banks of Oulton Broad . . . the village children used to hush their voices and draw aside at his approach. They looked upon him with fear and awe. . . . In his heart, Borrow was fond of the little ones, though it amused him to watch the impression his strange personality made upon them. Older people he seldom spoke to when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would flash out such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows as would make timid country folk hasten on their way filled with vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye.” [470c]
Even to the last the old sensitiveness occasionally flashed out, as on the occasion of a visit from the Vicar of Lowestoft, who drove over with an acquaintance of Borrow’s to make the hermit’s acquaintance. The visitor was so incautious as to ask the age of his host, when, with Johnsonian emphasis, came the reply: “Sir, I tell my age to no man!” This occurred some time during the year 1880. Immediately his discomfited guest had departed, Borrow withdrew to the summer-house, where he drew up the following apothegm on “People’s Age”:—
“Never talk to people about their age. Call a boy a boy, and he will fly into a passion and say, ‘Not quite so much of a boy either; I’m a young man.’ Tell an elderly person that he’s not so young as he was, and you will make him hate you for life. Compliment a man of eighty-five on the venerableness of his appearance, and he will shriek out: ‘No more venerable than yourself,’ and will perhaps hit you with his crutch.”
On 1st December 1880 Borrow sent for his solicitor from Lowestoft, and made his will, by which he bequeathed all his property, real and personal, to his stepdaughter Henrietta, devising that it should be held in trust for her by his friend Elizabeth Harvey. It was evidently Borrow’s intention so to tie up the bequest that Dr MacOubrey could not in any way touch his wife’s estate.
The end came suddenly. On the morning of 26th July 1881 Dr and Mrs MacOubrey drove into Lowestoft, leaving Borrow alone in the house. When they returned he was dead. Throughout his life Borrow had been a solitary, and it seems fitting that he should die alone. It has been urged against his stepdaughter that she disregarded Borrow’s appeals not to be left alone in the house, as he felt himself to be dying. He may have made similar requests on other occasions; still, whatever the facts, it was strange to leave so old and so infirm a man quite unattended.
On 4th August the body was brought to London, and buried beside that of Mrs George Borrow in Brompton Cemetery. On the stone, which is what is known as a saddle-back, is inscribed:
In Loving Remembrance of
George Henry Borrow, Esq.,
WHO DIED JULY 26TH, 1881 (AT HIS RESIDENCE “OULTON COTTAGE, SUFFOLK”)
IN HIS 79TH YEAR.
(Author of The Bible in Spain, Lavengro—and other works.)
“IN HOPE OF A GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.”