To Dr. John Bowring

7 Museum Street, Jany., 1830.

My dear Sir,—I write this to inform you that I am at No. 7 Museum St., Bloomsbury.  I have been obliged to decamp from Russell St. for the cogent reason of an execution having been sent into the house, and I thought myself happy in escaping with my things.  I have got half of the Manuscript from Mr. Richard Taylor, but many of the pages must be rewritten owing to their being torn, etc.  He is printing the prospectus, but a proof has not yet been struck off.  Send me some as soon as you get them.  I will send one with a letter to H. G.—Yours eternally,

G. Borrow.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 Museum Street, Jany. 25, 1830.

My dear Sir,—I find that you called at mine, I am sorry that I was not at home.  I have been to Richard Taylor, and you will have the prospectuses this afternoon.  I have translated Ferroe’s “Worthiness of Virtue” for you, and the two other pieces I shall translate this evening, and you shall have them all when I come on Wednesday evening.  If I can at all assist you in anything, pray let me know, and I shall be proud to do it.—Yours most truly,

G. Borrow.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 Museum Street, Friday Evening, May 21, 1830.

My dear Sir,—I shall be happy to accept your invitation to meet Mr. Grundtvig to-morrow morning.  As at present no doubt seems to be entertained of Prince Leopold’s accepting the sovereignty of Greece, would you have any objection to write to him concerning me?  I should be very happy to go to Greece in his service.  I do not wish to go in a civil or domestic capacity, and I have, moreover, no doubt that all such situations have been long since filled up; I wish to go in a military one, for which I am qualified by birth and early habits.  You might inform the Prince that I have been for years on the Commander-in-Chief’s List for a commission, but that I have not had sufficient interest to procure an appointment.  One of my reasons for wishing to reside in Greece is, that the mines of Eastern Literature would be acceptable to me.  I should soon become an adept in Turkish, and would weave and transmit to you such an anthology as would gladden your very heart.  As for The Songs of Scandinavia, all the ballads would be ready before departure, and as I should take books, I would in a few months send you translations of the modern lyric poetry.  I hope this letter will not displease you.  I do not write it from flightiness, but from thoughtfulness.  I am uneasy to find myself at four and twenty drifting on the sea of the world, and likely to continue so.—Yours most sincerely,

G. Borrow.

To Dr. John Bowring

7 Museum Street, June 7, 1830.

My dear Sir,—I have looked over Mr. Grundtvig’s manuscripts.  It is a very long affair, and the language is Norman-Saxon.  £40 would not be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told him at the museum.  However, as I am doing nothing particular at present, and as I might learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for £20.  He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then if you please you may recommend me.  The character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my competency.—Yours most truly,

CHAPTER XIV
Borrow and The Bible Society

Bleibe nicht am Boden heften,
Frisch gewagt und frisch hinaus!
Kopf und Arm, mit heitern Kräften,
Ueberall sind sie zu Haus;
Wo wir uns der Sonne freuen,
Sind wir jede Sorge los;
Dass wir uns in ihr zerstreuen,
Darum ist die Welt so gross. [91a]

Here was Borrow’s opportunity indeed.  Verily I believe that it would have been the same had it been a society for the propagation of the writings of Defoe among the Persians.  With what zest would Borrow have undertaken to translate Moll Flanders and Captain Singleton into the languages of Hafiz and Omar!  But the Bible Society was ready to his hand, and Borrow did nothing by halves.  A good hater and a staunch friend, he was loyal to the Bible Society in no half-hearted way, and not the most pronounced quarrel with forces obviously quite out of tune with his nature led to any real slackening of that loyalty.  In the end a portion of his property went to swell the Bible Society’s funds. [91b]

When Borrow became one of its servants, the Bible Society was only in its third decade.  It was founded in the year 1804, and had the names of William Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, and Zachary Macaulay on its first committee.  To circulate the authorised version of the Bible without note or comment was the first ideal that these worthy men set before them; never to the entire satisfaction of the great printing organisations, which already had a considerable financial interest in such a circulation.  For long years the words “Sold under cost price” upon the Bibles of the Society excited mingled feelings among those interested in the book trade.  The Society’s first idea was limited to Bibles in the English tongue.  This was speedily modified.  A Bible Society was set up in Nuremberg to which money was granted by the parent organisation.  A Bible in the Welsh language was circulated broadcast through the Principality, and so the movement grew.  From the first it had one of its principal centres in Norwich, where Joseph John Gurney’s house was open to its committee, and at its annual gatherings at Earlham his sister Elizabeth Fry took a leading part, while Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, the famous preacher, and Legh Richmond, whose Dairyman’s Daughter Borrow failed to appreciate, were of the company.  “Uncles Buxton and Cunningham are here,” we find one of Joseph John Gurney’s daughters writing in describing a Bible Society gathering.  This was John Cunningham, rector of Harrow, and it was his brother who helped Borrow to his position in connection with the Society, as we shall see.  At the moment of these early meetings Borrow is but a boy, meeting Joseph Gurney on the banks of the river near Earlham, and listening to his discourse upon angling.  The work of the Bible Society in Russia may be said to have commenced when one John Paterson of Glasgow, who had been a missionary of the Congregational body, went to St. Petersburg during those critical months of 1812 that Napoleon was marching into Russia.  Paterson indeed, William Canton tells us, was “one of the last to behold the old Tartar wall and high brick towers” and other splendours of the Moscow which in a month or two were to be consumed by the flames.  Paterson was back again in St. Petersburg before the French were at the gates of Moscow, and it is noteworthy that while Moscow was burning, and the Czar was on his way to join his army, this remarkable Scot was submitting to Prince Galitzin a plan for a Bible Society in St. Petersburg, and a memorial to the Czar thereon:

The plan and memorial were examined by the Czar on the 18th (of December); with a stroke of his pen he gave his sanction—“So be it, Alexander”; and as he wrote, the last tattered remnants of the Grand Army struggled across the ice of the Niemen. [92]

The Society was formed in January 1813, and when the Czar returned to St. Petersburg in 1815, after the shattering of Napoleon’s power, he authorised a new translation of the Bible into modern Russian.  From Russia it was not a far cry, where the spirit of evangelisation held sway, to Manchuria and to China.  To these remote lands the Bible Society desired to send its literature.  In 1822 the gospel of St. Matthew was printed in St. Petersburg in Manchu.  Ten years later the type of the whole New Testament in that language was lying in the Russian capital.  “All that was required was a Manchu scholar to see the work through the press.”  Here came the chance for Borrow.  At this period there resided at Oulton Hall, Suffolk, but a few miles from Norwich, a family of the name of Skepper, Edmund and Anne his wife, with their two children, Breame and Mary.  Mary married in 1817 one Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.  He died afterwards of consumption.  A posthumous child of the marriage, Henrietta Mary, was born two months after her father died.  Mary Clarke, as she now was, threw herself with zest into all the religious enthusiasms of the locality, and the Rev. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of St. Margaret’s, Lowestoft, was one of her friends.  Borrow had met Mary Clarke on one of her visits to Lowestoft, and she had doubtless been impressed with his fine presence, to say nothing of the intelligence and varied learning of the young man.  The following note, the first communication I can find from Borrow to his future wife, indicates how matters stood at the time:

That Borrow owed his introduction to Mr. Cunningham to Mrs. Clarke is clear, although Cunningham, in his letter to the Bible Society urging the claims of Borrow, refers to the fact that a “young farmer” in the neighbourhood had introduced him.  This was probably her brother, Breame Skepper.  Dr. Knapp was of the opinion that Joseph John Gurney obtained Borrow his appointment, but the recently published correspondence of Borrow with the Bible Society makes it clear that Cunningham wrote—on 27th December, 1832—recommending Borrow to the secretary, the Rev. Andrew Brandram.  How little he knew of Borrow is indicated by the fact that he referred to him as “independent in circumstances.”  Brandram told Caroline Fox many years afterwards that Gurney had effected the introduction, but this was merely a lapse of memory.  In fact we find Borrow asking to be allowed to meet Gurney before his departure.  In any case he has himself told us, in one of the brief biographies of himself that he wrote, that he promptly walked to London, covering the whole distance of 112 miles in twenty-seven hours, and that his expenses amounted to 5½d. laid out in a pint of ale, a half-pint of milk, a roll of bread and two apples.  He reached London in the early morning, called at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl Street, and was kindly received by Andrew Brandram and Joseph Jowett, the two secretaries.  He was asked if he would care to learn Manchu, and go to St. Petersburg.  He was given six months for the task, and doubtless also some money on account.  He returned to Norwich more luxuriously—by mail coach.  In June, 1833, we find a letter from Borrow to Jowett, dated from Willow Lane, Norwich, and commencing, “I have mastered Manchu, and I should feel obliged by your informing the committee of the fact, and also my excellent friend, Mr. Brandram.”  A long reply to this by Jowett is among my Borrow Papers, but the Bible Society clearly kept copies of its letters, and a portion of this one has been printed.  It shows that Borrow went through much heart-burning before his destiny was finally settled.  At last he was again invited to London, and found himself as one of two candidates for the privilege of going to Russia.  The examination consisted of a Manchu hymn, of which Borrow’s version seems to have proved the more acceptable, and he afterwards printed it in his Targum.  Finally, on the 5th of July, 1833, Borrow received a letter from Jowett offering him the appointment with a salary of £200 a year and expenses.  The letter contained his first lesson in the then unaccustomed discipline of the Evangelical vocabulary.  He was not at first at home in the precise measure of unction required by his new friends.  Borrow had spoken of the prospect of becoming “useful to the Deity, to man, and to himself.”  “Doubtless you meant,” commented Jowett, “the prospect of glorifying God,” and Jowett frankly tells him that his tone of confidence in speaking of himself “had alarmed some of the excellent members of our committee.”  Borrow adapted himself at once, and is congratulated by Jowett in a later communication upon the “truly Christian” spirit of his next letter.

By an interesting coincidence there was living in Norwich at the moment when Borrow was about to leave it, a man who had long identified himself with good causes in Russia, and had lived in that country for a considerable period of his life.  John Venning was born in Totnes in 1776, and he is buried—in the Rosary Cemetery—at Norwich, where he died in 1858, after twenty-eight years’ residence in that city.  He started for St. Petersburg four years after John Howard had died, ostensibly on behalf of the commercial house with which he was associated, but with the intention of carrying on the work of that great man in prison reform.  Alexander I. was on the throne, and he made Venning his friend, frequently conversing with him upon religious subjects.  He became the treasurer of a society for the humanising of Russian prisons; but when Nicholas became Czar in 1825 Venning’s work became more difficult, though the Emperor was sympathetic.  Venning returned to England in 1830, and thus opportunely, in 1833, was able to give his fellow-townsman letters of introduction to Prince Galitzin and other Russian notables, so that Borrow was able to set forth under the happiest auspices—with an entire change of conditions from those eight years of semi-starvation that he was now to leave behind him for ever.  Borrow left London for St. Petersburg on 31st July, 1833, not forgetting to pay his mother before he left the £17 he had had to borrow during his time of stress.  Always devoted to his mother, Borrow sent her sums of money at intervals from the moment the power of earning came to him.  We shall never know, we can only surmise, something of the self-sacrificing devotion of that mother during the years in which Borrow had failed to find remunerative work.  Wherever he wandered there had always been a home in the Willow Lane cottage.  It is probable that much the greater part of the period of his eight years of penury was spent under her roof.  Yet we may be sure that the good mother never once reproached her son.  She had just that touch of idealism in her character that made for faith and hope.  In any case never more was Borrow to suffer penury, or to be a burden on his mother.  Henceforth, to her dying day, she was to be his devoted care.

CHAPTER XV
St. Petersburg and John P. Hasfeld

Borrow travelled by way of Hamburg and Lübeck to Travemünde, whence he went by sea to St. Petersburg, now called Petrograd, where he arrived on the twentieth of August, 1833.  He was back in London in September, 1835, and thus it will be seen that he spent two years in Russia.  After the hard life he had led, everything was now rose-coloured.  “Petersburg is the finest city in the world,” he wrote to Mr. Jowett; “neither London nor Paris nor any other European capital which I have visited has sufficient pretensions to enter into comparison with it in respect to beauty and grandeur.”  But the striking thing about Borrow in these early years was his capacity for making friends.  He had not been a week in St. Petersburg before he had gained the regard of one William Glen, who, in 1825, had been engaged by the Bible Society to translate the Old Testament into Persian.  The clever Scot, of whom Borrow was informed by a competent judge that he was “a Persian scholar of the first water,” was probably too heretical for the Society, which recalled him, much to his chagrin.  “He is a very learned man, but of very simple and unassuming manners,” wrote Borrow to Jowett.  His version of the Psalms appeared in 1830, and of Proverbs in 1831.  Thus he was going home in despair, but seems to have had “good talk” on the way with Borrow in St. Petersburg.  In 1845 his complete Old Testament in Persian appeared in Edinburgh.  This William Glen has been confused with another William Glen, a law student, who taught Carlyle Greek, but they had nothing in common.  Borrow and Carlyle could not possibly have had friends in common.  Borrow was drawn towards this William Glen by his enthusiasm for the Persian language.  But Glen departed out of his life very quickly.  Hasfeld, who entered it about the same time, was to stay longer.  Hasfeld was a Dane, now thirty-three years of age, who, after a period in the Foreign Office at Copenhagen, had come to St. Petersburg as an interpreter to the Danish Legation, but made quite a good income as a professor of European languages in cadet schools and elsewhere.  The English language and literature would seem to have been his favourite topic.  His friendship for Borrow was a great factor in Borrow’s life in Russia and elsewhere.  If Borrow’s letters to Hasfeld should ever come to light, they will prove the best that he wrote.  Hasfeld’s letters to Borrow were preserved by him.  Three of them are in my possession.  Others were secured by Dr. Knapp, who made far too little use of them.  They are all written in Danish on foreign notepaper: flowery, grandiloquent productions we may admit, but if we may judge a man by his correspondents, we have a revelation of a more human Borrow than the correspondence with the friends at Earl Street reveals:

St. Petersburg, 6/18 November, 1836.

My dear Friend,—Much water has run through the Neva since I last wrote to you, my last letter was dated 5/17th April; the last letter I received from you was dated Madrid, 23rd May, and I now see with regret that it is still unanswered; it is, however, a good thing that I have not written as often to you as I have thought about you, for otherwise you would have received a couple of letters daily, because the sun never sets without you, my lean friend, entering into my imagination.  I received the Spanish letter a day or two before I left for Stockholm, and it made the journey with me, for it was in my mind to send you an epistle from Svea’s capital, but there were so many petty hindrances that I was nearly forgetting myself, let alone correspondence.  I lived in Stockholm as if each day were to be my last, swam in champagne, or rested in girls’ embraces.  You doubtless blush for me; you may do so, but don’t think that that conviction will murder my almost shameless candour, the only virtue which I possess, in a superfluous degree.  In Sweden I tried to be lovable, and succeeded, to the astonishment of myself and everybody else.  I reaped the reward on the most beautiful lips, which only too often had to complain that the fascinating Dane was faithless like the foam of the sea and the ice of spring.  Every wrinkle which seriousness had impressed on my face vanished in joy and smiles; my frozen heart melted and pulsed with the rapid beat of gladness; in short, I was not recognisable.  Now I have come back to my old wrinkles, and make sacrifice again on the altar of friendship, and when the incense, this letter, reaches you, then prove to me your pleasure, wherever you may be, and let an echo of friendship’s voice resound from Granada’s Alhambra or Sahara’s deserts.  But I know that you, good soul, will write and give me great pleasure by informing me that you are happy and well; when I get a letter from you my heart rejoices, and I feel as if I were happy, and that is what happiness consists of.  Therefore let your soldierlike letters march promptly to their place of arms—paper—and move in close columns to St. Petersburg, where they will find warm winter quarters.  I have received a letter from my correspondent in London, Mr. Edward Thomas Allan, No. 11 North Audley St.; he informs me that my manuscript has been promenading about, calling on publishers without having been well received; some of them would not even look at it, because it smelt of Russian leather; others kept it for three or six weeks and sent it back with “Thanks for the loan.”  They probably used it to get rid of the moth out of their old clothes.  It first went to Longman and Co.’s, Paternoster Row; Bull of Hollis St.; Saunders and Otley, Conduit St.; John Murray of Albemarle St., who kept it for three weeks; and finally it went to Bentley of New Burlington St., who kept it for SIX weeks and returned it; now it is to pay a visit to a Mr. Colburn, and if he won’t have the abandoned child, I will myself care for it.  If this finds you in London, which is quite possible, see whether you can do anything for me in this matter.  Thank God, I shall not buy bread with the shillings I perhaps may get for a work which has cost me seventy nights, for I cannot work during the day.  In The Athenæum, No. 436, issued on the 3rd March this year, you will find an article which I wrote, and in which you are referred to; in the same paper you will also find an extract from my translation.  I hope that article will meet with your approbation.  Ivan Semionewitch sends his kind regards to you.  I dare not write any more, for then I should make the letter a double one, and it may perhaps go after you to the continent; if it reaches you in England, write AT ONCE to your sincere friend,

J. P. Hasfeld.

My address is, Stieglitz and Co., St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg, 9th/21st July, 1842.

Dear Friend,—I do not know how I shall begin, for you have been a long time without any news from me, and the fault is mine, for the last letter was from you; as a matter of fact, I did produce a long letter for you last year in September, but you did not get it, because it was too long to send by post and I had no other opportunity, so that, as I am almost tired of the letter, you shall, nevertheless, get it one day, for perhaps you will find something interesting in it; I cannot do so, for I never like to read over my own letters.  Six days ago I commenced my old hermit life; my sisters left me on the 3rd/15th July, and are now, with God’s help, in Denmark.  They left with the French steamer Amsterdam, and had two Russian ladies with them, who are to spend a few months with us and visit the sea watering-places.  These ladies are the Misses Koladkin, and have learnt English from me, and became my sisters’ friends as soon as they could understand each other.  My sisters have also made such good progress in your language that they would be able to arouse your astonishment.  They read and understand everything in English, and, thank you, very much for the pleasure you gave them with your “Targum”; they know how to appreciate “King Christian stood by the high mast,” and everything which you have translated of languages with which they are acquainted.  They have not had more than sixty real lessons in English.  After they had taken ten lessons, I began, to their great despair, to speak English, and only gave them a Danish translation when it was absolutely necessary.  The result was that they became so accustomed to English that it scarcely ever occurs to them to speak Danish together; when one cannot get away from me one must learn from me.  The brothers and sisters remaining behind are now also to go to school when they get home, for they have recognised how pleasant it is to speak a language which servants and those around one do not understand.  During all the winter my dearest thought was how, this summer, I was going to visit my long, good friend, who was previously lean and who is now fat, and how I should let him fatten me a little, so as to be able to withstand better the long winter in Russia; I would then in the autumn, like the bears, go into my winter lair fat and sleek, and of all these romantic thoughts none has materialised, but I have always had the joy of thinking them and of continuing them; I can feel that I smile when such ideas run through my mind.  I am convinced that if I had nothing else to do than to employ my mind with pleasant thoughts, I should become fat on thoughts alone.  The principal reason why this real pleasure journey had to be postponed, was that my eldest sister, Hanna, became ill about Easter, and it was not until the end of June that she was well enough to travel.  I will not speak about the confusion which a sick lady can cause in a bachelor’s house, occasionally I almost lost my patience.  For the amount of roubles which that illness cost I could very well have travelled to America and back again to St. Petersburg; I have, however, the consolation in my reasonable trouble that the money which the doctor and chemist have received was well spent.  The lady got about again after she had caused me and Augusta just as much pain, if not more, than she herself suffered.  Perhaps you know how amiable people are when they suffer from liver trouble; I hope you may never get it.  I am not anxious to have it either, for you may do what the devil you like for such persons, and even then they are not satisfied.  We have had great festivals here by reason of the Emperor’s marriage; I did not move a step to see the pageantry; moreover, it is difficult to find anything fresh in it which would afford me enjoyment; I have seen illuminations and fireworks, the only attractive thing there was must have been the King of Prussia; but as I do not know that good man, I have not very great interest in him either; nor, so I am told, did he ask for me, and he went away without troubling himself in the slightest about me; it was a good thing that I did not bother him.

J. P. H.

St. Petersburg, 26th April/8th May, 1858.

Dear Friend,—I thank you for your friendly letter of the 12th April, and also for the invitation to visit you.  I am thinking of leaving Russia soon, perhaps permanently, for twenty-seven years are enough of this climate.  It is as yet undecided when I leave, for it depends on business matters which must be settled, but I hope it will be soon.  What I shall do I do not yet know either, but I shall have enough to live on; perhaps I shall settle down in Denmark.  It is very probable that I shall come to London in the summer, and then I shall soon be at Yarmouth with you, my old true friend.  It was a good thing that you at last wrote, for it would have been too bad to extend your disinclination to write letters even to me.  The last period one stays in a country is strange, and I have many persons whom I have to separate from.  If you want anything done in Russia, let me know promptly; when I am in movement I will write, so that you may know where I am and what has become of me.  I have been ill nearly all the winter, but now feel daily better, and when I get on the water I shall soon be well.  We have already had hot and thundery weather, but it has now become cool again.  I have already sold the greater part of my furniture, and am living in furnished apartments which cost me seventy roubles per month; I shall soon be tired of that.  I am expecting a letter from Denmark which will settle matters, and then I can get ready and spread my wings to get out into the world, for this is not the world, but Russia.  I see you have changed houses, for last year you lived at No. 37.  With kindest regards to your dear ones, I am, dear friend, yours sincerely,

John P. Hasfeld.

CHAPTER XVI
The Manchu Bible—“Targum”—“The Talisman”

As for the absurd object for which Borrow was sent to Russia the less said the better.  Any of my readers who care for the survey of human folly associated with undiscriminating Bible worship can read of this particular example in the Society’s own records. [102]  The Bible Society wanted the Bible to be set up in the Manchu language, the official language of the Chinese Court and Government.  A Russian scholar named Lipóftsof, who had spent twenty years in China, undertook in 1821 to translate the New Testament into Manchu for £560.  Lipóftsof had done his work in 1826, and had sent two manuscript copies to London.  In 1832 the Rev. William Swan of the London Missionary Society in passing through St. Petersburg discovered a transcript of a large part of the Old and New Testament in Manchu, made by one Pierot, a French Jesuit, many years before.  This transcript was unavailable, but a second was soon afterwards forthcoming for free publication if a qualified Manchu scholar could be found to see it through the Press.  Mr. Swan’s communication of these facts to the Bible Society in London gave Borrow his opportunity.  It was his task to find the printers, buy the paper, and hire the qualified compositors for setting the type.  It must be admitted Borrow worked hard for his £200 a year.  First he had to ask the diplomatists for permission from the Russian Government, not now so friendly to British missionary zeal.  The Russian Bible Society had been suppressed in 1826.  He succeeded here.  Then he had to continue his studies in the Manchu language.  He had written from Norwich to Mr. Jowett on 9th June, 1833, “I have mastered Manchu,” but on 20th January, 1834, we find him writing to the same correspondent: “I pay about six shillings, English, for each lesson, which I grudge not, for the perfect acquirement of Manchu is one of my most ardent wishes.” [103a]  Then he found the printers—a German firm, Schultz and Beneze—who probably printed the two little books of Borrow’s own for him as a “make weight.”  He purchased paper for his Manchu translation with an ability that would have done credit to a modern newspaper manager.  Every detail of these transactions is given in his letters to the Bible Society, and one cannot but be amused at Borrow’s explanation to the Reverend Secretary of the little subterfuges by which he proposed to “best” the godless for the benefit of the godly:

Knowing but too well that it is the general opinion of the people of this country that Englishmen are made of gold, and that it is only necessary to ask the most extravagant price for any article in order to obtain it, I told no person, to whom I applied, who I was, or of what country; and I believe I was supposed to be a German. [103b]

Then came the composing or setting up of the type of the book.  When Borrow was called to account by his London employers, who were not sure whether he was wasting time, he replied: “I have been working in the printing-office as a common compositor, between ten and thirteen hours every day.”  In another letter Borrow records further difficulties with the printers after the composition had been effected.  Several of the working printers, it appears, “went away in disgust.”  Then he adds:

I was resolved “to do or die,” and, instead of distressing and perplexing the Committee with complaints, to write nothing until I could write something perfectly satisfactory, as I now can; and to bring about that result I have spared neither myself nor my own money.  I have toiled in a close printing-office the whole day, during ninety degrees of heat, for the purpose of setting an example, and have bribed people to work whom nothing but bribes would induce so to do.  I am obliged to say all this in self-justification.  No member of the Bible Society would ever have heard a syllable respecting what I have undergone but for the question, “What has Mr. Borrow been about?” [103c]

It is not my intention to add materially to the letters of Borrow from Russia and from Spain that have already been published, although many are in my possession.  They reveal an aspect of the life of Borrow that has been amply dealt with already, and it is an aspect that interests me but little.  Here, however, is one hitherto unpublished letter that throws much light upon Borrow’s work at this time, and shows, moreover, how well he was learning the cant phrases which found acceptance with his friends in Earl Street:

To the Rev. Andrew Brandram

St. Petersburg, 18th Oct., 1833.

Reverend Sir,—Supposing that you will not be displeased to hear how I am proceeding, I have taken the liberty to send a few lines by a friend [104] who is leaving Russia for England.  Since my arrival in Petersburg I have been occupied eight hours every day in transcribing a Manchu manuscript of the Old Testament belonging to Baron Schilling, and I am happy to be able to say that I have just completed the last of it, the Rev. Mr. Swan, the Scottish missionary, having before my arrival copied the previous part.  Mr. Swan departs to his mission in Siberia in about two months, during most part of which time I shall be engaged in collating our transcripts with the original.  It is a great blessing that the Bible Society has now prepared the whole of the Sacred Scriptures in Manchu, which will doubtless, when printed, prove of incalculable benefit to tens of millions who have hitherto been ignorant of the will of God, putting their trust in idols of wood and stone instead of in a crucified Saviour.  I am sorry to say that this country in respect to religion is in a state almost as lamentable as the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, and, notwithstanding the scantiness of their means in general for the most part, eagerly buy the tracts which a few pious English Christians cause to be printed and hawked in the neighbourhood.  But no one is better aware, Sir, than yourself that without the Scriptures men can never be brought to a true sense of their fallen and miserable state, and of the proper means to be employed to free themselves from the thraldom of Satan.  The last few copies which remained of the New Testament in Russian were purchased and distributed a few days ago, and it is lamentable to be compelled to state that at the present there appears no probability of another edition being permitted in the modern language.  It is true that there are near twenty thousand copies of the Sclavonic bible in the shop which is entrusted with the sale of the books of the late Russian Bible Society, but the Sclavonian translation is upwards of a thousand years old, having been made in the eighth century, and differs from the dialect spoken at present in Russia as much as the old Saxon does from the modern English.  Therefore it cannot be of the slightest utility to any but the learned, that is, to about ten individuals in one thousand.  I hope and trust that the Almighty will see fit to open some door for the illumination of this country, for it is not to be wondered if vice and crime be very prevalent here when the people are ignorant of the commandments of God.  Is it to be wondered that the people follow their every day pursuits on the Sabbath when they know not the unlawfulness of so doing?  Is it to be wondered that they steal when only in dread of the laws of the country, and are not deterred by the voice of conscience which only exists in a few?  This accounts for their profanation of their Sabbath, their proneness to theft, etc.  It is only surprising that so much goodness is to be found in their nature as is the case, for they are mild, polite, and obliging, and in most of their faces is an expression of great kindness and benignity.  I find that the slight knowledge which I possess of the Russian tongue is of the utmost service to me here, for the common opinion in England that only French and German are spoken by persons of any respectability in Petersburg is a great and injurious error.  The nobility, it is true, for the most part speak French when necessity obliges them, that is, when in company with foreigners who are ignorant of Russian, but the affairs of most people who arrive in Petersburg do not lie among the nobility, therefore a knowledge of the language of the country, unless you associate solely with your own countrymen, is indispensable.  The servants speak no language but their native tongue, and also nine out of ten of the middle classes of Russians.  I might as well address Mr. Lipóftsof, who is to be my coadjutor in the edition of the New Testament (in Manchu), in Hebrew as in either French or German, for though he can read the first a little he cannot speak a word of it or understand when spoken.  I will now conclude by wishing you all possible happiness.  I have the honour to be, etc.,

George Borrow.

When the work was done at so great a cost of money, and of energy and enthusiasm on the part of George Borrow, it was found that the books were useless.  Most of these New Testaments were afterwards sent out to China, and copies distributed by the missionaries there as opportunities offered.  It was found then—why not before is not explained—that the Manchus in China were able to read Chinese, preferring it to their own language, which indeed had become almost confined to official use. [105]  In fact what was a congenial livelihood for Borrow—this production of a Bible in the Manchu tongue—would have been death and desolation to the highly placed caste of the Chinese Empire had these been compelled to make use of Borrow’s efforts.  The experiment was not to be made.  The Bible Society had such comfort for their subscribers as is contained in the fact that in the year 1859 editions of St. Matthew and St. Mark were published in Manchu and Chinese side by side, the Manchu text being a reprint of that edited by Borrow, and that these books are still in use in Chinese Turkestan.  But Borrow had here to suffer one of the many disappointments of his life.  If not actually a gypsy he had all a gypsy’s love of wandering.  No impartial reader of the innumerable letters of this period can possibly claim that there was in Borrow any of the proselytising zeal or evangelical fervour which wins for the names of Henry Martyn and of David Livingstone so much honour and sympathy even among the least zealous.  At the best Borrow’s zeal for religion was of the order of Dr. Keate, the famous headmaster of Eton—“Blessed are the pure in heart . . . if you are not pure in heart, by God, I’ll flog you!”  Borrow had got his New Testaments printed, and he wanted to distribute them because he wished to see still more of the world, and had no lack of courage to carry out any well-defined scheme of the organisation which was employing him.  Borrow had thrown out constant hints in his letters home.  People had suggested to him, he said, that he was printing Testaments for which he would never find readers.  If you wish for readers, they had said to him, “you must seek them among the natives of Pekin and the fierce hordes of desert Tartary.”  And it was this last most courageous thing that Borrow proposed.  Let him, he said to Mr. Jowett, fix his headquarters at Kiachta upon the northern frontier of China.  The Society should have an agent there:

I am a person of few words, and will therefore state without circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent.  I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which town are Chinamen.  I am therefore not altogether unqualified for such an adventure. [106]

The Bible Committee considered this and other plans through the intervening months, and it seems clear that at the end they would have sanctioned some form of missionary work for Borrow in the Chinese Empire; but on 1st June, 1835, he wrote to say that the Russian Government, solicitous of maintaining good relations with China, would not grant him a passport across Siberia except on the condition that he carried not one single Manchu Bible thither. [107]  And so Borrow’s dreams were left unfulfilled.  He was never to see China or the farther East, although, because he was a dreamer and like his hero, Defoe, a bit of a liar, he often said he had.  In September, 1835, he was back in England awaiting in his mother’s home in Norwich further commissions from his friends of the Bible Society.