Janry. 30, 1869,

This is to certify that I transcribed The Bible in Spain, Lavengro, and some other works of my husband George Borrow, from the original manuscripts.  A considerable portion of the transcript of Lavengro was lost at the printing-office where the work was printed.

Mary Borrow.

Witness: Henrietta M., daughter of Mary Borrow.

It only remains here to state the melancholy fact once again that Lavengro, great work of literature as it is now universally acknowledged to be, was not “the book of the year.”  The three thousand copies of the first issue took more than twenty years to sell, and it was not until 1872 that Mr. Murray resolved to issue a cheaper edition.  The time was not ripe for the cult of the open road, the zest for “the wind on the heath” that our age shares so keenly.

The moment was an awful one, when George Borrow, the well-known author of Lavengro and The Bible in Spain, dashed into the surf and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the others were saved.  We ourselves have known this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring as was his deed, we have known him more than once to risk his life for others.  We are happy to add that he has sustained no material injury.

This paragraph in the Bury St. Edmunds newspaper was copied into the Plymouth Mail, and was there read by the Borrows of Cornwall, who had heard nothing of their relative, Thomas Borrow the army captain, and his family for fifty years or more.  One of Borrow’s cousins by marriage, Robert Taylor of Penquite, invited him to his father’s homeland, and Borrow accepted, glad, we may be sure, of any excuse for a renewal of his wanderings.  And so on the 23rd of December, 1853, Borrow made his way from Yarmouth to Plymouth by rail, and thence walked twenty miles to Liskeard, where quite a little party of Borrow’s cousins were present to greet him.  The Borrow family consisted of Henry Borrow of Looe Down, the father of Mrs. Taylor, William Borrow of Trethinnick, Thomas Nicholas and Elizabeth Borrow, all first cousins, except Anne Taylor.  Anne, talking to a friend, describes Borrow on this visit better than any one else has done:

A fine tall man of about six feet three; well-proportioned and not stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped hands;—altogether a person you would notice in a crowd.

I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written during this tour:

To Mrs. George Borrow

Penquite, 27th Janry. 1854.

My dear Carreta,—I just write you a line to inform you that I have got back safe here from the Land’s End.  I have received your two letters, and hope you received mine from the Land’s End.  It is probable that I shall yet visit one or two places before I leave Cornwall.  I am very much pleased with the country.  When you receive this if you please write a line by return of post I think you may; the Trethinnick people wish me to stay with them for a day or two.  When you see the Cobbs pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace has lost his aunt, he will miss her.  Love to Hen.  Ever yours, dearest,

G. Borrow.

(Keep this.)

It was the failure of The Romany Rye that prevented Borrow from writing the Cornish book that he had caused to be advertised in the flyleaf of that work.  Borrow would have made a beautiful book upon Cornwall.  Even the title, Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland, has music in it.  And he had in these twenty weeks made himself wonderfully well acquainted not only with the topography of the principality, but with its folklore and legend.  The gulf that ever separated the Borrow of the notebook and the unprepared letter from the Borrow of the finished manuscript was extraordinary, and we may deplore with Mr. Walling the absence of this among Borrow’s many unwritten books.

But these stories are less human than a notebook in my hands.  This is a long leather pocket-book, in which, under the title of “Expedition to the Isle of Man,” we have, written in pencil, a quite vivacious account of his adventures.  It records that Borrow and his wife and daughter set out through Bury to Peterborough, Rugby, and Liverpool.  It tells of the admiration with which Peterborough’s “noble cathedral” inspired him.  Liverpool he calls a “London in miniature”:

Strolled about town with my wife and Henrietta; wonderful docks and quays, where all the ships of the world seemed to be gathered—all the commerce of the world to be carried on; St. George’s Crescent; noble shops; strange people walking about, an Herculean mulatto, for example; the old china shop; cups with Chinese characters upon them; an horrible old Irishwoman with naked feet; Assize Hall a noble edifice.

The party left Liverpool on 20th August, and Borrow, when in sight of the Isle of Man, noticed a lofty ridge of mountains rising to the clouds:

Entered into conversation with two of the crew—Manx sailors—about the Manx language; one, a very tall man, said he knew only a very little of it as he was born on the coast, but that his companion, who came from the interior, knew it well; said it was a mere gibberish.  This I denied, and said it was an ancient language, and that it was like the Irish; his companion, a shorter man, in shirt sleeves, with a sharp, eager countenance, now opened his mouth and said I was right, and said that I was the only gentleman whom he had ever heard ask questions about the Manx language.  I spoke several Irish words which they understood.

When he had landed he continued his investigations, asking every peasant he met the Manx for this or that English word:

One man whom Borrow asked if there were any poets in Man replied that he did not believe there were, that the last Manx poet had died some time ago at Kirk Conoshine, and this man had translated Parnell’s Hermit beautifully, and the translation had been printed.  He inquired about the Runic Stones, which he continually transcribed.  Under date Thursday, 30th August, we find the following:

This day year I ascended Snowdon, and this morning, which is very fine, I propose to start on an expedition to Castletown and to return by Peel.

By far the best glimpses of Borrow during these years of Suffolk life are those contained in a letter contributed by his friend, Elizabeth Harvey, to The Eastern Daily Press of Norwich over the initials “E. H.”:

It is refreshing to read this tribute, from which I have omitted nothing salient, because a very disagreeable Borrow has somehow grown up into a tradition.  I note in reading some of the reviews of Dr. Knapp’s Life that he is charged, or half-charged, with suppressing facts, “because they do not reflect credit upon the subject of his biography.”  Now, there were really no facts to suppress.  Borrow was at times a very irritable man, he was a very self-centred one.  His egotism might even be pronounced amazing by those who had never met an author.  But those of us who have, recognise that with very few exceptions they are all egotists, although some conceal it from the unobservant more deftly than others.  Many authors of power have died young and unrecognised; but recognition has usually come to those men of genius who have lived into middle age.  It did not come to Borrow.  He had therefore a right to be soured.  This sourness found expression in many ways.  Borrow, most sound of churchmen, actually quarrelled with his vicar over the tempers of their respective dogs.  Both the vicar, the Rev. Edwin Proctor Denniss, and his parishioner wrote one another acrid letters.  Here is Borrow’s parting shot:

Circumstances over which Mr. Borrow has at present no control will occasionally bring him and his family under the same roof with Mr. Denniss; that roof, however, is the roof of the House of God, and the prayers of the Church of England are wholesome from whatever mouth they may proceed.

Present my compliments to Mr. Gladstone, and tell him that the Bible in Spain will have no objection to becoming one of the “Great Unpaid.”

Mr. Gladstone, although he had admired The Bible in Spain, and indeed had even suggested the modification of one of its sentences, did nothing.  Lockhart, Lord Clarendon, and others who were applied to were equally powerless or indifferent.  Borrow never got his magistracy.  To-day no man of equal eminence in literature could possibly have failed of so slight an ambition.  Moreover, Borrow wanted to be a J.P., not from mere snobbery as many might, but for a definite, practical object.  I am afraid he would not have made a very good magistrate, and perhaps inquiry had made that clear to the authorities.  Lastly, there was Borrow’s quarrel with the railway which came through his estate.  He had thoughts of removing to Bury, where Dr. Hake lived, or to Troston Hall, once the home of the interesting Capell Lofft.  But he was not to leave Oulton.  In intervals of holidays, journeys, and of sojourn in Yarmouth it was to remain his home to the end.  In 1849 his mother joined him at Oulton.  She had resided for thirty-three years at the Willow Lane Cottage.  She was now seventy-seven years of age.  She lived on near her son as a tenant of his tenant at Oulton Hall until her death nine years later, dying in 1858 in her eighty-seventh year.  She lies buried in Oulton Churchyard, with a tomb thus inscribed:

Sacred to the memory of Ann Borrow, widow of Captain Thomas Borrow.  She died on the 16th of August 1858, aged eighty-six years and seven months.  She was a good wife and a good mother.

During these years at Oulton we have many glimpses of Borrow.  Dr. Jessopp, for example, has recorded in The Athenæum newspaper his own hero-worship for the author of Lavengro, whom he was never to meet.  This enthusiasm for Lavengro was shared by certain of his Norfolk friends of those days:

Mr. Arthur W. Upcher of Sheringham Hall, Cromer, also provided in The Athenæum a quaint reminiscence of Borrow in which he recalled that Lavengro had called upon Miss Anna Gurney.  This lady had, assuredly with less guile, treated him much as Frances Cobbe would have done.  She had taken down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point which he tried to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him continuously.  “I could not,” said Borrow, “study the Arabic grammar and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the book and ran out of the room.”  He soon after met Mr. Upcher, to whom he made an interesting revelation:

At one moment of the correspondence we obtain an interesting glimpse of a great man of science.  Mr. Darwin sent the following inquiry through Dr. Hooker, afterwards Sir Joseph Hooker, and it reached Borrow through his friend Thomas Brightwell:

Is there any Dog in Spain closely like our English Pointer, in shape and size, and habits,—namely in pointing, backing, and not giving tongue.  Might I be permitted to quote Mr. Borrow’s answer to the query?  Has the improved English pointer been introduced into Spain?

C. Darwin.

Borrow took constant holidays during these Oulton days.  We have elsewhere noted his holidays in Eastern Europe, in the Isle of Man, in Wales, and in Cornwall.  Letters from other parts of England would be welcome, but I can only find two, and these are but scraps.  Both are addressed to his wife, each without date:

To Mrs. George Borrow

Oxford, Feb. 2nd.

Dear Carreta,—I reached this place yesterday and hope to be home to-night (Monday).  I walked the whole way by Kingston, Hampton, Sunbury (Miss Oriel’s place), Windsor, Wallingford, etc., a good part of the way was by the Thames.  There has been much wet weather.  Oxford is a wonderful place.

Kiss Hen., and God bless you!

George Borrow.

One of the very last letters of Borrow that I possess is to an unknown correspondent.  It is from a rough “draft” in his handwriting:

Oulton, Lowestoft, May 1875.

Sir,—Your letter of the eighth of March I only lately received, otherwise I should have answered it sooner.  In it you mention Chamberlayne’s work, containing versions of the Lord’s Prayer translated into a hundred languages, and ask whether I can explain why the one which purports to be a rendering into Waldensian is evidently made in some dialect of the Gaelic.  To such explanation as I can afford you are welcome, though perhaps you will not deem it very satisfactory.  I have been acquainted with Chamberlayne’s work for upwards of forty years.  I first saw it at St. Petersburg in 1834, and the translation in question very soon caught my attention.  I at first thought that it was an attempt at imposition, but I soon relinquished that idea.  I remembered that Helvetia was a great place for Gaelic.  I do not mean in the old time when the Gael possessed the greater part of Europe, but at a long subsequent period: Switzerland was converted to Christianity by Irish monks, the most active and efficient of whom was Gall.  These people founded schools in which together with Christianity the Irish or Gaelic language was taught.  In process of time, though the religion flourished, the Helveto Gaelic died away, but many pieces in that tongue survived, some of which might still probably be found in the recesses of St. Gall.  The noble abbey is named after the venerable apostle of Christianity in Helvetia; so I deemed it very possible that the version in question might be one of the surviving fruits of Irish missionary labour in Helvetia, not but that I had my doubts, and still have, principally from observing that the language though certainly not modern does not exhibit any decided marks of high antiquity.  It is much to be regretted that Chamberlayne should have given the version to the world under a title so calculated to perplex and mislead as that which it bears, and without even stating how or where he obtained it.  This, sir, is all I have to say on the very obscure subject about which you have done me the honour to consult me.—Yours truly,

George Borrow.

Borrow has himself given us—in Lavengro—a picturesque record of his early experiences in Scotland.  It is passing strange that he published no account of his two visits to the North in maturer years.  Why did he not write Wild Scotland as a companion volume to Wild Wales?  He preserved in little leather pocket-books or leather-covered exercise-books copious notes of both tours.  Two of his notebooks came into the possession of the late Dr. Knapp, Borrow’s first biographer, and are thus described in his Bibliography:

Note Book of a Tour in Scotland, the Orkneys and Shetland in Oct. and Dec. 1858.  1 large vol. leather.

Note Book of Tours around Belfast and the Scottish Borders from Stranraer to Berwick-upon-Tweed in July and August 1866.  1 vol. leather.

He passed through Scotland in a disputative vein, which could not have made him a popular traveller.  He tells a Roman Catholic of the Macdonnel clan to read his Bible and “trust in Christ, not in the Virgin Mary and graven images.”  He went up to another man who accosted him with the remark that “It is a soft day,” and said, “You should not say a ‘soft’ day, but a wet day.”  Even the Spanish, for whom he had so much contempt and scorn when he returned from the Peninsula, are “in many things a wise people”—after his experiences of the Scots.  There is abundance of Borrow’s prejudice, intolerance, and charm in this fragment of a diary; but the extract I have given is of additional interest as showing how Borrow wrote all his books.  The notebooks that he wrote in Spain and Wales were made up of similar disjointed jottings.  Here is a note of more human character interspersed with Borrow’s diatribes upon the surliness of the Scots.  He is at Invergarry, on the banks of Loch Oich.  It is the 5th of October:

Dinner of real haggis; meet a conceited schoolmaster.  This night, or rather in the early morning, I saw in the dream of my sleep my dear departed mother—she appeared to be coming out of her little sleeping-room at Oulton Hall—overjoyed I gave a cry and fell down at her knee, but my agitation was so great that it burst the bonds of sleep, and I awoke.

To Mrs. George Borrow, 38 Camperdown Place,
Yarmouth, Norfolk

Edinburgh, Sunday (Sept. 19th, 1858).

Dear Carreta,—I just write a line to inform you that I arrived here yesterday quite safe.  We did not start from Yarmouth till past three o’clock on Thursday morning; we reached Newcastle about ten on Friday.  As I was walking in the street at Newcastle a sailor-like man came running up to me, and begged that I would let him speak to me.  He appeared almost wild with joy.  I asked him who he was, and he told me he was a Yarmouth north beach man, and that he knew me very well.  Before I could answer, another sailor-like, short, thick fellow came running up, who also seemed wild with joy; he was a comrade of the other.  I never saw two people so out of themselves with pleasure, they literally danced in the street; in fact, they were two of my old friends.  I asked them how they came down there, and they told me that they had been down fishing.  They begged a thousand pardons for speaking to me, but told me they could not help it.  I set off for Alnwick on Friday afternoon, stayed there all night, and saw the castle next morning.  It is a fine old place, but at present is undergoing repairs—a Scottish king was killed before its walls in the old time.  At about twelve I started for Edinburgh.  The place is wonderfully altered since I was here, and I don’t think for the better.  There is a Runic stone on the castle brae which I am going to copy.  It was not there in my time.  If you write direct to me at the Post Office, Inverness.  I am thinking of going to Glasgow to-morrow, from which place I shall start for Inverness by one of the packets which go thither by the North-West and the Caledonian Canal.  I hope that you and Hen. are well and comfortable.  Pray eat plenty of grapes and partridges.  We had upon the whole a pleasant passage from Yarmouth; we lived plainly but well, and I was not at all ill—the captain seemed a kind, honest creature.  Remember me kindly to Mrs. Turnour and Mrs. Clarke, and God bless you and Hen.

George Borrow.

In his unpublished diary Borrow records his journey from Glasgow through beautiful but over-described scenery to Inverness, where he stayed at the Caledonian Hotel:

Sept. 29th.—Quit the “Caledonian” for “Union Sun”—poor accommodation—could scarcely get anything to eat—unpleasant day.  Walked by the river—at night saw the comet again from the bridge.

Sept. 30th.—Breakfast.  The stout gentleman from Caithness, Mr. John Miller, gave me his card—show him mine—his delight.

Oct. 1st.—Left Inverness for Fort Augustus by steamer—passengers—strange man—tall gentleman—half doctor—breakfast—dreadful hurricane of wind and rain—reach Fort Augustus—inn—apartments—Edinburgh ale—stroll over the bridge to a wretched village—wind and rain—return—fall asleep before fire—dinner—herrings, first-rate—black ale, Highland mutton—pudding and cream—stroll round the fort—wet grass—stormy-like—wind and rain—return—kitchen—kind, intelligent woman from Dornoch—no Gaelic—shows me a Gaelic book of spiritual songs by one Robertson—talks to me about Alexander Cumming, a fat blacksmith and great singer of Gaelic songs.

But to return to Borrow’s letters to his wife: