they exert unbounded hospitality without the slightest idea of
    receiving any compensation, and they are, whether men or women, at
    any time willing to go two or three miles over mountain and bog to
    put strangers into the right road.”

During his stay in the Isle of Man, news reached Borrow of the death of a
kinsman, William, son of Samuel Borrow, his cousin, a cooper at
Devonport.  William Borrow had gone to America, where he had won a prize
for a new and wonderful application of steam.  His death is said to have
occurred as the result of mental fatigue.  In this Borrow saw cause for
grave complaint against the wretched English Aristocracy that forced
talent out of the country by denying it employment or honour, which were
all for their “connections and lick-spittles.”

The holiday in the Isle of Man had resulted in two quarto note books,
aggregating ninety-six pages, closely written in pencil.  Again Borrow
planned to write a book, just as he had done on the occasion of the
Cornish visit.  Nothing, however, came of it.  Among his papers was found
the following draft of a suggested title-page:—

                                 BAYR JAIRGEY
                                     AND
                                  GLION DOO

                      THE RED PATH AND THE BLACK VALLEY

                    WANDERINGS IN QUEST OF MANX LITERATURE

A curious feature of Mrs Borrow’s correspondence is her friendly
conspiracies, sometimes with John Murray, sometimes with Woodfall, the
printer, asking them to send encouraging letters that shall hearten
Borrow to greater efforts.  On 26th November 1850 John Murray wrote to
her: “I have determined on engraving [by W. Holl] Phillips’ portrait
{422} . . . as a frontispiece to it [_Lavengro_].  I trust that this will
not be disagreeable to you and the author—in fact I do it in confident
expectation that it will meet with _your_ assent; I do not ask Mr
Borrow’s leave, remember.”

It must be borne in mind that Mrs Borrow had been in London a few days
previously, in order to deliver to John Murray the manuscript of
_Lavengro_.  Mrs Borrow’s reply to this letter is significant.  With
regard to the engraving, she writes (28th November), “_I like the idea of
it_, and when Mr Borrow remarked that he did not wish it (as we expected
he would) I reminded him that _his_ leave _was_ not asked.”

Again, on 30th October 1852, Mrs Borrow wrote to Robert Cooke asking that
either he or John Murray would write to Borrow enquiring as to his
health, and progress with _The Romany Rye_, and how long it would be
before the manuscript were ready for the printer.  “Of course,” she adds,
“all this is in perfect confidence to Mr Murray and yourself as you
_both_ of you know my truly excellent Husband well enough to be aware how
much he every now and then requires an impetus to cause the large wheel
to move round at a quicker pace . . . Oblige me by committing this to the
flames, and write to him just as you would have done, without hearing _a
word from me_.”  On yet another occasion when she and Borrow were both in
London, she writes to Cooke asking that either he “or Mr Murray will give
my Husband a look, if it be only for a few minutes . . . He seems rather
low.  Do, _not_ let this note remain on your table,” she concludes, “or
_mention_ it.”

If Borrow were a problem to his wife and to his publisher, he presented
equal difficulties to the country folk about Oulton.  To one he was “a
missionary out of work,” to another “a man who kep’ ’isself to ’isself”;
but to none was he the tired lion weary of the chase.  “His great delight
. . . was to plunge into the darkening mere at eventide, his great head
and heavy shoulders ruddy in the rays of the sun.  Here he hissed and
roared and spluttered, sometimes frightening the eel-catcher sailing home
in the half-light, and remembering suddenly school legends of
river-sprites and monsters of the deep.” {423a}

In the spring following his return from the Isle of Man, Borrow made
numerous excursions on foot through East Anglia.  He seemed too restless
to remain long in one place.  During a tramp from Yarmouth to Ely by way
of Cromer, Holt, Lynn and Wisbech, he called upon Anna Gurney. {423b}
His reason for doing so was that she was one of the three celebrities of
the world he desired to see.  The other two were Daniel O’Connell {423c}
and Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus), Lord Berners winner of the
Derby.  Two of the world’s notabilities had slipped through his fingers
by reason of their deaths, but he was determined that Anna Gurney, who
lived at North Repps, should not evade him.  He gave her notice of his
intention to call, and found her ready to receive him.

    “When, according to his account, {424} he had been but a very short
    time in her presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her
    hand to one of her bookshelves and took 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; when, said he, ‘I could not study the Arabic grammar
    and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the book and ran
    out of the room.’”

It is said that Borrow ran until he reached Old Tucker’s Inn at Cromer,
where he ate “five excellent sausages” and found calm.  He then went on
to Sheringham and related the incident to the Upchers.

These lonely walking tours soothed Borrow’s restless mind.  He had
constant change of scene, and his thoughts were diverted by the
adventures of the roadside.  He encountered many and interesting people,
on one occasion an old man who remembered the fight between Painter and
Oliver; at another time he saw a carter beating his horse which had
fallen down.  “Give him a pint of ale, and I will pay for it,” counselled
Borrow.  After the second pint the beast got up and proceeded, “pulling
merrily . . . with the other horses.”

Ale was Borrow’s sovereign remedy for the world’s ills and wrongs.  It
was by ale that he had been cured when the “Horrors” were upon him in the
dingle.  “Oh, genial and gladdening is the power of good ale, the true
and proper drink of Englishmen,” he exclaims after having heartened Jack
Slingsby and his family.  “He is not deserving of the name of
Englishman,” he continues, “who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.”
{425a}  To John Murray (the Third) he wrote in his letter of sympathy on
the death of his father: “Pray keep up your spirits, and that you may be
able to do so, take long walks and drink plenty of Scotch ale with your
dinner . . .  God bless you.”

He liked ale “with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as well may
be—ale at least two years old.” {425b}  The period of its maturity
changed with his mood.  In another place he gives nine or ten months as
the ideal age. {425c}  He was all for an Act of Parliament to force
people to brew good ale.  He not only drank good ale himself; but
prescribed it as a universal elixir for man and beast.  Hearing from
Elizabeth Harvey “of a lady who was attached to a gentleman,” Borrow
demanded bluntly, “Well, did he make her an offer?”  “No,” was the
response.  “Ah,” Borrow replied with conviction, “if she had given him
some good ale he would.” {425d}

He loved best old Burton, which, with ’37 port, were his favourites; yet
he would drink whatever ale the roadside-inn provided, as if to
discipline his stomach.  It has been said that he habitually drank
“swipes,” a thin cheap ale, because that was the drink of his gypsy
friends; but Borrow’s friendship certainly did not often involve him in
anything so distasteful.

CHAPTER XXVII
_THE ROMANY RYE_.  1854–1859

BORROW was not a great correspondent, and he left behind him very few
letters from distinguished men of his time.  Among those few were several
from Edward FitzGerald, whose character contrasted so strangely with that
of the tempestuous Borrow.  In 1856 FitzGerald wrote:—

                                                 31 GREAT PORTLAND STREET,
                                            LONDON, 27_th_ _October_ 1856.

    MY DEAR SIR,—It is I who send you the new Turkish Dictionary
    [Redhouse’s Turkish & English Dictionary] which ought to go by this
    Post; my reasons being that I bought it really only for the purpose
    of doing that little good to the spirited Publisher of the book (who
    thought when he began it that the [Crimean] War was to last), and I
    send it to you because I should be glad of your opinion, if you can
    give it.  I am afraid that you will hardly condescend to _use_ it,
    for you abide in the old Meninsky; but if you _will_ use it, I shall
    be very glad.  I don’t think _I_ ever shall; and so what is to be
    done with it now it is bought?

    I don’t know what Kerrich told you of my being too _lazy_ to go over
    to Yarmouth to see you a year ago.  No such thing as that.  I simply
    had doubts as to whether you would not rather remain unlookt for.  I
    know I enjoyed my evening with you a month ago.  I wanted to ask you
    to read some of the _Northern Ballads_ too; but you shut the book.

    I must tell you.  I am come up here on my way to Chichester to be
    married! to Miss Barton (of Quaker memory) and our united ages amount
    to 96!—a dangerous experiment on both sides.  She at least brings a
    fine head and heart to the bargain—worthy of a better market.  But it
    is to be, and I dare say you will honestly wish we may do well.

    Keep the book as long as you will.  It is useless to me.  I shall be
    to be heard of through Geldeston Hall, Beccles.  With compliments to
    Mrs Borrow, believe me,

                                 Yours truly,

                                                        EDWARD FITZGERALD.

    _P.S._—Donne is well, and wants to know about you.

A few months later FitzGerald wrote again:

                                                  ALBERT HOUSE, GORLESTON,
                                                        6_th_ _July_ 1857.

    DEAR BORROW,—Will you send me [The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam] by
    bearer.  I only want to look at him, for that Frenchman {427} has
    been misquoting him in a way that will make [Professor] E. Cowell [of
    Cambridge] answerable for another’s blunder, which must not be.  You
    shall have ’_Omar_ back directly, or whenever you want him, and I
    should really like to make you a copy (taking my time) of the best
    Quatrains.  I am now looking over the Calcutta MS. which has
    500!—very many quite as good as those in the MS. you have; but very
    many in _both_ MSS. are well omitted.

    I have been for a fortnight to Geldeston where Kerrich is not very
    well.  I shall look for you one day in my Yarmouth rounds, and you
    know how entirely disengaged and glad to see you I am here.  I have
    two fresh Nieces with me—and I find I gave you the _worst_ wine of
    two samples Diver sent me.  I wish you would send word by bearer you
    are better—this one word written will be enough you see.

    My old Parson Crabbe is bowing down under epileptic fits, or
    something like, and I believe his brave old white head will soon sink
    into the village Churchsward.  Why, _our_ time seems coming.  Make
    way, Gentlemen!—Yours very truly,

                                                        EDWARD FITZGERALD.

What effect the sweet gentleness of FitzGerald’s nature had upon that of
Borrow is not known, for the replies have not been preserved.  FitzGerald
was a man capable of soothing the angriest and most discontented mind,
and it is a misfortune that he saw so little of Borrow.  In the early
part of the following year (24th Jan. 1857) FitzGerald wrote to Professor
E. B. Cowell of Cambridge:—

    “I was with Borrow a week ago at Donne’s, and also at Yarmouth three
    months ago: he is well, but not yet agreed with Murray.  He read me a
    long Translation he had made from the Turkish: which I could not
    admire, and his Taste becomes stranger than ever.” {428a}

From Wales Mrs George Borrow had written (Sept. 1854) to old Mrs Borrow:
“He [Borrow] will, I expect at Christmas, publish his other work [_The
Romany Rye_] together with his poetry in all the European languages.”
{428b}  In November (1854) the manuscript of _The Romany Rye_ was
delivered to John Murray, who appears to have taken his time in reading
it; for it was not until 23rd December that he expressed his views in the
following letter.  Even when the letter was written it was allowed to
remain in John Murray’s desk for five weeks, not being sent until 27th
January:—

    MY DEAR BORROW,—I have read with care the MS. of _The Romany Rye_ and
    have pondered anxiously over it; and in what I am about to write I
    think I may fairly claim the privilege of a friend deeply interested
    in you personally, as well as in your reputation as author, and by no
    means insensible to the abilities displayed in your various works.
    It is my firm conviction then, that you will incur the certainty of
    failure and run the risque of injuring your literary fame by
    publishing the MS. as it stands.  Very large omissions seem to me—and
    in this, Elwin, {429} no mean judge, concurs—absolutely
    indispensable.  That _Lavengro_ would have profited by curtailment, I
    stated before its publication.  The result has verified my
    anticipations, and in the present instance I feel compelled to make
    it the condition of publication.  You can well imagine that it is not
    my _interest_ to shorten a book from two volumes to one unless there
    were really good cause.

    _Lavengro_ clearly has not been successful.  Let us not then risque
    the chance of another failure, but try to avoid the rock upon which
    we then split.  You have so great store of interesting matter in your
    mind and in your notes, that I cannot but feel it to be a pity that
    you should harp always upon one string, as it were.  It seems to me
    that you have dwelt too long on English ground in this new work, and
    have resuscitated some characters of the former book (such as F.
    Ardry) whom your readers would have been better pleased to have left
    behind.  Why should you not introduce us rather to those novel scenes
    of Moscovite and Hungarian life respecting which I have heard you
    drop so many stimulating allusions.  Do not, I pray, take offence at
    what I have written.  It is difficult and even painful for me to
    assume the office of critic, and this is one of the reasons why this
    note has lingered so long in my desk.  Fortunately, in the advice I
    am tendering I am supported by others of better literary judgment
    than myself, and who have also deep regard for you.  I will specify
    below some of the passages which I would point out for omission.—With
    best remembrances, I remain, my dear Borrow, Your faithful publisher
    and sincere friend,

                                                              JOHN MURRAY.

                         _Suggestions for Omission_.

    The Hungarian in No. 6.

    The Jockey Story, terribly spun out, No. 7.

    Visit to the Church, too long.

    Interview with the Irishman, Do.

    Learning Chinese, too much repetition in this part of a very
    interesting chapter.

    The Postilion and Highwayman.

    Throughout the MS. condensation is indispensable.  Many of the
    narratives are carried to a tedious length by details and repetition.

    The dialogue with Ursula, the song, etc., border on the indelicate.
    I like much Horncastle Fair, the Chinese scholar, except objection
    noted above.

    Grooming of the horse.

    January 27, 1855.

On 29th January, Mrs Borrow wrote to John Murray a letter that was
inspired by Borrow himself.  Dr Knapp discovered the original draft, some
of which was in Borrow’s own hand.  It runs:—

    DEAR MR MURRAY,—We have received your letters.  In the first place I
    beg leave to say something on a very principal point.  You talk about
    _conditions_ of publishing.  Mr Borrow has not the slightest wish to
    publish the book.  The MS. was left with you because you wished to
    see it, and when left, you were particularly requested not to let it
    pass out of your own hands.  But it seems you have shown it to
    various individuals whose opinions you repeat.  What those opinions
    are worth may be gathered from the following fact.

    The book is one of the most learned works ever written; yet in the
    summary of the opinions which you give, not one single allusion is
    made to the learning which pervades the book, no more than if it
    contained none at all.  It is treated just as if all the philological
    and historical facts were mere inventions, and the book a common
    novel . . .

    With regard to _Lavengro_ it is necessary to observe that if ever a
    book experienced infamous and undeserved treatment it was that book.
    It was attacked in every form that envy and malice could suggest, on
    account of Mr Borrow’s acquirements and the success of _The Bible in
    Spain_, and it was deserted by those whose duty it was, in some
    degree to have protected it.  No attempt was ever made to refute the
    vile calumny that it was a book got up against the Popish agitation
    of ’51.  It was written years previous to that period—a fact of which
    none is better aware than the Publisher.  Is that calumny to be still
    permitted to go unanswered?

    If these suggestions are attended to, well and good; if not, Mr
    Borrow can bide his time.  He is independent of the public and of
    everybody.  Say no more on that Russian Subject.  Mr Borrow has had
    quite enough of the press.  If he wrote a book on Russia, it would be
    said to be like _The Bible in Spain_, or it would be said to be
    unlike _The Bible in Spain_, and would be blamed in either case.  He
    has written a book in connection with England such as no other body
    could have written, and he now rests from his labours.  He has found
    England an ungrateful country.  It owes much to him, and he owes
    nothing to it.  If he had been a low ignorant impostor, like a person
    he could name, he would have been employed and honoured.—I remain,
    Yours sincerely,

                                                              MARY BORROW.

On 5th April 1856 Mrs Borrow wrote again, requesting Murray to return the
manuscript, but for what purpose she does not state.  Two days later it
was despatched by rail from Albemarle Street.

Some years before, Borrow had met Rev. Whitwell Elwin, Rector of Booton,
somewhere about the time he (Elwin) came up to London to edit _The
Quarterly Review_, viz., 1853. {431}  The first interview between the two
men has been described as characteristic of both.

    “Borrow was just then very sore with his slashing critics, and on
    someone mentioning that Elwin was a ‘_Quartering_ reviewer,’ he said,
    ‘Sir, I wish you a better employment.’  Then hastily changing the
    subject, he called out, ‘What party are you in the Church—Tractarian,
    Moderate, or Evangelical?  I am happy to say, _I_ am the old _High_.’
    ‘I am happy to say I am _not_,’ was Elwin’s emphatic reply.  Borrow
    boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, which he
    endeavoured to speak as broadly as possible.  ‘I told him,’ said
    Elwin, ‘that he had not cultivated it with his usual success.’  As
    the conversation proceeded it became less disputatious, and the two
    ended by becoming so cordial that they promised to visit each other.
    Borrow fulfilled his promise in the following October, when he went
    to Booton, and was ‘full of anecdote and reminiscence,’ and delighted
    the rectory children by singing them songs in the gypsy tongue.
    Elwin during this visit urged him to try his hand at an article for
    the Review.  ‘Never,’ he said, ‘I have made a resolution never to
    have anything to do with such a blackguard trade.’” {432a}

Elwin became greatly interested in _The Romany Rye_.  He endeavoured to
influence its composition, and even wrote to Borrow begging him “to give
his sequel to _Lavengro_ more of an historical, and less of a romancing
air.”  He was not happy about the book.  He wrote to John Murray in
March:—

    “‘It is not the statements themselves which provoke incredulity, but
    the melodramatic effect which he tries to impart to all his
    adventures.’  Instead of ‘roaring like a lion,’ in reply, as Elwin
    had expected, he returned quite a ‘lamb-like’ note, which gave
    promise of a greater success for his new work than its precursor.”
    {432b}

Borrow appears to have become tired of biding his time with regard to
_The Romany Rye_, and on 27th Feb. 1857 he wrote to John Murray to say
that “the work must go to press, and that unless the printing is
forthwith commenced, I must come up to London and make arrangements
myself.  Time is passing away.  It ought to have appeared many years ago.
I can submit to no more delays.”  The work was accordingly proceeded
with, and Elwin wrote a criticism of the work for _The Quarterly Review_
from the proof-sheets:—

    “When the review was almost finished, it was on the point of being
    altogether withdrawn, owing to a passage in _Romany Rye_ which Elwin
    said was clearly meant to be a reflection on his friend Ford, ‘to
    avenge the presumed refusal of the latter to praise _Lavengro_ in
    _The Quarterly Review_.’  ‘I am very anxious,’ he said, ‘to get
    Borrow justice for rare merits which have been entirely overlooked,
    but if he persists in publishing an attack of this kind I shall, I
    fear, not be able to serve him.’  The objectionable paragraphs had
    been written by Borrow under a misapprehension, and he cancelled them
    as soon as he was convinced of his error.” {433}

John Murray determined not to publish the book unless the offending
passage were removed.  He wrote to Borrow the following letter:—

                                                       8_th_ _April_ 1857.

    MY DEAR BORROW,—When I have done anything towards you deserving of
    apology I will not hesitate to offer one.  As it is, I have acted
    loyally towards you, and with a view to maintain your interests.

    I agreed to publish your present work solely with the object of
    obliging you, and in a great degree at the strong recommendation of
    Cooke.  I meant (as was my duty) to do my very best to promote its
    success.  You on your side promised to listen to me in regard to any
    necessary omissions; and on the faith of this, I pointed out one
    omission, which I make the indispensable condition of my proceeding
    further with the book.  I have asked nothing unfair nor
    unreasonable—nay, a compliance with the request is essential for your
    own character as an author and a man.

    You are the last man that I should ever expect to “frighten or
    bully”; and if a mild but firm remonstrance against an offensive
    passage in your book is interpreted by you into such an application,
    I submit that the grounds for the notion must exist nowhere but in
    your own imagination.  The alternative offered to you is to omit or
    publish elsewhere.  Nothing shall compel me to publish what you have
    written.  Think calmly and dispassionately over this, and when you
    have decided let me know.

                            Yours very faithfully,

                                                              JOHN MURRAY.

The reference that had so offended Murray and Elwin had, in all
probability been interpolated in proof form, otherwise it would have been
discovered either when Murray read the manuscript or Elwin the proofs.
By return of post came the following reply from Borrow, then at Great
Yarmouth:—

    DEAR SIR,—Yesterday I received your letter.  You had better ask your
    cousin [Robert Cooke] to come down and talk about matters.  _After_
    Monday I shall be disengaged and shall be most happy to see him.  And
    now I must tell you that you are exceedingly injudicious.  You call a
    chapter heavy, and I, not wishing to appear unaccommodating, remove
    or alter two or three passages for which I do not particularly care,
    whereupon you make most unnecessary comments, obtruding your private
    judgment upon matters with which you have no business, and of which
    it is impossible that you should have a competent knowledge.  If you
    disliked the passages you might have said so, but you had no right to
    say anything more.  I believe that you not only meant no harm, but
    that your intentions were good; unfortunately, however, people with
    the best of intentions occasionally do a great deal of harm.  In your
    language you are frequently in the highest degree injudicious; for
    example, in your last letter you talk of obliging me by publishing my
    work.  Now is not that speaking very injudiciously?  Surely you
    forget that I could return a most cutting answer were I disposed to
    do so.

    I believe, however, that your intentions are good, and that you are
    disposed to be friendly.—Yours truly,

                                                            GEORGE BORROW.

The tone of this letter is strangely reminiscent of some of the Rev
Andrew Brandram’s admonitions to Borrow himself, during his association
with the Bible Society.  Borrow bowed to the wind, and the offending
passage was deleted, and _The Romany Rye_ eventually appeared on 30th
April 1857, in an edition of a thousand copies.  The public, or such part
of it as had not forgotten Borrow, had been kept waiting six years to
know what had happened on the morning after the storm.  _Lavengro_ had
ended by the postilion concluding his story with “Young gentleman, I will
now take a spell on your blanket—young lady, good-night,” and presumably
the three, Borrow, Isopel Berners and their guest had lain down to sleep,
and a great quiet fell upon the dingle, and the moon and the stars shone
down upon it, and the red glow from the charcoal in the brazier paled and
died away.

_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}

CHAPTER XXVIII
JULY 1859–JANUARY 1869

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.

    [Picture: The Rev. Andrew Brandram.  From an old silhouette in the
           possession of the British and Foreign Bible Society]

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.

CHAPTER XXIX
JANUARY 1869–1881

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, 24_th_ _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.”

A fruitless effort was made by the late J. J. Colman of Carrow to
purchase the whole of Borrow’s manuscripts, library, and papers for the
Carrow Abbey Library; but the price asked, a thousand pounds, was
considered too high, and they passed into the possession of another.
Eventually they found their way into the reverent hands of the man who
subsequently made Borrow his hero, and who devoted years of his life to
the writing of his biography—Dr W. J. Knapp.

It was Borrow’s fate, a tragic fate for a man so proud, to outlive the
period of his fame.  Not only were his books forgotten, but the world
anticipated his death by some seven or eight years.  His was a curiously
complex nature, one that seems specially to have been conceived by
Providence to arouse enmity among the many, and to awaken in the hearts
of the few a sterling, unwavering friendship.  It is impossible to
reconcile the accounts of those who hated him with those whose love and
respect he engaged.

He was in sympathy with vagrants and vagabonds—a taste that was perhaps
emphasised by the months he spent in preparing _Celebrated Trials_.  If
those months of hack work taught him sympathy with pariahs, it also
taught him to write strong, nervous English.

He was one of the most remarkable characters of his century—whimsical,
eccentric, lovable, inexplicable; possessed of an odd, dry humour that
sometimes failed him when most he needed it.  He lived and died a
stranger to the class to which he belonged, and was the intimate friend
and associate of that dark and mysterious personage, Mr Petulengro.  He
hated his social equals, and admired Tamerlane and Jerry Abershaw.  It
has been said {473} that he was born three centuries too late, and that
he belonged to the age when men dropped mysteriously down the river in
ships, later to return with strange stories and great treasure from the
Spanish Main.  Mr Watts-Dunton has said:—

    “When Borrow was talking to people in his own class of life there was
    always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism.  What Carlyle
    called the ‘armed neutrality’ of social intercourse oppressed him.
    He felt himself to be in the enemy’s camp.  In his eyes there was
    always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his
    interlocutor and weighing him against himself.  He seemed to be
    observing what effect his words were having, and this attitude
    repelled people at first.  But the moment he approached a gypsy on
    the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by
    the wayside, he became another man.  He threw off the burden of
    restraint.  The feeling of the ‘armed neutrality’ was left behind,
    and he seemed to be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that
    could give him pleasure.  This it was that enabled him to make
    friends so entirely with the gypsies.  Notwithstanding what is called
    ‘Romany guile’ (which is the growth of ages of oppression), the basis
    of the Romany character is a joyous frankness.  Once let the
    isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from the ‘Gorgio’ be broken
    through, and the communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins
    to show itself.  The gypsies are extremely close observers; they were
    very quick to notice how different was Borrow’s bearing towards
    themselves from his bearing towards people of his own race, and
    Borrow used to say that ‘old Mrs Herne and Leonora were the only
    gypsies who suspected and disliked him.’” {474a}

This convincing character sketch seems to show the real Borrow.  It
accounts even for that high-piping, artificial voice (a gypsy trait) that
he assumed when speaking with those who were not his intimate friends,
and which any sudden interest in the conversation would cause him to
abandon in favour of his own deep, rich tones.  Mr F. J. Bowring, himself
no friend of Borrow’s for very obvious reasons, has described this
artificial intonation as something between a beggar’s whine and the
high-pitched voice of a gypsy—in sort, a falsetto.  He tells how, on one
occasion, when in conversation with Borrow, he happened to mention to him
something of particular interest concerning the gypsies, Borrow became
immensely interested, immediately dropped the falsetto and spoke in his
natural voice, which Mr Bowring describes as deep and manly.

Even his friends were led sometimes into criticisms that appear
unsympathetic. {474b}  He was, Dr Hake has said, “essentially
hypochondriacal.  Society he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he
might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the
prince that he felt himself in its midst.” {474c}  It is the son who
shows the better understanding, although there is no doubt about Dr
Hake’s loyalty to Borrow.  There is a faithful presentation of a man such
as Borrow really seems to have been, in the following words:—

    “Few men have ever made so deep an impression on me as George Borrow.
    His tall, broad figure, his stately bearing, his fine brown eyes, so
    bright yet soft, his thick white hair, his oval beardless face, his
    loud rich voice and bold heroic air were such as to impress the most
    indifferent lookers-on.  Added to this there was something not easily
    forgotten in the manner in which he would unexpectedly come to our
    gates, singing some gypsy song, and as suddenly depart.” {475a}

If Borrow wrote that he was ashamed of being an Englishman and referred
to their “pinched and mortified expressions,” if he found the virtues of
the Saxons “uncouth and ungracious,” he never permitted others to make
disparaging remarks about his country or his countrymen. {475b}  He was
typically English in this: agree with his strictures, add a word or two
of dispraise of the English, and there appeared a terrifying figure of a
patriot; “not only an Englishman but an East Englishman,” which in
Borrow’s vocabulary meant the finest of the breed.  He might with more
truth have said a Cornishman.  “I could not command myself when I heard
my own glorious land traduced in this unmerited manner,” {475c} he once
exclaimed.  He permitted to himself, and to himself only, a certain
latitude in such matters.

That Borrow exaggerated is beyond all question, but it must not be called
deliberate.  He desired to give impressions of scenes and people, and he
was inclined to emphasize certain features.  Isopel Berners he wished it
to be known was a queenly creature, and he described her as taller than
himself (he was 6 feet 2 inches without his shoes).  Exaggeration is
colour, not form.  A disbelief in his having encountered the convict son
of the old apple-woman near Salisbury does not imply that the old woman
herself is a fiction.  Borrow insisted upon Norfolk as his county, “where
the people eat the best dumplings in the world, and speak the purest
English.”  He even spoke with a strong, if imperfect, East Anglian
accent.  As a matter of fact his father was Cornish and his mother of
Huguenot stock.  It would be absurd to argue from this obvious
exaggeration of the actual facts that Borrow was a myth.

Then he has been taken to task for not being a philologist as well as a
linguist.  He may have used the word philologist somewhat loosely on
occasion.  “Think what the reader would have lost,” says one eminent but
by no means prejudiced critic {476} with real sympathy and insight, “had
Borrow waited to verify his etymologies.”  In all probability Nature will
never produce a Humboldt-Le Sage combination of intellect.  Language was
to Borrow merely the key that permitted him access to the chamber of
men’s minds.  It must be confessed that sometimes he invaded the sacred
precincts of philology.  His chapter on the Basque language in _The Bible
in Spain_ has been described as “utterly frantic,” and German
philologists, speechless in their astonishment, have expressed themselves
upon his conclusions in marks of exclamation!  He was not qualified to
discourse upon the science of language.

He was a staunch member of the Church of England, because he believed
there was in it more religion than in any other Church; but this did not
hinder him from consorting with the godless children of the tents, or
contributing towards the upkeep of Nonconformist-schools.  The gypsies
honoured and trusted him because, crooked themselves, they appreciated
straightness and clean living in another.  They had never known him use a
bad word or do a bad thing.  He was, on occasion, arrogant, overbearing,
ungracious, in short all the unattractive things that a proud and
masterful man can be; but his friendship was as strong as the man
himself; his charity above the narrow prejudices of sect.  When he threw
his tremendous power into any enterprise or undertaking, it was with the
determination that it should succeed, if work and self-sacrifice could
make it.  “The wisest course,” he thought, was, “ . . . to blend the
whole of the philosophy of the tombstone with a portion of the philosophy
of the publican and something more, to enjoy one’s pint and pipe and
other innocent pleasures, and to think every now and then of death and
judgment.” {477}

Borrow loved mystery for its own sake, and none were ever able quite to
penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality.  Those who came
nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent
good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men.  Of
all Borrow’s friends it is probable that none understood him so well as
Hasfeldt.  He recognised the strength of character of the white-haired
man who sang when he was happy, and he refused to be affected by his
gloomy moods.  “Write and tell me,” he requests, “if you have not fallen
in love with some nun or Gypsy in Spain, or have met with some other
romantic adventure worthy of a roaming knight.”  On another occasion
(June 1845) he boasts with some justification, “Heaven be praised, I can
comprehend you as a reality, while many regard you as an imaginary,
fantastic being.  But they who portray you have not eaten bread and salt
with you.”

Borrow’s contemporary recognition was a chance; he was writing for
another generation, and some of the friends that he left behind have
loyally striven to erect to him the only monument an artist desires—the
proclaiming of his works.

Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of magnificence, and,
lest he should be enticed away from her, had instilled into his soul a
hatred of all things artificial and at variance with her august decrees.
He was shy and suspicious with the men and women who regulated their
lives by the narrow standards of civilisation and decorum; but with the
children of the tents and the vagrants of the wayside he was a
single-minded man, eager to learn the lore of the open air.  He
recognised in these vagabonds the true sons and daughters of “the Great
Mother who mixes all our bloods.”

                                 THE END

LIST OF BORROW’S WORKS

1825

_Celebrated Trials_, _and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence_,
_from the Earliest Records to the Year_ 1825.  Six volumes, with plates.
London.

_Faustus_: _His Life_, _Death_, _and Descent into Hell_.  Translated from
the German [of F. M. von Klinger].  W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, London.

1826

_Romantic Ballads_.  Translated from the Danish: and Miscellaneous
Pieces.  S. Wilkin, Norwich.

1835

_Targum_: _or_, _Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and
Dialects_.  St Petersburgh.  Reprinted later by Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.

_The Talisman_.  From the Russian of Alexander Pushkin.  With _Other
Pieces_.  St Petersburg.

1841

_The Zincali_; _or_, _An Account of the Gypsies of Spain_.  With an
Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary
of their Language.  Two volumes.  John Murray, London.

1842

_The Bible in Spain_; _or_, _the Journeys_, _Adventures_, _and
Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures
in the Peninsula_.  Three volumes.  John Murray, London.

_Lavengro_: The Scholar—The Gypsy—The Priest.  Three volumes.  John
Murray, London.

_The Romany Rye_: _a Sequel to Lavengro_.  Two volumes.  John Murray,
London.

_The Sleeping Bard_; _or_, _Visions of the World_, _Death_, _and Hell_.
By Elis Wyn.  Translated from the Cambrian British.  John Murray, London.

1862

_Wild Wales_: _Its People_, _Language_, _and Scenery_.  Three volumes.
John Murray, London.

_Romano Lavo-Lil_: _Word-Book of Romany_; _or_, _English Gypsy Language_.
With Many Pieces in Gypsy, Illustrative of the Way of Speaking and
Thinking of the English Gypsies; with Specimens of Their Poetry, and an
Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various
Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England.  John Murray, London.

1884

_The Turkish Jester_; _or_, _the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin
Effendi_.  Translated from the Turkish.  Jarrold & Sons, Norwich.

1892

_The Death of Balder_.  Translated from the Danish of Evald.  Jarrold &
Sons, Norwich.

From the foregoing list has been omitted the mysterious _Life and
Adventures of Joseph Sell_, _the Great Traveller_, and those works that
Borrow edited or translated for the British and Foreign Bible Society.

FOOTNOTES

{3}  Afterwards General Morshead and friend of the Duke of York.  Captain
Morshead, himself a Cornishman, is credited with doing everything in his
power to dissuade Thomas Borrow from enlisting, but without result.

{4a}  _Lavengro_, page 2.  References to Borrow’s works throughout this
volume are to the Standard Edition, published by John Murray.

{4b}  Ann, the third of eight children born to Samuel Perfrement and Mary
his wife, 23rd January 1772.

{4c}  Locally, the name is pronounced “_Par_frement.”  This is quite in
accordance with the Norfolk dialect, which changes “e” into “a.”  Thus
“Ernest” becomes “Arnest”; “Earlham,” “Arlham”; “Erpingham,” “Arpingham,”
and so on.  In Norfolk there are grave peculiarities of pronunciation,
which have caused many a stranger to wish that he had never enquired his
way, so puzzling are the replies hurled at him in an incomprehensible
vernacular.

{5}  Married the Rev. Wm. Holland, rector of Walmer and afterwards rector
of Brasted, Kent.

{6a}  _Lavengro_, page 5.

{6b}  _Lavengro_, page 5.

{7a}  George in honour of the King, it is said, and Henry after his
father’s eldest brother.

{7b}  _Lavengro_, page 6.

{7c}  _Lavengro_, page 6.

{7d}  _Lavengro_, page 6.

{7e}  _Lavengro_, page 7.

{7f}  _Lavengro_, page 7.

{9a}  _Lavengro_, page 16.

{9b}  The widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the _Paston Letters_.

{9c}  _Lavengro_, page 15.

{10a}  _Lavengro_, pages 398–9.

{10b}  “Many years have not passed over my head, yet during those which I
can call to remembrance, how many things have I seen flourish, pass away,
and become forgotten, except by myself, who, in spite of all my
endeavours, never can forget anything.”—_Lavengro_, page 166.

{10c}  _Lavengro_, page 16.

{11a}  _Lavengro_, pages 19–20.

{11b}  _Lavengro_, page 22.

{12a}  The gypsies “have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family
having a public and private name, one by which they are known to the
Gentiles, and another to themselves alone . . .  There are only two names
of trades which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper names,
Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English gypsy dialect
by _Vardo-mescro_ and _Petulengro_ (_Romano Lavo-Lil_, page 185).  Thus
the Smiths are known among themselves as the Petulengros.  Petul, a horse
shoe, and engro a “masculine affix used in the formation of figurative
names.”  Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes from Bosh a fiddle,
Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor = to fight.

{12b}  The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard narrated at a provincial Bible
Society’s meeting that when Borrow first called at Earl Street “he said
that he had been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had passed several
years with them, but had been recognised at a fair in Norfolk and brought
home to his family by his uncle.”  There is, however, nothing to confirm
this story.

{13a}  _Lavengro_, page 164.

{13b}  The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait making;
but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of the English
that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.

{13c}  _Lavengro_, page 45.

{14}  David Haggart, born 24th June 1801, was an instinctive criminal,
who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the
West Norfolks.  Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his
career of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a
policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, he was hanged at
Edinburgh.

{15a}  _Lavengro_, page 138.

{15b}  John Crome (1768–1821), landscape painter.  Apprenticed 1783 as
sign-painter; introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded the
Norwich School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy 1806.

{17}  Borrow was always a magnificent horseman.  “Vaya! how you ride!  It
is dangerous to be in your way!” said the Archbishop of Toledo to him
years later.  In _The Bible in Spain_ he wrote that he had “been
accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a saddle.”  The Rev.
Wentworth Webster states that in Madrid “he used to ride with a Russian
skin for a saddle and _without stirrups_.”

{20}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_,
26th April 1851.

{21a}  “It is probable, that had I been launched about this time into
some agreeable career, that of arms, for example, for which, being the
son of a soldier, I had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I might have
thought nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any kind; but,
having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to my genius
which appeared open to me.”—_Lavengro_, page 89.

{21b}  The Rev. Thomas D’Eterville, M.A., “Poor Old Detterville,” as the
Grammar School boys called him, of Caen University, who arrived at
Norwich in 1793.  He acquired a small fortune by teaching languages.
There were rumours that he was engaged in the contraband trade, an
occupation more likely to bring fortune than teaching languages.

{21c}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_,
26th April 1851.

{22}  It was here, in 1827, that he saw the world’s greatest trotter,
Marshland Shales, and in common with other lovers of horses lifted his
hat to salute “the wondrous horse, the fast trotter, the best in mother
England.”  In _Lavengro_ Borrow antedated this event by some nine years.

{23}  Manuscript autobiographical notes supplied by Borrow to Mr John
Longe, 1862.

{24}  _Lavengro_, page 134.

{25a}  This account is taken from a letter by “A Schoolfellow of
_Lavengro_” in _The Britannia_, 26th April 1851.

{25b}  In a letter to Borrow, dated 15th October 1862, John Longe, J.P.,
of Spixworth Park, Norwich, in acknowledging some biographical
particulars that Borrow had sent him for inclusion in Burton’s
_Antiquities of the Royal School of Norwich_, wrote:—

    “You have omitted an important and characteristic anecdote of your
    early days (fifteen years of age).  When at school you, with
    Theodosius and Francis W. Purland, _absented_ yourself from home and
    school and took up your abode in a certain ‘Robber’s Cave’ at Acle,
    where you _resided_ three days, and once more returned to your
    homes.”

{26}  According to the original manuscript of _Lavengro_, it appears that
Roger Kerrison, a Norwich friend of Borrow’s, strongly advised the law as
“an excellent profession . . . for those who never intend to follow
it.”—_Life of George Borrow_, by Dr Knapp, i., 66.

{27a}  The Rev. Wm. Drake of Mundesley, in a letter which appeared in
_The Eastern Daily Press_, 22nd September 1892:—

    “ . . . I was at the Norwich Grammar School nine years, from 1820 to
    1829, and during that time (probably in 1824 and 1825) George Borrow
    was lodging in the Upper Close . . .  The house was a low
    old-fashioned building with a garden in front of it, and the fact of
    Borrow’s residence there is fixed in my memory because I had spent
    the first five or six years of my own life in the same house, from
    1811 to 1816 or 1817.  My father occupied it in virtue of his being a
    minor canon in Norwich Cathedral.  I remember Borrow very distinctly,
    because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who used to gather
    round the railings of his garden, and occasionally he would ask one
    or two of them to have tea with him.  I have a faint recollection
    that he gave us some of our first notions of chess, but I am not sure
    of this.  I . . . remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man,
    usually dressed in black.  In person he was not unlike another
    Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different notoriety
    from that which now belongs to Borrow’s name.  I mean John Thurtell,
    who murdered Mr Weare.”

{27b}  _Wild Wales_, page 3.

{28a}  _Wild Wales_, page 157.

{28b}  Forty years later Borrow wrote of these days:—“‘How much more
happy, innocent, and holy I was in the days of my boyhood when I
translated Iolo’s ode than I am at the present time!’  Then covering my
face with my hands I wept like a child.”—_Wild Wales_, page 448.

{30a}  There is no doubt that Borrow became possessed of a copy of
_Kiæmpe Viser_, first collected by Anders Vedel, which may or may not
have been given to him, with a handshake from the old farmer and a kiss
from his wife, in recognition of the attention he had shown the pair in
his official capacity.  He refers to the volume repeatedly in _Lavengro_,
and narrates how it was presented by some shipwrecked Danish mariners to
the old couple in acknowledgment of their humanity and hospitality.  It
is, however, most likely that he was in error when he stated that “in
less than a month” he was able “to read the book.”—_Lavengro_, pages
140–4.

{30b}  _Wild Wales_, page 2.

{30c}  _Wild Wales_, page 374.

{30d}  _Wild Wales_, page 9.  There is an interesting letter written to
Borrow by the old lawyer’s son on the appearance of _Lavengro_, in which
he says: “With tearful eyes, yet smiling lips, I have read and re-read
your faithful portrait of my dear old father.  I cannot mistake him—the
creaking shoes, the florid face, the polished pate—all serve as marks of
recognition to his youngest son!”

{31a}  _Wild Wales_, page 374.

{31b}  During the five years that he was articled to Simpson & Rackham,
Borrow, according to Dr Knapp, studied Welsh, Danish, German, Hebrew,
Arabic, Gaelic, and Armenian.  He already had a knowledge of Latin,
Greek, Irish, French, Italian, and Spanish.

{31c}  _Lavengro_, page 235.

{32a}  Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), the historical painter.

{32b}  _Lavengro_, page 166.

{33a}  William Taylor (1765–1836) was an admirer of German literature and
a defender of the French Revolution.  He is credited with having first
inspired his friend Southey with a liking for poetry.  He travelled much
abroad, met Goethe, attended the National Assembly debates in 1790,
translated from the German and contributed to a number of English
periodicals.

{33b}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.

{33c}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.

{33d}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in The Britannia, 26th
April 1851.

{34a}  _Memoir of Wm. Taylor_, by J. W. Robberds.

{34b}  _Memoir of Wm. Taylor_, by J. W. Robberds.

{34c}  Letter from “A School-fellow of _Lavengro_” in The Britannia, 26th
April 1851.

{35a}  The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in a letter, 17th February 1887.

{35b}  Harriet Martineau’s _Autobiography_, 1877.

{35c}  _Lavengro_, page 355.

{36a}  John Bowring, F.R.S. (1792–1872), began life in trade, went to the
Peninsula for Milford & Co., army contractors, in 1811, set up for
himself as a merchant, travelled and acquired a number of languages.  He
was ambitious, energetic and shrewd.  He became editor of _The
Westminster Review_ in 1824, and LL.D., Grönigen, in 1829.  He was sent
by the Government upon a commercial mission to Belgium, 1833; to Egypt;
Syria and Turkey, 1837–8; M.P. for Clyde burghs, 1835–7, and for Bolton,
1841; was instrumental in obtaining the issue of the florin as a first
step toward a decimal system of currency; Consul of Canton, 1847;
plenipotentiary to China; governor, commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral
of Hong Kong, 1854; knighted 1854; established diplomatic and commercial
relations with Siam, 1855.  He published a number of volumes of
translations from various languages.  He died full of years and honours
in 1872.

{36b}  _The Romany Rye_, page 368, _et seq._

{38}  _Lavengro_, pages 177–8.

{39}  _Lavengro_, pages 179–80.  Captain Borrow was in his sixty-sixth
year at his death; b. December 1758, d. 28th February 1824.  He was
buried in St Giles churchyard, Norwich, on 4th March 1824.

{40a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 302.

{40b}  In his will Captain Borrow bequeathed to George his watch and “the
small Portrait,” and to John “the large Portrait” of himself; his mother
to hold and enjoy them during her lifetime.  Should Mrs Borrow die or
marry again, elaborate provision was made for the proper distribution of
the property between the two sons.

{41}  In particular Borrow believed in Ab Gwilym “the greatest poetical
genius that has appeared in Europe since the revival of literature”
(_Wild Wales_, page 6).  “The great poet of Nature, the contemporary of
Chaucer, but worth half-a-dozen of the accomplished word-master, the
ingenious versifier of Norman and Italian Tales.” (_Wild Wales_, page
xxviii.).

{42a}  Lines to Six-Foot-Three.  _Romantic Ballads_.  Norwich 1826.

{42b}  Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840) before becoming a publisher was a
schoolmaster, hosier, stationer, bookseller, and vendor of patent
medicines at Leicester, where he also founded a newspaper.  In 1795 he
came to London, was sheriff in 1807, and received his knighthood a year
later.

{43}  It has been urged against Borrow’s accuracy that Sir Richard
Phillips had retired to Brighton in 1823, vide _The Dictionary of
National Biography_.  In the January number (1824) of _The Monthly
Magazine_ appeared the following paragraph: “The Editor [Sir Richard
Phillips], having retired from his commercial engagements and removed
from his late house of business in New Bridge Street, communications
should be addressed to the appointed Publishers [Messrs Whittakers]; but
personal interviews of Correspondents and interested persons may be
obtained at his private residence in Tavistock Square.”  This proves
conclusively that Sir Richard was to be seen in London in the early part
of 1824.

{44a}  _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence
from the Earliest Records to the Year_ 1825, 6 vols., with plates.
London, 1825.

{44b}  _Proximate Causes of the Material Phenomena of the Universe_.  By
Sir Richard Phillips.  London, 1821.

{45a}  Dr Knapp identified the editor as “William Gifford, editor of _The
Quarterly Review_ from 1809 to September 1824.”  (Life of George Borrow,
i. 93.)  The late Sir Leslie Stephen, however, cast very serious doubt
upon this identification, himself concluding that the editor of _The
Universal Review_ was John Carey (1756–1826), whose name was actually
associated with an edition of Quintilian published in 1822.  Carey was a
known contributor to two of Sir Richard Phillips’ magazines.

{45b}  _The Monthly Magazine_, July 1824.

{46a}  It appeared in six volumes.

{46b}  The work when completed contained accounts of over 400 trials.

{46c}  It appeared on 19th March following.

{46d}  _Lavengro_, page 210.

{47}  The picture was duly painted in the Heroic manner, the artist
lending to the ex-mayor, for some reason or other, his own unheroically
short legs.  Haydon received his fee of a hundred guineas, and the
picture now hangs in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich.

{48a}  Letter from Roger Kerrison to John Borrow, 28th May 1824.

{48b}  _Memoirs_, _C. G. Leland_ 1893.

{49a}  Borrow himself gave the sum as “eighteen-pence a page.”  The books
themselves apparently did not become the property of the reviewer.—_The
Romany Rye_, page 324.

{49b}  Borrow says that he demanded lives of people who had never lived,
and cancelled others that Borrow had prepared with great care, because be
considered them as “drugs.”—_Lavengro_, pages 245–6.

{50a}  “‘Sir,’ said he, ‘you know nothing of German; I have shown your
translation of the first chapter of my Philosophy to several Germans: it
is utterly unintelligible to them.’  ‘Did they see the Philosophy?’ I
replied.  ‘They did, sir, but they did not profess to understand
English.’  ‘No more do I,’ I replied, ‘if the Philosophy be
English.’”—_Lavengro_, page 254.

{50b}  A German edition of the work appeared in Stuttgart in 1826.

{52a}  This sentence is quoted in _The Gypsies of Spain_ as a heading to
the section “On Robber Language,” page 335.

{52b}  _Lavengro_, pages 216–7.

{52c}  _Lavengro_, page 271.

{53a}  _Faustus_: _His Life_, _Death and Descent into Hell_.  Translated
from the German.  London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825, pages xxii.,
251.  Coloured Plate.

{53b}  A letter from Borrow to the publishers, which Dr Knapp quotes, and
dates 15th September 1825, but without giving his reasons, was written
from Norwich, and runs:

    Dear Sir,—

    As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to take
    thirty copies of _Faustus_ instead of the money.  The book has been
    _burnt_ in both the libraries here, and, as it has been talked about,
    I may, perhaps, be able to dispose of some in the course of a year or
    so.—Yours, G. BORROW.

{55a}  _Lavengro_, page 310.

{55b}  _The Romany Rye_, Appendix, page 303.

{57}  Probably it was only a portion of the whole amount of £50 that
Borrow drew after the completion of the work.  One thing is assured, that
Sir Richard Phillips was too astute a man to pay the whole amount before
the completion of the work.

{58}  Dr Knapp’s _Life of George Borrow_, i., page 141.

{60}  Dr Knapp gives the date as the 22nd; but Mr John Sampson makes the
date the 24th, which seems more likely to be correct.

{61a}  _The Athenæum_, 25th March 1899.

{61b}  _Lavengro_, page 362.

{62a}  _Lavengro_, page 362.

{62b}  _Lavengro_, page 374.

{63a}  _Lavengro_, pages 431–2.

{64a}  _Lavengro_, page 451.

{64b}  Mr Watts-Dunton in a review of Dr Knapp’s _Life of Borrow_ says
that she “was really an East-Anglian road-girl of the finest type, known
to the Boswells, and remembered not many years ago.”—_Athenæum_, 25th
March 1899.

{66a}  Mr Petulengro is made to say the “Flying Tinker.”

{66b}  Dr Knapp sees in the account of Murtagh’s story of his travels
Barrow’s own adventures during 1826–7, but there is no evidence in
support of this theory.  Another contention of Dr Knapp’s is more likely
correct, viz., that the story of Finn MacCoul was that told him by Cronan
the Cornish guide during the excursion to Land’s End.

{67a}  It will be remembered that in _The Romany Rye_ Borrow takes his
horse to the Swan Inn at Stafford, meets his postilion friend and is
introduced by him to the landlord, with the result that he arranges to
act as “general superintendent of the yard,” and keep the hay and corn
account.  In return he and his horse are to be fed and lodged.  Here
Borrow encounters Francis Ardry, on his way to see the dog and lion fight
at Warwick, and the man in black.

{67b}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 360.

{68}  Introduction to _The Romany Rye_ in The Little Library, Methuen &
Co., Ltd.

{69a}  _The Romany Rye_, page 162.

{69b}  _The Romany Rye_, page 162.

{69c}  _The Romany Rye_, page 50.

{69d}  “Let but the will of a human being be turned to any particular
object, and it is ten to one that sooner or later he achieves
it.”—_Lavengro_, page 16.

{73}  They appeared as _Romantic Ballads_, _translated from the Danish_,
_and Miscellaneous Pieces_, by George Borrow.  Norwich.  S. Wilkin, 1826.
Included in the volume were translations from the _Kiæmpe Viser_ and from
Oehlenschlæger.

{74}  _Correspondence and Table-Talk of B. R. Haydon_.  London, 1876.
The position of the letter in the _Haydon Journal_ is between November
1825 and January 1826; but it is more likely that it was written some
months later.  Unfortunately, Borrow’s portrait cannot be traced in any
of Haydon’s pictures.

{75a}  _Lavengro_, page 9.

{75b}  There was a tradition that Borrow became a foreign correspondent
for the _Morning Herald_, and it was in this capacity that he travelled
on the Continent in 1826–7; but Dr Knapp clearly showed that such a
theory was untenable.

{75c}  _The Gypsies of Spain_, page 11.

{75d}  _The Bible in Spain_, page 219.