Kathleen Norris - "Harriet and the Piper"

J. M. Judy - "Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes"

Frank Gee Patchin - "The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies"

Samuel Butler - "Hudibras"

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Books: The Life of George Borrow

H >> Herbert Jenkins >> The Life of George Borrow




There are, unquestionably, inconsistencies in Lavengro and The Romany
Rye -they are admitted, they have been pointed out. There are many
inaccuracies, it must be confessed; but because a man makes a mistake
in the date of his birth or even the year, it does not prove that he
was not born at all. Borrow was for ever making the most inaccurate
statements about his age.

In the main Lavengro would appear to be autobiographical up to the
period of Borrow's coming to London. After this he begins to indulge
somewhat in the dramatic. The meeting with the pickpocket as a
thimble-rigger at Greenwich might pass muster were it not for the
rencontre with the apple-woman's son near Salisbury. The Dingle
episode may be accepted, for Mr John Sampson has verified even the
famous thunder-storm by means of the local press. Isopel Berners is
not so easy to settle; yet the picture of her is so convincing, and
Borrow was unable to do more than colour his narrative, that she too
must have existed.

The failure of Lavengro is easily accounted for. Borrow wrote of
vagabonds and vagabondage; it did not mitigate his offence in the
eyes of the critics or the public that he wrote well about them. His
crime lay in his subject. To Borrow, a man must be ready and able to
knock another man down if necessity arise. When nearing sixty he
lamented his childless state and said very mournfully: "I shall soon
not be able to knock a man down, and I have no son to do it for me."
{398a} He glorified the bruisers of England, in the face of
horrified public opinion. England had become ashamed of its bruisers
long before Lavengro was written, and this flaunting in its face of
creatures that it considered too low to be mentioned, gave mortal
offence. That in Lavengro was the best descriptions of a fight in
the language, only made the matter worse. Borrow's was an age of
gentility and refinement, and he outraged it, first by glorifying
vagabondage, secondly by decrying and sneering at gentility.


"Qui n' a pas l'esprit de son age,
De son age a tout le malheur."


And Borrow proved Voltaire's words.

It is not difficult to understand that an age in which prize-fighting
is anathema should not tolerate a book glorifying the ring; but it is
strange that Borrow's simple paganism and nature-worship should not
have aroused sympathetic recognition. Poetry is ageless, and such
passages as the description of the sunrise over Stonehenge should
have found some, at least, to welcome them, even when found in
juxtaposition with bruisers and gypsies.

Borrow loved to mystify, but in Lavengro he had overreached himself.
"Are you really in existence?" wrote one correspondent who was
unknown to Borrow, "for I also have occasionally doubted whether
things exist, as you describe your own feelings in former days."

John Murray wrote (8th Nov. 1851):-


"I was reminded of you the other day by an enquiry after Lavengro and
its author, made by the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker. Knowing
how fastidious and severe a critic he is, I was particularly glad to
find him expressing a favourable opinion of it; and thinking well of
it his curiosity was piqued about you. Like all the rest of the
world, he is mystified by it. He knew not whether to regard it as
truth or fiction. How can you remedy this defect? I call it a
defect, because it really impedes your popularity. People say of a
chapter or of a character: 'This is very wonderful, IF TRUE; but if
fiction it is pointless.'--Will your new volumes explain this and
dissolve the mystery? If so, pray make haste and get on with them.
I hope you have employed the summer in giving them the finishing
touches."


"There are," says a distinguished critic, {399a} "passages in
Lavengro which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of England--
unsurpassed, I mean, for mere perfection of style--for blending of
strength and graphic power with limpidity and music of flow."
Borrow's own generation would have laughed at such a value being put
upon anything in Lavengro.

Another thing against the books success was its style. It lacked
what has been described as the poetic ecstacy or sentimental verdure
of the age. Trope, imagery, mawkishness, were all absent, for Borrow
had gone back to his masters, at whose head stood the glorious Defoe.
Borrow's style was as individual as the man himself. By a curious
contradiction, the tendency is to overlook literary lapses in the
very man towards whom so little latitude was allowed in other
directions. Many Borrovians have groaned in anguish over his misuse
of that wretched word "Individual." A distinguished man of letters
{400a} has written:- "I would as lief read a chapter of The Bible in
Spain as I would Gil Blas; nay, I positively would give the
preference to Senor Giorgio." Another critic, and a severe one, has
written:-


"It is not as philologist, or traveller, or wild missionary, or folk-
lorist, or antiquary, that Borrow lives and will live. It is as the
master of splendid, strong, simple English, the prose Morland of a
vanished road-side life, the realist who, Defoe-like, could make
fiction seem truer than fact. To have written the finest fight in
the whole world's literature, the fight with the Flaming Tinman, is
surely something of an achievement." {400b}


It is Borrow's personality that looms out from his pages. His
mastery over the imagination of his reader, his subtle instinct of
how to throw his own magnetism over everything he relates, although
he may be standing aside as regards the actual events with which he
is dealing, is worthy of Defoe himself. It is this magnetism that
carries his readers safely over the difficult places, where, but for
the author's grip upon them, they would give up in despair; it is
this magnetism that prompts them to pass by only with a slight
shudder, such references as the feathered tribe, fast in the arms of
Morpheus, and, above all, those terrible puns that crop up from time
to time. There is always the strong, masterful man behind the words
who, like a great general, can turn a reverse to his own advantage.

In his style perhaps, after all, lay the secret of Borrow's
unsuccess. He was writing for another generation; speaking in a
voice too strong to be heard other than as a strange noise by those
near to him. It may be urged that The Bible in Spain disproves these
conclusions; but The Bible in Spain was a peculiar book. It was a
chronicle of Christian enterprise served up with sauce picaresque.
It pleased and astonished everyone, especially those who had grown a
little weary of godly missioners. It had the advantage of being
spontaneous, having been largely written on the spot, whereas
Lavengro and The Romany Rye were worked on and laboured at for years.
Above all, it had the inestimable virtue of being known to be True.
To the imaginative intellectual, Truth or Fiction are matters of
small importance, he judges by Art; but to the general public of
limited intellectual capacity, Truth is appreciated out of all
proportion to its artistic importance. If Borrow had published The
Bible in Spain after the failure of Lavengro, it would in all
probability have been as successful as it was appearing before.



CHAPTER XXV: SEPTEMBER 1849-FEBRUARY 1854



One of the finest traits in Borrow's character was his devotion to
his mother. He was always thoughtful for her comfort, even when
fighting that almost hopeless battle in Russia, and later in the
midst of bandits and bloody patriots in Spain. She was now, in 1849,
an old woman, too feeble to live alone, and it was decided to
transfer her to Oulton. An addition to the Hall was constructed for
her accommodation, and she was to be given an attendant-companion in
the person of the daughter of a local farmer.

For thirty-three years she had lived in the little house in Willow
Lane; yet it was not she, but Borrow, who felt the parting from old
associations. "I wish," she writes to her daughter-in-law on 16th
September 1849, "my dear George would not have such fancies about the
old house; it is a mercy it has not fallen on my head before this."
The old lady was anxious to get away. It would not be safe, she
thought, for her to be shut up alone, as the old woman who had looked
after her could, for some reason or other, do so no longer. She
urges her daughter-in-law to represent this to Borrow.


"There is a low, noisy set close to me," she continues. "I shall not
die one day sooner, or live one day longer. If I stop here and die
on a sudden, half the things might be lost or stolen, therefore it
seems as if the Lord would provide me a SAFER HOME. I have made up
my mind to the change and only pray that I may be able to get through
the trouble."


It would appear that the move, which took place at the end of
September, was brought about by the old lady's appeals and
insistence, and that Borrow himself was not anxious for it. He felt
a sentimental attachment to the old place, which for so many years
had been a home to him.

In 1853 Borrow removed to Great Yarmouth. During the summer of that
year, Dr Hake had peremptorily ordered Mrs George Borrow not to spend
the ensuing winter and spring at Oulton, and the move was made in
August. The change was found to be beneficial to Mrs Borrow and
agreeable to all, and for the next seven years (Aug. 1853-June 1860)
Borrow's headquarters were to be at Great Yarmouth, where he and his
family occupied various lodgings.

Shortly before leaving Oulton, Borrow had received the following
interesting letter from FitzGerald:-


BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, 22nd July 1853.

MY DEAR SIR,--I take the liberty of sending you a book [Six Dramas
from Calderon], of which the title-page and advertisement will
sufficiently explain the import. I am afraid that I shall in general
be set down at once as an impudent fellow in making so free with a
Great Man; but, as usual, I shall feel least fear before a man like
yourself, who both do fine things in your own language and are deep
read in those of others. I mean, that whether you like or not what I
send you, you will do so from knowledge and in the candour which
knowledge brings.

I had even a mind to ask you to look at these plays before they were
printed, relying on our common friend Donne for a mediator; but I
know how wearisome all MS. inspection is; and, after all, the whole
affair was not worth giving you such a trouble. You must pardon all
this, and believe me,--Yours very faithfully,

EDWARD FITZGERALD.


Soon after his arrival by the sea, Borrow performed an act of bravery
of which The Bury Post (17th Sept. 1852) gave the following account,
most likely written by Dr Hake:-


"INTREPIDITY.--Yarmouth jetty presented an extra-ordinary and
thrilling spectacle on Thursday, the 8th inst., about one o'clock.
The sea raged frantically, and a ship's boat, endeavouring to land
for water, was upset, and the men were engulfed in a wave some thirty
feet high, and struggling with it in vain. The moment was an awful
one, when George Borrow, the well-known author of Lavengro, and The
Bible in Spain, dashed into the surf and saved one life, and through
his instrumentality the others were saved. We ourselves have known
this brave and gifted man for years, and, daring as was this deed we
have known him more than once to risk his life for others. We are
happy to add that he has sustained no material injury."


Borrow was a splendid swimmer. {404a} In the course of one of his
country walks with Robert Cooke (John Murray's partner), with whom he
was on very friendly terms, "he suggested a bathe in the river along
which they were walking. Mr Cooke told me that Borrow, having
stripped, took a header into the water and disappeared. More than a
minute had elapsed, and as there were no signs of his whereabouts, Mr
Cooke was becoming alarmed, lest he had struck his head or been
entangled in the weeds, when Borrow suddenly reappeared a
considerable distance off, under the opposite bank of the stream, and
called out 'What do you think of that?'" {404b}


Elizabeth Harvey, in telling the same story, says that on coming up
he exclaimed: "There, if that had been written in one of my books,
they would have said it was a lie, wouldn't they?"

The paragraph about Borrow's courage was printed in various
newspapers throughout the country, amongst others in the Plymouth
Mail under the heading of "Gallant Conduct of Mr G. Borrow," and was
read by Borrow's Cornish kinsmen, who for years had heard nothing of
Thomas Borrow. Apparently quite convinced that George was his son,
they deputed Robert Taylor, a farmer of Penquite Farm (who had
married Anne Borrow, granddaughter of Henry Borrow), to write to
Borrow and invite him to visit Trethinnick. The letter was dated
10th October and directed to "George Borrow, Yarmouth." Borrow
replied as follows:-


YARMOUTH, 14th Octr., 1853.

MY DEAR SIR,--I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter
of the 10th inst. in which you inform me of the kind desire of my
Cornish relatives to see me at Trethinnock (sic). Please to inform
them that I shall be proud and happy to avail myself of their
kindness and to make the acquaintance of "one and all" {405a} of
them. My engagements will prevent my visiting them at present, but I
will appear amongst them on the first opportunity. I am delighted to
learn that there are still some living at Trethinnock who remember my
honoured father, who had as true a Cornish heart as ever beat.

I am at present at Yarmouth, to which place I have brought my wife
for the benefit of her health; but my residence is Oulton Hall,
Lowestoft, Suffolk. With kind greetings to my Cornish kindred, in
which my wife and my mother join,--I remain, my dear Sir, ever
sincerely yours, -

GEORGE BORROW.


Borrow was not free to visit his kinsfolk until the following
Christmas. First advising Robert Taylor of his intention, and
receiving his approval and instructions for the journey, Borrow set
out from Great Yarmouth on 23rd December. He spent the night at
Plymouth. Next morning on finding the Liskeard coach full, he
decided to walk. Leaving his carpet-bag to be sent on by the mail,
and throwing over his arm the cloak that had seen many years of
service, he set out upon his eighteen-mile tramp. He arrived at
Liskeard in the afternoon, and was met by his cousin Henry Borrow and
Robert Taylor, as well as by several local celebrities.

After tea Borrow, accompanied by Robert Taylor, rode to Penquite,
four miles away. "Ride by night to Penquite, Borrow records in his
Journal. House of stone and slate on side of a hill. Mrs Taylor.
Hospitable reception. Christmas Eve. Log on fire." He found alive
of his own generation, Henry, William, Thomas, Elizabeth (who lived
to be 94 years of age) and Nicholas, the children of Henry Borrow,
Captain Borrow's eldest brother. Also Anne, daughter of Henry, who
married Robert Taylor, and their daughter, likewise named Anne, and
William Henry, son of Nicholas.

In the Cornish Note Books there appears under the date of 3rd January
the following entry: "Rain and snow. Rode with Mr Taylor to dine at
Trethinnick. House dilapidated. A family party. Hospitable
people." On first entering his father's old home tears had sprung to
Borrow's eyes, and he was much affected. There was present at the
dinner the vicar of St Cleer, the Rev. J. R. P. Berkeley, a pleasant
Irish clergyman who, years later, was able to give to Dr Knapp an
account of what took place. He noticed the "vast difference in
appearance and manners between the simple yet shrewd Cornish farmers
and the betravelled gentleman their kinsman;" yet for all this there
were shades of resemblance--in a look, some turn of thought or tone
of voice. George Borrow was not at his best that evening, Mr
Berkeley relates of the dinner at Trethinnick:


"his feelings were too much excited. He was thinking of the time
when his father's footsteps and his father's voice re-echoed in the
room in which we were sitting. His eyes wandered from point to
point, and at times, if I was not mistaken, a tear could be seen
trembling in them. At length he could no longer control his
feelings. He left the hall suddenly, and in a few moments, but for
God's providential care, the career of George Borrow would have been
ended. There was within a few feet of the house a low wall with a
drop of some feet into a paved yard. He walked rapidly out, and, it
being nearly dark, he stepped one side of the gate and fell over the
wall. He did not mention the accident, although he bruised himself a
good deal, and it was some days before I heard of it. His words to
me that evening, when bidding me good-bye, were: 'Well, we have
shared the old-fashioned hospitality of old-fashioned people in an
old-fashioned house.'" {407a}


Borrow created something of a sensation in the neighbourhood. As a
celebrity his autograph was much sought after; but he would gratify
nobody. His hosts experienced many little surprises from their
guest's strange ways. He would plunge into a moorland pool to fetch
a bird that had fallen to his gun, or, round the family fireside, he
would shout his ballads of the North, at one time alarming his
audience by seizing a carving-knife and brandishing it about in the
air to emphasize the passionate nature of his song. When a card-
party proved too dull he slipped off and found his way into some
slums, picking up all the disreputable characters he could find,
working off his knowledge of cant on them, and getting out of them
what he could. {407b}

On one occasion when dining at the house of a local celebrity he was
suddenly missed from table during dessert.


"A search revealed him in a remote room surrounded by the children of
the house, whom he was amusing by his stories and catechising in the
subject of their studies and pursuits. He excused his absence by
saying that he had been fascinated by the intelligence of the
children, and had forgotten about the dinner." {407c}

His hatred of gentility led him into some actions that can only be
characterised as childish. Even in Cornwall he was on the lookout
for his fetish. On one occasion when dining with the ex-Mayor of
Liskeard, he pulled out of his pocket and used instead of a
handkerchief, a dirty old grease-stained rag with which he was wont
to clean his gun. {408a} This was done as a protest against
something or other that seemed to him to suggest mock refinement.

When at Wolsdon as the guest of the Pollards there arrived a lady and
gentleman of the name of Hambly, according to the Note Books. In
spite of this brief reference, Borrow immediately recognised a hated
name. Never was one of the name good, he informed Mr Berkeley. He
may even have been informed that they were descendants of the
Headborough whom his father had knocked down. He showed his
detestation for the name by being as rude as he could to those who
bore it.

Borrow was as incapable of dissimulating his dislikes as he was of
controlling his moods. Even during his short stay at Penquite he was
on one occasion, at least, plunged into a deep melancholy, sitting
before a huge fire entirely oblivious to the presence of others in
the room. Mrs Berkeley, who, with the vicar himself, was a caller,
thinking to produce some good effect upon the gloomy man, sat down at
the piano and played some old Irish and Scottish airs. After a time
Borrow began to listen, then he raised his head, and finally "he
suddenly sprang to his feet, clapped his hands several times, danced
about the room, and struck up some joyous melody. From that moment
he was a different man." He told them "tales and side-splitting
anecdotes," he joined the party at supper, and when the vicar and his
wife rose to take their leave he pressed Mrs Berkeley's hands, and
told her that her music had been as David's harp to his soul.

To the young man he met during this visit who informed him that he
had left the Army as it was no place for a gentleman, Borrow replied
that it was no place for a man who was not a gentleman, and that he
was quite right in leaving it. To speak against the Army to Borrow
was to speak against his honoured father.

How Borrow struck his Cornish kinsfolk is shown in a letter written
by his hostess to a friend. "I must tell you," she writes, "a bit
about our distinguished visitor." She gives one of the most valuable
portraits of Borrow that exists. He was to her:


"A fine tall man of about six feet three, well-proportioned and not
stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather florid
face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and soft; eyes and
eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth; well-shaped hands--
altogether a person you would notice in a crowd. His character is
not so easy to portray. The more I see of him the less I know of
him. He is very enthusiastic and eccentric, very proud and
unyielding. He says very little of himself, and one cannot ask him
if inclined to . . . He is a marvel in himself. There is no one here
to draw him out. He has an astonishing memory as to dates when great
events have taken place, no matter in what part of the world. He
seems to know everything." {409a}


Borrow was gratified at the welcome he received, and was much pleased
with the neighbourhood and its people. "My relations are most
excellent people," he wrote to his wife, "but I could not understand
more than half they said." He was puzzled to know why the head of a
family, which was reputed to be worth seventy thousand pounds, should
live in a house which could not boast of a single grate--"nothing but
open chimneys."

He remained at Penquite for upwards of a fortnight, at one time
galloping over snowy hills and dales with Anne Taylor, Junr., "as
gallant a girl as ever rode," at another, alert as ever for fragments
of folk-lore or philology, jotting down the story of a pisky-child
from the dictation of his cousin Elizabeth.

On 9th January Borrow left Penquite on a tour to Truro, Penzance,
Mousehole, and Land's End, armed with the inevitable umbrella,
grasped in the centre by the right hand, green, manifold and bulging,
that so puzzled Mr Watts-Dunton and caused him on one occasion to ask
Dr Hake, "Is he a genuine Child of the Open Air?" It was one of the
first things to which Borrow's pedestrian friends had to accustom
themselves. With this "damning thing . . . gigantic and green,"
Borrow set out upon his excursion, now examining some Celtic barrow,
now enquiring his way or the name of a landmark, occasionally singing
in that tremendous voice of his, "Look out, look out, Swayne Vonved!"

At Mousehole he called upon a relative, H. D. Burney (who was, it
would seem, in charge of the Coast Guard Station), to whom he had a
letter of introduction from Robert Taylor. Mr Burney entertained him
with stories, showed him places and things of interest in the
neighbourhood, and accompanied him on his visit to St Michael's
Mount. Borrow returned to Penquite on the 25th with a considerable
store of Cornish legends and Cornish words, and the knowledge that
you can only see Cornwall or know anything about it by walking
through it.

The next excursion was to the North Coast, Pentire Point, Tintagel,
King Arthur's Castle, etc. On the 1st of February he left Penquite,
and slept the night at Trethinnick. The next morning he set out on
horseback accompanied by Nicholas Borrow.

To the vicar of St Cleer and his family, Borrow was a very welcome
visitor. Mr Berkeley's eldest son, a boy of ten years of age, on
being introduced to the distinguished caller, gazed at him for some
moments and then without a word left the room and, going straight to
his mother in another apartment cried, "Well, mother, that IS a man."
Borrow was delighted when he heard of the child's enthusiasm. Mr
Berkeley give a picture of his distinguished visitor far more
prepossessing than many that exist. He was particularly struck, as
was everybody, by the beauty of Borrow's hands, and their owner's
vanity over them as the legacy of his Huguenot ancestors. Mr
Berkeley found Borrow's countenance pleasing, betokening calm
firmness, self-confidence and a mind under control, though capable of
passion. He could on occasion prove a delightful talker, and he gave
to the vicar's family a new maxim to implant upon their Christianity,
the old prize-fighters receipt for a quiet life: "Learn to box, and
keep a civil tongue in your head." He would often drop in at the
vicarage in the evening, when he would


"sit in the centre of a group before the fire with his hands on his
knees--his favourite position--pouring forth tales of the scenes he
had witnessed in his wanderings. . . . Then he would suddenly spring
from his seat and walk to and fro the room in silence; anon he would
clap his hands and sing a Gypsy song, or perchance would chant forth
a translation of some Viking poem; after which he would sit down
again and chat about his father, whose memory he revered as he did
his mother's; {411a} and finally he would recount some tale of
suffering or sorrow with deep pathos--his voice being capable of
expressing triumphant joy or the profoundest sadness."