The Life of George Borrow Part 26

During his six years in Spain he had distributed nearly 5000 copies of the New Testament and 500 Bibles, also some hundreds of the Basque and Gypsy Gospel of St Luke. These figures seem insignificant beside those of Lieut. Graydon, who, on one occasion, sold as many as 1082 volumes in fourteen days, and in two years printed 13,000 Testaments and 3000 Bibles, distributing the larger part of them. During the year 1837 he circulated altogether between five and six thousand books. But there was no comparison between the work of the two men.

Graydon had kept to the towns and cities on the south coast; Borrow's methods were different. He circulated his books largely among villages and hamlets, where the population was spa.r.s.e and the opportunities of distribution small. He had gone out into the highways, risking his life at every turn, penetrating into bandit- infested provinces in the throes of civil war, suffering incredible hards.h.i.+ps and fatigues and, never sparing himself. Both men were earnest and eager; but the Bible Society favoured the wrong man--at least for its purposes. But for Lieut. Graydon, Borrow would in all probability have gone to China, and what a book he would have written, at least what letters, about the sealed East!

Borrow, however, had nothing to complain of. He had found occupation when he badly needed it, which indirectly was to bring him fame. He had been well paid for his services (during the seven years of his employment he drew some 2300 pounds in salary and expenses), his 200 pounds a year and expenses (in Spain) comparing very favourably with Mr Brandram's 300 pounds a year.

He was loyal to the Bible Society, both in word and thought. He honourably kept to himself the story of the Graydon dispute. He spoke of the Society with enthusiasm, exclaiming, "Oh! the blood glows in his veins! oh! the marrow awakes in his old bones when he thinks of what he accomplished in Spain in the cause of religion and civilisation with the colours of that society in his hat." {328a} In spite of the misunderstandings and the rebukes he could write fourteen years later that he "bade it adieu with feelings of love and admiration." {328b} He "had done with Spain for ever, after doing for her all that lay in the power of a lone man, who had never in this world anything to depend upon, but G.o.d and his own slight strength." {328c} In the preface to The Bible in Spain he pays a handsome tribute to both Rule and Graydon, thus showing that although he was a good hater, he could be magnanimous.

It has been stated that, during a portion of his a.s.sociation with the Bible Society, Borrow acted as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Herald. Dr Knapp has very satisfactorily disproved the statement, which the Rev. Wentworth Webster received from the Marques de Santa Coloma. Either the Marques or Mr Webster is responsible for the statement that Borrow was wrecked, instead of nearly wrecked, off Cape Finisterre. As the Marques was a pa.s.senger on the boat, the mistake must be ascribed to Mr Webster. The further statement that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona by Quesada is scarcely more credible than that about the wreck. His imprisonment could not very well have taken place, as stated, in 1837-9, because General Quesada was killed in 1836. Mention is made of this foreign correspondent rumour only because it has been printed and reprinted. It may be that Borrow was imprisoned at Pamplona during the "Veiled Period"; there is certainly one imprisonment (according to his own statement) unaccounted for. It is curious how the fact first became impressed upon the Marques' mind, unless he had heard it from Borrow. It is quite likely that he confused the date.

It would be interesting to identify the two men whom Borrow describes in Lavengro as being at the offices of the Bible Society in Earl Street, when he sought to exchange for a Bible the old Apple-woman's copy of Moll Flanders. "One was dressed in brown," he writes, "and the other was dressed in black; both were tall men--he who was dressed in brown was thin, and had a particularly ill-natured countenance; the man dressed in black was bulky, his features were n.o.ble, but they were those of a lion." {329a} Again, in The Romany Rye, he makes the man in black say with reference to the Bible Society:- "There is one fellow amongst them for whom we entertain a particular aversion: a big, burly parson, with the face of a lion, the voice of a buffalo, and a fist like a sledge-hammer." {329b} Who these two worthies were it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Caroline Fox describes Andrew Brandram no further than that he "appeared before us once more with his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows."

{329c} Mr Brandram was not thin and his countenance was not ill- natured.

CHAPTER XXI: MAY 1840-MARCH 1841

Early in May, Borrow, his wife and step-daughter left London to take up their residence at Oulton, in Suffolk. After years of wandering and vagabondage he was to settle down as a landed proprietor. His income, or rather his wife's, amounted to 450 pounds per annum, and he must have saved a considerable sum out of the 2300 pounds he had drawn from the Bible Society, as his mother appears to have regarded the amounts he had sent to her as held in trust. He was therefore able to instal himself, Sidi Habismilk and the Jew of Fez upon his wife's small estate, with every prospect of enjoying a period of comfort and rest after his many years of wandering and adventure.

Oulton Cottage was ideally situated on the margin of the Broad. It was a one-storied building, with a dormer-attic above, hanging "over a lonely lake covered with wild fowl, and girt with dark firs, through which the wind sighs sadly. {330a} A regular Patmos, an ultima Thule; placed in an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the- way portion of England." {330b} A few yards from the water's edge stood the famous octagonal Summer-house that Borrow made his study.

Here he kept his books, a veritable "polyglot gentleman's" library, consisting of such literary "tools" as a Lav-engro might be expected to possess. There were also books of travel and adventure, some chairs, a lounge and a table; whilst behind the door hung the sword and regimental coat of the sleeping warrior to whom his younger son had been an affliction of the spirit, because his mind pursued paths that appeared so strangely perilous.

Here in this Summer-house Borrow wrote his books. Here when "sickness was in the land, and the face of nature was overcast--heavy rain-clouds swam in the heavens--the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround the lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated," Borrow shouted, "'Bring lights. .h.i.ther, O Hayim Ben Attar, son of the miracle!' And the Jew of Fez brought in the lights," {331a} and his master commenced writing a book that was to make him famous. When tired of writing, he would sometimes sing "strange words in a stentorian voice, while pa.s.sers-by on the lake would stop to listen with astonishment and curiosity to the singular sounds." {331b}

Life at Oulton Cottage was delightfully simple. Borrow was a good host. "I am rather hospitable than otherwise," {331c} he wrote, and thoroughly disliked anything in the nature of meanness. There was always a bottle of wine of a rare vintage for the honoured guest.

Sometimes the host himself would hasten away to the little Summer- house by the side of the Broad to muse, his eyes fixed upon the military coat and sword, or to scribble upon sc.r.a.ps of paper that, later, were to be transcribed by Mrs Borrow. Borrow would spend his evenings with his wife and Henrietta, generally in reading until bedtime.

In the Norwich days Borrow had formed an acquaintance with another articled-clerk named Harvey (probably one of his colleagues at Tuck's Court). They had kindred tastes, in particular a love of the open air and vigorous exercise. After settling at Oulton, the Borrows and the Harveys (then living at Bury St Edmunds) became very intimate, and frequently visited each other. Elizabeth Harvey, the daughter of Borrow's contemporary, has given an extremely interesting account of the home life of the Borrows. She has described how sometimes Borrow would sing one of his Romany songs, "shake his fist at me and look quite wild. Then he would ask: 'Aren't you afraid of me?' 'No, not at all,' I would say. Then he would look just as gentle and kind, and say, 'G.o.d bless you, I would not hurt a hair of your head.'"

{332a}

Miss Harvey has also given us many glimpses into Borrow's character.

"He was very fond of ghost stories," she writes, "and believed in the supernatural." {332b} He enjoyed music of a lively description, one of his favourite compositions being the well-known "Redowa" polka, which he would frequently ask to have played to him again.

As an eater Borrow was very moderate, he "took very little breakfast but ate a very great quant.i.ty of dinner, and then had only a draught of cold water before going to bed . . . He was very temperate and would eat what was set before him, often not thinking of what he was doing, and he never refused what was offered him." {332c} On one occasion when he was dining with the Harveys, young Harvey, seeing Borrow engrossed in telling of his travels, handed him dish after dish in rapid succession, from all of which he helped himself, entirely unconscious of what he was doing. Finally his plate was full to overflowing, perceiving which he became very angry, and it was some time before he could be appeased. A practical joke made no appeal to him. {332d}

Elizabeth Harvey also tells how, when a cousin of hers was staying at Cromer, the landlady went to her one day and said, "O, Miss, there's such a curious gentleman been. I don't know what to think of him, I asked him what he would like for dinner, and he said, 'Give me a piece of flesh.'" "What sort of gentleman was it?" enquired the cousin, and on hearing the description recognised George Borrow, and explained that the strange visitor merely wanted a rump-steak, a favourite dish with him.

As he did not shoot or hunt, he obtained exercise either by riding or walking. At times "he suffered from sleeplessness, when he would get up and walk to Norwich (25 miles) and return the next night recovered" {333a} yet Borrow has said that "he always had the health of an elephant."

He was proud of the Church and took great pleasure in showing to his friends the bra.s.ses it contained, including one bearing an effigy of Sir John Fastolf, whom he considered to be the original of Falstaff.

He was also "very fond of his trees. He quite fretted if by some mischance he lost one." {333b}

His methods with the country people round Oulton were calculated to earn for him a reputation for queerness. "Curiosity is the leading feature of my character" {333c} he confessed, and the East Anglian looks upon curiosity in others with marked suspicion. It was impossible for Borrow to walk far without getting into conversation with someone or other. He delighted in getting people to tell their histories and experiences; "when they used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or Suffolk) country men, he would say 'Why, that's a Danish word.' By and bye the man would use another peculiar expression, 'Why, that's Saxon'; a little further on another, 'Why, that's French.' And he would add, 'Why, what a wonderful man you are to speak so many languages.' One man got very angry, but Mr Borrow was quite unconscious that he had given any offence." {334a}

He took pleasure in puzzling people about languages. Elizabeth Harvey tells {334b} how he once put a book before her telling her to read it, and on her saying she could not, he replied, "You ought; it's your own language." The volume was written in Saxon. Yet for all this he hated to hear foreign words introduced into conversation.

When he heard such adulterations of the English language he would exclaim jocosely, "What's that, trying to come over me with strange languages?" {334c}

Borrow's first thoughts on settling down were of literature. He had material for several books, as he had informed Mr Brandram. Putting aside, at least for the present, the translations of the ballads and songs, he devoted himself to preparing for the press a book upon the Spanish Gypsies. During the five years spent in Spain he had gathered together much material. He had made notes in queer places under strange and curious conditions, "in moments s.n.a.t.c.hed from more important pursuits--chiefly in ventas and posadas" {334d}--whilst engaged in distributing the Gospel. It was a book of facts that he meant to write, not theories, and if he sometimes fostered error, it was because at the moment it was his conception of truth. Very little remained to do to the ma.n.u.script. Mrs. Borrow had performed her share of the work in making a fair copy for the printer.

Borrow's subsequent remark that the ma.n.u.script "was written by a country amanuensis and probably contains many ridiculous errata," was scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to have comprehended so well the first principle of wifely duty to an ill.u.s.trious and, it must be admitted, autocratic genius--viz., self-extinction.

"No man could endure a clever wife," Borrow once confided to the unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he had married one nevertheless. No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of inspiration could have lived in intimate a.s.sociation with so capricious and masterful a man as George Borrow. John Hasfeldt, in sending his congratulations, had seemed to suggest that Borrow was one of those abstruse works of nature that require close and constant study. "When your wife thoroughly knows you," he wrote, "she will smooth the wrinkles on your brow and you will be so cheerful and happy that your grey hair will turn black again."

"In November 1840 a tall athletic gentleman in black called upon Mr Murray, offering a ma.n.u.script for perusal and publication." {335a} Fifteen years before, the same "tall athletic gentleman" had called a dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of Northern and Welsh ballads, but "never could see Glorious John." Borrow had determined to make another attempt to see John Murray, and this time he was successful. He submitted the ma.n.u.script of The Zincali, which Murray sent to Richard Ford {335b} that he might p.r.o.nounce upon it and its possibilities. "I have made acquaintance," Ford wrote to H.

U. Addington, 14th Jan. 1841, "with an extraordinary fellow, George Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies. He is about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. It was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray." {335c} On Ford's advice the book was accepted for publication, it being arranged that author and publisher should share the profits equally between them.

On 17th April 1841 there appeared in two volumes The Zincali; {336a} or, An Account of the Gypsies in Spain. With an original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a copious Dictionary of their Language. By George Borrow, late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain. It was dedicated to the Earl of Clarendon, G.C.B. (Sir George Villiers), in "remembrance of the many obligations under which your Lords.h.i.+p has placed me, by your energetic and effectual interference in time of need." The first edition of 750 copies sufficed to meet the demand of two years. Ford, however, wrote to Murray: "The book has created a great sensation far and wide. I was sure it would, and I hope you think that when I read the MS. my opinion and advice were sound." {336b}

The Zincali had been begun at Badajos with the Romany songs or rhymes copied down as recited by his gypsy friends. To these he had subsequently added, being a.s.sisted by a French courier, Juan Antonio Bailly, who translated the songs into Spanish. These translations were originally intended to be published in a separate work, as was the Vocabulary, which forms part of The Zincali. Had Borrow sought to make two separate works of the "Songs" and "Vocabulary," there is very considerable doubt if they would have fared any better than the everlasting Ab Gwilym; but either with inspiration, or acting on some one's wise counsel, he determined to subordinate them to an account of the Spanish Gypsies.

As a piece of bookmaking The Zincali is by no means notable. Borrow himself refers to it (page 354) as "this strange wandering book of mine." In construction it savours rather of the method by which it was originally inspired; but for all that it is fascinating reading, saturated with the atmosphere of vagabondage and the gypsy encampment. It was not necessarily a book for the scholar and the philologist, many of whom scorned it on account of its rather obvious carelessnesses and inaccuracies. Borrow was not a writer of academic books. He lacked the instinct for research which alone insures accuracy.

It was particularly appropriate that Borrow's first book should be about the Gypsies, who had always exercised so strange an attraction for him that he could not remember the time "when the very name of Gypsy did not awaken within me feelings hard to be described." {337a} His was not merely an interest in their strange language, their traditions, their folk-lore; it was something nearer and closer to the people themselves. They excited his curiosity, he envied their mode of life, admired their clannishness, delighted in their primitive customs. Their persistence in warring against the gentile appealed strongly to his instinctive hatred of "gentility nonsense"; and perhaps more than anything else, he envied them the stars and the sun and the wind on the heath.

"Romany matters have always had a peculiar interest for me," {337b} he affirms over and over again in different words, and he never lost an opportunity of joining a party of gypsies round their camp-fire.

His knowledge of the Romany people was not acquired from books.

Apparently he had read very few of the many works dealing with the mysterious race he had singled out for his particular attention.

With characteristic a.s.surance he makes the sweeping a.s.sertion that "all the books which have been published concerning them [the Gypsies] have been written by those who have introduced themselves into their society for a few hours, and from what they have seen or heard consider themselves competent to give the world an idea of the manners and customs of the mysterious Romany." {338a}

His att.i.tude towards the race is curious. He recognised the Gypsies as liars, rogues, cheats, vagabonds, in short as the incarnation of all the vices; yet their fascination for him in no way diminished.

He could mix with them, as with other vagabonds, and not become harmed by their broad views upon personal property, or their hundred and one tricks and dishonesties. He was a changed man when in their company, losing all that constraint that marked his intercourse with people of his own cla.s.s.

He had laboured hard to bring the light of the Gospel into their lives. He made them translate for him the Scriptures into their tongue; but it was the novelty of the situation, aided by the gla.s.s of Malaga wine he gave them, not the beauty of the Gospel of St Luke, that aroused their interest and enthusiasm. To this, Borrow's own eyes were open. "They listened with admiration," he says; "but, alas! not of the truths, the eternal truths, I was telling them, but to find that their broken jargon could be written and read." {338b}

On one occasion, having refused to one of his congregation the loan of two barias (ounces of gold), he proceeded to read to the whole a.s.sembly instead the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed in Romany.

Happening to glance up, he found not a gypsy in the room, but squinted, "the Gypsy fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted worst of all. Such are Gypsies." {338c}

It was indeed the novelty that appealed to them. They greeted with a shout of exultation the reading aloud a translation that they themselves had dictated; but they remained unmoved by the Christian teaching it contained. For all these discouragements Borrow persisted, and perhaps none of his efforts in Spain produced less result than this "attempt to enlighten the minds of the Gitanos on the subject of religion." {339a}

If the Gypsies were all that is evil, judged by conventional standards, they at least loyally stood by each other in the face of a common foe. Borrow knew Ambrose Petulengro to be a liar, a thief, in fact most things that it is desirable a man should not be; yet he was equally sure that under no circ.u.mstances would he forsake a friend to whom he stood pledged. There seems to be little doubt that Borrow's fame with the Gypsies spread throughout England and the Continent.

"Everybody as ever see'd the white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him."

Borrow was by no means the first Romany Rye. From Andrew Boorde (15th-16th Century) down the centuries they are to be found, even to our day, in the persons of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton and Mr John Sampson; but Borrow was the first to bring the cult of Gypsyism into popularity. Before he wrote, the general view of Gypsies was that they were uncomfortable people who robbed the clothes-lines and hen- roosts, told fortunes and incidentally intimidated the housewife if unprotected by man or dog. Borrow changed all this. The suspicion remained, so strongly in fact that he himself was looked at askance for consorting with such vagabonds; but with the suspicion was more than a spice of interest, and the Gypsies became epitomised and immortalised in the person of Jasper Petulengro. Borrow's Gypsyism was as unscientific as his "philology." Their language, their origin he commented on without first acquainting himself with the literature that had gathered round their name. Francis Hindes Groome, "that perfect scholar-gypsy and gypsy-scholar," wrote:-

"The meagreness of his knowledge of the Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out in his Word Book of the Romany (1874); there must have been over a dozen Englishmen who have known it far better than he. For his Spanish-Gypsy vocabulary in The Zincali he certainly drew largely either on Richard Bright's Travels through Lower Hungary or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically nil. And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the Gypsies. In Lavengro and, to a less degree, in its sequel, The Romany Rye, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally wanting in the works--mainly philological--of Pott, Lieb.i.+.c.h, Paspati, Miklosich, and their confreres." {340a}

Groome was by no means partial to Borrow, as a matter of fact he openly taxed him {340b} with drawing upon Bright's Travels in Hungary (Edinburgh 1819) for the Spanish-Romany Vocabulary, and was strong in his denunciation of him as a poseur.

Borrow scorned book-learning. Writing to John Murray, Junr. (21st Jan. 1843), about The Bible in Spain, he says, "I was conscious that there was vitality in the book and knew that it must sell. I read nothing and drew entirely from my own well. I have long been tired of books; I have had enough of them," {340c} he wrote later, and this, taken in conjunction with another sentence, viz., "My favourite, I might say my only study, is man," explains not only Borrow's Gypsyism, but also his casual philology. Languages he mostly learned that he might know men. In youth he read--he had to do something during the long office hours, and he read Danish and Welsh literature; but he did not trouble himself much with the literary wealth of other countries, beyond dipping into it. He had a brain of his own, and preferred to form theories from the knowledge he had acquired first hand, a most excellent thing for a man of the nature of George Borrow, but scarcely calculated to advance learning.

He hated anything academic.

"I cannot help thinking," he wrote, "that it was fortunate for myself, who am, to a certain extent, a philologist, that with me the pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of horses .

. . I might, otherwise, have become a mere philologist; one of those beings who toil night and day in culling useless words for some opus magnum which Murray will never publish and n.o.body ever read--beings without enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a generous steed, cannot detect a good point in Pegasus himself." {341a}

This quotation clearly explains Borrow's att.i.tude towards philology.

As he told the emigre priest, he hoped to become something more than a philologist.