The Life of George Borrow Part 6

"I have looked over Mr Gruntvig's (sic) ma.n.u.script. It is a very long affair, and the language is Norman Saxon. 40 pounds would not be an extravagant price for a transcript, and so they told him at the Museum. However, as I am doing nothing particular at present, and as I might learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for 20 pounds. He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then, if you please, you may recommend me. The character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my competency."

At this time there were a hundred schemes seething through Borrow's eager brain. Hearing that "an order has been issued for the making a transcript of the celebrated Anglo-Saxon Codex of Exeter, for the use of the British Museum," he applied to some unknown correspondent for his interest and help to obtain the appointment as transcriber. The work, however, was carried out by a Museum official.

Another project appears to have been to obtain a post at the British Museum. On 9th March 1830 he had written to Dr Bowring:

"I have thought over the Museum matter, which we were talking about last night, and it appears to me that it would be the very thing for me, provided that it could be accomplished. I should feel obliged if you would deliberate upon the best mode of proceeding, so that when I see you again I may have the benefit of your advice."

In reply Dr Bowring commended the scheme, and promised to a.s.sist "by every sort of counsel and exertion. But it would injure you," he proceeds, "if I were to take the initiative. [The Gibraltar house of Bowring & Murdock had recently failed.] Quietly make yourself master of that department of the Museum. We must then think of how best to get at the Council. If by any management they can be induced to ask my opinion, I will give you a character which shall take you to the top of Hecla itself. You have claims, strong ones, and I should rejoice to see you NICHED in the British Museum."

Again failure! Disappointment seemed to be d.o.g.g.i.ng Borrow's footsteps at this period. For years past he had been seeking some sort of occupation, into which he could throw all that energy and determination of character that he possessed. He was earnest and able, and he knew that he only required an opportunity of showing to the world what manner of man he was. He seemed doomed to meet everywhere with discouragement; for no one wanted him, just as no one wanted his translations of the glorious Ab Gwilym. He appeared before the world as a failure, which probably troubled him very little; but there was another aspect of the case that was in his eyes, "the most heartbreaking of everything, the strange, the disadvantageous light in which I am aware that I must frequently have appeared to those whom I most love and honour." {83a}

On 14th September he wrote to Dr Bowring:

"I am going to Norwich for some short time, as I am very unwell and hope that cold bathing in October and November may prove of service to me. My complaints are, I believe, the offspring of ennui and unsettled prospects. I have thoughts of attempting to get into the French service, as I should like prodigiously to serve under Clausel in the next Bedouin campaign. I shall leave London next Sunday and will call some evening to take my leave; I cannot come in the morning, as early rising kills me."

A year later he writes again to Dr Bowring, who once more has been exerting himself on his friend's behalf:

"WILLOW LANE, NORWICH, 11th September 1831.

MY DEAR SIR, -

I return you my most sincere thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd inst., and though you have not been successful in your application to the Belgian authorities in my behalf, I know full well that you did your utmost, and am only sorry that at my instigation you attempted an impossibility.

The Belgians seem either not to know or not to care for the opinion of the great Cyrus who gives this advice to his captains. 'Take no heed from what countries ye fill up your ranks, but seek recruits as ye do horses, not those particularly who are of your own country, but those of merit.' The Belgians will only have such recruits as are born in Belgium, and when we consider the heroic manner in which the native Belgian army defended the person of their new sovereign in the last conflict with the Dutch, can we blame them for their determination? It is rather singular, however, that resolved as they are to be served only by themselves they should have sent for 5000 Frenchmen to clear their country of a handful of Hollanders, who have generally been considered the most unwarlike people in Europe, but who, if they had fair play given them, would long ere this time have replanted the Orange flag on the towers of Brussels, and made the Belgians what they deserve to be, hewers of wood and drawers of water.

And now, my dear Sir, allow me to reply to a very important part of your letter; you ask me whether I wish to purchase a commission in the British service, because in that case you would speak to the Secretary at War about me. I must inform you therefore that my name has been for several years upon the list for the purchase of a commission, and I have never yet had sufficient interest to procure an appointment. If I can do nothing better I shall be very glad to purchase; but I will pause two or three months before I call upon you to fulfil your kind promise. It is believed that the Militia will be embodied in order to be sent to that unhappy country Ireland, and provided I can obtain a commission in one of them, and they are kept in service, it would be better than spending 500 pounds about one in the line. I am acquainted with the Colonels of the two Norfolk regiments, and I daresay that neither of them would have any objection to receive me. If they are not embodied I will most certainly apply to you, and you may say when you recommend me that being well grounded in Arabic, and having some talent for languages, I might be an acquisition to a corps in one of our Eastern Colonies.

I flatter myself that I could do a great deal in the East provided I could once get there, either in a civil or military capacity; there is much talk at present about translating European books into the two great languages, the Arabic and Persian; now I believe that with my enthusiasm for these tongues I could, if resident in the East, become in a year or two better acquainted with them than any European has been yet, and more capable of executing such a task. Bear this in mind, and if before you hear from me again you should have any opportunity to recommend me as a proper person to fill any civil situation in those countries or to attend any expedition thither, I pray you to lay hold of it, and no conduct of mine shall ever give you reason to repent it.

I remain, My Dear Sir, Your most obliged and obedient Servant, GEORGE BORROW.

P.S.--Present my best remembrances to Mrs B. and to Edgar, and tell them that they will both be starved. There is now a report in the street that twelve corn-stacks are blazing within twenty miles of this place. I have lately been wandering about Norfolk, and I am sorry to say that the minds of the peasantry are in a horrible state of excitement; I have repeatedly heard men and women in the harvest- field swear that not a grain of the corn they were cutting should be eaten, and that they would as lieve be hanged as live. I am afraid all this will end in a famine and a rustic war.

It was pride that prompted Borrow to ask Dr Bowring to stay his hand for the moment about a commission. There was no reasonable possibility of his being able to raise 500 pounds. Even if his mother had possessed it, which she did not, he would not have drained her resources of so large an amount. His subsequent att.i.tude towards the Belgians was characteristic of him. To his acutely sensitive perceptions, failure to obtain an appointment he sought was a rebuff, and his whole nature rose up against what, at the moment, appeared to be an intolerable slight.

Nothing came of the project of collaboration between Bowring and Borrow beyond an article on Danish and Norwegian literature that appeared in The Foreign Quarterly Review (June 1830), in which Borrow supplied translations of the sixteen poems ill.u.s.trating Bowring's text. In all probability the response to the prospectus was deemed inadequate, and Bowring did not wish to face a certain financial loss.

From Borrow's own letters there is no question that Dr Bowring was acting towards him in a most friendly manner, and really endeavouring to a.s.sist him to obtain some sort of employment. It may be, as has been said, and as seems extremely probable, that Bowring used his "facility in acquiring and translating tongues deliberately as a ladder to an administrative post abroad," {86a} but if Borrow "put a wrong construction upon his sympathy" and was led into "a veritable cul-de-sac of literature," {86b} it was no fault of Bowring's.

Borrow's relations with Dr Bowring continued to be most cordial for many years, as his letters show. "Pray excuse me for troubling you with these lines," he writes years later; "I write to you, as usual, for a.s.sistance in my projects, convinced that you will withhold none which it may be in your power to afford, more especially when by so doing you will perhaps be promoting the happiness of our fellow- creatures." This is very significant as indicating the nature of the relations between the two men.

Borrow was to experience yet another disappointment. A Welsh bookseller, living in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, commissioned him to translate into English Elis Wyn's The Sleeping Bard, a book printed originally in 1703. The bookseller foresaw for the volume a large sale, not only in England but in Wales; but "on the eve of committing it to the press, however, the Cambrian-Briton felt his small heart give way within him. 'Were I to print it,' said he, 'I should be ruined; the terrible descriptions of vice and torment would frighten the genteel part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett . . . Myn Diawl! I had no idea, till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a terrible fellow.'" {87a}

With this Borrow had to be content and retire from the presence of the little bookseller, who told him he was "much obliged . . . for the trouble you have given yourself on my account," {87b} and his bundle of ma.n.u.script, containing nearly three thousand lines, the work probably of some months, was to be put aside for thirty years before eventually appearing in a limited edition.

It cannot be determined with exactness when Borrow relinquished the unequal struggle against adverse circ.u.mstances in London. He had met with sufficient discouragement to dishearten him from further effort.

Perhaps his greatest misfortune was his disinclination to make friends with anybody save vagabonds. He could attract and earn the friends.h.i.+p of an apple-woman, thimble-riggers, tramps, thieves, gypsies, in short with any vagrant he chose to speak to; but his hatred of gentility was a great and grave obstacle in the way of his material advancement. His brother John seemed to recognise this; for in 1831 he wrote, "I am convinced that YOUR WANT OF SUCCESS IN LIFE is more owing to your being unlike other people than to any other cause."

It would appear that, finding nothing to do in London, Borrow once more became a wanderer. He was in London in March; but on 27th, 28th, and 29th July 1830 he was unquestionably in Paris. Writing about the Revolution of La Granja (August 1836) and of the energy, courage and activity of the war correspondents, he says:

"I saw them [the war correspondents] during the three days at Paris, mingled with canaille and gamins behind the barriers, whilst the mitraille was flying in all directions, and the desperate cuira.s.siers were das.h.i.+ng their fierce horses against these seemingly feeble bulwarks. There stood they, dotting down their observations in their pocket-books as unconcernedly as if reporting the proceedings of a reform meeting in Covent Garden or Finsbury Square." {88a}

This can have reference only to the "Three Glorious Days" of Revolution, 27th to 29th July 1830, during which Charles X. lost, and Louis-Philippe gained, a throne. He returned to Norwich sometime during the autumn of 1830. {88b} In November he was entering upon his epistolary duel with the Army Pay Office in connection with John's half-pay as a lieutenant in the West Norfolk Militia.

In 1826 John had gone to Mexico, then looked upon as a land of promise for young Englishmen, who might expect to find fortunes in its silver mines. Allday, brother of Roger Kerrison, was there, and John Borrow determined to join him. Obtaining a year's leave of absence from his colonel, together with permission to apply for an extension, he entered the service of the Real del Monte Company, receiving a salary of three hundred pounds a year. He arranged that his mother should have his half-pay, and it was in connection with this that George entered upon a correspondence with the Army Pay Office that was to extend over a period of fifteen months.

Originally John had arranged for the amounts to be remitted to Mexico, and he sent them back again to his mother. This involved heavy losses in connection with the bills of exchange, and wis.h.i.+ng to avoid this tax, John sent to his brother an official copy of a Mexican Power of Attorney, which George strove to persuade the Army Pay Office was the original.

Tact was unfortunately not one of George Borrow's acquirements at this period, and in this correspondence he adopted an att.i.tude that must have seriously prejudiced his case. "I am a solicitor myself, Sir," he states, and proceeds to threaten to bring the matter before Parliament. He writes to the Solicitor of the Treasury "as a member of the same honourable profession to which I was myself bred up," and demands whether he has not law, etc., on his side. The outcome of the correspondence was that the disembodied allowance was refused on the plea "that Lieutenant Borrow having been absent without Leave from the Training of the West Norfolk Militia has, under the provisions of the 12th Section of the Militia Pay and Clothing Act, forfeited his Allowance." In consequence, payment was made only for the amount due from 25th June 1829 to 24th December 1830. The whole tone of Borrow's letters was unfortunate for the cause he pleaded.

He wrote to the Secretary of State for War as he might have written to the little Welsh bookseller with "the small heart." He was indignant at what he conceived to be an injustice, and was unable to dissemble his anger.

George had thought of joining his brother, but had not received any very marked encouragement to do so. John despised Mexican methods.

On one occasion he writes apropos of George's suggestion of the army, "If you can raise the pewter, come out here rather than that, and ROB." One sage thing at least John is to be credited with, when he wrote to his brother, "Do not enter the army; it is a bad spec." It would have been for George Borrow.

Among the papers left at Borrow's death was a fragment of a political article in dispraise of the Radicals. The editorial "We" suggests that Borrow might possibly have been engaged in political journalism.

The statement made by him that he "frequently spoke up for Wellington" {90a} may or may not have had reference to contributions to the press. The fragment itself proves nothing. Many would-be journalists write "leaders" that never see the case-room.

It is useless to speculate further regarding the period that Borrow himself elected to veil from the eyes, not only of his contemporaries, but those of another generation. Men who have overcome adverse conditions and achieved fame are not as a rule averse from publis.h.i.+ng, or at least allowing to be known, the difficulties that they had to contend with. Borrow was in no sense of the word an ordinary man. He unquestionably suffered acutely during the years of failure, when it seemed likely that his life was to be wasted, barren of anything else save the acquirement of a score or more languages; keys that could open literary storehouses that n.o.body wanted to explore, to the very existence of which, in fact, the public was frigidly indifferent.

"Poor George . . . I wish he was making money . . . He works hard and remains poor," is the comment of his brother John, written in the autumn of 1830. To no small degree Borrow was responsible for his own failure, or perhaps it would be more just to say that he had been denied many of the attributes that make for success. His independence was aggressive, and it offended people. Even with the Welsh Preacher and his wife he refused to unbend.

"'What a disposition!'" Winifred had exclaimed, holding up her hands; "'and this is pride, genuine pride--that feeling which the world agrees to call so n.o.ble. Oh, how mean a thing is pride! never before did I see all the meanness of what is called pride!'" {91a}

This pride, magnificent as the loneliness of kings, and about as unproductive of a sympathetic view of life, always const.i.tuted a barrier in the way of Borrow's success. There were innumerable other obstacles: his choice of friends, his fierce denunciatory hatred of gentility, together with humbug, which he always seemed to confuse with it, the attacks of the "Horrors," his grave bearing, which no laugh ever disturbed, and, above all, his uncompromising hostility to the things that the world chose to consider excellent. The world in return could make nothing of a man who was a ma.s.s of moods and sensibilities, strange tastes and pursuits. It is not remarkable that he should fail to make the stir that he had hoped to make.

With the unerring instinct of a hypersensitive nature, he knew his merit, his honesty, his capacity--knew that he possessed one thing that eventually commands success, which "through life has ever been of incalculable utility to me, and has not unfrequently supplied the place of friends, money, and many other things of almost equal importance--iron perseverance, without which all the advantages of time and circ.u.mstance are of very little avail in any undertaking."

{91b} It was this dogged determination that was to carry him through the most critical period of his life, enable him to earn the approval of those in whose interests he worked, and eventually achieve fame and an una.s.sailable place in English literature.

CHAPTER VI: JANUARY-JULY 1833

It is not a little curious that no one should have thought of putting Borrow's undoubted gifts as a linguist to some practical use. He himself had frequently cast his eyes in the direction of a political appointment abroad. It remained, however, for the Rev. Francis Cunningham, {92a} vicar of Lowestoft, in Suffolk, to see in this young man against whom the curse of Babel was inoperative, a sword that, in the hands of the British and Foreign Bible Society, might be wielded with considerable effect against the heathen.

Borrow appears to have become acquainted with the Rev. Francis Cunningham through the Skeppers of Oulton Hall, near Lowestoft, of whom it is necessary to give some account. Edmund Skepper had married Anne Breame of Beetley, who, on the death of her father, came into 9000 pounds. She and her husband purchased the Oulton Hall estate, upon which Anne Skepper seems to have been given a five per cent. mortgage. There were two children of the marriage, Breame (born 1794) and Mary (born 1796). The boy inherited the estate, and the girl the mortgage, worth about 450 pounds per annum. Mary married Henry Clarke, a lieutenant in the Navy (26th July 1817), who within eight months died of consumption. Two months later Mrs Clarke gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Henrietta Mary. Mrs Clarke became acquainted with the Cunninghams while they were at Pakefield, and there is every reason to believe that she was instrumental in introducing Borrow to Cunningham. It is most probable that they met during Borrow's visit at Oulton Hall in November 1832.

The Rev. Francis Cunningham appears to have been impressed by Borrow's talent for languages, and fully alive to his value to an inst.i.tution such as the Bible Society, of which he, Cunningham, was an active member. He accordingly addressed {93a} to the secretary, the Rev. Andrew Brandram, the following letter: