II.

Borrow could look at Nature without thinking of himself—a rare gift, for

Nature, as I have said, has been disappointed in man. Her great desire

from the first has been to grow an organism so conscious that it can turn

round and look at her with intelligent eyes. She has done so at last,

but the consciousness is so high as to be self-conscious, and man cannot

for egotism look at his mother after all. Borrow was a great exception.

Thoreau’s self-consciousness showed itself in presence of Nature,

Borrow’s in presence of man. The very basis of Borrow’s nature was

reverence. His unswerving belief in the beneficence of God was most

beautiful, most touching. In his life Borrow had suffered much: a

temperament such as his must needs suffer much—so shy it was, so proud,

and yet yearning for a close sympathy such as no creature and only

solitary communing with Nature can give. Under any circumstances, I say,

Borrow would have known how sharp and cruel are the flints along the

road—how tender are a poet’s feet; but _his_ road at one time was rough

indeed; not when he was with his gipsy friends (for a tent is freer than

a roof, according to the grammarian of Codling Gap, and roast hedgehog is

the daintiest of viands), but when he was toiling in London, his fine

gifts unrecognized and useless—_that_ was when Borrow passed through the

fire. Yet every sorrow and every disaster of his life he traced to the

kindly hand of a benevolent and wise Father, who sometimes will use a

whip of scorpions, but only to chastise into a right and happy course the

children he loves.

Apart from the instinctive rectitude of his nature, it was with Borrow a

deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and never can go, unpunished.

His doctrine, indeed, was something like the Buddhist doctrine of

Karma—it was based on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of

“law” in the most universal acceptation of that word. Sylvester

Boswell’s definition of a free man, in that fine, self-respective

certificate of his, as one who is “free from all cares or fears of law

that may come against him,” is, indeed, the gospel of every true

nature-worshipper. The moment Thoreau spurned the legal tax-gatherer the

law locked the nature-worshipper in gaol. To enjoy nature the soul

_must_ be free—free not only from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every

wrongful act awakes, out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its

own peculiar serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry

and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they

go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging

round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling across the brook where the

wrongdoer would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul

with the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the

water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at last, in sheer

desperation, he must needs stop and turn, and bare his breast to the

fangs; when, having yielded up to the thing its fill of atoning blood,

Nature breaks into her old smile again, and he goes on his way in peace.

All this Borrow understood better than any man I have ever met. Yet even

into his doctrine of Providence Borrow imported such an element of whim

that it was impossible to listen to him sometimes without a smile. For

instance, having arrived at the conclusion that a certain lieutenant had

been cruelly ill used by genteel magnates high in office, Borrow

discovered that since that iniquity Providence had frowned on the British

arms, and went on to trace the disastrous blunder of Balaklava to this

cause. Again, having decided that Sir Walter Scott’s worship of

gentility and Jacobitism had been the main cause of the revival of

flunkeyism and Popery in England, Borrow saw in the dreadful monetary

disasters which overclouded Scott’s last days the hand of God, whose plan

was to deprive him of the worldly position Scott worshipped at the very

moment when his literary fame (which he misprized) was dazzling the

world.

And now as to the gipsy wanderings. As I have said, no man has been more

entirely misunderstood than Borrow. That a man who certainly did (as F.

H. Groome says) look like a “colossal clergyman” should have joined the

gipsies, that he should have wandered over England and Europe, content

often to have the grass for his bed and the sky for his hostry-roof, has

astonished very much (and I believe scandalized very much) this age. My

explanation of the matter is this: Among the myriads of children born

into a world of brick and mortar there appears now and then one who is

meant for better things—one who exhibits unmistakable signs that he

inherits the blood of those remote children of the open air who,

according to the old Sabæan notion, on the plains of Asia lived with

Nature, loved Nature and were loved by her, and from whom all men are

descended. George Borrow was one of those who show the olden strain.

Now, for such a man, born in a country like England, where the modern

fanaticism of house-worship has reached a condition which can only be

called maniacal, what is there left but to try for a time the gipsy’s

tent? On the Continent house-worship is strong enough in all conscience;

but in France, in Spain, in Italy, even in Germany, people do think of

something beyond the house. But here, where there are no romantic

crimes, to get a genteel house, to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, or to

pretend to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, is the great first cause of

almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander up to

forgery, robbery, and murder. And yet it is a fact, as Borrow discovered

(when a mere lad in a solicitor’s office), that to men in health the

house need not, and should not, be the all-absorbing consideration, but

should be quite secondary to considerations of honesty and sweet air,

pure water, clean linen, good manners, freedom to migrate at will, and,

above all, freedom from “all cares or fears of law” that may come against

a man in the shape of debts, duns, and tax-gatherers.

Against this folly of softening our bodies by “snugness” and degrading

our souls by “flunkeyism,” Borrow’s early life was a protest. He saw

that if it were really unwholesome for man to be shone upon by the sun,

blown upon by the winds, and rained upon by the rain, like all the other

animals, man would never have existed at all, for sun and wind and rain

have produced him and everything that lives. He saw that for the

cultivation of health, honesty, and good behaviour every man born in the

temperate zone ought, unless King Circumstance says “No,” to spend in the

open air eight or nine hours at least out of the twenty-four, and ought

to court rather than to shun Nature’s sweet shower-bath the rain, unless,

of course, his chest is weak.

The evanescence of literary fame is strikingly illustrated by recalling

at this moment my first sight of Borrow. I could not have been much more

than a boy, for I and a friend had gone down to Yarmouth in March to

enjoy the luxury of bathing in a Yarmouth sea, and it is certainly a

“good while”—to use Borrow’s phrase—since I considered _that_ a luxury

suitable to March. On the morning after our arrival, having walked some

distance out of Yarmouth, we threw down our clothes and towels upon the

sand some few yards from another heap of clothes, which indicated, to our

surprise, that we were not, after all, the only people in Yarmouth who

could bathe in a biting wind; and soon we perceived, ducking in an

immense billow that came curving and curling towards the shore, such a

pair of shoulders as I had not seen for a long time, crowned by a head

white and glistening as burnished silver. (Borrow’s hair was white I

believe, when he was quite a young man.) When the wave had broken upon

the sand, there was the bather wallowing on the top of the water like a

Polar bear disporting in an Arctic sun. In swimming Borrow clawed the

water like a dog. I had plunged into the surf and got very close to the

swimmer, whom I perceived to be a man of almost gigantic proportions,

when suddenly an instinct told me that it was Lavengro himself, who lived

thereabouts, and the feeling that it was he so entirely stopped the

action of my heart that I sank for a moment like a stone, soon to rise

again, however, in glow of pleasure and excitement: so august a presence

was Lavengro’s then!

I ought to say, however, that Borrow was at that time my hero. From my

childhood I had taken the deepest interest in proscribed races such as

the Cagots, but especially in the persecuted children of Roma. I had

read accounts of whole families being executed in past times for no other

crime than that of their being born gipsies, and tears, childish and yet

bitter, had I shed over their woes. Now Borrow was the recognized

champion of the gipsies—the friend companion, indeed, of the proscribed

and persecuted races of the world. Nor was this all: I saw in him more

of the true Nature instinct than in any other writer—or so, at least, I

imagined. To walk out from a snug house at Rydal Mount for the purpose

of making poetical sketches for publication seemed to me a very different

thing from having no home but a tent in a dingle, or rather from Borrow’s

fashion of making all Nature your home. Although I would have given

worlds to go up and speak to him as he was tossing his clothes upon his

back, I could not do it. Morning after morning did I see him undress,

wallow in the sea, come out again, give me a somewhat sour look, dress,

and then stride away inland at a tremendous pace, but never could I speak

to him; and many years passed before I saw him again. He was then half

forgotten.

For an introduction to him at last I was indebted to Dr. Gordon Hake, the

poet, who had known Borrow for many years, and whose friendship Borrow

cherished above most things—as was usual, indeed, with the friends of Dr.

Hake. This was done with some difficulty, for, in calling at Roehampton

for a walk through Richmond Park and about the Common, Borrow’s first

question was always, “Are you alone?” and no persuasion could induce him

to stay unless it could be satisfactorily shown that he would not be

“pestered by strangers.” On a certain morning, however, he called, and

suddenly coming upon me, there was no retreating, and we were introduced.

He tried to be as civil as possible, but evidently he was much annoyed.

Yet there was something in the very tone of his voice that drew my heart

to him, for to me he was the Lavengro of my boyhood still. My own

shyness had been long before fingered off by the rough handling of the

world, but his retained all the bloom of youth, and a terrible barrier it

was, yet I attacked it manfully. I knew that Borrow had read but little

except in his own out-of-the-way directions; but then unfortunately, like

all specialists, he considered that in these his own special directions

lay all the knowledge that was of any value. Accordingly, what appeared

to Borrow as the most striking characteristic of the present age was its

ignorance.

Unfortunately, too, I knew that for strangers to talk of his own

published books or of gipsies appeared to him to be “prying,” though

there I should have been quite at home. I knew, however, that in the

obscure English pamphlet literature of the last century, recording the

sayings and doings of eccentric people and strange adventurers, Borrow

was very learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that

direction. I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without effect.

Borrow evidently considered that every properly educated man was familiar

with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew in its every detail. Then I

touched upon beer, the British bruiser, “gentility-nonsense,” the

“trumpery great”; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to _toit_, a

roof,—but only to have my shallow philology dismissed with a withering

smile. I tried other subjects in the same direction, but with small

success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett.

There is a very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story 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 at 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 cowheel.

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.

From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, sometimes at

Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London. I could have seen much

more of him than I did had not the whirlpool of London, into which I

plunged for a time, borne me away from this most original of men; and

this is what I so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it

was said of a greater man still, that “after Nature made _him_ she

forthwith broke the mould.” The last time I ever saw him 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; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had

lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs,

steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy

vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed

as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which

struck Borrow deeply. 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.