Students of Borrow will be as much surprised as pleased to find what a
large collection of documents Dr. Knapp has been able to use in compiling
this long-expected biography. {50} Indeed, the collection might have
been larger and richer still. For instance, in the original manuscript
of ‘Zincali’ (in the possession of the present writer) there are some
variations from the printed text; but, what is of very much more
importance, the whole—or nearly the whole—of Borrow’s letters to the
Bible Society, which Dr. Knapp believed to be lost, have been discovered
in the crypt of the Bible House in which the records of the Society are
stored. But even without these materials two massive volumes crammed
with documents throwing light upon the life and career of a man like
George Borrow must needs be interesting to the student of English
literature. For among all the remarkable characters that during the
middle of the present century figured in the world of letters, the most
eccentric, the most whimsical, and in every way the most extraordinary
was surely the man whom Dr. Knapp calls, appropriately enough, his
“hero.”
It is no exaggeration to say that there was not a single point in which
Borrow resembled any other writing man of his time; indeed, we cannot, at
the moment, recall any really important writer of any period whose
eccentricity of character can be compared with his. At the basis of the
artistic temperament is generally that “sweet reasonableness” the lack of
which we excuse in Borrow and in almost no one else. As to literary
whim, it must not be supposed that this quality is necessarily and always
the outcome of temperament. There are some authors of whom it may be
said that the moment they take pen in hand they pass into their “literary
mood,” a mood that in their cases does not seem to be born of
temperament, but to spring from some fantastic movement of the intellect.
Sterne, for instance, the greatest of all masters of whim (not excluding
Rabelais), passed when in the act of writing into a literary mood which,
as “Yorick,” he tried to live up to in his private life—tried in vain.
With regard to Charles Lamb, his temperament, no doubt, was whimsical
enough, and yet how many rich and rare passages in his writings are
informed by a whim of a purely intellectual kind—a whim which could only
have sprung from that delicious literary mood of his, engendered by much
study of quaint old writers, into which he passed when at his desk! But
whatsoever is whimsical, whatsoever is eccentric and angular, in Borrow’s
writings is the natural, the inevitable growth of a nature more
whimsical, more eccentric, more angular still.
That such a man should have had an extraordinary life-experience was to
be expected. And an extraordinary life-experience Borrow’s was, to be
sure! This alone would lend an especial interest to Borrow’s
biography—the fact, we mean, of his life having been extraordinary. For
in these days no lives, as a rule, are less adventurous, none, as a rule,
less tinged with romance, than the lives of those who attain eminence in
the world of letters. No doubt they nowadays move about from place to
place a good deal; not a few of them may even be called travellers, or at
least globe-trotters; but, alas! in globe-trotting who shall hope to meet
with adventures of a more romantic kind than those connected with a
railway collision or a storm at sea? And this was so in days that
preceded ours. It was so with Scott, it was so with Dickens, it was so
with even Dumas, who, chained to his desk for months and months at a
stretch, could only be seen by his friends during the intervals of work.
Nay, even with regard to the writing men of the far past, the more time a
man gave to literary production the less time he had to drink the rich
wine of life, to see the world, to study nature and nature’s enigma man.
Perhaps one reason why we have almost no record of what the greatest of
all writing men was doing in the world is that while his friends were
elbowing the tide of life in the streets of London, or fighting in the
Low Countries, or carousing at the Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo
Saloon, he was filling every moment with work—work which enabled him,
before he reached his fifty-second year, to build up that literary
monument of his, that edifice which made the monuments of the others, his
contemporaries, seem like the handiwork of pigmies. But as regards
Borrow, student though he was, it is not as an author that we think of
him; it is as the adventurer, it is as the great Romany Rye, who
discovered the most interesting people in Europe, and as a brother
vagabond lived with them—lived with them “on the accont of health,
sweetness of the air, and for enjoying the pleasure of Nature’s life,” to
quote the “testimonial” of the prose-poet Sylvester Boswell.
Even by his personal appearance Borrow was marked off from his
fellow-men. As a gipsy girl once remarked, “Nobody as ever see’d the
white-headed Romany Rye ever forgot him.” Standing considerably above
six feet in height, he was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his
practice of athletic exercises gave his every movement the easy
elasticity of an athlete under training. As to his countenance, “noble”
is the only word that can be used to describe it. The silvery whiteness
of the thick crop of hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty
of the hairless face, but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this
strangeness was intensified by a certain incongruity between the features
(perfect Roman-Greek in type) and the Scandinavian complexion, luminous
and sometimes rosy as an English girl’s. An increased intensity was lent
by the fair skin to the dark lustre of the eyes. What struck the
observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of the man’s
appearance. It was not this feature or that which struck the eye, it was
the expression of the face as a whole. If it were possible to describe
this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a shy
self-consciousness.
How did it come about, then, that a man shy, self-conscious, and
sensitive to the last degree, became the Ulysses of the writing
fraternity, wandering among strangers all over Europe, and consorting on
intimate terms with that race who, more than all others, are repelled by
shy self-consciousness—the gipsies? This, perhaps, is how the puzzle may
be explained. 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 calls 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 gipsy 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 gipsies.
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 gipsies 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 gipsies who suspected and disliked him.”
Thus it came about that the gipsies and the wanderers generally were
almost the only people in any country who saw the winsome side of Borrow.
A truly winsome side he had. Yes, notwithstanding all that has been said
about him to the contrary, Borrow was a most interesting and charming
companion. We all have our angularities; we all have unpleasant facets
of character when occasion offers for showing them. But there are some
unfortunate people whose angularities are for ever chafing and irritating
their friends. Borrow was one of these. It is very rarely indeed that
one meets a friend or an acquaintance of Borrow’s who speaks of him with
the kindness he deserved. When a friend or an acquaintance relates an
anecdote of him the asperity with which he does so is really remarkable
and quite painful. It was—it must have been—far from Dr. Gordon Hake’s
wish to speak unkindly of his old friend who remained to the last deeply
attached to him. And yet few things have done more to prejudice the
public against Borrow than the Doctor’s tale of Lavengro’s outrage at
Rougham Rookery, the residence of the banker Bevan, one of the kindest
and most benevolent men in Suffolk.
This story, often told by Hake, appeared at last in print in his memoirs.
Invited to dinner by Mr. Bevan, Borrow accepted the invitation and,
according to the anecdote, thus behaved: During dinner Mrs. Bevan,
thinking to please him, said, “Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books
with so much pleasure!” On which Borrow exclaimed, “Pray what books do
you mean, ma’am—do you mean my account books?” Then, rising from the
table, he walked up and down among the servants during the whole dinner,
and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passages till the carriage
could be ordered for his return home. A monstrous proceeding truly, and
not to be condoned by any circumstances. Yet some part of its violence
may, perhaps, thus be explained. Borrow’s loyalty to a friend was
proverbial—until he and the friend quarrelled. A man who dared say an
ungenerous word against a friend of Borrow’s ran the risk of being
knocked down. Borrow on this occasion had been driven half mad with
rage—unreasoning, ignorant rage—against the Bury banking-house, because
it had “struck the docket” against a friend of Borrow’s, the heir to a
considerable estate, who had got into difficulties. What Borrow yearned
to do was, as he told the present writer, to cane the banker. He had, as
far as his own reputation went, far better have done this and taken the
consequences than have insulted the banker’s wife—one of the most gentle,
amiable, and unassuming ladies in Suffolk. Dr. Knapp speaks very sharply
of Miss Cobb’s remarks upon Borrow, and certainly these remarks are made
with a great deal too much acidity. But if the Borrovian is to lose
temper with every one who girds at Borrow he will lead a not very
comfortable life.
Dr. Knapp has no doubt whatever that ‘Lavengro’ is in the main an
autobiography. We have none. The only question is how much _Dichtung_
is mingled with the _Wahrheit_. Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy
pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative—such incidents as
that of his meeting on the road the sailor son of the old apple-woman of
London Bridge, and the exaggerated description of the man sent to sleep
by reading Wordsworth—few readers would have doubted the autobiographical
nature of ‘Lavengro’ and ‘The Romany Rye.’ Such incidents as these shed
an air of unreality over the whole.
All writers upon Borrow fall into the mistake of considering him to have
been an East Anglian. They might as well call Charlotte Brontë a
Yorkshirewoman as call Borrow an East Anglian. He was, of course, no
more an East Anglian than an Irishman born in London is an Englishman.
He had at bottom no East Anglian characteristics. He inherited nothing
from Norfolk save his accent and his love of “leg of mutton and turnips.”
Yet he is a striking illustration of the way in which the locality that
has given birth to a man influences him throughout his life. The fact of
Borrow’s having been born in East Anglia was the result of accident. His
father, a Cornishman of a good middle-class family, had been obliged,
owing to a youthful escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a
common soldier. Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and moved
about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to another. It so
chanced that while staying at East Dereham, in Norfolk, he met and fell
in love with a lady of French extraction. Not one drop of East Anglian
blood was in the veins of Borrow’s father, and very little in the veins
of his mother. Borrow’s ancestry was pure Cornish on one side, and on
the other mainly French. But such was the sublime egotism of
Borrow—perhaps we should have said such is the sublime egotism of human
nature—that the fact of his having been born in East Anglia made him look
upon that part of the world as the very hub of the universe.
There is, it must be confessed, something to us very agreeable in Dr.
Knapp’s single-minded hero-worship. A scholar and a philologist himself,
he seems to have devoted a large portion of his life to the study of
Borrow—following in Lavengro’s footsteps from one country to another with
unflagging enthusiasm. Now and again, undoubtedly, this hero-worship
runs to excess: the faults of style and of method in Borrow’s writings
are condoned or are passed by unobserved by Dr. Knapp, while the most
unanswerable strictures upon them by others are resented. For instance,
at the end of the following extract from the report of the gentleman who
read ‘Zincali’ for Mr. Murray, he appends a note of exclamation, as
though he considers the admirable advice given to be eccentric or bad:—
“The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of the book; but in several
of them the tone of the speakers, of those especially who are in
humble life, is too correct and elevated, and therefore out of
character. This takes away from their effect. I think it would be
very advisable that Mr. Borrow should go over them with reference to
this point, simplifying a few of the terms of expression and
introducing a few contractions—_don’ts_, _can’ts_, &c. This would
improve them greatly.”
Now the truth is that Mr. Murray’s reader, whoever he was, {60} pointed
out the one great blemish in _all_ Borrow’s dramatic pictures of gipsy
life, wheresoever the scene may be laid. Take his pictures of English
gipsies. The reader has only to compare the dialogue between gipsies
given in that photographic study of Romany life ‘In Gipsy Tents’ with the
dialogues in ‘Lavengro’ to see how the illusion in Borrow’s narrative is
disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers. After all
allowance is made for the Romany’s love of high-sounding words, it
considerably weakens our belief in Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro, Ursula, and
the rest, to find them using complex sentences and bookish words which,
even among English people, are rarely heard in conversation.
Dr. Knapp says emphatically that Borrow never created a character, and
that the originals are easily recognizable to one who thoroughly knows
the times and Borrow’s writings. This is true, no doubt, as regards
people with whom he was brought into contact at Norwich, and, indeed,
generally before the period of his gipsy wanderings. It must not be
supposed, however, that such characters as the man who “touched” to avert
the evil chance and the man who taught himself Chinese are in any sense
portraits. They have so many of Borrow’s own peculiarities that they
might rather be called portraits of himself. There was nothing that
Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious impulse, which he
seems to have shared with Dr. Johnson, to touch the objects along his
path in order to save himself from the evil chance. He never conquered
the superstition. In walking through Richmond Park he would step out of
his way constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he
was with seemed to observe it. Many of the peculiarities of the man who
taught himself Chinese were also Borrow’s own.
“But what about Isopel Berners?” the reader will ask. “How much of truth
and how much of fiction went to the presentation of this most interesting
character?” Seeing that Dr. Knapp has at his command such an immense
amount of material in manuscript, the reader will feel some
disappointment at discovering that the book tells us nothing new about
her. The character he names Isopel Berners was just the sort of girl in
every way to attract Borrow, and if he had had the feeblest spark of the
love-passion in his constitution one could almost imagine his falling in
love with her. Yet even the portrait of Isopel is marred by Borrow’s
impulse towards exaggeration. He must needs describe her as being taller
than himself, and as he certainly stood six feet three Isopel would have
been far better suited to sit by the side of Borrow’s friend the “Norfolk
giant,” Hales, in the little London public-house where he latterly
resided, than to become famous as a fighting woman who could conquer the
Flaming Tinman. Few indeed have been the women who could stand up for
long before a trained boxer, and these must needs be not too tall, and
moreover they must have their breasts padded after the manner of a
well-known gipsy girl who excelled in this once fashionable
accomplishment. Even then a woman’s instinct impels her to guard her
chest more carefully than she guards her face, and this leads to
disaster. Altogether Borrow, by his wilful exaggeration, makes the
reader a little sceptical about Isopel, who was really an East Anglian
road-girl of the finest type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not
many years ago. All that Dr. Knapp has derived from the documents in his
possession concerning her is the following extraordinary passage from the
original manuscript, which Borrow struck out of ‘Lavengro.’ He says:—
“As to the remarkable character introduced into ‘Lavengro’ and
‘Romany Rye’ under the name of Isopel Berners, I have no light from
the MSS. of George Borrow, save the following fragment, which perhaps
I ought to have suppressed. I am sorry if it dispel any illusions:—
“(_Loquitur Petulengro_) ‘My mind at present rather inclines towards
two wives. I have heard that King Pharaoh had two, if not more.
Now, I think myself as good a man as he; and if he had more wives
than one, why should not I, whose name is Petulengro?’
“‘But what would Mrs. Petulengro say?’
“‘Why, to tell you the truth, brother, it was she who first put the
thought into my mind. She has always, you know, had strange notions
in her head, gorgiko notions, I suppose we may call them, about
gentility and the like, and reading and writing. Now, though she can
neither read nor write herself, she thinks that she is lost among our
people and that they are no society for her. So says she to me one
day, “Pharaoh,” says she, “I wish you would take another wife, that I
might have a little pleasant company. As for these here, I am their
betters.” “I have no objection,” said I; “who shall it be? Shall it
be a Cooper or a Stanley?” “A Cooper or a Stanley!” said she, with a
toss of her head, “I might as well keep my present company as theirs;
none of your rubbish; let it be a _gorgie_, one that I can speak an
idea with”—that was her word, I think. Now I am thinking that this
here Bess of yours would be just the kind of person both for my wife
and myself. My wife wants something gorgiko, something genteel. Now
Bess is of blood gorgious; if you doubt it, look in her face, all
full of _pawno ratter_, white blood, brother; and as for gentility,
nobody can make exceptions to Bess’s gentility, seeing she was born
in the workhouse of Melford the Short, where she learned to read and
write. She is no Irish woman, brother, but English pure, and her
father was a farmer.
“‘So much as far as my wife is concerned. As for myself, I tell you
what, brother, I want a strapper; one who can give and take. The
Flying Tinker is abroad, vowing vengeance against us all. I know
what the Flying Tinker is, so does Tawno. The Flying Tinker came to
our camp. “Damn you all,” says he, “I’ll fight the best of you for
nothing.”—“Done!” says Tawno, “I’ll be ready for you in a minute.”
So Tawno went into his tent and came out naked. “Here’s at you,”
says Tawno. Brother, Tawno fought for two hours with the Flying
Tinker, for two whole hours, and it’s hard to say which had the best
of it or the worst. I tell you what, brother, I think Tawno had the
worst of it. Night came on. Tawno went into his tent to dress
himself and the Flying Tinker went his way.
“‘Now suppose, brother, the Flying Tinker comes upon us when Tawno is
away. Who is to fight the Flying Tinker when he says: “D---n you, I
will fight the best of you”? Brother, I will fight the Flying Tinker
for five pounds; but I couldn’t for less. The Flying Tinker is a big
man, and though he hasn’t my science, he weighs five stone heavier.
It wouldn’t do for me to fight a man like that for nothing. But
there’s Bess, who can afford to fight the Flying Tinker at any time
for what he’s got, and that’s three ha’pence. She can beat him,
brother; I bet five pounds that Bess can beat the Flying Tinker.
Now, if I marry Bess, I’m quite easy on his score. He comes to our
camp and says his say. “I won’t dirty my hands with you,” says I,
“at least not under five pounds; but here’s Bess who’ll fight you for
nothing.” I tell you what, brother, when he knows that Bess is Mrs.
Pharaoh, he’ll fight shy of our camp; he won’t come near it, brother.
He knows Bess don’t like him, and what’s more, that she can lick him.
He’ll let us alone; at least I think so. If he does come, I’ll smoke
my pipe whilst Bess is beating the Flying Tinker. Brother, I’m dry,
and will now take a cup of ale.’”
Why did Borrow reject this passage? Was it owing to his dread of
respectability’s frowns?—or was it not rather because he felt that here
his exaggeration, his departure from the true in quest of the striking,
did not recommend itself to his cooler judgment? For those who know
anything of the gipsies would say at once that it would have been
impossible for Mrs. Petulengro to make this suggestion; and that, even if
she had made it, Mr. Petulengro would not have dared to broach it to any
English road-girl, least of all to a girl like Isopel Berners. The
passage, however, is the most interesting document that Dr. Knapp has
published.
What may be called the Isopel Berners chapter of Borrow’s life was soon
to be followed by the “veiled period”—that is to say, the period between
the point where ends ‘The Romany Rye’ and the point where the Bible
Society engages Borrow.
Dr. Knapp’s mind seems a good deal exercised concerning this period.
Borrow having chosen to draw the veil over that period, no one has any
right to raise it—or, rather, perhaps no one would have had any right to
do so had not Borrow himself thrown such a needless mystery around it.
In considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always necessary
to take into account the secretiveness of his disposition, and also his
passion for posing. He had a child’s fondness for the wonderful. It is
through his own love of mystification that students like Dr. Knapp must
needs pry into these matters—must needs ask why Borrow drew the veil over
seven years—must needs ask whether during the “veiled period” he led a
life of squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel
Berners in Mumpers’ Dingle was luxury, or whether he was really
travelling, as he pretended to have been, over the world.
By yielding to his instinct as a born showman he excites a curiosity
which would otherwise be unjustifiable. Even if Dr. Knapp had been able
to approach Borrow’s stepdaughter—which he seems not to have been able to
do—it is pretty certain that she could have told him nothing of that
mysterious seven years. For about this subject the people to whom Borrow
seems to have been most reticent were his wife and her daughter. Indeed,
it was not until after his wife’s death that he would allude to this
period even to his most intimate friends. One of the very few people to
whom he did latterly talk with anything like frankness about this period
in his life—Dr. Gordon Hake—is dead; and perhaps there is not more than
about one other person now living who had anything of his confidence.
With regard to this veiled period, people who read the idyllic pictures
in ‘Lavengro’ and ‘The Romany Rye’ of the life of a gipsy gentleman
working as a hedge-smith in the dingle or by the roadside seem to forget
that Borrow was then working not for amusement, but for bread, and they
forget how scant the bread must have been that could be bought for the
odd sixpence or the few coppers that he was able to earn. To those,
however, who do not forget this it needs no revelation from documents,
and none from any surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as
Borrow was mainly living in England during these seven years (continuing
for a considerable time his life of a wanderer, and afterwards living as
an obscure literary struggler in Norwich), his life was during this
period one of privation, disappointment, and gloom. It was for him to
decide what he would give to the public and what he would withhold.
The concluding chapter of Dr. Knapp’s book is not only pathetic—it is
painful. In the summer of 1874 Borrow left London, bade adieu to Mr.
Murray and a few friends, and returned to Oulton—to die. On the 26th of
July, 1881, he was found dead in his home at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth
year.
II. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI,
1828–1882.