BORROW'S MOTHER
Throughout his whole life George Borrow adored his mother, who seems to
have developed into a woman of great strength of character far remote
from the pretty play-actor who won the heart of a young soldier at East
Dereham in the last years of the eighteenth century. We would gladly
know something of the early years of Ann Perfrement. Her father was a
farmer, whose farm at Dumpling Green we have already described. He did
not, however, 'farm his own little estate' as Borrow declared. The
grandfather--a French Protestant--came, if we are to believe Borrow,
from Caen in Normandy after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but
there is no documentary evidence to support the contention. However, the
story of the Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound up with
Norwich and the adjacent district. And so we may well take the name of
'Perfrement' as conclusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as
utterly untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
that Borrow's mother was 'of gypsy descent.'[9] She was one of the eight
children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have
devoted their lives to East Anglia.[10] We owe to Dr. Knapp's edition of
_Lavengro_ one exquisite glimpse of Ann's girlhood that is not in any
other issue of the book. Ann's elder sister, curious to know if she was
ever to be married, falls in with the current superstition that she must
wash her linen and 'watch' it drying before the fire between eleven and
twelve at night. Ann Perfrement was ten years old at the time. The two
girls walked over to East Dereham, purchased the necessary garment,
washed it in the pool near the house that may still be seen, and watched
and watched. Suddenly when the clock struck twelve they heard, or
thought they heard, a footstep on the path, the wind howled, and the
elder sister sprang to the door, locked and bolted it, and then fell in
convulsions on the floor. The superstition, which Borrow seems to have
told his mother had a Danish origin, is common enough in Ireland and in
Celtic lands. It could scarcely have been thus rehearsed by two Norfolk
children had they not had the blood of a more imaginative race in their
veins. In addition to this we find more than one effective glimpse of
Borrow's mother in _Lavengro_. We have already noted the episode in
which she takes the side of her younger boy against her husband, with
whom John was the favourite. We meet her again in the following
dialogue, with its pathetic allusions to Dante and to the complaint--a
kind of nervous exhaustion which he called 'the horrors'--that was to
trouble Borrow all his days:
'What ails you, my child?' said a mother to her son, as he lay
on a couch under the influence of the dreadful one; 'what ails
you? you seem afraid!'
_Boy._ And so I am; a dreadful fear is upon me.
_Mother._ But of what? there is no one can harm you; of what
are you apprehensive?
_Boy._ Of nothing that I can express. I know not what I am
afraid of, but afraid I am.
_Mother._ Perhaps you see sights and visions. I knew a lady
once who was continually thinking that she saw an armed man
threaten her, but it was only an imagination, a phantom of the
brain.
_Boy._ No armed man threatens me; and 'tis not a thing like
that would cause me any fear. Did an armed man threaten me I
would get up and fight him; weak as I am, I would wish for
nothing better, for then, perhaps, I should lose this fear;
mine is a dread of I know not what, and there the horror lies.
_Mother._ Your forehead is cool, and your speech collected. Do
you know where you are?
_Boy._ I know where I am, and I see things just as they are;
you are beside me, and upon the table there is a book which was
written by a Florentine; all this I see, and that there is no
ground for being afraid. I am, moreover, quite cool, and feel
no pain--but, but----
And then there was a burst of 'gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.'
Alas, alas, poor child of clay! as the sparks fly upward, so
wast thou born to sorrow--Onward![11]
Our next glimpse of Mrs. Borrow is when after his father's death George
had shouldered his knapsack and made his way to London to seek his
fortune by literature. His elder brother had remained at home,
determined upon being a painter, but joined George in London, leaving
the widowed mother momentarily alone in Norwich.
'And how are things going on at home?' said I to my brother,
after we had kissed and embraced. 'How is my mother, and how is
the dog?'
'My mother, thank God, is tolerably well,' said my brother,
'but very much given to fits of crying. As for the dog, he is
not so well; but we will talk more of these matters anon,' said
my brother, again glancing at the breakfast things. 'I am very
hungry, as you may suppose, after having travelled all night.'
Thereupon I exerted myself to the best of my ability to perform
the duties of hospitality, and I made my brother welcome--I may
say more than welcome; and when the rage of my brother's hunger
was somewhat abated, we recommenced talking about the matters
of our little family, and my brother told me much about my
mother; he spoke of her fits of crying, but said that of late
the said fits of crying had much diminished, and she appeared
to be taking comfort; and, if I am not much mistaken, my
brother told me that my mother had of late the prayer-book
frequently in her hand, and yet oftener the Bible.[12]
Ann Borrow lived in Willow Lane, Norwich, for thirty-three years. That
Borrow was a devoted husband these pages will show. He was also a
devoted son. When he had made a prosperous marriage he tried hard to
persuade his mother to live with him at Oulton, but all in vain. She had
the wisdom to see that such an arrangement is rarely conducive to a
son's domestic happiness. She continued to live in the little cottage
made sacred by many associations until almost the end of her days. Here
she had lived in earlier years with her husband and her two ambitious
boys, and in Norwich, doubtless, she had made her own friendships,
although of these no record remains. The cottage still stands in its
modest court, but is at the moment untenanted. There is a letter extant
from Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, who wrote _The Life of Mrs. Opie_, to Mary
Borrow at Oulton, when Mrs. Borrow the elder had gone to live there,
which records the fact that in 1851, two years after Mrs. Borrow had
left the cottage in Willow Lane, it had already changed its appearance.
Mrs. Brightwell writes:
Give my kind love to dear mother. Tell her I went past her
house to-day and looked up the court. It is quite changed: all
the trees and the ivy taken away.
The house was the property of Thomas King, a carpenter. You enter from
Willow Lane through a covered passage into what was then known as King's
Court. Here the little house faces you, and you meet it with a
peculiarly agreeable sensation, recalling more than one incident in
_Lavengro_ that transpired there. In 1897 the then mayor made the one
attempt of his city of a whole half century to honour Borrow by calling
this court Borrow's Court--thereby conferring a ridiculously small
distinction upon Borrow,[13] and removing a landmark connected with one
of its own worthy citizens. For Thomas King, the carpenter, was in
direct descent in the maternal line from the family of Parker, which
gave to Norwich one of its most distinguished sons in the famous
Archbishop of Queen Elizabeth's day. He extended his business as
carpenter sufficiently to die a prosperous builder. Of his two sons one,
also named Thomas, became physician to Prince Talleyrand, and married a
sister of John Stuart Mill.[14] All this by the way, but there is little
more to record of Borrow's mother apart from the letters addressed to
her by her son, which occur in their due place in these records. Yet one
little memorandum among my papers which bears Mrs. Borrow's signature
may well find place here:
In the year 1797 I was at Canterbury. One night at about one
o'clock Sir Robert Laurie and Captain Treve came to our
lodgings and tapped at our bedroom door, and told my husband to
get up, and get the men under arms without beat of drum as soon
as possible, for that there was a mutiny at the Nore. My
husband did so, and in less than two hours they had marched out
of town towards Sheerness without making any noise. They had to
break open the store-house in order to get provender, because
the Quartermaster, Serjeant Rowe, was out of the way. The
Dragoon Guards at that time at Canterbury were in a state of
mutiny.
ANN BORROW.
[Illustration: THE BORROW HOUSE, NORWICH
The house is situated in Borrow's Court, formerly King's Court, Willow
Lane, St. Giles's, Norwich, and here Borrow lived at intervals from 1816
to his marriage in 1839. His mother lived here for thirty-three years
until 1849; his father died here, and is buried in the neighbouring
churchyard of St. Giles's.]
FOOTNOTES:
[9] 24th May 1856. Dining at Mr. Rathbone's one evening last week (21st
May), it was mentioned that Borrow, author of _The Bible in Spain_, is
supposed to be of gypsy descent by the mother's side. Hereupon Mr.
Martineau mentioned that he had been a schoolfellow of Borrow, and
though he had never heard of his gypsy blood, he thought it probable,
from Borrow's traits of character. He said that Borrow had once run away
from school, and carried with him a party of other boys, meaning to lead
a wandering life (_The English Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne_, vol.
ii. 1858).
[10] Samuel and Maria Perfrement were married in 1766, the latter to
John Burcham. Two of her brothers survived Ann Borrow, Samuel Perfrement
dying in 1864 and Philip in 1867.
[11] _Lavengro_, ch. xviii.
[12] _Lavengro_, ch. xxxvii.
[13] In May 1913 the Lord Mayor of Norwich (Mr. A. M. Samuel) purchased
the Borrow house in Willow Lane for £375, and gave it to the city for
the purpose of a Borrow Museum.
[14] This Thomas King was a cousin of my mother; his father built the
Borrow House in Norwich in 1812. The only allusion to him I have ever
seen in print is contained in a letter on _Lavengro_ contributed by
Thomas Burcham to _The Britannia_ newspaper of June 26, 1851:--'With
your criticism on _Lavengro_ I cordially agree, and if you were
disappointed in the long promised work, what must I have been? A
schoolfellow of Borrow, who, in the autobiography, expected to find much
interesting matter, not only relating to himself, but also to
schoolfellows and friends--the associates of his youth, who, in
after-life, gained no slight notoriety--amongst them may be named Sir
James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak; poor Stoddard, who was murdered at
Bokhara, and who, as a boy, displayed that noble bearing and high
sensitiveness of honour which partly induced that fatal result; and
Thomas King, one of Borrow's early friends, who, the son of a carpenter
at Norwich, the landlord of Lavengro's father, after working in his
father's shop till nearly sixteen, went to Paris, entered himself as a
student at one of the hospitals, and through his energy and intellect
became internal surgeon of L'Hôtel Dieu and private physician to Prince
Talleyrand.' Thomas Borrow Burcham was Magistrate of Southwark Police
Court from 1856 till his death in 1869. He was the son of Maria
Perfrement, Borrow's aunt.