GEORGE BORROW'S NORWICH--THE TAYLORS
With the famous 'Taylors of Norwich' Borrow seems to have had no
acquaintance, although he went to school with a connection of that
family, James Martineau. These socially important Taylors were in no way
related to William Taylor of that city, who knew German literature, and
scandalised the more virtuous citizens by that, and perhaps more by his
fondness for wine and also for good English beer--a drink over which his
friend Borrow was to become lyrical. When people speak of the Norwich
Taylors they refer to the family of Dr. John Taylor, who in 1783 was
elected to the charge of the Presbyterian congregation in Norwich. His
eldest son, Richard, married Margaret, the daughter of a mayor of
Norwich of the name of Meadows; and Sarah, another daughter of that same
worshipful mayor, married David Martineau, grandson of Gaston Martineau,
who fled from France at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes.[35] Harriet and James Martineau were grandchildren of this
David. The second son of Richard and Margaret Taylor was John, who
married Susannah Cook. Susannah is the clever Mrs. John Taylor of this
story, and her daughter of even greater ability was Sarah Austin, the
wife of the famous jurist. Their daughter married Sir Alexander
Duff-Gordon. She was the author of _Letters from Egypt_, a book to which
George Meredith wrote an 'Introduction,' so much did he love the writer.
Lady Duff-Gordon's daughter, Janet Ross, wrote the biography of her
mother, her grandmother, and Mrs. John Taylor, in _Three Generations of
Englishwomen_. A niece, Lena Duff-Gordon (Mrs. Waterfield), has written
pleasant books of travel, and so, for five generations, this family has
produced clever women-folk. But here we are only concerned with Mrs.
John Taylor, called by her friends the 'Madame Roland of Norwich.' Lucy
Aikin describes how she 'darned her boy's grey worsted stockings while
holding her own with Southey, Brougham, or Mackintosh.' One of her
daughters married Henry Reeve, and, as I have said, another married John
Austin. Borrow was twenty years of age and living in Norwich when Mrs.
Taylor died. It is to be regretted that in the early impressionable
years his position as a lawyer's clerk did not allow of his coming into
a circle in which he might have gained certain qualities of _savoir
faire_ and _joie de vivre_, which he was all his days to lack. Of the
Taylor family the Duke of Sussex said that they reversed the ordinary
saying that it takes nine tailors to make a man. The witticism has been
attributed to Sydney Smith, but Mrs. Ross gives evidence that it was the
Duke's--the youngest son of George III. In his _Life of Sir James
Mackintosh_ Basil Montagu, referring to Mrs. John Taylor, says:
Norwich was always a haven of rest to us, from the literary
society with which that city abounded. Dr. Sayers we used to
visit, and the high-minded and intelligent William Taylor; but
our chief delight was in the society of Mrs. John Taylor, a
most intelligent and excellent woman, mild and unassuming,
quiet and meek, sitting amidst her large family, occupied with
her needle and domestic occupations, but always assisting, by
her great knowledge, the advancement of kind and dignified
sentiment and conduct.
We note here the reference to 'the high-minded and intelligent William
Taylor,' because William Taylor, whose influence upon Borrow's destiny
was so pronounced, has been revealed to many by the slanders of Harriet
Martineau, that extraordinary compound of meanness and generosity, of
poverty-stricken intelligence and rich endowment. In her
_Autobiography_, published in 1877, thirty-four years after Robberds's
_Memoir of William Taylor_, she dwells upon the drinking propensities of
William Taylor, who was a schoolfellow of her father's. She admits,
indeed, that Taylor was an ideal son, whose 'exemplary filial duty was a
fine spectacle to the whole city,' and she continues:
His virtues as a son were before our eyes when we witnessed his
endurance of his father's brutality of temper and manners, and
his watchfulness in ministering to the old man's comfort in his
infirmities. When we saw, on a Sunday morning, William Taylor
guiding his blind mother to chapel ... we could forgive
anything that had shocked or disgusted us at the dinner-table.
Well, Harriet Martineau is not much to be trusted as to Taylor's virtues
or his vices, for her early recollections are frequently far from the
mark. Thus she refers under the date 1833 to the fact that:
The great days of the Gurneys were not come yet. The remarkable
family from which issued Mrs. Fry and Joseph John Gurney were
then a set of dashing young people, dressed in gay riding
habits and scarlet boots, and riding about the country to balls
and gaieties of all sorts.
As a matter of fact, in this year, 1833, Mrs. Fry was the mother of
fifteen children, and had nine grandchildren, and Joseph John Gurney had
been twice a widower. Both brother and sister were zealous
philanthropists at this date. And so we may take with some measure of
qualification Harriet Martineau's many strictures upon Taylor's drinking
habits, which were, no doubt, those of his century and epoch; although
perhaps beyond the acceptable standard of Norwich, where the Gurneys
were strong teetotallers, and the Bishop once invited Father Mathew,
then in the glory of his temperance crusade, to discourse in his
diocese. Indeed, Robberds, his biographer, tells us explicitly that
these charges of intemperance were 'grossly and unjustly exaggerated.'
William Taylor's life is pleasantly interlinked with Scott and Southey.
Lucy Aikin records that she heard Sir Walter Scott declare to Mrs.
Barbauld that Taylor had laid the foundations of his literary
career--had started him upon the path of glory through romantic verse to
romantic prose, from _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ to _Waverley_. It
was the reading of Taylor's translation of Bürger's _Lenore_ that did
all this. 'This, madam,' said Scott, 'was what made me a poet. I had
several times attempted the more regular kinds of poetry without
success, but here was something that I thought I could do.' Southey
assuredly loved Taylor, and each threw at the feet of the other the
abundant literary learning that both possessed. This we find in a
correspondence which, reading more than a century after it was written,
still has its charm.[36] The son of a wealthy manufacturer of Norwich,
Taylor was born in that city in 1765. He was in early years a pupil of
Mrs. Barbauld. At fourteen he was placed in his father's counting-house,
and soon afterwards was sent abroad, in the company of one of the
partners, to acquire languages. He learnt German thoroughly at a time
when few Englishmen had acquaintance with its literature. To Goethe's
genius he never did justice, having been offended by that great man's
failure to acknowledge a book that Taylor sent to him, exactly as
Carlyle and Borrow alike were afterwards offended by similar
delinquencies on the part of Walter Scott. When he settled again in
Norwich he commenced to write for the magazines, among others for Sir
Richard Phillips's _Monthly Magazine_, and to correspond with Southey.
At the time Southey was a poor man, thinking of abandoning literature
for the law, and hopeful of practising in Calcutta. The Norwich
Liberals, however, aspired to a newspaper to be called _The Iris_.
Taylor asked Southey to come to Norwich and to become its editor.
Southey declined and Taylor took up the task. The _Norwich Iris_ lasted
for two years. Southey never threw over his friendship for Taylor,
although their views ultimately came to be far apart. Writing to Taylor
in 1803 he says:
Your theology does nothing but mischief; it serves only to thin
the miserable ranks of Unitarianism. The regular troops of
infidelity do little harm; and their trumpeters, such as
Voltaire and Paine, not much more. But it is such pioneers as
Middleton, and you and your German friends, that work
underground and sap the very citadel. That _Monthly Magazine_
is read by all the Dissenters--I call it the Dissenters'
Obituary--and here are you eternally mining, mining, under the
shallow faith of their half-learned, half-witted, half-paid,
half-starved pastors.
But the correspondence went on apace, indeed it occupies the larger part
of Robberds's two substantial volumes. It is in the very last letter
from Taylor to Southey that we find an oft-quoted reference to Borrow.
The letter is dated 12th March 1821:
A Norwich young man is construing with me Schiller's _Wilhelm
Tell_ with the view of translating it for the Press. His name
is George Henry Borrow, and he has learnt German with
extraordinary rapidity; indeed, he has the gift of tongues,
and, though not yet eighteen, understands twelve
languages--English, Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German,
Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; he would like
to get into the Office for Foreign Affairs, but does not know
how.
Although this was the last letter to Southey that is published in the
memoir, Taylor visited Southey at Keswick in 1826. Taylor's three
volumes of the _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ appeared in 1828,
1829, and 1830. Sir Walter Scott, in the last year of his life, wrote
from Abbotsford on 23rd April 1832 to Taylor to protest against an
allusion to 'William Scott of Edinburgh' being the author of a
translation of _Goetz von Berlichingen_. Scott explained that he (Walter
Scott) was that author, and also made allusion to the fact that he had
borrowed with acknowledgment two lines from Taylor's _Lenore_ for his
own--
Tramp, tramp along the land,
Splash, splash across the sea.
adding that his recollection of the obligation was infinitely stronger
than of the mistake. It would seem, however, that the name 'William' was
actually on the title-page of the London edition of 1799 of _Goetz von
Berlichingen_. When Southey heard of the death of Taylor in 1836 he
wrote:
I was not aware of my old friend's illness, or I should
certainly have written to him, to express that unabated regard
which I have felt for him eight-and-thirty years, and that hope
which I shall ever feel, that we may meet in the higher state
of existence. I have known very few who equalled him in
talents--none who had a kinder heart; and there never lived a
more dutiful son, or a sincerer friend.
Taylor's many books are now all forgotten. His translation of Bürger's
_Lenore_ one now only recalls by its effect upon Scott; his translation
of Lessing's _Nathan the Wise_ has been superseded. His voluminous
_Historic Survey of German Poetry_ only lives through Carlyle's severe
review in the _Edinburgh Review_[37] against the many strictures in
which Taylor's biographer attempts to defend him. Taylor had none of
Carlyle's inspiration. Not a line of his work survives in print in our
day, but it was no small thing to have been the friend and correspondent
of Southey, whose figure in literary history looms larger now than it
did when Emerson asked contemptuously, 'Who's Southey?'; and to have
been the wise mentor of George Borrow is in itself to be no small thing
in the record of letters. There is a considerable correspondence between
Taylor and Sir Richard Phillips in Robberds's _Memoir_, and Phillips
seemed always anxious to secure articles from Taylor for the _Monthly_,
and even books for his publishing-house. Hence the introduction from
Taylor that Borrow carried to London might have been most effective if
Phillips had had any use for poor and impracticable would-be authors.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] _Three Generations of Englishwomen_, by Janet Ross, vol. i, p. 3.
[36] _A Memoir of the Life and Writings of William Taylor of Norwich:
Containing his Correspondence of many years with the late Robert
Southey, Esquire, and Original Letters from Sir Walter Scott and other
Eminent Literary Men_. Compiled and edited by J. W. Robberds of Norwich,
2 vols. London: John Murray, 1843.
[37] Reprinted in Carlyle's _Miscellanies_.