_FAUSTUS_ AND _ROMANTIC BALLADS_
In the early pages of _Lavengro_ Borrow tells us nearly all we are ever
likely to know of his sojourn in London in the years 1824 and 1825,
during which time he had those interviews with Sir Richard Phillips
which are recorded in our last chapter. Dr. Knapp, indeed, prints a
little note from him to his friend Kerrison, in which he begs his friend
to come to him as he believes he is dying. Roger Kerrison, it would
seem, had been so frightened by Borrow's depression and threats of
suicide that he had left the lodgings at 16 Milman Street, Bedford Row,
and removed himself elsewhere, and so Borrow was left friendless to
fight what he called his 'horrors' alone. The depression was not
unnatural. From his own vivid narrative we learn of Borrow's bitter
failure as an author. No one wanted his translations from the Welsh and
the Danish, and Phillips clearly had no further use for him after he had
compiled his _Newgate Lives and Trials_ (Borrow's name in _Lavengro_ for
_Celebrated Trials_), and was doubtless inclined to look upon him as an
impostor for professing, with William Taylor's sanction, a mastery of
the German language which had been demonstrated to be false with regard
to his own book. No 'spirited publisher' had come forward to give
reality to his dream thus set down:
I had still an idea that, provided I could persuade any
spirited publisher to give these translations to the world, I
should acquire both considerable fame and profit; not, perhaps,
a world-embracing fame such as Byron's; but a fame not to be
sneered at, which would last me a considerable time, and would
keep my heart from breaking;--profit, not equal to that which
Scott had made by his wondrous novels, but which would prevent
me from starving, and enable me to achieve some other literary
enterprise. I read and re-read my ballads, and the more I read
them the more I was convinced that the public, in the event of
their being published, would freely purchase, and hail them
with the merited applause.
He has a tale to tell us in _Lavengro_ of a certain _Life and Adventures
of Joseph Sell, the Great Traveller_, the purchase of which from him by
a publisher at the last moment saved him from starvation and enabled him
to take to the road, there to meet the many adventures that have become
immortal in the pages of _Lavengro_. Dr. Knapp has encouraged the idea
that _Joseph Sell_ was a real book, ignoring the fact that the very
title suggests doubts, and was probably meant to suggest them. In
Norfolk, as elsewhere, a 'sell' is a word in current slang used for an
imposture or a cheat, and doubtless Borrow meant to make merry with the
credulous. There was, we may be perfectly sure, no _Joseph Sell_, and it
is more reasonable to suppose that it was the sale of his translation of
Klinger's _Faustus_ that gave him the much needed money at this crisis.
Dr. Knapp pictures Borrow as carrying the manuscript of his translation
of _Faustus_ with him to London. There is not the slightest evidence of
this. It may be reasonably assumed that Borrow made the translation from
Klinger's novel during his sojourn in London. It is true the preface is
dated 'Norwich, April 1825,' but Borrow did not leave London until the
end of May 1825, that is to say, until after he had negotiated with 'W.
Simpkin and R. Marshall,' now the well-known firm of Simpkin and
Marshall, for the publication of the little volume. That firm,
unfortunately, has no record of the transaction. My impression is that
Borrow in his wandering after old volumes on crime for his great
compilation, _Celebrated Trials_, came across the French translation of
Klinger's novel published at Amsterdam. From that translation he
acknowledges that he borrowed the plate which serves as frontispiece--a
plate entitled 'The Corporation Feast.' It represents the corporation of
Frankfort at a banquet turned by the devil into various animals. It has
been erroneously assumed that Borrow had had something to do with the
designing of this plate, and that he had introduced the corporation of
Norwich in vivid portraiture into the picture. Borrow does, indeed,
interpolate a reference to Norwich into his translation of a not too
complimentary character, for at that time he had no very amiable
feelings towards his native city. Of the inhabitants of Frankfort he
says:
They found the people of the place modelled after so unsightly
a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features, that the
devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the
inhabitants of an English town called Norwich, when dressed in
their Sunday's best.[61]
In the original German version of 1791 we have the town of Nuremberg
thus satirised. But Borrow was not the first translator to seize the
opportunity of adapting the reference for personal ends. In the French
translation of 1798, published at Amsterdam, and entitled _Les Aventures
du Docteur Faust_, the translator has substituted Auxerre for
Nuremberg. What makes me think that Borrow used only the French version
in his translation is the fact that in his preface he refers to the
engravings of that version, one of which he reproduced; whereas the
engravings are in the German version as well.
Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger (1752-1831), who was responsible for
Borrow's 'first book,' was responsible for much else of an epoch-making
character. It was he who by one of his many plays, _Sturm und Drang_,
gave a name to an important period of German Literature. In 1780 von
Klinger entered the service of Russia, and in 1790 married a natural
daughter of the Empress Catherine. Thus his novel, _Faust's Leben,
Thaten und Höllenfahrt_, was actually first published at St. Petersburg
in 1791. This was seventeen years before Goethe published his first part
of _Faust_, a book which by its exquisite poetry was to extinguish for
all self-respecting Germans Klinger's turgid prose. Borrow, like the
translator of Rousseau's _Confessions_ and of many another classic,
takes refuge more than once in the asterisk. Klinger's _Faustus_, with
much that was bad and even bestial, has merits. The devil throughout
shows his victim a succession of examples of 'man's inhumanity to man.'
Borrow's translation of Klinger's novel was reprinted in 1864 without
any acknowledgment of the name of the translator, and only a few stray
words being altered.[62] Borrow nowhere mentions Klinger's name in his
latter volume, of which the title-page runs:
Faustus: His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell. Translated
from the German. London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825.
I doubt very much if he really knew who was the author, as the book in
both the German editions I have seen as well as in the French version
bears no author's name on its title-page. A letter of Borrow's in the
possession of an American collector indicates that he was back in
Norwich in September 1825, after, we may assume, three months' wandering
among gypsies and tinkers. It is written from Willow Lane, and is
apparently to the publishers of _Faustus_:
As your bill will become payable in a few days, I am willing to
take thirty copies of _Faustus_ instead of the money. The book
has been _burnt_ in both the libraries here, and, as it has
been talked about, I may perhaps be able to dispose of some in
the course of a year or so.
This letter clearly demonstrates that the guileless Simpkin and the
equally guileless Marshall had paid Borrow for the right to publish
_Faustus_, and even though part of the payment was met by a bill, I
think we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity there may be
in the Joseph Sell episode. 'Let me know how you sold your manuscript,'
writes Borrow's brother to him so late as the year 1829. And this was
doubtless _Faustus_. The action of the Norwich libraries in burning the
book would clearly have had the sympathy of one of its few reviewers had
he been informed of the circumstance. It is thus that the _Literary
Gazette_ for 16th July 1825 refers to Borrow's little book:
This is another work to which no respectable publisher ought to
have allowed his name to be put. The political allusions and
metaphysics, which may have made it popular among a low class
in Germany, do not sufficiently season its lewd scenes and
coarse descriptions for British palates. We have occasionally
publications for the fireside--these are only fit for the fire.
Borrow returned then to Norwich in the autumn of 1825 a disappointed man
so far as concerned the giving of his poetical translations to the
world, from which he had hoped so much. No 'spirited publisher' had been
forthcoming, although Dr. Knapp's researches have unearthed a 'note' in
_The Monthly Magazine_, which, after the fashion of the anticipatory
literary gossip of our day, announced that Olaus Borrow was about to
issue _Legends and Popular Superstitions of the North_, 'in two elegant
volumes.' But this never appeared. Quite a number of Borrow's
translations from divers languages had appeared from time to time,
beginning with a version of Schiller's 'Diver' in _The New Monthly
Magazine_ for 1823, continuing with Stolberg's 'Ode to a Mountain
Torrent' in _The Monthly Magazine_, and including the 'Deceived Merman.'
These he collected into book form and, not to be deterred by the
coldness of heartless London publishers, issued them by subscription.
Three copies of the slim octavo book lie before me, with separate
title-pages:
(1) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. Norwich: Printed and
Published by S. Wilkin, Upper Haymarket, 1826.
(2) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces by George Borrow. London: Published by
John Taylor, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 1826.
(3) Romantic Ballads, Translated from the Danish; and
Miscellaneous Pieces, by George Borrow. London: Published by
Wightman and Cramp, 24 Paternoster Row, 1826.[63]
The book contains an introduction in verse by Allan Cunningham, whose
acquaintance Borrow seems to have made in London. It commences:
Sing, sing, my friend, breathe life again
Through Norway's song and Denmark's strain:
On flowing Thames and Forth, in flood,
Pour Haco's war-song, fierce and rude.
Cunningham had not himself climbed very far up the literary ladder in
1825, although he was forty-one years of age. At one time a stonemason
in a Scots village, he had entered Chantrey's studio, and was
'superintendent of the works' to that eminent sculptor at the time when
Borrow called upon him in London, and made an acquaintance which never
seems to have extended beyond this courtesy to the younger man's _Danish
Ballads_. The point of sympathy of course was that in the year 1825
Cunningham had published _The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern_.
But Allan Cunningham, whose _Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters_
is his best remembered book to-day, scarcely comes into this story.
There are four letters from Cunningham to Borrow in Dr. Knapp's _Life_,
and two from Borrow to Cunningham. The latter gave his young friend much
good advice. He told him, for example, to send copies of his book to the
newspapers--to the _Literary Gazette_ in particular, and 'Walter Scott
must not be forgotten.' Dr. Knapp thinks that the newspapers were
forgotten, and that Borrow neglected to send to them. In any case not a
single review appeared. But it is not exactly true that Borrow ignored
the usual practice of authors so entirely as Dr. Knapp supposes. There
is a letter to Borrow among my Borrow Papers from Francis Palgrave the
historian, who became Sir Francis Palgrave seven years later, which
throws some light upon the subject:
To George Borrow
PARLIAMENT ST., _17 June 1826._
MY DEAR SIR,--I am very much obliged to you for the opportunity
that you have afforded me of perusing your spirited and
faithful translating of the Danish ballads. Mr. Allan
Cunningham, who, as you will know, is an ancient minstrel
himself, says that they are more true to the originals and more
truly poetical than any that he has yet seen. I have delivered
one copy to Mr. Lockhart, the new editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, and I hope he will notice it as it deserves. Murray
would probably be inclined to publish your translations.--I
remain, dear sir, your obedient and faithful servant,
FRANCIS PALGRAVE.
It is probable that he did also send a copy to Scott, and it is Dr.
Knapp's theory that 'that busy writer forgot to acknowledge the
courtesy.' It may be that this is so. It has been the source of many a
literary prejudice. Carlyle had a bitterness in his heart against Scott
for much the same cause. Rarely indeed can the struggling author endure
to be ignored by the radiantly successful one. It must have been the
more galling in that a few years earlier Scott had been lifted by the
ballad from obscurity to fame. Borrow did not in any case lack
encouragement from Allan Cunningham: 'I like your Danish ballads much,'
he writes. 'Get out of bed, George Borrow, and be sick or sleepy no
longer. A fellow who can give us such exquisite Danish ballads has no
right to repose.'[64] Borrow, on his side, thanks Cunningham for his
'noble lines,' and tells him that he has got 'half of his _Songs of
Scotland_ by heart.'
Five hundred copies of the _Romantic Ballads_ were printed in Norwich by
S. Wilkin, about two hundred being subscribed for, mainly in that city,
the other three hundred being dispatched to London--to Taylor, whose
name appears on the London title-page, although he seems to have passed
on the book very quickly to Wightman and Cramp, for what reason we are
not informed. Borrow tells us that the two hundred subscriptions of half
a guinea 'amply paid expenses,' but he must have been cruelly
disappointed, as he was doomed to be more than once in his career, by
the lack of public appreciation outside of Norwich. Yet there were many
reasons for this. If Scott had made the ballad popular, he had also
destroyed it for a century--perhaps for ever--by substituting the novel
as the favourite medium for the storyteller. Great ballads we were to
have in every decade from that day to this, but never another 'best
seller' like _Marmion_ or _The Lady of the Lake_. Our _popular_ poets
had to express themselves in other ways. Then Borrow, although his verse
has been underrated by those who have not seen it at its best, or who
are incompetent to appraise poetry, was not very effective here,
notwithstanding that the stories in verse in _Romantic Ballads_ are all
entirely interesting. This fact is most in evidence in a case where a
real poet, not of the greatest, has told the same story. We owe a
rendering of 'The Deceived Merman' to both George Borrow and Matthew
Arnold, but how widely different the treatment! The story is of a merman
who rose out of the water and enticed a mortal--fair Agnes or
Margaret--under the waves; she becomes his wife, bears him children, and
then asks to return to earth. Arriving there she refuses to go back when
the merman comes disconsolately to the churchdoor for her. Here are a
few lines from the two versions, which demonstrate that here at least
Borrow was no poet and that Arnold was a very fine one:
GEORGE BORROW
'Now, Agnes, Agnes list to me,
Thy babes are longing so after thee.'
'I cannot come yet, here must I stay
Until the priest shall have said his say,'
And when the priest had said his say,
She thought with her mother at home she'd stay.
'O Agnes, Agnes list to me,
Thy babes are sorrowing after thee,'
'Let them sorrow and sorrow their fill,
But back to them never return I will.'
MATTHEW ARNOLD
We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisles through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
'Margaret, hist! come quick we are here!
Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long-alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan,'
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were sealed on the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!
It says much for the literary proclivities of Norwich at this period
that Borrow should have had so kindly a reception for his book as the
subscription list implies. At the end of each of Wilkin's two hundred
copies a 'list of subscribers' is given. It opens with the name of the
Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bathurst; it includes the equally familiar names
of the Gurdons, Gurneys, Harveys, Rackhams, Hares (then as now of Stow
Hall), Woodhouses--all good Norfolk or Norwich names that have come down
to our time. Mayor Hawkes, who is made famous in _Lavengro_ by Haydon's
portrait, is there also. Among London names we find 'F. Arden,' which
recalls his friend 'Francis Ardry' in _Lavengro_, John Bowring, Borrow's
new friend, and later to be counted an enemy, Thomas Campbell, Benjamin
Haydon, and John Timbs, But the name that most strikes the eye is that
of 'Thurtell.' Three of the family are among the subscribers, including
Mr. George Thurtell of Eaton, near Norwich, brother of the murderer;
there also is the name of John Thurtell, executed for murder exactly a
year before. This would seem to imply that Borrow had been a long time
collecting these names and subscriptions, and doubtless before the
all-too-famous crime of the previous year he had made Thurtell promise
to become a subscriber, and, let us hope, had secured his half-guinea.
That may account, with so sensitive and impressionable a man as our
author, for the kindly place that Weare's unhappy murderer always had in
his memory. Borrow, in any case, was now, for a few years, to become
more than ever a vagabond. Not a single further appeal did he make to an
unsympathetic literary public for a period of five years at least.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] _Life and Death of Faustus_, p. 59.
[62] _Faustus: His Life, Death, and Doom: a Romance in Prose, translated
from the German_. London: W. Kent and Co., Paternoster Row, 1864,
Borrow's _Life and Death of Faustus_ was reprinted in 1840, again with
Simpkin's imprint. Collating Borrow's translation with the issue of
1864, I find that, with a few trivial verbal alterations, they are
identical--that is to say, the translator of the book of 1864 did not
translate at all, but copied from Borrow's version of _Faustus_, copying
even his errors in translation. There is no reason to suppose that the
individual, whoever he may have been, who prepared the 1864 edition of
_Faustus_ for the Press, had ever seen either the German original or the
French translation of Klinger's book. It is clear that he 'conveyed'
Borrow's translation almost in its entirety.
[63] Allan Cunningham, in a letter to Borrow, says, 'Taylor will
undertake to publish.' But there must have been a change afterwards, for
some of the London copies bear the imprint Wightman and Cramp. In 1913
Jarrold and Sons of Norwich issued a reprint of _Romantic Ballads_
limited to 300 copies, with facsimiles of the manuscript from my Borrow
Papers.
[64] Knapp's _Life_, vol. i 117.