A VISIT TO CORNISH KINSMEN
If Borrow had been a normal man of letters he would have been quite
satisfied to settle down at Oulton, in a comfortable home, with a
devoted wife. The question of money was no longer to worry him. He had
moreover a money-making gift, which made him independent in a measure of
his wife's fortune. From _The Bible in Spain_ he must have drawn a very
considerable amount, considerable, that is, for a man whose habits were
always somewhat penurious. _The Bible in Spain_ would have been followed
up, were Borrow a quite other kind of man, by a succession of books
almost equally remunerative. Even for one so prone to hate both books
and bookmen there was always the wind on the heath, the gypsy
encampment, the now famous 'broad,' not then the haunt of innumerable
trippers. But Borrow ever loved wandering more than writing. Almost
immediately after his marriage--in 1840--he hinted to the Bible Society
of a journey to China; a year later, in June 1841, he suggested to Lord
Clarendon that Lord Palmerston might give him a consulship: he consulted
Hasfeld as to a possible livelihood in Berlin, and Ford as to travel in
Africa. He seems to have endured residence at Oulton with difficulty
during the succeeding three years, and in 1844 we find him engaged upon
the continental travel that we have already recorded. In 1847 he had
hopes of the consulship at Canton, but Bowring wanted it for himself,
and a misunderstanding over this led to an inevitable break of old
friendship. Borrow's passionate love of travel was never more to be
gratified at the expense of others. He tried hard, indeed, to secure a
journey to the East from the British Museum Trustees, and then gave up
the struggle. Further wanderings, which were many, were to be confined
to Europe and indeed to England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man.
His first journey, however, was not at his own initiative. Mrs. Borrow's
health was unequal to the severe winters at Oulton, and so the Borrows
made their home at Yarmouth from 1853 to 1860. During these years he
gave his vagabond propensities full play. No year passed without its
record of wandering. His first expedition was the outcome of a burst of
notoriety that seems to have done for Borrow what the success of his
_Bible in Spain_ could not do--revealed his identity to his Cornish
relations. The _Bury Post_ of 17th September 1853 recorded that Borrow
had at the risk of his life saved at least one member of a boat's crew
wrecked on the coast at Yarmouth:
The moment was an awful one, when George Borrow, the well-known
author of _Lavengro_ and _The Bible in Spain_, dashed into the
surf and saved one life, and through his instrumentality the
others were saved. We ourselves have known this brave and
gifted man for years, and, daring as was his deed, we have
known him more than once to risk his life for others. We are
happy to add that he has sustained no material injury.
I was quite sorry to find this extract from the _Bury Post_ among my
Borrow Papers in Mrs. Borrow's handwriting. It a little suggests that
she sent the copy to the journal in question, or at least inspired the
paragraph, perhaps in a letter to her friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, who with
his family then resided at Bury St. Edmunds. Borrow was a perfect
swimmer, and there is no reason to suppose but that he did act
heroically.[178] In my Borrow Papers I find in his handwriting his own
account of the adventure:
I was seated on Yarmouth jetty; the weather was very stormy;
there came a tremendous sea, which struck the jetty, and made
it quiver; there was a boat on the lee-side of the jetty
fastened by a painter; the surge snapped the painter like a
thread, the boat was overset with two men in it, there was a
cry, 'The men must be drowned.' I started up from my seat on
the north side of the jetty, and saw the boat bottom upwards,
and I heard some people say, 'The men are under it.' I ran a
little way along the jetty, and then jumped upon the sand;
before taking the leap I saw a man flung by the surge upon the
shore; he crawled up upon the beach, and was, I believe, lifted
up upon his legs by certain beachmen. I had my eye upon the
boat, which was now near the shore; I had an idea that there
was a man under it; I flung off my coat and hat, and went a
little way into the sea, about parallel to some beachmen who
were moving backwards and forwards as the waves advanced and
receded. I now saw a man as a wave recoiled lying close by the
boat in the reflux. I dashed forward and made a grip at the
man, then came a tremendous wave which tumbled me heels over
head; being an expert diver I did not attempt to rise, lest I
should be flung on shore. When the wave receded, I found
myself near the boat; the man was now nearer to the shore than
myself. I believe a man or two were making towards him; another
wave came which overwhelmed me, and flung me on the shore, to
which I was now making with all my strength. I got on my legs
for one moment, when the advanced guard, if I may call it so,
of another wave, struck me on the back, and laid me upon my
face, but I was now quite out of danger. A man now came and
lifted me up, as others lifted up the other man, who seemed
quite unable to exert himself. The above is a plain statement
of facts. I was the only person, with the exception of the man
in distress, who was in the deep water, or who confronted the
billows, which were indeed monstrous, but which I cared little
for, being, as I said before, an expert diver. Had I been alone
the result of the affair would have been much the same; as it
is, after the last wave I could easily have dragged the man up
upon the beach. I am willing to give to the beachmen whatever
credit is due to them; I am anxious to believe that one of them
was once up to his middle in water, but truth compels me to
state that I never saw one of them up to his knees. I received
very uncivil language from one of them, but every species of
respect and sympathy from the genteel part of the spectators. A
gentleman, I believe from Norwich, and a policeman, attended me
in a cab to my lodgings, where they undressed and dressed me.
The kindness of these two individuals I shall never forget.
In any case this adventure had exceptional publicity. For example Mr.
Robert Cooke of John Murray's firm wrote to Mrs. Borrow on 13th October
1853 to say that while travelling abroad he had read in _Galignani's
Messenger_ an account of his friend Lavengro's 'daring and heroic act in
rescuing so many from a watery grave.' 'I wish they had all been
critics,' he adds; 'he would have done just the same, and they might
perhaps have shown their gratitude when they got among his inky waves of
literature.'
More than this, the paragraph in the Bury St. Edmunds newspaper was
copied into the _Plymouth Mail_, and was there read by the Borrows of
Cornwall, who had heard nothing of their relative, Thomas Borrow, the
army captain and his family, for fifty years or more. One of Borrow's
cousins by marriage, Robert Taylor of Penquite, invited him to his
father's homeland, and Borrow accepted, glad, we may be sure, of any
excuse for a renewal of his wanderings. And so on the 23rd of December
1853 Borrow made his way from Yarmouth to Plymouth by rail, and thence
walked twenty miles to Liskeard, where quite a little party of Borrow's
cousins were present to greet him. The Borrow family consisted of Henry
Borrow of Looe Doun, the father of Mrs. Taylor, William Borrow of
Trethinnick, Thomas Nicholas and Elizabeth Borrow, all first cousins,
except Anne Taylor. Anne, talking to a friend, describes Borrow on this
visit better than any one else has done:
A fine tall man of about six feet three; well-proportioned and
not stout; able to walk five miles an hour successively; rather
florid face without any hirsute appendages; hair white and
soft; eyes and eyebrows dark; good nose and very nice mouth;
well-shaped hands;--altogether a person you would notice in a
crowd.[179]
Dr. Knapp possessed two 'notebooks' of this Cornish tour. Borrow stayed
at Penquite with his cousins from 24th December to 9th January, then he
went on a walking tour to Land's End, through Truro and Penzance; he was
back at Penquite from 26th January to 1st February, and then took a
week's tramp to Tintagel, King Arthur's Castle, and Pentire. Naturally
he made inquiries into the language, already extinct, but spoken within
the memory of the older inhabitants. 'My relations are most excellent
people,' he wrote to his wife from London on his way back, 'but I could
not understand more than half of what they said.'
I have only one letter to Mrs. Borrow written during this tour:
To Mrs. George Borrow
PENQUITE, _27th Janry. 1854._
MY DEAR CARRETA,--I just write you a line to inform you that I
have got back safe here from the Land's End. I have received
your two letters, and hope you received mine from the Land's
End. It is probable that I shall yet visit one or two places
before I leave Cornwall. I am very much pleased with the
country. When you receive this if you please to write a line
_by return of post_ I think you may; the Trethinnick people
wish me to stay with them for a day or two. When you see the
Cobbs pray remember me to them; I am sorry Horace has lost his
aunt, he will _miss her_. Love to Hen. Ever yours, dearest,
G. BORROW.
(Keep this.)
One of Borrow's biographers, Mr. Walling, has given us the best account
of that journey through Cornwall,[180] and his explanation of why Borrow
did not write the Cornish book that he caused to be advertised in a
fly-leaf of _The Romany Rye_, by the discouragement arising out of the
dire failure of that book, may be accepted.[181] Borrow would have made
a beautiful book upon Cornwall. Even the title, _Penquite and Pentyre;
or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland_, has music in it. And he
had in these twenty weeks made himself wonderfully well acquainted not
only with the topography of the principality, but with its folklore and
legend. The gulf that ever separated the Borrow of the notebook and of
the unprepared letter from the Borrow of the finished manuscript was
extraordinary, and we may deplore with Mr. Walling the absence of this
among Borrow's many unwritten books.
Borrow was back in Yarmouth at the end of February 1854--he had not fled
the country as Dalrymple had suggested--but in July he was off again for
his great tour in Wales, in which he was accompanied by his wife and
daughter. Of that tour we must treat in another and later chapter, for
_Wild Wales_ was not published until 1862. The year following his great
tour in Wales he went on a trip to the Isle of Man.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] It is thus that an old schoolfellow, Dalrymple, describes the
episode in a fragment of manuscript in the possession of Mrs. James
Stuart of Carrow Abbey, from which I have already quoted:
'In 1850/2/3 Borrow lived at Yarmouth; he here made rather a ludicrous
exhibition of himself on the occasion of a wreck, when he ran into the
sea through a full tide up to his knees, with the utmost apparent
heroism, and retreated again as soon as he thought it might be
dangerous. He incurred so much ridicule that he abruptly quitted the
town, and I have not heard since of him.'
[179] Knapp's _Life_, vol. ii. p. 97. Letter from Mrs. Robert Taylor to
Mrs. Wilkey.
[180] _George Borrow, The Man and His Work_. By R. A. J. Walling.
Cassell, 1908.
[181] It is not generally known that not less than eleven books by
Borrow were advertised in the first edition of _The Romany Rye_ in 1857,
of which only two were published in his lifetime:
1. _Celtic Bards, Chiefs, and Kings._ 2 volumes.
2. _Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery._ 2 volumes.
3. _Songs of Europe, or Metrical Translations from all the European
Languages._ 2 volumes.
4. _Kæmpe Viser. Songs about Giants and Heroes._ 2 volumes.
5. _The Turkish Jester._ 1 volume.
6. _Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland. A
Book on Cornwall._ 2 volumes.
7. _Russian Popular Tales._ 1 volume.
8. _The Sleeping Bard._ 1 volume.
9. _Norman Skalds, Kings, and Earls._ 2 volumes.
10. _The Death of Balder._ 1 volume.
11. _Bayr Jairgey and Glion Doo. Wanderings in Search of Manx
Literature._ 1 volume.
Of these _The Sleeping Bard_ appeared in 1860 and _Wild Wales_ in 1862;
and after Borrow's death _The Turkish Jester_ in 1884 and _The Death of
Balder_ in 1889. The remaining seven books have not yet been published.
Their manuscript is partly in the Knapp Collection now in the Hispanic
Society's possession, partly in my Collection, while certain fragments
and the manuscript of _Romano Lavo-Lil_ are in the possession of
well-known Borrow enthusiasts.