It is a long jump from Samuel Pepys to George Borrow—from one pole of
the human character to the other—and yet they are in contact on the
shelf of my favourite authors. There is something wonderful, I think,
about the land of Cornwall. That long peninsula extending out into the
ocean has caught all sorts of strange floating things, and has held
them there in isolation until they have woven themselves into the
texture of the Cornish race. What is this strange strain which lurks
down yonder and every now and then throws up a great man with singular
un-English ways and features for all the world to marvel at? It is not
Celtic, nor is it the dark old Iberian. Further and deeper lie the
springs. Is it not Semitic, Phoenician, the roving men of Tyre, with
noble Southern faces and Oriental imaginations, who have in far-off
days forgotten their blue Mediterranean and settled on the granite
shores of the Northern Sea?
Whence came the wonderful face and great personality of Henry Irving?
How strong, how beautiful, how un-Saxon it was! I only know that his
mother was a Cornish woman. Whence came the intense glowing imagination
of the Brontes—so unlike the Miss-Austen-like calm of their
predecessors? Again, I only know that their mother was a Cornish woman.
Whence came this huge elfin creature, George Borrow, with his eagle
head perched on his rocklike shoulders, brown-faced, white-headed, a
king among men? Where did he get that remarkable face, those strange
mental gifts, which place him by himself in literature? Once more, his
father was a Cornishman. Yes, there is something strange, and weird,
and great, lurking down yonder in the great peninsula which juts into
the western sea. Borrow may, if he so pleases, call himself an East
Anglian—“an English Englishman,” as he loved to term it—but is it a
coincidence that the one East Anglian born of Cornish blood was the one
who showed these strange qualities? The birth was accidental. The
qualities throw back to the twilight of the world.
There are some authors from whom I shrink because they are so
voluminous that I feel that, do what I may, I can never hope to be well
read in their works. Therefore, and very weakly, I avoid them
altogether. There is Balzac, for example, with his hundred odd volumes.
I am told that some of them are masterpieces and the rest pot-boilers,
but that no one is agreed which is which. Such an author makes an undue
claim upon the little span of mortal years. Because he asks too much
one is inclined to give him nothing at all. Dumas, too! I stand on the
edge of him, and look at that huge crop, and content myself with a
sample here and there. But no one could raise this objection to Borrow.
A month’s reading—even for a leisurely reader—will master all that he
has written. There are “Lavengro,” “The Bible in Spain,” “Romany Rye,”
and, finally, if you wish to go further, “Wild Wales.” Only four
books—not much to found a great reputation upon—but, then, there are no
other four books quite like them in the language.
He was a very strange man, bigoted, prejudiced, obstinate, inclined to
be sulky, as wayward as a man could be. So far his catalogue of
qualities does not seem to pick him as a winner. But he had one great
and rare gift. He preserved through all his days a sense of the great
wonder and mystery of life—the child sense which is so quickly dulled.
Not only did he retain it himself, but he was word-master enough to
make other people hark back to it also. As he writes you cannot help
seeing through his eyes, and nothing which his eyes saw or his ear
heard was ever dull or commonplace. It was all strange, mystic, with
some deeper meaning struggling always to the light. If he chronicled
his conversation with a washer-woman there was something arresting in
the words he said, something singular in her reply. If he met a man in
a public-house one felt, after reading his account, that one would wish
to know more of that man. If he approached a town he saw and made you
see—not a collection of commonplace houses or frowsy streets, but
something very strange and wonderful, the winding river, the noble
bridge, the old castle, the shadows of the dead. Every human being,
every object, was not so much a thing in itself, as a symbol and
reminder of the past. He looked through a man at that which the man
represented. Was his name Welsh? Then in an instant the individual is
forgotten and he is off, dragging you in his train, to ancient Britons,
intrusive Saxons, unheard-of bards, Owen Glendower, mountain raiders
and a thousand fascinating things. Or is it a Danish name? He leaves
the individual in all his modern commonplace while he flies off to huge
skulls at Hythe (in parenthesis I may remark that I have examined the
said skulls with some care, and they seemed to me to be rather below
the human average), to Vikings, Berserkers, Varangians, Harald
Haardraada, and the innate wickedness of the Pope. To Borrow all roads
lead to Rome.
But, my word, what English the fellow could write! What an organ-roll
he could get into his sentences! How nervous and vital and vivid it all
is!
There is music in every line of it if you have been blessed with an ear
for the music of prose. Take the chapter in “Lavengro” of how the
screaming horror came upon his spirit when he was encamped in the
Dingle. The man who wrote that has caught the true mantle of Bunyan and
Defoe. And, observe the art of it, under all the simplicity—notice, for
example, the curious weird effect produced by the studied repetition of
the word “dingle” coming ever round and round like the master-note in a
chime. Or take the passage about Britain towards the end of “The Bible
in Spain.” I hate quoting from these masterpieces, if only for the very
selfish reason that my poor setting cannot afford to show up
brilliants. None the less, cost what it may, let me transcribe that one
noble piece of impassioned prose—
“O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath
the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now
gathering rapidly around thee, still, still may it please the Almighty
to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and
still brighter in renown than thy past! Or, if thy doom be at hand, may
that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled the Old
Queen of the waters! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and
flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate
in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee
from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and
a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though they envy and abhor
thee, still fear thee, nay even against their will, honour and respect
thee…. Remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity and
divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it
may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have
strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the
righteous sad. Oh, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall
thy end be a majestic and an enviable one; or God shall perpetuate thy
reign upon the waters, thou Old Queen!”
Or take the fight with the Flaming Tinman. It’s too long for
quotation—but read it, read every word of it. Where in the language can
you find a stronger, more condensed and more restrained narrative? I
have seen with my own eyes many a noble fight, more than one
international battle, where the best of two great countries have been
pitted against each other—yet the second-hand impression of Borrow’s
description leaves a more vivid remembrance upon my mind than any of
them. This is the real witchcraft of letters.
He was a great fighter himself. He has left a secure reputation in
other than literary circles—circles which would have been amazed to
learn that he was a writer of books. With his natural advantages, his
six foot three of height and his staglike agility, he could hardly fail
to be formidable. But he was a scientific sparrer as well, though he
had, I have been told, a curious sprawling fashion of his own. And how
his heart was in it—how he loved the fighting men! You remember his
thumb-nail sketches of his heroes. If you don’t I must quote one, and
if you do you will be glad to read it again—
“There’s Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best man in
England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face
wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger, not the
mighty one, who is gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most
scientific pugilist that ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to
be I won’t say what. He appears to walk before me now, as he did that
evening, with his white hat, white great coat, thin genteel figure,
springy step, and keen determined eye. Crosses him, what a contrast!
Grim, savage Shelton, who has a civil word for nobody, and a hard blow
for anybody. Hard! One blow given with the proper play of his athletic
arm will unsense a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about with his
hands behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized, and
who looks anything but what he is, is the king of the light-weights,
so-called—Randall! The terrible Randall, who has Irish blood in his
veins; not the better for that, nor the worse; and not far from him is
his last antagonist, Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still
thinks himself as good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it
was a near thing. But how shall I name them all? They were there by
dozens, and all tremendous in their way. There was Bulldog Hudson, and
fearless Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam the Jew. There was
Black Richmond—no, he was not there, but I knew him well; he was the
most dangerous of blacks, even with a broken thigh. There was Purcell,
who could never conquer until all seemed over with him. There was—what!
shall I name thee last? Ay, why not? I believe that thou art the last
of all that strong family still above the sod, where mayst thou long
continue—true piece of English stuff—Tom of Bedford. Hail to thee, Tom
of Bedford, or by whatever name it may please thee to be called, Spring
or Winter! Hail to thee, six-foot Englishman of the brown eye, worthy
to have carried a six-foot bow at Flodden, where England’s yeomen
triumphed over Scotland’s King, his clans and chivalry. Hail to thee,
last of English bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast
achieved—true English victories, unbought by yellow gold.”
Those are words from the heart. Long may it be before we lose the
fighting blood which has come to us from of old! In a world of peace we
shall at last be able to root it from our natures. In a world which is
armed to the teeth it is the last and only guarantee of our future.
Neither our numbers, nor our wealth, nor the waters which guard us can
hold us safe if once the old iron passes from our spirit. Barbarous,
perhaps—but there are possibilities for barbarism, and none in this
wide world for effeminacy.
Borrow’s views of literature and of literary men were curious.
Publisher and brother author, he hated them with a fine comprehensive
hatred. In all his books I cannot recall a word of commendation to any
living writer, nor has he posthumous praise for those of the generation
immediately preceding. Southey, indeed, he commends with what most
would regard as exaggerated warmth, but for the rest he who lived when
Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson were all in their glorious prime,
looks fixedly past them at some obscure Dane or forgotten Welshman. The
reason was, I expect, that his proud soul was bitterly wounded by his
own early failures and slow recognition. He knew himself to be a chief
in the clan, and when the clan heeded him not he withdrew in haughty
disdain. Look at his proud, sensitive face and you hold the key to his
life.
Harking back and talking of pugilism, I recall an incident which gave
me pleasure. A friend of mine read a pugilistic novel called “Rodney
Stone” to a famous Australian prize-fighter, stretched upon a bed of
mortal sickness. The dying gladiator listened with intent interest but
keen, professional criticism to the combats of the novel. The reader
had got to the point where the young amateur fights the brutal Berks.
Berks is winded, but holds his adversary off with a stiff left arm. The
amateur’s second in the story, an old prize-fighter, shouts some advice
to him as to how to deal with the situation. “That’s right. By —— he’s
got him!” yelled the stricken man in the bed. Who cares for critics
after that?
You can see my own devotion to the ring in that trio of brown volumes
which stand, appropriately enough, upon the flank of Borrow. They are
the three volumes of “Pugilistica,” given me years ago by my old
friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an
hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those
days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles,
its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two
in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit
sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, become dull and vulgar, in
that dreadful jargon. You have to turn to Hazlitt’s account of the
encounter between the Gasman and the Bristol Bull, to feel the savage
strength of it all. It is a hardened reader who does not wince even in
print before that frightful right-hander which felled the giant, and
left him in “red ruin” from eyebrow to jaw. But even if there be no
Hazlitt present to describe such a combat it is a poor imagination
which is not fired by the deeds of the humble heroes who lived once so
vividly upon earth, and now only appeal to faithful ones in these
little-read pages. They were picturesque creatures, men of great force
of character and will, who reached the limits of human bravery and
endurance. There is Jackson on the cover, gold upon brown, “gentleman
Jackson,” Jackson of the balustrade calf and the noble head, who wrote
his name with an 88-pound weight dangling from his little finger.