may, a picture of the poet for his own use. It is curious how sometimes
little scraps of things serve to do this better than deliberate efforts.
In 1800, the year of Cowper's death, his relative, a Dr. Johnson, wrote
a letter to John Newton, sending good wishes to the old gentleman, and
to his niece, Miss Catlett; and added: 'Poor dear Mr. Cowper, oh that he
were as tolerable as he was, even in those days when, dining at his
house in Buckinghamshire with you and that lady, I could not help
smiling to see his pleasant face when he said, "Miss Catlett, shall I
give you a piece of cutlet?"' It was a very small joke indeed, and it is
a very humble little quotation, but for me it has long served, in the
mind's eye, for a vignette of the poet, doomed yet _debonnaire_.
Romney's picture, with that frightful nightcap and eyes gleaming with
madness, is a pestilent thing one would forget if one could. Cowper's
pleasant face when he said, 'Miss Catlett, shall I give you a piece of
cutlet?' is a much more agreeable picture to find a small corner for in
one's memory.
GEORGE BORROW
Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his delightful _Memories and Portraits_,
takes occasion to tell us, amongst a good many other things of the sort,
that he has a great fancy for _The Bible in Spain_, by Mr. George
Borrow. He has not, indeed, read it quite so often as he has Mr. George
Meredith's _Egoist_, but still he is very fond of it. It is interesting
to know this, interesting, that is, to the great Clan Stevenson who owe
suit and service to their liege lord; but so far as Borrow is concerned,
it does not matter, to speak frankly, two straws. The author of
_Lavengro_, _The Romany Rye_, _The Bible in Spain_, and _Wild Wales_ is
one of those kings of literature who never need to number their tribe.
His personality will always secure him an attendant company, who, when
he pipes, must dance. A queer company it is too, even as was the
company he kept himself, composed as it is of saints and sinners, gentle
and simple, master and man, mistresses and maids; of those who, learned
in the tongues, have read everything else, and of those who have read
nothing else and do not want to. People there are for whom Borrow's
books play the same part as did horses and dogs for the gentleman in the
tall white hat, whom David Copperfield met on the top of the Canterbury
coach. ''Orses and dorgs,' said that gentleman, 'is some men's fancy.
They are wittles and drink to me, lodging, wife and children, reading,
writing, and 'rithmetic, snuff, tobacker, and sleep.'
Nothing, indeed, is more disagreeable, even offensive, than to have
anybody else's favourite author thrust down your throat. 'Love me, love
my dog,' is a maxim of behaviour which deserves all the odium Charles
Lamb has heaped upon it. Still, it would be hard to go through life
arm-in-arm with anyone who had stuck in the middle of _Guy Mannering_,
or had bidden a final farewell to Jeannie Deans in the barn with the
robbers near Gunnerly Hill in Lincolnshire. But, oddly enough, Borrow
excites no such feelings. It is quite possible to live amicably in the
same house with a person who has stuck hopelessly in the middle of _Wild
Wales_, and who braves it out (what impudence!) by the assertion that
the book is full of things like this: 'Nothing worthy of commemoration
took place during the two following days, save that myself and family
took an evening walk on the Wednesday up the side of the Berwyn, for the
purpose of botanising, in which we were attended by John Jones. There,
amongst other plants, we found a curious moss which our good friend said
was called in Welsh Corn Carw, or deer's horn, and which he said the
deer were very fond of. On the Thursday he and I started on an
expedition on foot to Ruthyn, distant about fourteen miles, proposing to
return in the evening.'
The book _is_ full of things like this, and must be pronounced as arrant
a bit of book-making as ever was. But judgment is not always followed by
execution, and a more mirth-provoking error can hardly be imagined than
for anyone to suppose that the admission of the fact--sometimes
doubtless a damaging fact--namely, book-making, will for one moment
shake the faithful in their certitude that _Wild Wales_ is a delightful
book; not so delightful, indeed, as _Lavengro_, _The Romany_, or _The
Bible in Spain_, but still delightful because issuing from the same mint
as they, stamped with the same physiognomy, and bearing the same
bewitching inscription.
It is a mercy the people we love do not know how much we must forgive
them. Oh the liberties they would take, the things they would do, were
it to be revealed to them that their roots have gone far too deep into
our soil for us to disturb them under any provocation whatsoever!
George Borrow has to be forgiven a great deal. The Appendix to _The
Romany Rye_ contains an assault upon the memory of Sir Walter Scott, of
which every word is a blow. It is savage, cruel, unjustifiable. There is
just enough of what base men call truth in it, to make it one of the
most powerful bits of devil's advocacy ever penned. Had another than
Borrow written thus of the good Sir Walter, some men would travel far
to spit upon his tomb. Quick and easy would have been his descent to the
Avernus of oblivion. His books, torn from the shelf, should have long
stood neglected in the shop of the second-hand, till the hour came for
them to seek the stall, where, exposed to wind and weather, they should
dolefully await the sack of the paper-merchant, whose holy office it
should be to mash them into eternal pulp. But what rhodomontade is this!
No books are more, in the vile phrase of the craft, 'esteemed' than
Borrow's. The prices demanded for the early editions already impinge
upon the absurd, and are steadily rising. The fact is, there is no use
blinking it, mankind cannot afford to quarrel with George Borrow, and
will not do so. It is bad enough what he did, but when we remember that
whatever he had done, we must have forgiven him all the same, it is just
possible to thank Heaven (feebly) that it was no worse. He might have
robbed a church!
Borrow is indeed one of those lucky men who, in Bagehot's happy phrase,
'keep their own atmosphere,' and as a consequence, when in the destined
hour the born Borrovian--for men are born Borrovians, not made--takes up
a volume of him, in ten minutes (unless it be _Wild Wales_, and then
twenty must be allowed) the victory is won; down tumbles the standard of
Respectability which through a virtuous and perhaps long life has braved
the battle and the breeze; up flutters the lawless pennon of the Romany
Chal, and away skims the reader's craft over seas, hitherto untravelled,
in search of adventures, manifold and marvellous, nor in vain.
If one was in search of a single epithet most properly descriptive of
Borrow's effect upon his reader, perhaps it would best be found in the
word 'contagious.' He is one of the most 'catching' of our authors. The
most inconsistent of men, he compels those who are born subject to his
charm to share his inconsistencies. He was an agent of the Bible
Society, and his extraordinary adventures in Spain were encountered, so
at least his title-page would have us believe, in an attempt to
circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. He was a sound Churchman, and
would have nothing to do with Dissent, even in Wild Wales, but he had
also a passion for the ring. Mark his devastations. It is as bad as the
pestilence. A gentle lady, bred amongst the Quakers, a hater of physical
force, with eyes brimful of mercy, was lately heard to say, in
heightened tones, at a dinner-table, where the subject of momentary
conversation was a late prize-fight: 'Oh! pity was it that ever
corruption should have crept in amongst them.' 'Amongst whom?' inquired
her immediate neighbour. 'Amongst the bruisers of England,' was the
terrific rejoinder. Deep were her blushes--and yet how easy to forgive
her! The gentle lady spoke as one does in dreams; for, you must know,
she was born a Borrovian, and only that afternoon had read for the first
time the famous twenty-fifth chapter of _Lavengro_:
'But what a bold and vigorous aspect pugilism wore at that time! And the
great battle was just then coming off; the day had been decided upon,
and the spot--a convenient distance from the old town (Norwich); and to
the old town were now flocking the bruisers of England, men of
tremendous renown. Let no one sneer at the bruisers of England; what
were the gladiators of Rome, or the bull-fighters of Spain, in its
palmiest days, compared to England's bruisers? Pity that ever corruption
should have crept in amongst them--but of that I wish not to talk. There
they come, the bruisers from far London, or from wherever else they
might chance to be at the time, to the great rendezvous in the old city;
some came one way, some another: some of tip-top reputation came with
peers in their chariots, for glory and fame are such fair things that
even peers are proud to have those invested therewith by their sides;
others came in their own gigs, driving their own bits of blood; and I
heard one say: "I have driven through at a heat the whole hundred and
eleven miles, and only stopped to bait twice!" Oh! the blood horses of
old England! but they too have had their day--for everything beneath the
sun there is a season and a time.... So the bruisers of England are come
to be present at the grand fight speedily coming off; there they are
met in the precincts of the old town, near the field of the chapel,
planted with tender saplings at the restoration of sporting Charles,
which are now become venerable elms, as high as many a steeple; there
they are met at a fitting rendezvous, where a retired coachman with one
leg keeps an hotel and a bowling-green. I think I now see them upon the
bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of people with no
renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is
a glorious thing, though it lasts only for a day. 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.... 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 till 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 may'st thou long continue--true piece of English
stuff, Tom of Bedford, sharp as Winter, kind as Spring!'
No wonder the gentle lady was undone. It is as good as Homer.
Diderot, it will be remembered, once wrote a celebrated eulogium on
Richardson, which some have thought exaggerated, because he says in it
that, on the happening of certain events, in themselves improbable, he
would keep _Clarissa_ and _Sir Charles_ on the same shelf with the
writings of Moses, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles. Why a literary man
should not be allowed to arrange his library as he chooses, without
being exposed to so awful a charge as that of exaggeration, it is hard
to say. But no doubt the whole eulogium is pitched in too high a key for
modern ears; still, it contains sensible remarks, amongst them this one:
that he had observed that in a company where the writings of Richardson
were being read, either privately or aloud, the conversation became at
once interesting and animated. Books cannot be subjected to a truer
test. Will they bear talking about? A parcel of friends can talk about
Borrow's books for ever. The death of his father, as told in the last
chapter of _Lavengro_. Is there anything of the kind more affecting in
the library? Somebody is almost sure to say, 'Yes, the death of Le Fevre
in _Tristram Shandy_.' A third, who always (provoking creature) likes
best what she read last, will wax eloquent over the death of the little
princess in Tolstoi's great book. The character-sketch of Borrow's elder
brother, the self-abnegating artist who declined to paint the portrait
of the Mayor of Norwich because he thought a friend of his could do it
better, suggests De Quincey's marvellous sketch of his elder brother.
And then, what about Benedict Moll, Joey the dog-fancier of Westminster,
and that odious wretch the London publisher? You had need to be a deaf
mute to avoid taking part in a conversation like this. Who was Mary
Fulcher? All the clocks in the parish will have struck midnight before
that question has been answered. It is not to take a gloomy view of the
world to say that there are few pleasanter things in it than a good talk
about George Borrow.
For invalids and delicate persons leading retired lives, there are no
books like Borrow's. Lassitude and Languor, horrid hags, simply pick up
their trailing skirts and scuttle out of any room into which he enters.
They cannot abide him. A single chapter of Borrow is air and exercise;
and, indeed, the exercise is not always gentle. 'I feel,' said an
invalid, laying down _The Bible in Spain_, as she spoke, upon the
counterpane, 'as if I had been gesticulating violently for the space of
two hours.' She then sank into deep sleep, and is now hale and hearty.
Miss Martineau, in her _Life in the Sick Room_, invokes a blessing upon
the head of Christopher North. But there were always those who refused
to believe in Miss Martineau's illness, and certainly her avowed
preference for the man whom Macaulay in his wrath, writing to Napier in
Edinburgh, called 'your grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgel-playing
Professor of Moral Philosophy,' is calculated to give countenance to
this unworthy suspicion. It was an odd taste for an invalid who, whilst
craving for vigour, must necessarily hate noise. Borrow is a vigorous
writer, Wilson a noisy one. It was, however, his _Recreations_ and not
the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, that Miss Martineau affected. Still the
_Recreations_ are noisy too, and Miss Martineau must find her best
excuse, and I am determined to find an excuse for her--for did she not
write the _Feats on the Fiord_?--in the fact, that when she wrote her
_Life in the Sick Room_ (a dear little book to read when in rude
health), Borrow had published nothing of note. Had he done so, she would
have been of my way of thinking.
How much of Borrow is true and how much is false, is one of those
questions which might easily set all mankind by the ears, but for the
pleasing circumstance that it does not matter a dump. Few things are
more comical than to hear some douce body, unread in Borrow, gravely
inquiring how far his word may be relied upon. The sole possible
response takes the exceptionable shape of loud peals of laughter. And
yet, surely, it is a most reasonable question, or query, as the Scotch
say. So it is; but after you have read your author you won't ask it--you
won't want to. The reader can believe what he likes, and as much as he
likes. In the old woman on London Bridge and her convict son, in the man
in black (how unlike Goldsmith's!), in the _Flaming Tinman_, in Ursula,
the wife of Sylvester. There is but one person in whom you must believe,
every hour of the day and of the night, else are you indeed
unworthy--you must believe in Isopel Berners. A stranger and more
pathetic figure than she is not to be seen flitting about in the great
shadow-dance men call their life. Born and bred though she was in a
workhouse, where she learnt to read and sew, fear God, and take her own
part, a nobler, more lovable woman never crossed man's path. Her
introduction to her historian was quaint. 'Before I could put myself on
my guard, she struck me a blow on the face, which had nearly brought me
to the ground.' Alas, poor Isopel! Borrow returned the blow, a deadlier,
fiercer blow, aimed not at the face but at the heart. Of their life in
the Dingle let no man speak; it must be read in the last chapters of
_Lavengro_, and the early ones of _The Romany Rye_. Borrow was certainly
irritating. One longs to shake him. He was what children call 'a tease.'
He teased poor Isopel with his confounded philology. Whether he simply
made a mistake, or whether the girl was right in her final surmise, that
he was 'at the root mad,' who can say? He offered her his hand, but at
too late a stage in the proceedings. Isopel Berners left the Dingle to
go to America, and we hear of her no more. That she lived to become a
happy 'housemother,' and to start a line of brave men and chaste women,
must be the prayer of all who know what it is to love a woman they have
never seen. Of the strange love-making that went on in the Dingle no
idea can or ought to be given save from the original.
'Thereupon I descended into the Dingle. Belle was sitting before the
fire, at which the kettle was boiling. "Were you waiting for me?" I
inquired. "Yes," said Belle, "I thought you would come, and I waited for
you." "That was very kind," said I. "Not half so kind," said she, "as it
was of you to get everything ready for me in the dead of last night,
when there was scarcely a chance of my coming." The tea-things were
brought forward, and we sat down. "Have you been far?" said Belle.
"Merely to that public-house," said I, "to which you directed me on the
second day of our acquaintance." "Young men should not make a habit of
visiting public-houses," said Belle; "they are bad places." "They may be
so to some people," said I, "but I do not think the worst public-house
in England could do me any harm." "Perhaps you are so bad already," said
Belle with a smile, "that it would be impossible to spoil you." "How
dare you catch at my words?" said I; "come, I will make you pay for
doing so--you shall have this evening the longest lesson in Armenian
which I have yet inflicted upon you." "You may well say inflicted," said
Belle, "but pray spare me. I do not wish to hear anything about Armenian,
especially this evening." "Why this evening?" said I. Belle made no
answer. "I will not spare you," said I; "this evening I intend to make
you conjugate an Armenian verb." "Well, be it so," said Belle, "for this
evening you shall command." "To command is hramahyel," said I. "Ram her
ill indeed," said Belle, "I do not wish to begin with that." "No," said
I, "as we have come to the verbs we will begin regularly: hramahyel is a
verb of the second conjugation. We will begin with the first." "First of
all, tell me," said Belle, "what a verb is?" "A part of speech," said I,
"which, according to the dictionary, signifies some action or passion;
for example, 'I command you, or I hate you.'" "I have given you no
cause to hate me," said Belle, looking me sorrowfully in the face.
'"I was merely giving two examples," said I, "and neither was directed
at you. In those examples, to command and hate are verbs. Belle, in
Armenian there are four conjugations of verbs; the first ends in al, the
second in yel, the third in oul, and the fourth in il. Now, have you
understood me?"
'"I am afraid, indeed, it will all end ill," said Belle. "Hold your
tongue!" said I, "or you will make me lose my patience." "You have
already made me nearly lose mine," said Belle. "Let us have no
unprofitable interruptions," said I. "The conjugations of the Armenian
verbs are neither so numerous nor so difficult as the declensions of the
nouns. Hear that and rejoice. Come, we will begin with the verb hntal, a
verb of the first conjugation, which signifies to rejoice. Come along:
hntam, I rejoice; hyntas, thou rejoicest. Why don't you follow, Belle?"
'"I am sure I don't rejoice, whatever you may do," said Belle. "The
chief difficulty, Belle," said I, "that I find in teaching you the
Armenian grammar proceeds from your applying to yourself and me every
example I give. Rejoice, in this instance, is merely an example of an
Armenian verb of the first conjugation, and has no more to do with your
rejoicing than lal, which is also a verb of the first conjugation, and
which signifies to weep, would have to do with your weeping, provided I
made you conjugate it. Come along: hntam, I rejoice; hntas, thou
rejoicest; hnta, he rejoices; hntamk, we rejoice. Now repeat those
words." "I can't bear this much longer," said Belle. "Keep yourself
quiet," said I. "I wish to be gentle with you, and to convince you, we
will skip hntal, and also, for the present, verbs of the first
conjugation, and proceed to the second. Belle, I will now select for you
to conjugate the prettiest verb in Armenian, not only of the second, but
also of all the four conjugations. That verb is siriel. Here is the
present tense: siriem, siries, sire, siriemk, sirèk, sirien. Come on,
Belle, and say siriem." Belle hesitated. "Pray oblige me, Belle, by
saying siriem." Belle still appeared to hesitate. "You must admit, Belle,
that it is softer than hntam." "It is so," said Belle, "and to oblige
you I will say siriem." "Very well indeed, Belle," said I, "and now to
show you how verbs act upon pronouns in Armenian, I will say siriem
zkiez. Please to repeat siriem zkiez." "Siriem zkiez," said Belle; "that
last word is very hard to say." "Sorry that you think so, Belle," said
I. "Now, please to say siriá zis." Belle did so. "Exceedingly well,"
said I. "Now say girani thè sireir zis." "Girane thè sireir zis," said
Belle. "Capital!" said I. "You have now said I love you--love me. Ah!
would that you would love me!"
'"And I have said all these things?" said Belle. "Yes," said I. "You have
said them in Armenian." "I would have said them in no language that I
understood," said Belle. "And it was very wrong of you to take advantage
of my ignorance, and make me say such things!" "Why so?" said I. "If
you said them, I said them too."'
'Was ever woman in this humour wooed?'
It is, I believe, the opinion of the best critics that _The Bible in
Spain_ is Borrow's masterpiece. It very likely is so. At the present
moment I feel myself even more than usually disqualified for so grave a
consideration by my over-powering delight in its dear, deluding title. A
quarter of a century ago, in all decent homes, a boy's reading was, by
the stern decree of his elders, divided rigorously, though at the same
time it must be admitted crudely, into Sunday books and week-day books.
'What have you got there?' has before now been an inquiry addressed on a
Sunday afternoon to some youngster, suspiciously engrossed in a book.
'Oh, _The Bible in Spain_,' would be the reply. 'It is written by a Mr.
Borrow, you know, and it is all about'--(then the title-page would serve
its turn) 'his attempts "to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula!"'
'Indeed! Sounds most suitable,' answers the gulled authority, some
foolish sisters' governess or the like illiterate, and moves off. And
then the happy boy would wriggle in his chair, and, as if thirsting to
taste the first fruits of his wile, hastily seek out a streaky page, and
there read, for perhaps the hundredth time, the memorable words: