biblical subject perhaps deserves to be, the greatest general favourite,
though its literary value is a good deal below that of _Lavengro_. _The
Bible in Spain_ records the journeys, which, as an agent of the Bible
Society, Borrow took through the Peninsula at a singularly interesting
time, the disturbed years of the early reign of Isabel Segunda. Navarre
and Aragon, with Catalonia, Valencia, and Murcia, he seems to have left
entirely unvisited; I suppose because of the Carlists. Nor did he
attempt the southern part of Portugal; but Castile and Leon, with the
north of Portugal and the south of Spain, he quartered in the most
interesting manner, riding everywhere with his servant and his
saddle-bag of Testaments at, I should suppose, a considerable cost to
the subscribers of the Society and at, it may be hoped, some gain to the
propagation of evangelical principles in the Peninsula, but certainly
with the results of extreme satisfaction to himself and of a very
delightful addition to English literature. He was actually imprisoned at
Madrid, and was frequently in danger from Carlists, and brigands, and
severely orthodox ecclesiastics. It is possible to imagine a more
ideally perfect missionary; but it is hardly possible to imagine a more
ideally perfect traveller. His early habits of roughing it, his gipsy
initiation, his faculties as a linguist, and his other faculties as a
born vagrant, certain to fall on his feet anywhere, were all called into
operation. But he might have had all these advantages and yet lacked the
extraordinary literary talent which the book reveals. In the first
chapter there is a certain stiffness; but the passage of the Tagus in
the second must have told every competent reader in 1842 that he had to
deal with somebody quite different from the run of common writers, and
thenceforward the book never flags till the end. How far the story is
rigidly historical I should be very sorry to have to decide. The author
makes a kind of apology in his preface for the amount of fact which has
been supplied from memory. I daresay the memory was quite trustworthy,
and certainly adventures are to the adventurous. We have had daring
travellers enough during the last half-century, but I do not know that
any one has ever had quite such a romantic experience as Borrow's ride
across the Hispano-Portuguese frontier with a gipsy _contrabandista_,
who was at the time a very particular object of police inquiry. I
daresay the interests of the Bible Society required the adventurous
journey to the wilds of Finisterra. But I feel that if that association
had been a mere mundane company and Borrow its agent, troublesome
shareholders might have asked awkward questions at the annual meeting.
Still, this sceptical attitude is only part of the official duty of the
critic, just as, of course, Borrow's adventurous journeys into the most
remote and interesting parts of Spain were part of the duty of the
colporteur. The book is so delightful that, except when duty calls, no
one would willingly take any exception to any part or feature of it. The
constant change of scene, the romantic episodes of adventure, the
kaleidoscope of characters, the crisp dialogue, the quaint reflection
and comment relieve each other without a break. I do not know whether it
is really true to Spain and Spanish life, and, to tell the exact truth,
I do not in the least care. If it is not Spanish it is remarkably human
and remarkably literary, and those are the chief and principal things.
_Lavengro_, which followed, has all the merits of its predecessor and
more. It is a little spoilt in its later chapters by the purpose, the
antipapal purpose, which appears still more fully in _The Romany Rye_.
But the strong and singular individuality of its flavour as a whole
would have been more than sufficient to carry off a greater fault. There
are, I should suppose, few books the successive pictures of which leave
such an impression on the reader who is prepared to receive that
impression. The word picture is here rightly used, for in all Borrow's
books more or less, and in this particularly, the narrative is anything
but continuous. It is a succession of dissolving views which grow clear
and distinct for a time and then fade off into vagueness before once
more appearing distinctly; nor has this mode of dealing with a subject
ever been more successfully applied than in _Lavengro_. At the same time
the mode is one singularly difficult of treatment by any reviewer. To
describe _Lavengro_ with any chance of distinctness to those who have
not read it, it would be necessary to give a series of sketches in
words, like those famous ones of the pictures in _Jane Eyre_. East
Dereham, the Viper Collector, the French Prisoners at Norman Cross, the
Gipsy Encampment, the Sojourn in Edinburgh (with a passing view of
Scotch schoolboys only inferior, as everything is, to Sir Walter's
history of Green-breeks), the Irish Sojourn (with the horse whispering
and the "dog of peace,") the settlement in Norwich (with Borrow's
compulsory legal studies and his very uncompulsory excursions into
Italian, Hebrew, Welsh, Scandinavian, anything that obviously would not
pay), the new meeting with the gipsies in the Castle Field, the
fight--only the first of many excellent fights--these are but a few of
the memories which rise to every reader of even the early chapters of
this extraordinary book, and they do not cover its first hundred pages
in the common edition. Then his father dies and the born vagrant is set
loose for vagrancy. He goes to London, with a stock of translations
which is to make him famous, and a recommendation from Taylor of Norwich
to "the publisher." The publisher exacted something more than his pound
of flesh in the form of Newgate Lives and review articles, and paid,
when he did pay, in bills of uncertain date which were very likely to be
protested. But Borrow won through it all, making odd acquaintances with
a young man of fashion (his least lifelike sketch); with an apple-seller
on London Bridge, who was something of a "fence" and had erected Moll
Flanders (surely the oddest patroness ever so selected) into a kind of
patron saint; with a mysterious Armenian merchant of vast wealth, whom
the young man, according to his own account, finally put on a kind of
filibustering expedition against both the Sublime Porte and the White
Czar, for the restoration of Armenian independence. At last, out of
health with perpetual work and low living, out of employ, his friends
beyond call, he sees destruction before him, writes _The Life and
Adventures of Joseph Sell_ (name of fortunate omen!) almost at a heat
and on a capital, fixed and floating, of eighteen-pence, and disposes of
it for twenty pounds by the special providence of the Muses. With this
twenty pounds his journey into the blue distance begins. He travels,
partly by coach, to somewhere near Salisbury, and gives the first of the
curiously unfavourable portraits of stage coachmen, which remain to
check Dickens's rose-coloured representations of Mr. Weller and his
brethren. I incline to think that Borrow's was likely to be the truer
picture. According to him, the average stage coachman was anything but
an amiable character, greedy, insolent to all but persons of wealth and
rank, a hanger-on of those who might claim either; bruiser enough to be
a bully but not enough to be anything more; in short, one of the worst
products of civilisation. From civilisation itself, however, Borrow soon
disappears, as far as any traceable signs go. He journeys, not farther
west but northwards, into the West Midlands and the marches of Wales. He
buys a tinker's beat and fit-out from a feeble vessel of the craft, who
has been expelled by "the Flaming Tinman," a half-gipsy of robustious
behaviour. He is met by old Mrs. Hearne, the mother-in-law of his gipsy
friend Jasper Petulengro, who resents a Gorgio's initiation in gipsy
ways, and very nearly poisons him by the wily aid of her grand-daughter
Leonora. He recovers, thanks to a Welsh travelling preacher and to
castor oil. And then, when the Welshman has left him, comes the climax
and turning-point of the whole story, the great fight with Jem Bosvile,
"the Flaming Tinman." The much-abused adjective Homeric belongs in sober
strictness to this immortal battle, which has the additional interest
not thought of by Homer (for goddesses do not count) that Borrow's
second and guardian angel is a young woman of great attractions and
severe morality, Miss Isopel (or Belle) Berners, whose extraction,
allowing for the bar sinister, is honourable, and who, her hands being
fully able to keep her head, has sojourned without ill fortune in the
Flaming Tinman's very disreputable company. Bosvile, vanquished by pluck
and good fortune rather than strength, flees the place with his wife.
Isopel remains behind and the couple take up their joint residence, a
residence of perfect propriety, in this dingle, the exact locality of
which I have always longed to know, that I might make an autumnal
pilgrimage to it. Isopel, Brynhild as she is, would apparently have had
no objection to be honourably wooed. But her eccentric companion
confines himself to teaching her "I love" in Armenian, which she finds
unsatisfactory; and she at last departs, leaving a letter which tells
Mr. Borrow some home truths. And, even before this catastrophe has been
reached, _Lavengro_ itself ends with a more startling abruptness than
perhaps any nominally complete book before or since.
It would be a little interesting to know whether the continuation, _The
Romany Rye_, which opens as if there had been no break whatever, was
written continuously or with a break. At any rate its opening chapters
contain the finish of the lamentable history of Belle Berners, which
must induce every reader of sensibility to trust that Borrow, in writing
it, was only indulging in his very considerable faculty of perverse
romancing. The chief argument to the contrary is, that surely no man,
however imbued with romantic perversity, would have made himself cut so
poor a figure as Borrow here does without cause. The gipsies reappear to
save the situation, and a kind of minor Belle Berners drama is played
out with Ursula, Jasper's sister. Then the story takes another of its
abrupt turns. Jasper, half in generosity it would appear, half in
waywardness, insists on Borrow purchasing a thorough-bred horse which is
for sale, advances the money, and despatches him across England to
Horncastle Fair to sell it. The usual Le Sagelike adventures occur, the
oddest of them being the hero's residence for some considerable time as
clerk and storekeeper at a great roadside inn. At last he reaches
Horncastle, and sells the horse to advantage. Then the story closes as
abruptly and mysteriously almost as that of _Lavengro_, with a long and
in parts, it must be confessed, rather dull conversation between the
hero, the Hungarian who has bought the horse, and the dealer who has
acted as go-between. This dealer, in honour of Borrow, of whom he has
heard through the gipsies, executes the wasteful and very meaningless
ceremony of throwing two bottles of old rose champagne, at a guinea
apiece, through the window. Even this is too dramatic a finale for
Borrow's unconquerable singularity, and he adds a short dialogue between
himself and a recruiting sergeant. And after this again there comes an
appendix containing an _apologia_ for _Lavengro_, a great deal more
polemic against Romanism, some historical views of more originality than
exactness, and a diatribe against gentility, Scotchmen, Scott, and other
black beasts of Borrow's. This appendix has received from some professed
admirers of the author a great deal more attention than it deserves. In
the first place, it was evidently written in a fit of personal pique; in
the second, it is chiefly argumentative, and Borrow had absolutely no
argumentative faculty. To say that it contains a great deal of quaint
and piquant writing is only to say that its writer wrote it, and though
the description of "Charlie-over-the-waterism" probably does not apply
to any being who ever lived, except to a few school-girls of both sexes,
it has a strong infusion of Borrow's satiric gift. As for the diatribes
against gentility, Borrow has only done very clumsily what Thackeray had
done long before without clumsiness. It can escape nobody who has read
his books with a seeing eye that he was himself exceedingly proud, not
merely of being a gentleman in the ethical sense, but of being one in
the sense of station and extraction--as, by the way, the decriers of
British snobbishness usually are, so that no special blame attaches to
Borrow for the inconsistency. Only let it be understood, once for all,
that to describe him as "the apostle of the ungenteel" is either to
speak in riddles or quite to misunderstand his real merits and
abilities.
I believe that some of the small but fierce tribe of Borrovians are
inclined to resent the putting of the last of this remarkable series,
_Wild Wales_, on a level with the other three. With such I can by no
means agree. _Wild Wales_ has not, of course, the charm of unfamiliar
scenery and the freshness of youthful impression which distinguish _The
Bible in Spain_; it does not attempt anything like the novel-interest of
_Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_; and though, as has been pointed out
above, something of Borrow's secret and mysterious way of indicating
places survives, it is a pretty distinct itinerary over great part of
the actual principality. I have followed most of its tracks on foot
myself, and nobody who wants a Welsh guide-book can take a pleasanter
one, though he might easily find one much less erratic. It may thus
have, to superficial observers, a positive and prosaic flavour as
compared with the romantic character of the other three. But this
distinction is not real. The tones are a little subdued, as was likely
to be the case with an elderly gentleman of fifty, travelling with his
wife and stepdaughter, and not publishing the record of his travels till
he was nearly ten years older. The localities are traceable on the map
and in Murray, instead of being the enchanted dingles and the
half-mythical woods of _Lavengro_. The personages of the former books
return no more, though, with one of his most excellent touches of art,
the author has suggested the contrast of youth and age by a single gipsy
interview in one of the later chapters. Borrow, like all sensible men,
was at no time indifferent to good food and drink, especially good ale;
but the trencher plays in _Wild Wales_ a part, the importance of which
may perhaps have shocked some of our latter-day delicates, to whom
strong beer is a word of loathing, and who wonder how on earth our
grandfathers and fathers used to dispose of "black strap." A very
different set of readers may be repelled by the strong literary colour
of the book, which is almost a Welsh anthology in parts. But those few
who can boast themselves to find the whole of a book, not merely its
parts, and to judge that whole when found, will be not least fond of
_Wild Wales_. If they have, as every reader of Borrow should have, the
spirit of the roads upon them, and are never more happy than when
journeying on "Shanks his mare," they will, of course, have in addition
a peculiar and personal love for it. It is, despite the interludes of
literary history, as full of Borrow's peculiar conversational gift as
any of its predecessors. Its thumbnail sketches, if somewhat more
subdued and less elaborate, are not less full of character. John Jones,
the Dissenting weaver, who served Borrow at once as a guide and a
whetstone of Welsh in the neighbourhood of Llangollen; the "kenfigenous"
Welshwoman who first, but by no means last, exhibited the curious local
jealousy of a Welsh-speaking Englishman; the doctor and the Italian
barometer-seller at Cerrig-y-Druidion; the "best Pridydd of the world"
in Anglesey, with his unlucky addiction to beer and flattery; the waiter
at Bala; the "ecclesiastical cat" (a cat worthy to rank with those of
Southey and Gautier); the characters of the walk across the hills from
Machynlleth to the Devil's Bridge; the scene at the public-house on the
Glamorgan Border, where the above-mentioned jealousy comes out so
strongly; the mad Irishwoman, Johanna Colgan (a masterpiece by herself);
and the Irish girl, with her hardly inferior history of the
faction-fights of Scotland Road (which Borrow, by a mistake, has put in
Manchester instead of in Liverpool); these make a list which I have
written down merely as they occurred to me, without opening the book,
and without prejudice to another list, nearly as long, which might be
added. _Wild Wales_, too, because of its easy and direct opportunity of
comparing its description with the originals, is particularly valuable
as showing how sober, and yet how forcible, Borrow's descriptions are.
As to incident, one often, as before, suspects him of romancing, and it
stands to reason that his dialogue, written long after the event, must
be full of the "cocked-hat-and-cane" style of narrative. But his
description, while it has all the vividness, has also all the
faithfulness and sobriety of the best landscape-painting. See a place
which Kingsley or Mr. Ruskin, or some other master of our decorative
school, has described--much more one which has fallen into the hands of
the small fry of their imitators--and you are almost sure to find that
it has been overdone. This is never, or hardly ever, the case with
Borrow, and it is so rare a merit, when it is found in a man who does
not shirk description where necessary, that it deserves to be counted to
him at no grudging rate.
But there is no doubt that the distinguishing feature of the book is its
survey of Welsh poetical literature. I have already confessed that I am
not qualified to judge the accuracy of Borrow's translations, and by no
means disposed to over-value them. But any one who takes an interest in
literature at all, must, I think, feel that interest not a little
excited by the curious Old-Mortality-like peregrinations which the
author of _Wild Wales_ made to the birth-place, or the burial-place as
it might be, of bard after bard, and by the short but masterly accounts
which he gives of the objects of his search. Of none of the numerous
subjects of his linguistic rovings does Borrow seem to have been fonder,
putting Romany aside, than of Welsh. He learnt it in a peculiarly
contraband manner originally, which, no doubt, endeared it to him; it
was little known to and often ridiculed by most Englishmen, which was
another attraction; and it was extremely unlikely to "pay" in any way,
which was a third. Perhaps he was not such an adept in it as he would
have us believe--the respected Cymmrodorion Society or Professor Rhys
must settle that. But it needs no knowledge of Welsh whatever to
perceive the genuine enthusiasm, and the genuine range of his
acquaintance with the language from the purely literary side. When he
tells us that Ab Gwilym was a greater poet than Ovid or Chaucer I feel
considerable doubts whether he was quite competent to understand Ovid
and little or no doubt that he has done wrong to Chaucer. But when,
leaving these idle comparisons, he luxuriates in details about Ab Gwilym
himself, and his poems, and his lady loves, and so forth, I have no
doubt about Borrow's appreciation (casual prejudices always excepted) of
literature. Nor is it easy to exaggerate the charm which he has added to
Welsh scenery by this constant identification of it with the men, and
the deeds, and the words of the past.
Little has been said hitherto of Borrow's more purely literary
characteristics from the point of view of formal criticism. They are
sufficiently interesting. He unites with a general plainness of speech
and writing, not unworthy of Defoe or Cobbett, a very odd and
complicated mannerism, which, as he had the wisdom to make it the
seasoning and not the main substance of his literary fare, is never
disgusting. The secret of this may be, no doubt, in part sought in his
early familiarity with a great many foreign languages, some of whose
idioms he transplanted into English: but this is by no means the whole
of the receipt. Perhaps it is useless to examine analytically that
receipt's details, or rather (for the analysis may be said to be
compulsory on any one who calls himself a critic), useless to offer its
results to the reader. One point which can escape no one who reads with
his eyes open is the frequent, yet not too abundant, repetition of the
same or very similar words--a point wherein much of the secret of
persons so dissimilar as Carlyle, Borrow, and Thackeray consists. This
is a well-known fact--so well known indeed that when a person who
desires to acquire style hears of it, he often goes and does likewise,
with what result all reviewers know. The peculiarity of Borrow, as far
as I can mark it, is that, despite his strong mannerism, he never relies
on it as too many others, great and small, are wont to do. The character
sketches, of which, as I have said, he is so abundant a master, are
always put in the plainest and simplest English. So are his flashes of
ethical reflection, which, though like all ethical reflections often
one-sided, are of the first order of insight. I really do not know that,
in the mint-and-anise-and-cummin order of criticism, I have more than
one charge to make against Borrow. That is that he, like other persons
of his own and the immediately preceding time, is wont to make a most
absurd misuse of the word individual. With Borrow "individual" means
simply "person": a piece of literary gentility of which he, of all
others, ought to have been ashamed.
But such criticism has but very little propriety in the case of a
writer, whose attraction is neither mainly nor in any very great degree
one of pure form. His early critics compared him to Le Sage, and the
comparison is natural. But if it is natural, it is not extraordinarily
critical. Both men wrote of vagabonds, and to some extent of picaroons;
both neglected the conventionalities of their own language and
literature; both had a singular knowledge of human nature. But Le Sage
is one of the most impersonal of all great writers, and Borrow is one of
the most personal. And it is undoubtedly in the revelation of his
personality that great part of his charm lies. It is, as has been fully
acknowledged, a one-sided, wrong-headed, not always quite right-hearted
personality. But it is intensely English, possessing at the same time a
certain strain of romance which the other John Bulls of literature
mostly lack, and which John Bunyan, the king of them all, only reached
within the limits, still more limited than Borrow's, of purely
religious, if not purely ecclesiastical, interests. A born grumbler; a
person with an intense appetite for the good things of this life;
profoundly impressed with, and at the same time sceptically critical of,
the bad or good things of another life; apt, as he somewhere says
himself, "to hit people when he is not pleased"; illogical; constantly
right in general, despite his extremely roundabout ways of reaching his
conclusion; sometimes absurd, and yet full of humour; alternately
prosaic and capable of the highest poetry; George Borrow, Cornishman on
the father's side and Huguenot on the mother's, managed to display in
perfection most of the characteristics of what once was, and let us hope
has not quite ceased to be, the English type. If he had a slight
overdose of Celtic blood and Celtic peculiarity, it was more than made
up by the readiness of literary expression which it gave him. He, if any
one, bore an English heart, though, as there often has been in
Englishmen, there was something perhaps more as well as something less
than English in his fashion of expression.