GEORGE HENRY BORROW.

The time is ripe, and over ripe, for a commemorative celebration of

George Borrow in a city with which he was so long, and so intimately,

associated as he was with Norwich. His increasing fame as a foremost

literary man of the nineteenth century is amply witnessed to by the

various biographies of him, and the numerous appreciations of him by

writers of repute, and Mr. Clement Shorter's forthcoming "Life of Borrow"

will certainly add to the cult.

The following sketch of this wayward genius is mainly devoted to

outstanding characteristics, with necessarily brief accounts of his works

and journeyings. It seems convenient to sum up his career in the four

divisions which follow.

_Section I_.

(1803-15)--EARLY WANDERING DAYS.

Borrow's father, Thomas Borrow, was a patriotic, pugnacious, but

God-fearing Cornishman, born at an old homestead known as Trethinnick, in

the parish of St. Cleer, in which his forbears had been settled well back

in the seventeenth century, probably earlier. To quote Dr. Knapp: "They

feared God, honoured the king, and believed in 'piskies' and Holy Wells."

Thomas Borrow, handsome, tall, and muscular, was an adept in the athletic

sports for which Cornwall is famous, and early signalised himself by his

prowess as a boxer. As he grew up, George Borrow himself became an

ardent admirer of "the Fancy," and when asked "What is the best way to

get through life quietly?" was wont to say, "Learn to box, and keep a

civil tongue in your head."

In 1778, when nineteen years of age, Thomas Borrow was articled for five

years to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a

bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the

braves of that town. Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by

the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the

head-borough, who happened to be his maltster master. He wisely fled,

and shortly after enlisted as a private soldier in the Coldstream Guards,

and was soon quartered in London. In 1792, as a sergeant, he was

transferred to the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, with headquarters at

East Dereham. A company of players from Norwich frequently visited that

nice little town, and in one of them appeared, as a supernumerary, Ann

Perfrement, the pretty daughter of a small farmer of Dumpling Green, on

the outskirts of the town. This maiden, of Huguenot descent, fascinated

the Cornish soldier, and the two were married at Dereham Church on

February 11th, 1793. The regiment was then about to start a wandering

course over the highways of England--at Colchester; in Norfolk; then at

Sheerness, Sandgate, and Dover; at Colchester once more; in Kent; Essex

again, and then, in 1802-3, at East Dereham, where George was born July

5th, 1803, in the house of his maternal grandparents. On July 17th he

was baptized George Henry, names of the king and of the eldest brother of

Captain Thomas Borrow.

[Picture: Plan of Dumpling Green, East Dereham. By permission of Mr.

Murray]

As a mere infant Borrow was gloomy and fond of solitude, "ever

conscious," he says, "of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of

a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and

for which I could assign no real cause whatever." Of this earliest

period he tells a characteristic story of drawing strange lines in the

dust with his fingers, when a Jew pedlar came up and said: "The child is

a sweet child, and he has all the look of one of our own people"; but

when he leaned forward to inspect the lines in the dust, "started back,

and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he made some strange

gestures to me, cringing, chattering, . . . and shortly departed,

muttering something about 'holy letters,' and talking to himself in a

strange tongue." This, in the first chapter of "Lavengro," is in the

true Borrovian mystery-man style.

[Picture: George Borrow's birthplace, Dumpling Green, East Dereham]

Again and again Borrow, throughout his life, suffered from some nervous

ailment which defied definition; thus, when he was fifteen, his strength

and appetite deserted him and he pined and drooped, but an ancient

female, a kind of doctress, who had been his nurse in his infancy, gave

him a decoction of a bitter root growing on commons and desolate places,

from which he took draughts till he was convalescent. In any estimate of

Borrow's life the strange attacks of what he called "the Fear" or "the

Horrors" must be taken into account. At times they even produced a

suicidal tendency, as when, in 1824, he wrote to his friend Roger

Kerrison, "Come to me immediately; I am, I believe, dying." The

facsimile of this note in Knapp's "Life of Borrow" is as tremulous as if

the writer was suffering from delirium tremens, which, of course, he was

not.

[Picture: Roger Kerrison]

We have in "Lavengro" a very interesting account of the boy Borrow being

taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham,

where, from a corner of a spacious pew, he would fix his eyes on the

dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from

whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous

works of the Most High." The rector was the Rev. F. J. H. Wollaston,

B.D., who was himself patron of the living, which reverted to the Crown

in 1841. At East Dereham, too, he came in touch with that exquisite old

gentlewoman, Lady Fenn, widow of Sir John Fenn, editor of the "Paston

Letters," as she passed to and fro from her mansion on some errand of

bounty or of mercy, leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old

footman walked at a respectful distance behind. But Borrow's admiration

for Philo, the clerk, was greatest--"Peace to thee, thou fine old chap,

despiser of dissenters, and hater of papists, as became a dignified and

high-Church clerk."

Leaving Dereham in April, 1810, Captain Borrow and his family were

transferred to Norman Cross, in the parish of Yaxley, some four miles

from Peterborough, to guard a large number of French prisoners in sixteen

long casernes, or barracks. At this place little Borrow, now seven years

old, made a friend, quite to his liking, in a wild sequestered spot which

was his favourite haunt; for he was allowed to pass his time principally

in wandering about the neighbouring country. It was at this wild nook he

came to know a viper-catcher and herbalist, a quaint figure in a skin

cap, and with stout gaiters, who was catching a viper when the boy first

made his acquaintance. "'What do you think of catching such a thing as

that with the naked hand?' asked the old fellow. 'What do I think?' said

I. 'Why, that I could do as much myself.'" This ruffled the old man's

pride, but later he became quite friendly and explained that he hunted

the vipers for their fat, to make unguents especially for rheumatism, and

also collected simples, knowing he virtues of such as had medicinal

value. On one of his excursions this primitive sportsman told him the

marvellous tale of the King of the Vipers. The old fellow was wakened

from his sleep one sultry day by a dreadful viper moving towards

him--"all yellow and gold . . . bearing its head about a foot and a-half

above the ground, the dry stubble crackling beneath its outrageous belly

. . . then it lifted its head and chest high in the air, and high over my

face as I looked up, flickering at me with its tongue as if it would fly

at my face. Child," continued the narrator, "what I felt at that moment

I can scarcely say, but it was a sufficient punishment for all the sins I

ever committed; and there we two were, I looking up at the viper, and the

viper looking down upon me, flickering at me with its tongue." Happily a

sharp gun report close at hand frightened the reptile away. Before

leaving the neighbourhood the viper-catcher presented his child friend

with a specimen which he had tamed and rendered harmless by removing the

fangs. This creature the queer boy fed with milk and often carried with

him in his walks.

This episode resulted in experiences which coloured all the rest of

Borrow's life, for, soon after, when he first came among gypsy tents, and

saw the long-haired woman with skin dark and swarthy like that of a toad,

and a particularly evil expression, and when her husband threatened to

baste the intruder with a ladle, the boy broke forth into what in Romany

would be called a "gillie," or ditty, ending--

"My father lies concealed within my tepid breast,

And if to me you offer any harm or wrong,

I'll call him forth to help me with his forked tongue."

The story cannot be mangled without losing its wild significance, but, on

further threats, Borrow, to use his own words, "made a motion which the

viper understood; and now partly disengaging itself from my bosom, where

it had lain perdu, it raised its head to a level with my face, and stared

upon my enemy with its glittering eyes."

The superstitious gypsies were effectively terrified, and invited the lad

into their tent: "Don't be angry, and say no; but look kindly upon us,

and satisfied, my precious little God Almighty."

They had taken him for a goblin, but when he explained that he was not

"one of them there," the man said, "You are a sap-engro, a chap who

catches snakes, and plays tricks with them." Then, when the boy

proceeded to read them a bit of "Robinson Crusoe," it was voted that it

"beat the rubricals hollow." Next followed the momentous meeting with

Ambrose Smith--the Jasper Petulengro of Borrow's pages--and, as the band

of gypsies were departing, Jasper, turning round, leered into the little

Gorgio's face, held out his hand, and said, "Goodbye, Sap, I daresay we

shall meet again; remember we are brothers, two gentle brothers." Gazing

after the retreating company, the sap-engro said to himself, "A strange

set of people, I wonder who they can be." Such was Borrow's first

introduction to the Romany folk.

From July, 1811, to July, 1814, the Borrows led a nomadic life, yet at

each tarrying-place Captain Borrow sent his sons to the best school

available, and George, in these three years' travelling with the

regiment, acquired Lilly's Latin Grammar by heart. A Dereham

schoolmaster had assured Captain Borrow that "there is but one good

school book in the world--the one I use in my seminary--Lilly's Latin

Grammar." There is, it may be added, good evidence that Shakespeare was

taught out of this venerable work.

Early in 1813 our interesting family were in Edinburgh, where the Borrow

boys were sent to the celebrated High School, and George entered with

zest into the faction fights between the Auld and the New Toon. More,

and better than this, he picked up just such a wild character as fitted

in with his romantic scheme of things. This was David Haggart, son of a

gamekeeper and guilty of nearly every crime in the Statute Book under

various aliases--John Wilson, John Morrison, John McColgan, David

O'Brien, and "The Switcher." Haggart enlisted as a drummer-boy in

Captain Borrow's recruiting-party at Leith Races in July, 1813, being

then just twelve years old; but soon tiring of discipline and scanty pay,

obtained his discharge, soon after embarking on a career of crime which

culminated in his well-deserved hanging at Edinburgh in 1821, at the age

of twenty.

[Picture: Crown and Angel, St. Stephen's. From Drawing by Mr. H. W.

Tuck]

In June, 1814, the West Norfolk Regiment was ordered south; some went by

sea, those who preferred by land. Captain Borrow chose the latter, and

on July 18th his division entered Norwich, and the Earl of Orford,

colonel of the regiment, entertained the officers and their friends at

the Maid's Head Hotel. At this time Captain Borrow and his family went

to lodge at the Crown and Angel, an ancient hostelry in St. Stephen's

Street. From that convenient centre, the recruiting-parties under

Captain Borrow were very successful in obtaining men, by beat of drum

instead of by ballot, as had previously been the practice. But troubles

arose in Ireland, and in August, 1815, the West Norfolks were again on

the move. They found themselves at Cork early in September, and marched

on to Clonmel.

During their short interval at Norwich, George went to the Grammar

School, and his brother studied painting with "Old Crome."

[Picture: The Grammar School]

Captain Borrow commanded a division, and George walked by his side,

holding the stirrup-leather of his horse, while John Thomas Borrow,

gazetted ensign in May and lieutenant in December, was in his place in

the regiment. At Clonmel the Borrows lodged with a handsome athletic man

and his wife, who enthusiastically welcomed them. "I have made bold to

bring up a bottle of claret," said the Orangeman, ". . . and when your

honour and your family have dined, I will make bold too to bring up

Mistress Hyne from Londonderry, to introduce to your honour's lady, and

then we'll drink to the health of King George, God bless him; to the

'glorious and immortal'--to Boyne water--to your honour's speedy

promotion to be Lord-Lieutenant."

Here at Clonmel our hero "read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters

with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk, with a huge

Elzevir Flaccus before him." "Here," says Borrow, "I was in the habit of

sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the huge open

chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young gentlemen of my

own age . . . with extraordinary accounts of my own adventures and those

of the corps, with an occasional anecdote extracted from the story-books

of Hickathrift and Wight Wallace, pretending to be conning the lesson all

the while." Borrow calls Hickathrift his countryman; the legend is that

Tom Hickathrift ridded the Fenland between Lynn and Wisbech, of a

monstrous giant, by slaying him with the axle-tree of his cart. I gave

the full story of this Norfolk giant-killer in the _Gentleman's

Magazine_, for January, 1896. The boy's genius for story telling was

quite exceptional, and when he was at Norwich Grammar School, as his

schoolfellow Dr. Martineau informed me, "He used to gather about him

three or four favourite schoolfellows, after they had learned their class

lesson and before the class was called up, and with a sheet of paper and

book on his knee, invent and tell a story, making rapid little pictures

of each _Dramatis __Persona_. The plot was woven and spread out with

much ingenuity, and the characters were various and well-discriminated.

But two of them were sure to turn up in every tale, the Devil and the

Pope: and the working of the drama invariably had the same issue--the

utter ruin and disgrace of these two Potentates."

At Clonmel it was his good luck to make friends with one more notable

character, another figure in his gallery of strange personages--Murtagh,

a Papist gasoon, sent to school by his father to be "made a saggrart of

and sent to Paris and Salamanca." But the gasoon loved cards better.

George had a new pack, which soon changed hands. "You can't learn Greek,

so you must teach Irish!" said George. "Before Christmas, Murtagh was

playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable

quantity of broken Irish."

In January, 1816, the regiment was moved on to Templemore, a charming

town in mid-Tipperary, where the Borrows remained but a short time,

reaching Norwich again on May 13th, and tarrying at the Crown and Angel

till they settled at the historic little house in King's Court, Willow

Lane, which they leased from a builder named Thomas King. At the

instance of Sir Peter Eade, it was re-named Borrow's Court, and the

tablet commemorating the residence there of George Borrow was affixed on

November 6th, 1891. Now, by the generosity of the Lord Mayor of Norwich

(Arthur Michael Samuel), in this year of grace 1913, it has become a

possession of the City of Norwich as a Borrow Museum in perpetuity.

At Templemore George Borrow, tall and large-limbed for a lad of thirteen,

still had adventures; for on an excursion to visit his brother at

Loughmore, he encountered the fierce "Dog of Peace" and its master, Jerry

Grant, the outlaw--"a fairy man, in league with fairies and spirits, and

able to work much harm by supernatural means, on which account the

peasants held him in great awe." The account of Sergeant Bagge's

encounter with this wizardly creature is in Borrow's best style. The

sergeant thought he had the fellow fast by the throat, but suddenly "the

man seemed to melt away from his grasp, and the wind howled more and

more, and the night poured down darker and darker, the snow and the sleet

thicker and more blinding. 'Lord have mercy upon us!' said Bagge, who

concluded that the tussle was 'not fair but something Irish and

supernatural.'" "I daresay," comments George to his brother, "he's

right. I have read of witchcraft in the Bible."

At Templemore, too, our boy of thirteen learned to ride, mounted on a

tremendous "gallant specimen of the genuine Irish cob," said by Borrow to

be nearly extinct in his day. This horse had been the only friend in the

world of his groom, but after a blow would not let him mount. So young

Borrow mounted the animal barebacked, for, said the groom, "If you are

ever to be a frank rider, you must begin without a saddle; . . . leave it

all to him." Following the groom's directions, the cob gave his young

rider every assistance, and great was the lad's joy! "Oh, that ride!

that first ride!--most truly it was an epoch in my existence; and I still

look back to it with feelings of longing and regret. People may talk of

first love--it is a very agreeable event, I daresay--but give me the

flush and triumph, and glorious sweat of a first ride, like mine on the

mighty cob! . . . By that one trial I had become free . . . of the whole

equine species." Thus began Borrow's passion for the equine race, and he

avows that with him the pursuit of languages was always modified by his

love of horses. As a wonderful pendant to this riding exploit, Borrow

tells the tale of the Irish smith who, by a magical word, which thrilled

the boy, absolutely maddened the cob, until the wizard soothed it by

uttering another word "in a voice singularly modified, but sweet and

almost plaintive."

With this weird episode ends the tale, as "coloured up and poetized" in

"Lavengro," of Borrow's earliest journeyings and adventures; truly in his

case adventures were to the adventurous. Having had all the wild

experiences just outlined, small wonder that the strange lad was not very

adaptable when, as a free scholar, he came under the rule of the Rev.

Edward Valpy at Norwich Grammar School.

_Section II_.

NORWICH (1816-24)--SCHOOL, LAW, AND LANGUAGES.

The criss-cross experiences of his boyhood, together with his mixed

Cornish and Gallic heredity, were elements that very largely helped to

create the whimsical character of George Borrow. We have now come to the

time when the old soldier, with his pension of eight shillings a day, and

his excellent and devoted wife, settled with their two sons at the little

house in Willow Lane, Norwich.

[Picture: Borrow's House, Willow Lane]

For a short time in 1814, when his parents lodged in St. Stephen's, young

George was sent to the Grammar School; but now, in 1816, settled

comfortably in Norwich, he was again sent to the Grammar School, under

the Rev. Edward Valpy, called by Dr. Knapp "a severe master," by Mr.

Walling "a martinet," whose "principal claims to fame," says Mr. Jenkins,

"are his severity, his having flogged the conqueror of the 'Flaming

Tinman,' and his destruction of the School Records of Admission, which

dated back to the sixteenth century." Against this chorus of

denunciation, I will quote from a letter the late Dr. Martineau wrote me

about Borrow: "It is true that I had to _hoist_ (not 'horse') Borrow for

his flogging; but not that there was anything exceptional, or capable of

leaving permanent scars in the infliction: Mr. Valpy was not given to

excess of that kind." It is a pity that the earliest biographers did not

get the opinion of some of Borrow's surviving schoolfellows as to their

old master. Dr. Knapp, in 1899, stated that Dr. Martineau (died January

11th, 1900), and Dr. W. E. Image, D.L., J.P., of Herringswell House,

Suffolk (died September 26th, 1903), were the only survivors of Borrow's

schoolmates. Amongst these was Thomas Borrow Burcham, the London Police

Magistrate, who, there is good reason to believe, was a cousin of

George's, as his father married a Mary Perfrement, and T. B. Burcham was

christened at East Dereham Church.

[Picture: The Winding River, near Norwich. Lent by Mrs. E. Peake]

[Picture: The Yare at Earlham, near Norwich. By Mr. E. Peake]

It is quite noteworthy that Borrow makes no mention of his term at the

Grammar School in "Lavengro," but, after his Irish experiences, opens a

chapter with the following eloquent description of Norwich:--

"A fine old city, truly, is that, view it from whatever side you

will, but it shows best from the east, where the ground, bold and

elevated, overlooks the fair and fertile valley in which it stands.

Gazing from those heights, the eye beholds a scene which cannot fail

to awaken, even in the least sensitive bosom, feelings of pleasure

and admiration. At the foot of the heights flows a narrow and deep

river, with an antique bridge communicating with a long and narrow

suburb, flanked on either side by rich meadows of the brightest

green, beyond which spreads the city, the fine old city, perhaps the

most curious specimen at present extant of the genuine old English

town. Yes, there it spreads from north to south, with its venerable

houses, its numerous gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its mighty

mound, which, if tradition speaks true, was raised by human hands to

serve as the grave heap of an old heathen king, who sits deep within

it, with his sword in his hand and his gold and silver treasures

about him. There is a grey old castle upon the top of that mighty

mound; and yonder, rising three hundred feet above the soil, from

among those noble forest trees, behold that old Norman master-work,

that cloud encircled cathedral spire, around which a garrulous army

of rooks and choughs continually wheel their flight. Now, who can

wonder that the children of that fine old city are proud of her, and

offer up prayers for her prosperity? I, myself, who was not born

within her walls, offer up prayers for her prosperity, that want may

never visit her cottages."

"It was yonder, to the west, that the great naval hero of Britain

first saw the light; he who annihilated the sea pride of Spain and

dragged the humble banner of France in triumph at his stern. He was

born yonder to the west, and of him there is a glorious relic in that

old town; in its dark flint guildhouse, the roof of which you can

just descry rising above that maze of buildings, in the upper hall of

justice, is a species of glass shrine, in which the relic is to be

seen: a sword of curious workmanship, the blade is of keen Toledan

steel, the heft of ivory and mother-of-pearl. 'Tis the sword of

Cordova, won in the bloodiest fray off St. Vincent's promontory, and

presented by Nelson to the old capital of the much-loved land of his

birth. Yes, the proud Spaniard's sword is to be seen in yonder

guildhouse, in the glass case affixed to the wall; many other relics

has the good old town, but none prouder than the Spaniard's sword."

After these descriptive passages, he at once passes to the questionings

of his father and mother as to the career of "the other child," much more

difficult to settle in life than his more sober-minded elder brother, who

had, as Dr. Martineau informed me, "quite too much sense" to join in the

wild escapade described by Dr. Knapp in one of his most "purple patches."

Captain Borrow was sadly exercised about his younger son, and exclaimed,

in the discussion about his prospects, "Why, he has neither my hair nor

eyes; and then his countenance! Why, 'tis absolutely swarthy, God

forgive me! I had almost said like that of a gypsy, but I have nothing

to say against that; the boy is not to be blamed for the colour of his

face, nor for his hair and eyes; but, then, his ways and manners!"

Our glimpses of the Grammar School life are meagre, but we can readily

understand that to a lad of Borrow's temperament the routine of a

well-ordered school was naturally distasteful, though he loved to gain

knowledge from any unconventional source open to him. So we find him

studying French and Italian with "one banished priest," the Rev. Thomas

D'Eterville, M.A., of Caen University, who, as Borrow says, "lived in an

old court of the old town," having come to Norwich in 1793. He

advertised his "school in St. Andrew's," and this was situated in

Locket's Yard, now built over by Messrs. Harmer's factory. Later he

resided in the Strangers' Hall, then occupied by priests of the adjoining

Roman Catholic Chapel of St. John, now superseded by the grand church

which towers on the crest of St. Giles's Hill. The Norman priest was

robust, with a slight stoop, but a rapid and vigorous step, "sixty or

thereabouts," when Borrow was his pupil in 1816, according to "Lavengro."

But he was really considerably younger, for when he died at Caen,

February 22nd, 1843, his age was given as seventy-six. In a local

obituary notice he was described as "a well-known and respected

inhabitant of Norwich for upwards of forty years, who retired a few

months ago to end his days in his native country." He made a small

fortune, and there were rumours that he was engaged in the contraband

trade. In a suppressed passage, reproduced by Dr. Knapp in his notes to

"Lavengro," D'Eterville says he found friends here, and was able to ride

a good horse to visit pupils in the country; also that he always carried

pistols, which Borrow said he had seen. Here, then, was another

character after Borrow's heart, especially as he told his pupil that one

day he would be a great philologist. Of course, young Borrow was by no

means the sort of lad to spend all his time on books. He loved to sally

forth with an old condemned musket, and did such execution that he seldom

returned (sad to say!) without a string of bullfinches, blackbirds, and

linnets hanging round his neck. Yet, as Mr. Jenkins says, Borrow's "love

of animals was almost feminine." With less zest he went fishing--too

listless a pastime to interest him much, for he often fell into a doze by

the water side, and sometimes let his rod drop into the stream. His

poetical but strictly accurate account of Earlham is worth quoting:

"At some distance from the city, behind a range of hilly ground which

rises towards the south-west, is a small river, the waters of which,

after many meanderings, eventually enter the principal river of the

district, and assist to swell the tide which it rolls down to the

ocean. It is a sweet rivulet, and pleasant it is to trace its course

from its spring-head, high up in the remote regions of East Anglia,

till it arrives in the valley behind yon rising ground; and pleasant

is that valley, truly a goodly spot, but most lovely where yonder

bridge crosses the little stream. Beneath its arch the waters rush

garrulously into a blue pool, and are there stilled for a time, for

the pool is deep, and they appear to have sunk to sleep. Farther on,

however, you hear their voice again, where they ripple gaily over yon

gravelly shallow. On the left, the hill slopes gently down to the

margin of the stream. On the right is a green level, a smiling

meadow, grass of the richest decks the side of the slope; mighty

trees also adorn it, giant elms, the nearest of which, when the sun

is nigh at its meridian, fling a broad shadow upon the face of the

pool; through yon vista you catch a glimpse of the ancient brick of

an old English hall. It has a stately look, that old building,

indistinctly seen, as it is, among those umbrageous trees; you might

almost suppose it an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its

site stood an earl's home, in the days of old, for there some old

Kemp, some Sigurd, or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead,

settled down in the gray old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods,

and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the

Earl's Home."

It was while fishing in "a sweet rivulet" in the grounds of the old hall

one summer's day that "a voice, clear and sonorous as a bell," asked,

"Canst thou answer to thy conscience for pulling all those fish out of

the water, and leaving them to gasp in the sun?" The speaker was none

other than the learned Friend, Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), who as a

young man read nearly all the Old Testament in Hebrew in the early

morning. It was natural, therefore, that he should ask the young angler

if he knew Hebrew, having confessed, according to "Lavengro," that he

himself could not read Dante. This is clearly wrong, for writing to

Thomas Fowell Buxton, in 1808, he mentions that he is reading Sophocles,

some Italian, Livy, etc., and in the following year he informs his

sister, Hannah Buxton, that he is engaged, _inter alia_, on Apollonius

Rhodius, the Greek Testament, and Ariosto.

[Picture: The Strangers' Hall, Norwich. From Painting by Ventnor. Lent

by Mr. E. Peake]

Borrow had good reason to respect and admire the Quakers, as is evidenced

in "Wild Wales" (Chap. CVI.), for when a Methodist called them "a bad

lot," and said he at first thought Borrow was a Methodist minister (!),

and hoped to hear from him something "conducive to salvation," Borrow's

severe answer was: "So you shall. Never speak ill of people of whom you

know nothing. If that isn't a saying conducive to salvation, I know not

what is." It is not very creditable, in my opinion, that the late Mr. J.

B. Braithwaite, in his "Memoirs of J. J. Gurney" (two volumes, 1854),

never once mentions Borrow by name. I have no doubt, however, that the

following passage refers to him: "'Wilt thou execute a little commission

for me at Arch's?' said Joseph John Gurney, addressing another of his

young friends, whom he had kindly taken one day to dine at his lodgings

during the interval between the sittings of the Yearly Meeting. His

young friend, of course, readily assented. J. J. Gurney wrote a few

lines on a slip of paper which he handed to his young friend, enclosed to

his bookseller's; but without giving to his young companion any

intimation of its contents. The note was duly delivered, and the

circumstance was forgotten until, after a lapse of a few weeks, the young

friend, no less to his surprise than to his delight, received a large

parcel, sent to him, as he was informed, at Joseph John Gurney's request,

consisting of thirty volumes, comprising the Lexicons of Simonis and

Schleusner, and the Scholia of the Rosenmullers (the father and son) on

the Old and New Testaments: a great prize indeed to a youthful student.

Many were the instances in which he thus encouraged, amongst his young

friends, a taste for reading, more especially in those pursuits in which

he himself delighted."

[Picture: Earlham Bridge. From Photograph. Lent by Mr. E. Peake]

Who can wonder at Mr. Clement Shorter's indignation when, in his address

in Norwich on the Borrow Centenary in 1903, after enumerating many great

Norwich people, he endeavoured to show "that Borrow, the very least of

those men and women in public estimation for a good portion of his life,

and perhaps the least in popular judgment ever since his death, was

really the greatest, was really the man of all others, to whom this

beautiful city should do honour if it asks for a name out of its

nineteenth-century history to crown with local recognition."

In his Tombland Fair chapter is this vivid patch of local colour:

"I was standing on the castle hill in the midst of a fair of horses.

I have already had occasion to mention this castle. It is the

remains of what was once a Norman stronghold, and is perched upon a

round mound or monicle, in the midst of the old city. Steep is this

mound and scarped, evidently by the hand of man; a deep gorge, over

which is flung a bridge, separates it, on the south, from a broad

swell of open ground called "the hill"; of old the scene of many a

tournament and feat of Norman chivalry, but now much used as a show

place for cattle, where those who buy and sell beeves and other

beasts resort at stated periods."

Perhaps Borrow inherited from his father--the conqueror of Big Ben Brain,

"whose skin was brown and dusky as that of a toad"--the love of

fisticuffs which was so prominently marked in his career. It was this

which led him to become the pupil in boxing of "the terrible Thurtell,"

executed for the murder of Weare, January 9th, 1824 (his father, Thomas

Thurtell, was Sheriff of Norwich in 1815, Mayor in 1828, and died April

8th, 1846, at the good old age of eighty-one. He lived at Harford Hall

Farm, Lakenham, a largish house standing back from the highway, towards

the end of the Ipswich Road, on the left-hand side going from Norwich,

some little distance this side of Harford Bridges in the river valley

below). The celebrated chapter on "The Bruisers of England" ("Lavengro,"

Chap. XXVI.) has been warmly applauded by many writers as a very fine

example of Borrow's style. That it undoubtedly is, but some critics were

unsympathetic about pugilism, amongst them the late Rev. Whitwell Elwin,

who, in the _Quarterly Review_ (January-April, 1857), wrote: "Mr.

Borrow's notions of what constitutes cant have not always been the same.

In his 'Gypsies of Spain' he speaks of pugilistic combats as 'disgraceful

and brutalizing exhibitions,' but in the Appendix to 'The Romany Rye' we

find that he now considers such language to be cant. This is one of the

cases in which second thoughts are worst." Another reviewer deprecates

Borrow's glorifying attitude towards "the very worst amongst the bad,

such as David Haggart and John Thurtell; and not content with turning

away the edge of an instinctive condemnation of crime, actually entitles

the prize-fighters, the brutality of whose profession can scarcely be

exaggerated, 'the priests of an old religion.'" More recently, while

advocating the Children's Bill in the House of Commons (March 24th,

1908), Mr. Shaw said that "George Borrow never did a worse service to

humanity than by writing 'Lavengro,' with its glorification of vagabond

life." Though one cannot acquit Borrow of inconsistency, we must

remember that "The Gypsies of Spain" was written in 1840, and that he

sent a notice of it to Mr. Brandram of the Bible Society in March of that

year, ending his letter with the words: "I hope yet to die in the cause

of my Redeemer." For my part, I am convinced that Borrow's real opinion

of pugilism is contained in several passages of the Appendix to "The

Romany Rye," where he justifies "his favourite pursuits, hunting after

strange characters, or analysing strange words and names," and expressed

the belief that he would not be refused admission to heaven because of

"some inclination to put on certain gloves, not white kid, with any

friend who may be inclined for a little old-English diversion, and a

readiness to take a glass of ale, with plenty of malt in it, and as

little hop as may well be--ale at least two years old--with the aforesaid

friend when the diversion is over." He says he is "not ashamed to speak

to a beggar in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can

gratify a laudable curiosity." More emphatically still, he asks: "Can

the rolls of the English aristocracy exhibit names belonging to more

heroic men than those who were called respectively Pearce, Cribb, and

Spring?" Both "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," be it noted, were written

long after Borrow's association with the Bible Society had come to an

end.

Those who wish to visualize in some degree the rendezvous of "the

bruisers of England, men of tremendous renown," should look upon the

building, once the Bowling Green Hotel, by Chapel Field Gardens. It is

now an Orphan's Home, bought for that purpose for seven hundred pounds in

January, 1870, but the initials "R.G." on the north wall still recall the

memory of Richard Gurney, "the retired coachman with one leg," who died

August 11th, 1829, aged forty-eight. The stabling still remains in use,

but the bowling green now forms part of the property of the Bethel

Hospital: it adjoins the theatre, and is occupied by tennis courts for

the recreation of the patients. The Bowling Green Hotel in its heyday

was a place of much importance; for being so close to the theatre, it was

the chosen hostelry for many great theatrical stars--Mrs. Charles Kean

and others. Many amusing anecdotes are told of the guests in a booklet

on "Old Norfolk Inns," published by Messrs. Jarrold in 1888, but now

unfortunately out of print. Borrow gives an account of the mixed

assemblage at this inn, gathered for the great fight of July 17th, 1820,

between Ned Painter ("Ned Flatnose"), of Norwich, and Oliver.

He is wrong about the planting of the trees in Chapel Field "at the

restoration of sporting Charles," for they were planted in 1746, by Sir

Thomas Churchman, then lessee of the Field.

A good contemporary account of the big fight, in which Painter won, may

be found in "Norfolk Annals" (compiled from the files of the _Norfolk

Chronicle_), vol. i. p. 184. This was Painter's last appearance in the

prize-ring. He was landlord of the White Hart, just above St. Peter

Mancroft Church, from 1823 to 1835, and in that inn there is still a

portrait of the famous Ned. He occupied the meadows on which Thorpe

Station was built.

[Picture: Bowling Green Inn (now Orphan's Home). From Drawing by H. W.

Tuck]

Borrow's introduction of the celebrated fast trotter "Marshland Shales"

at the Tombland Fair of March 19th, 1818, is an anachronism, for that

noble animal did not present himself on the Castle Hill till 1827. He

had been sold for 305 guineas in 1810, and again sold in 1827; he died in

1835, aged thirty-three. Sir Walter Gilbey states that "though the

Norfolk Hackney achieved its fame through Blaze (foaled 1733), who begat

the original Shales, foaled in 1755, and the foundations of this

invaluable breed were thus laid in George II.'s time, we must have regard

to the period during which the breed achieved its celebrity both at home

and abroad, and that period is the long reign of George III." Dr. Knapp

expresses himself as much terrified by the invasion of the free path by

"a party rushing madly up, striving to keep pace with a mettlesome steed

. . . at the sight of whose enormous hoofs and shaggy fetlocks you are

all but ready to perish." Such niggling super refinement would be quite

repugnant to Borrow's highway robustious temperament.

[Picture: Portrait of William Simpson. From Painting in Blackfriars'

Hall, by Thomas Phillips, R.A., Norwich Corporation Collection]

It was at this Horse Fair that he became conscious of being watched by

someone, till at last he was accosted: "What! the sap-engro? Lor! the

sap-engro upon the hill!" Then Jasper revealed himself. He had been

dodging about inspecting young Borrow, and said he believed Borrow had

felt his presence--"a sign, brother, that we are akin, that we are _dui

palor_--two relations. Your blood beat when mine was near, as mine

always does at the coming of a brother." The two pals walked on over

"the old Norman Bridge" till they reached the gypsy tents on Mousehold,

where Borrow had a memorable conversation with Jasper (Ambrose Smith),

and incurred the wrath of the malignant Mrs. Herne, who objected to the

strange Gorgio "stealing" her language. But he continually consorted

with Jasper, studying the language, the characters, and the manners of

the gypsies. So quickly did he pick up Romany words that Jasper said:

"We'll no longer call you Sap-engro, brother, but rather Lav-engro, which

in the language of the Gorgios meaneth Word Master." The handsome Tawno

Chikno would have preferred to call him Cooro-mengro, as he had found him

"a pure fist master." Mrs. Herne could not stand this intimacy, for she

so hated the Gorgio that she said she would like to mix a little poison

with his water, so she left her party with her blessing, and this

_gillie_ to cheer their hearts:

"In all kinds of weather

Have we lived together;

But now we are parted,

I goes broken hearted.

Ye are no longer Rommany.

To gain a bad brother,

Ye have lost a good mother."

[Picture: Tuck's Court, St. Giles]

[Picture: Portrait of John Crome. By Michael W. Sharpe]

About three years later, Lavengro and Jasper had that conversation on

Mousehold, in which this classic passage occurs:--

"Life is sweet, brother."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so! There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun,

moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise the wind

on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"

"I would wish to die--"

"You talk like a gorgio--which is the same as talking like a

fool--were you a Rommany Chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die

indeed! A Rommany Chal would wish to live for ever!"

"In sickness, Jasper?"

"There's the sun and stars, brother."

"In blindness, Jasper?"

"There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I

would gladly live for ever. Dosta, we'll now go to the tents and put

on the gloves; and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is

to be alive, brother!"

Borrow's school era was closed appropriately, says Dr. Knapp, by the

mysterious distemper already referred to, which would, he thought, end

his life; but as he recovered a career had to be decided upon, and,

apparently on the advice of his friend Roger Kerrison, the law was

chosen. So on Monday, March 30th, 1819, George Borrow was articled for a

term of five years to the highly respectable firm of Simpson & Rackham,

whose offices were in Tuck's Court, St. Giles's, still occupied by

solicitors in the persons of Messrs. Leathes Prior & Son. "So," says

Borrow, "I sat behind a desk many hours in the day, ostensibly engaged in

transcribing documents of various kinds. The scene of my labours was a

strange old house, occupying one side of a long and narrow court, into

which, however, the greater number of the windows looked not, but into an

extensive garden, filled with fruit trees, in the rear of a large

handsome house, belonging to a highly respectable gentleman." This was

William Simpson, Town Clerk of Norwich from 1826 till his death, in 1834,

having succeeded Elisha de Hague, who attested Borrow's articles. The

portraits of both these worthies hang in Blackfriars Hall, that of De

Hague by Sir William Beechey, that of Simpson by Thomas Phillips, whose

son, H. W. Phillips, painted Borrow's portrait in 1843: it was exhibited

at the Royal Academy in 1844. As articled clerk Borrow lived at Mr.

Simpson's house in the Upper Close, which has long since disappeared.

Mr. Simpson was a genial and indulgent employer, so probably young Borrow

found little to prevent him from bringing Ab Gwilym into company with

Blackstone: by adopting the law the ardent young linguist had not ceased

to be Lav-engro; indeed, the acquisition of languages was his chief

pursuit. He already knew, in a way, Latin, Greek, Irish, French,

Italian, Spanish, and what Dr. Knapp calls "the broken jargon" then

current in England as gypsy. From a misshapen Welsh groom this queer

lawyer's clerk learned Welsh pronunciation, and to the consternation of

his employer, "turned Sir Edward from the door," and gladly admitted the

petty versifier Parkerson who sold his sheets to the highest bidder in

the streets; worse even than this was his audacity in contending against

a wealthy archdeacon that Ab Gwilym was the superior of Ovid. This

gentleman was probably the Rev. John Oldershaw, Archdeacon of Norfolk

from 1797 till his death, January 31st, 1847, aged ninety-three. As he

was one of the most active magistrates in the county, he would naturally

be on friendly terms with so prominent a lawyer as Mr. Simpson, whose

handsome wife, moreover, was in the habit of giving entertainments which

rather worried her spouse. The episode of the Wake of Freya, included in

Chapter XX. of Dr. Knapp's edition of "Lavengro," and the fine eulogy of

Crome in the succeeding chapter, should inspire every reader's genuine

interest. Here is the memorable Crome passage: "A living master? Why,

there he comes! thou hast had him long, he has long guided thy young hand

towards the excellence which is yet far from thee, but which thou canst

attain if thou shouldst persist and wrestle, even as he has done, midst

gloom and despondency--ay, and even contempt; he who now comes up the

creaking stair to thy little studio in the second floor to inspect thy

last effort before thou departest, the little stout man whose face is

very dark, and whose eye is vivacious; that man has attained excellence,

destined some day to be acknowledged, though not till he is cold, and his

mortal part returned to its kindred clay. He has painted, not pictures

of the world, but English pictures, such as Gainsborough himself might

have done; beautiful rural pieces, with trees which might well tempt the

wild birds to perch upon them; thou needest not run to Rome, brother,

after pictures of the world, whilst at home there are pictures of

England; nor needest thou even go to London, the big city, in search of a

master, for thou hast one at home in the old East Anglian town who can

instruct thee whilst thou needest instruction. Better stay at home,

brother, at least for a season, and toil and strive 'midst groanings and

despondency till thou hast attained excellence even as he has done--the

little dark man with the brown coat and the top-boots, whose name will

one day be considered the chief ornament of the old town, and whose works

will at no distant period rank among the proudest pictures of

England--and England against the world! thy master, my brother, thy, at

present, all too little considered master--Crome."

Borrow was frankly bored by his experiences in law; he tired of his

surroundings, but relaxation came when an old couple gave him a venerable

collection of Danish ballads, jetsam of the sea, left with the yeoman and

his wife by some shipwrecked red-haired man. This was enough to waken

his greedy curiosity, and he at once shook off his listlessness, and set

to work to learn Danish, by the aid of a Danish Bible bought of a

Muggletonian preacher, who was also a bookseller. In less than a month

he was able to read his prize. A correspondent in "Notes and Queries"

(April 3rd, 1852) suggested that Borrow confounded Muggleton with

Huntington, which, indeed, seems likely enough.

[Picture: The Windmill on Mousehold Heath. By John Crome]

In the old Corporation Library Borrow was enabled to pursue his studies

in Scandinavian literature, and having become acquainted with William

Taylor, "one of the most extraordinary men that Norwich ever produced,"

learned German from him with wonderful rapidity. He was a frequent

visitor at Taylor's house, 21, King Street, which has just been

demolished for the extension of some motor works. Though a pronounced

Free-thinker, Taylor was a friend of Southey, and gave his young pupil

excellent advice. Mr. Elwin once said to me that most of the Norwich

antipathetic references to Borrow arose from his waywardness and wildness

as a youth, and considered that there was no evidence that he was ever

dissipated or loose in his life. We may largely discount Harriet

Martineau's acid references to Taylor's harum-scarum young men,

especially as she romanced about that very wild young man Polidori,

Byron's erstwhile physician, who, during his stay in Norwich--1817-8--was

ever at the Martineaus' house.

[Picture: Ned Painter. From an Engraving. Lent by Mr. C. J. A. Howes]

Whatever were the faults of "Godless Billy," as the Norwich people called

Taylor, it was at his table that Borrow met the most intellectual people

of Norwich, and of visitors who were amongst Taylor's admirers. One of

these, in July, 1821, was Dr. Bowring (afterwards Sir John), so unjustly

and rancorously pilloried in Appendix XI. of "The Romany Rye," in 1857.

Another guest at the same time was Dr. Lewis Evans, physician to the

Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, 1821-50, a hot-tempered Welshman who had

served with distinction in Spain during the Peninsular War. In 1823

William Taylor declared that Borrow translated with facility and elegance

twenty different languages.

On Monday, February 11th, 1822, Captain Borrow made his will, and perhaps

it was not a mere coincidence that it was a Monday, also on February

11th, but back in 1793, that he married his beloved wife at East Dereham.

The old soldier again became concerned about the fate of George when out

of his articles, and was anything but heartened by being informed that

the young lawyer's clerk had acquired Armenian from a book obtained from

a clergyman's widow, who took a fancy, so he says, to him, and even drew

his portrait--the expression of his countenance putting her in mind of

Alfieri's Saul. The worthy Captain died February 28th, 1824, and was

buried in St. Giles's churchyard on March 4th. There never appears to

have been any memorial stone, and I have found it impossible to locate

the exact position of the grave. As a corner of the churchyard was cut

off to widen the street, and to remove a dangerous corner, under the City

of Norwich Act of 1867, it is quite likely that the remains are now under

the roadway.

In an obituary notice in the _Norwich Mercury_ of March 6th, 1824,

Captain Borrow's passing is described thus: "He rose from his bed about

four, apparently as well as he has usually been in the winter time;

returned to it without the least assistance, and in less than a quarter

of an hour was a corpse in the arms of his sons, leaving those who knew

his worth and deeply lament his loss." "It will be a shocking thing for

George and John," wrote Allday Kerrison to his brother Roger.

Borrow's articles with Simpson & Rackham expired on March 30th, 1824, and

a new epoch, packed with extraordinary vicissitudes, was to follow.

_Section III_.

(1824-35)--LONDON--EARLY WRITINGS--A NORWICH MAYOR--GYPSYING--"VEILED

PERIOD"--BIBLE SOCIETY.

Borrow describes his father's death in the following memorable passage in

"Lavengro": "Clasping his hands he uttered another name clearly. It was

the name of Christ. With that name upon his lips the brave old soldier

sank back upon my bosom, and with his hands still clasped yielded up his

soul." This concluded Volume I. of the original edition of the work.

He begins the first chapter of the second volume abruptly, thus:

"One-and-ninepence, sir, or the things which you have brought with you

will be taken from you!"

Such was Borrow's first greeting in London when, on the morning of April

2nd, 1824, he alighted from the Norwich coach in the yard of the Swan

with Two Necks, in a lane now swallowed up by Gresham Street. He

proceeded to the lodgings of his friend Roger Kerrison, at 16, Millman

Street, Bedford Row; but in May he had developed such alarming, even

suicidal, symptoms that Kerrison, fearing he might be involved in a

tragedy, hastily moved off to Soho. Borrow was now to begin the real

battle of life, and he had to put in practice, as best he might, his

motto, "Fear God, and take your own part." He had left behind in Norwich

the mother he loved so well, she who ever defended him when his odd

speeches and unconventional proceedings called forth criticism or

censure. His friend William Taylor had given him introductions in

London, and "honest six-foot-three," conscious of possessing unusual

powers, mental and physical, set forth to seek literary work. So, with

some papers from a little green box, he looked up Sir Richard Phillips,

in Tavistock Square, presented him a letter from Mr. So-and-So (W.

Taylor), and was promptly assured "literature is a drug." The following

Sunday, however, he dined with the old publisher, who was soon to retire

to Brighton, and was commissioned to compile six volumes of "Celebrated

Trials," etc., "from the earliest records to the year 1825." What a

caprice of Fate that the young aspirant should, on the very threshold of

his adult career, be thrown into these coulisses of criminal biography!

That a taste already keen to search out the birds of prey that haunt the

fringe of decorous society, should be immersed, as it were, in a stream

of criminal records! Old songs of Denmark, the poems of Ab Gwilym

("worth half a dozen of Chaucer"!), the "romance in the German style,"

all were ruthlessly swept aside to give place to a catena of lives of

notorious evildoers!

The Lives and Trials appeared in March, 1825, with a preface by Sir

Richard; but without Borrow's name. The intellectual impressions which

this task, reaching 3,600 pages, produced on Borrow's mind were, said the

publisher, "mournful." The grisly and sordid stories of crime and

criminals he had to edit reduced him to a state of gloomy depression.

[Picture: Norwich Castle and Cattle Market in Borrow's Time. From a

Lithograph. Lent by Norwich Public Library]

His melancholy was abated by an unexpected visit from his soldier-artist

brother (April 29th, 1824), of whom, after an affectionate embrace, he

asked: "How is my mother, and how is the dog?" Old Mrs. Borrow, down in

Willow Lane, was getting past her fits of crying over the loss of her

husband, and frequently had the Prayer Book in her hand, but oftener the

Bible. John Borrow had been offered one hundred pounds by a Committee to

paint Robert Hawkes, Mayor of Norwich in 1822, a prominent draper, who

became extremely popular for "the nobly liberal spirit in which he

sustained the splendour of civic hospitality." Mr. T. O. Springfield,

commonly called "T.O.," was spokesman of the Committee--a little

watchmaker with a hump, Borrow called him. Dr. Knapp denies that he was

a watchmaker, but such he was in his early days, though he became very

wealthy through speculations in silk, and Mayor of Norwich 1829 and 1836.

Quite a character, his tombstone in the Rosary cemetery bears this

honourable record: "A merciful magistrate, a successful merchant, A

consistent politician, A benevolent benefactor, He devoted the energies

of a vigorous intellect, and the sympathies of a warm heart, to the

prosperity of his native city and the welfare of its inhabitants.

Beloved, honoured and regretted, He died April 24th, 1855." John did not

feel equal to painting little Mr. Hawkes "striding under the Norman arch

out of the cathedral," but said, "I can introduce you to a great master

of the heroic, fully competent to do justice to your mayor." "T.O."

thought the money should not go to London, but John prevailed, and so

came up to London to interview B. R. Haydon, who, owning himself

confoundedly hard up, at once accepted the commission. But George comes

in as Haydon's _beau ideal_ for that face of Pharaoh the artist desired

to paint; later on Borrow asked Haydon for a sitting, saying he would

"sooner lose a thousand pounds than not have the honour of appearing in

the picture." No trace of any such portrait can be found. Haydon's

portrait of Hawkes hangs in St. Andrew's Hall in close proximity to that

of his friend "T.O.," painted by Philip Westcott.

[Picture: Marshland Shales]

"I have often thought," says Borrow, very characteristically, "what a

capital picture might have been made by my brother's friend, if, instead

of making the mayor issue out of the Norman arch, he had painted him

moving under the sign of the Checquers (_sic_), or the Three Brewers,

with mace--yes, with mace--the mace appears in the picture issuing out of

the Norman arch behind the mayor--but likewise with Snap, and with

whiffler, quart pot, and frying-pan, Billy Blind, and Owlenglass, Mr.

Petulengro, and Pakomovna."

Borrow's real literary career had begun with the translation of "Faustus"

(1825), a rather lurid German work by F. von Klinger, one of whose plays,

_Sturm und Drang_, gave the name to a whole period of German literature.

The book was received very unfavourably, but Borrow meant having his

Danish Ballads published, and in 1826 they were issued by S. Wilkin,

Upper Haymarket, Norwich, in an edition of five hundred copies, of which

two hundred were reserved for Norwich and sold at half a guinea each

copy; the rest went to London. Allan Cunningham wrote a very eulogistic

metrical dedication. The subscription list reveals a very varied list of

subscribers, including Bishop Bathurst, Benjamin Haydon, Thomas Campbell,

and John Thurtell, who was hanged before the book appeared. Borrow's

biographers generally treat these ballads with scarcely veiled contempt,

though Lockhart, whose brilliant renderings of Spanish ballads are

unsurpassed, wrote of his complete skill in the Scandinavian languages,

and his "copious body of translations from their popular minstrelsies,

not at all to be confounded with that of certain versifiers. . . . His

Norse ditties have the unforgeable stamp of authenticity on every line."

W. Bodham Donne, a well-known critic, even went so far as to rank them

above Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome." A fine facsimile edition of

Borrow's "Romantic Ballads" was brought out by Messrs. Jarrold in the

early part of this year.

A rupture with Phillips, almost inevitable, set Borrow wandering, and

very soon he became acquainted with the old fruit-woman who found a valid

defence for theft in the history of "the blessed Mary Flanders," a

dog's-eared volume of "Moll Flanders," wherein Borrow found "the air, the

style, the spirit of the writer of the book" which first taught him to

read--Defoe, of course. This classic is "supreme as a realistic picture

of low life in the large."

A quite different figure appears in the person of Francis Arden, a

handsome young Irishman with whom Borrow became acquainted in the

coffee-room of an hotel, and with him obtained some knowledge of "the

strange and eccentric places of London." When Arden burst out laughing

one day Borrow said he would, perhaps, have joined if it were ever his

wont to laugh, and his friends said that, though he enjoyed a joke, he

did not seem to have the power of laughing. But in Borrow we expect

contrarieties, so we find him saying that when he detected a man poking

fun at him in Welsh he flung back his head, closed his eyes, and laughed

aloud; and later on, walking in Wales with the rain at his back, he flung

his umbrella over his shoulder and laughed. "Oh, how a man laughs who

has a good umbrella when he has the rain at his back" ("Wild Wales," pp.

301, 470).

Passing by Borrow's meetings with the Armenian merchant, we come to the

time when, as he says, he found himself reduced to his last half-crown,

and set about writing the "Life and Adventures of Joseph Sell, the Great

Traveller," an entirely fictitious personage. This was completed within

a week, towards the end of May, 1825, and the story brought the author a

welcome twenty pounds. Such is the record. Dr. Knapp believes that

there was such a story, probably part of a series, but Mr. Jenkins gives

good reasons for thinking that "Joseph Sell" was not written till 1829,

when Borrow would more probably be in want of money than just after

payment for his "Trials" (in every sense trials) from Phillips. Anyway,

on May 24th, 1825, Borrow left London. At starting he encountered Arden

driving a cabriolet, who asked him whither he was bound. "I don't know,"

replied Borrow, "all I can say is that I am about to leave London."

Being out of condition, he tired of walking, mounted a coach, "tipped the

blunt" to the driver, and alighted at Amesbury, near Stonehenge, whence

he began a ramble which became a perfect Iliad of strange happenings.

His health improved, his spirits rose, as he tramped on, his journeyings

varying from twenty to twenty-five miles a day. On the fifth day of his

tramp he met at an inn the mysterious stranger who "touched," as Borrow

himself did, against the evil eye; Dr. Johnson was an habitual toucher,

and even Macaulay owned to a kindred feeling. While a guest of the

"touching" gentleman, Borrow was introduced to the Rev. Mr. Platitude, a

notable character in his literary portrait gallery--"he did not go to

college a gentleman; he went an ass and returned a prig," writes Borrow

fiercely. No biographer, so far as I know, has identified Platitude, but

Mr. Donne evidently knew him, for he calls Borrow's account a "gross and

unfair caricature." I believe I have identified "the rascally Unitarian

minister who went over to the High Church," with the Rev. Theophilus

Browne, Fellow and Tutor of Peterhouse, Cambridge, who quitted the Church

for conscience sake, obtained an appointment at the York Unitarian

College, and was minister at the Octagon Chapel in 1809, but was paid to

resign the following year. He died at Bath in May, 1835. The historian

of the Octagon applies Milton's line to him:

"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."

Arriving at Tamworth, Borrow entered a cottage inn, and, as was his

custom, called "House!" as loud as he could. Whilst drinking his beer he

cheered the heart of the sorrowful Jack Slingsby by buying his whole

tinker's stock-in-trade--beat, plant, pony, and all--concluding that "a

tinker is his own master, a scholar is not." Poor Slingsby had been

driven off the road by the great Flaming Tinman, "Black Jack," whose clan

name was Anselo Herne, who, thrusting a Bible into Slingsby's mouth,

forced him to swear his Bible oath that he would surrender his beat.

Here was a truly picturesque situation after Borrow's own taste, and, no

doubt with a joyful heart, he paid Slingsby five pounds ten shillings for

his tinker's outfit, bought a wagoner's frock from the landlady, and felt

ready enough to encounter the dreaded "Black Jack."

[Picture: A quaint corner in Borrow's House. By C. M. Nichols, R.E.]

Borrow avers that he fled from London "from fear of consumption," that he

must do something or go mad, so, having a knowledge of smithing that

enabled him to acquire the tinkering craft, he became a sort of

Petulengro himself. A few days after pitching his tent in Mumper's

Dingle, near Willenhall, as he slept against an ash tree, a voice seemed

to cry in his ear Danger! Danger! and he awoke to see Leonora, a pretty

gypsy girl of thirteen, wearing a handsome necklace of corals and gold.

She offered him a _manricli_, or cake, saying "Eat, pretty brother,

grey-haired brother." After some demur, he ate part of it; it was

poisoned, and he fell into a swoon. Soon he heard the voice of the

malicious old hag Mrs. Herne, who, gloating over her enemy, told him he

had taken _drows_, as, however he began to move they set their _juggal_

(dog) at him; but the animal, fled from the flash of the tinker's eye,

and Mrs. Herne realised that he would live--the _dook_ (spirit of

divination) told her so. The arrival of the Welsh preacher Peter

Williams, and his wife Winifred, in their cart put the gypsy witch-wife

and her daughter to flight. The Welshman administered some oil, which,

after two hours of suspense, and with the help of an opiate, saved the

life of Lavengro. During this companionship Borrow found that Williams

suffered excruciating spiritual terrors from the conviction that he had

committed the sin against the Holy Ghost--_pechod Ysprydd Glan_!

Borrow left his Welsh friends to join no less a personage than Jasper

Petulengro, "one of the clibberty-clabber," quoted Peter from a Welsh

poet; Borrow's pal had a wondrous story to tell of Mrs. Herne, of the

"drows," who had "been her own hinjiri," _i.e._ hanged herself. The girl

Leonora told Jasper that she had tracked Borrow and found him, alive and

well, 'discussing religion with a Methody, and that when she told the old

woman, Mrs. Herne said it was all up with her, and she must take a long

journey. In March, 1911, died Isaac Herne, of the same family, son of

beautiful Sinfi; he was known as "King of the Gypsies," and to the last

would tell of his meetings and talks with the "Romany Rye." Unlike his

clanswoman, who was buried "like a Roman woman of the old blood," he was

buried in gorgious fashion--in the graveyard of Manston Church, near

Leeds.

Borrow soon parted from Jasper, and settled himself in the beautiful

Mumper's Dingle, where he had the historic fight with the "Flaming

Tinman," getting the victory by using his "Long Melford," on the advice

of that towering and handsome female bearing the name of Isopel Berners,

who now comes on the scene, and who will ever remain one of the most

fascinating figures in the wonderful gallery of Borrovian characters.

"I never saw such a face and figure," exclaims Borrow, "both regal--why,

you look like Ingeborg, Queen of Norway; she had twelve brothers, you

know, and could lick them all, though they were heroes--

"'On Dovrefeld in Norway,

Were once together seen,

The twelve heroic brothers

Of Ingeborg the queen.'"

(See "Romantic Ballads," p. 59.)

In Chapter XV. of "The Romany Rye," Borrow thus describes the last

farewell to Belle, as he called her: "I found the Romany party waiting

for me, and everything in readiness for departing. Mr. Petulengro and

Tawno Chikno were mounted on two old horses. The rest, who intended to

go to the fair, amongst whom were two or three women, were on foot. On

arriving at the extremity of the plain, I looked towards the dingle.

Isopel Berners stood at the mouth, the beams of the early morning sun

shone full on her noble face and figure. I waved my hand towards her.

She slowly lifted up her right arm. I turned away, and never saw Isopel

Berners again."

This little book, concerned chiefly with Norwich, cannot follow the

wayfarings of Borrow, so enchantingly described in "Lavengro" and "The

Romany Rye," in chapters which justify to the full Mr. Birrell's

enthusiastic admiration when he wrote: "The delightful, the bewitching,

the never sufficiently to be praised George Borrow--Borrow, the Friend of

Man, at whose bidding lassitude and languor strike their tents and flee;

and health and spirits, adventure and human comradeship, take up the

reins of life, whistle to the horses and away you go!"

It is much to be hoped that the Borrow Celebration, to which this booklet

is a modest contribution, may lead to a warmer appreciation in Norwich of

one of the greatest men who ever trod her streets. "The Romany Rye" has

a thoroughly Borrovian ending, much in the manner of Sterne, as many of

Borrow's passages are. His pilgrimage of tinkering and adventurous

vagrancy between May and August, 1825, came to an end at Boston--"a large

town, situate at the entrance of an extensive firth"--where a recruiting

sergeant wished to enlist him for the service of the Honourable East

India Company. But his references to Petulengro and Tawno Chikno

disgusted the soldier, who exclaimed: "Young fellow, I don't like your

way of speaking; no, nor your way of looking. You are mad, sir; you are

mad; and what's this? Why your hair is grey! You won't do for the

Honourable Company--they like red. I'm glad I didn't give you the

shilling." Then Borrow soliloquizes: "I shouldn't wonder if Mr.

Petulengro and Tawno Chikno came originally from India. I think I'll go

there." So ends one of the most amazing fragments of autobiography that

the world has ever seen; many readers we know leave these unwillingly and

return to them again and again with unquenchable zest. Borrow was

twenty-three when in the autumn of 1825 he was making his way to Norwich

from Lincolnshire, and from then till his employment by the Bible Society

in 1833, his movements were very uncertain. The intervening years have

been called "the veiled period"--gloomy and mysterious, says Mr. Jenkins,

but not utterly dark. He was in Norwich at Tombland Fair in April, 1827,

the real date of his doffing his hat to that celebrated horse, "Marshland

Shales," and towards the end of the year he was still in Willow Lane, as

is proved by entries in his mother's cash book, seen by Dr. Knapp.

Tired of inactivity, Borrow was in London in December, 1829, at 17, Great

Russell Street, W.C., eagerly seeking work, scheming for a work on the

Songs of Scandinavia, jointly with Bowring, which came to nothing.

It is curious that in a letter to Bowring of September 14th, 1830, he

proposes to call on him one evening, as early rising kills him. Quite a

strange expression for so open-air a wanderer. That Borrow could not

secure employment in the ordinary avenues of the professions and commerce

is hardly to be wondered at; he preferred the society of vagabonds, into

which he had been driven by his own inclinations as much as, or more

than, by force of circumstances. His brother John told him that his want

of success in life was more owing to his being unlike other people than

to any other cause. His isolating and aggressive pride engendered a

tactlessness which often spoilt any chances of advancement that came his

way. But he had dogged determination, which, to quote Mr. Jenkins, "was

to carry him through the most critical period of his life, enable him to

earn the approval of those in whose interests he worked, and eventually

achieve fame and an unassailable place in English literature."

It does not come within the scope of this local souvenir to follow Borrow

in his career under the Bible Society in Russia and the Peninsula; but we

must just note that he obtained his appointment with that society through

the Rev. Francis Cunningham, a brother-in-law of the great banker J. J.

Gurney, of Earlham, having married his sister Richenda at Earlham Church

in 1816. He became Rector of Pakefield in 1814, and of Lowestoft from

1830 till his death in August, 1863.

[Picture: William Taylor]

[Picture: George Borrow's House, Oulton, near Lowestoft]

To this gentleman Borrow was introduced by a young farmer, no doubt Mr.

Skepper, of Oulton Hall, on December 27th, 1832. It is believed that it

was through the Batemans, of Norwich (of whom the late Sir Frederic

Bateman, M.D., was best known), that the acquaintance with the Skeppers

began, as the families had intermarried. On the very day of the

introduction Mr. Cunningham wrote to the Rev. Andrew Brandram, Secretary

of the Bible Society, recommending Borrow as one who could read the Bible

in thirteen languages--a very produceable person, of no very defined

denomination of Christians, but, thought Mr. Cunningham, of certain

Christian principle. Dr. Knapp errs in stating that Borrow owed this

introduction to J. J. Gurney ("Life of Borrow," i. p. 152). Anyway, he

was invited to interview the Bible Society secretaries, and when one of

them hoped he had slept well, replied: "I am not aware that I fell asleep

on the road; I have walked from Norwich to London." He records that he

did the hundred and twelve miles in twenty-seven hours, his outlay on the

journey being 5.5d. for one pint of ale, half-pint of milk, a roll of

bread, and two apples. Thus began the period of Bible distribution in

Russia and Spain, still a life crowded with adventures and risky

situations--the tall, handsome, young Englishman now in a prison, and

anon kissing his hands to a group of tittering nuns. "The Bible in

Spain" was the chief enduring result of these experiences, a work which

secured immediate popularity; moreover, the halo of the Bible Society

shed a glamour of unquestionable respectability on Borrow's head. At

Seville, in some inexplicable way, Borrow met Mrs. Clarke (born Mary

Skepper), the widow of Lieut. Clarke, by whom she had the daughter

Henrietta, the "Hen" of "Wild Wales," who in 1865 married Dr. MacOubrey,

apparently both a physician and a barrister. Accompanied by her

daughter, now about twenty-two, Mrs. Clarke arrived at Seville, and their

_menage_ there with Borrow was certainly curious; but on April 3rd, 1840,

the whole party, including Hayim Ben Attar, his body servant, and Sidi

Habismilk, his Arab steed, boarded the "Royal Adelaide," bound for

London, where she berthed on April 16th. The Borrow party at once

proceeded to the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch Street, and on April 23rd,

George Henry Borrow, "gentleman, of the City of Norwich," was married at

St. Peter's, Cornhill, in the City of London to Mary Clarke, "widow,

daughter of Edmund Skepper, Esquire." One of the witnesses was Mr. John

Pilgrim, a Norwich solicitor. About May 5th the little family left

London for Oulton, long to be the home of Lav-engro, and of his faithful

and most helpful wife, who had an assured income of 450 pounds, with

something over from the estate.

[Picture: George Borrow. From a Photograph by Mr. Pulley, taken in 1848.

Lent by Mr. Simms Reeve]

[Picture: George Borrow. Painted by John T. Borrow, a pupil of Old

Crome]

_Section IV_.

(1840-81)--OULTON--AUTHORSHIP--BORROW'S APPEARANCE AND LEADING

CHARACTERISTICS--TWILIGHT, AND THE END.

Our Ulysses had now found a haven of refuge, and a permanent Calypso who

worthily held his heart to the end.

Oulton Cottage, with its banded firs and solemn solitary lake, alive with

wild fowl, was an ideal place for Borrow. He had, in his early days,

loved Norwich well, and might have settled here but for what Harriet

Martineau styles the shout of laughter from all who remembered the old

Norwich days, when he appeared "as a devout agent of the Bible Society."

It is unquestionable that the jog-trot "daily-round-and-common-task"

citizens of Norwich looked askance at him as a sort of _lusus naturae_,

what naturalists call a "sport"--not in the slangy sense. Mr. Egmont

Hake ("Macmillan's Magazine," 1882, Vol. XLV.) went so far as to say that

Borrow was "perhaps the handsomest man of his day." On the other hand,

Caroline Fox, the Quakeress, who called on Borrow in October, 1843,

described him as "a tall, ungainly man, with great physical strength,

quick, penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable tone and

pronunciation." It was on April 11th, 1843, that Sir Robert Peel

pronounced his striking eulogy on "The Bible in Spain."

Any appreciation of Borrow's works is out of the question in this outline

survey. He professed a great liking for his "Lives and Trials"--how full

were the Lives "of wild and racy adventures, and in what racy, genuine

language they were told." These words are closely applicable to Borrow's

own writings; many of the critics fell foul of them, though Lockhart said

Borrow had "a true eye for the picturesque, and a fund of real racy

humour," while Elwin, fourteen years later (1857), praised his

descriptions "as accurate as they are picturesque. They abound in

dramatic and delicate strokes of nature, of which no extracts give an

adequate idea, and are painted with a force that brings men, events and

prospects before the eye with the vividness of reality. In this power of

verbal delineation Mr. Borrow has never been outdone. . . . His

descriptions of scenery have a peculiar sublimity and grace." A little

later, W. Bodham Donne, a Norfolk man and acute critic, said, "We all

read Mr. Borrow's books," but lamented his "plunge into the worse than

Irish bogs of Polemical Protestantism." Mr. Saintsbury, one of our

foremost literary essayists, while asserting, in 1886, that Borrow was

not a popular author, stated that "his works greatly influenced

Longfellow and Merimee, especially the latter." Blackwood naturally

disliked Borrow, said gypsies constituted nine-tenths of his

stock-in-trade, and that his chief credential to London was a letter from

"an eccentric German teacher"! To-day where will you find a competent

scholarly critic who is not a whole-hearted admirer of Borrow's style?

His grave and gay pictures of persons and places, are etched in with

instinctive faithfulness, and clarity of atmosphere; always excepting

such characters as were under the ban of his capricious hatred: "Mr.

Flamson," "the Old Radical," Scott and his "gentility nonsense," and so

forth. It is doubtful if any but lovers of the open road, can thoroughly

enter into the Borrow fellowship, but only such as Mr. E. V. Lucas, Mr.

Hilaire Belloc, of the comity of wayfaring men--initiates in the

charities of the roads--men who love the dewy perfume of the meadows when

the day is young, the blazing splendours of noon on the highway, and the

magic of moonlight in many a dale, on many a hill. Men, moreover, who

find nothing "low" in listening to the tapestried talk of wayside

taverns, where, indeed, even to-day many a scrap of folk-lore and remnant

of age-old superstitions may be learned. The spirit of Borrow has

inspired and evolved the noble army of caravanners, with Lady Grosvenor

and Mr. J. Harris Stone at their head. The people who cannot appreciate

Borrow are those who will not lift their eyes from the pavement to be

rapt in admiration of a glorious sunset, to whom, indeed, Borrow would

appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when "the Heavens declare the

glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare

time when the spirit--unconsciously worshipping--is uplifted in an

ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity the dull eye ever abased

to the grime of the trodden path?

"In matters of taste you never are sure--

Your curry's a poison, your tastelessness pure!"

Borrow's sturdy forthrightness, his abhorrence of suave ambiguities and

formal inanities, found vent in most vigorous and unmistakeable language;

dogmatic _obiter dicta_ came from his mouth or his pen like so many

cudgel-thwacks. His nature was tense and intense, very excitable and

subject to aberrant moods--and he was often the victim of a false ply, as

the French would say. It cannot be gainsaid that his suspicions of

society ways, and of ordinarily conventional literary men, often betrayed

him into tactless discourtesies. It is needless to repeat the anecdotes

in which he appears in an unfavourable light, some of them probably

exaggerations, as, for instance, the well-known story of Borrow snubbing

Thackeray, as told by Dr. Hake. Miss Jay, whose father was of the firm

of Jay and Pilgrim, told me (November 22nd, 1893) that Borrow was loud in

his denunciation of Thackeray's meanness on a certain occasion, and she

utterly refused to believe Dr. Hake's version of the alleged boorishness

at Hardwick Hall. Borrow was a man of many moods, and Miss Jay seems to

have seen him only in his brighter hours: she described him to me as

open-hearted and generous, always thought highly of good old ale, and

liked Burgundy. "It puts fire into your veins," he would say; if he

poured out wine for anyone, he was angry if they did not drink it. But

she never knew him to exceed, and, though she often saw him highly

excited, never heard him swear. Very similar accounts appeared in the

_Eastern Daily Press_, of October 1st, 1892, over the signature "E.H."

[Picture: Corner of George Borrow's Bedroom, showing a view of city

roofs. By C. M. Nichols, R.E.]

Another friend of Borrow's with whom I had many talks was the late Rev.

Whitwell Elwin, at Booton Rectory. He was editor of the _Quarterly

Review_ (1854-60), and in 1857 had reviewed "Lavengro" and "The Romany

Rye" in excellent style, under the heading "Roving Life in England." Mr.

Elwin and his wife were a most delightful couple, models of old-fashioned

courtesy and heart-kindness. He knew Borrow well, and quite discredited

the innuendoes and insinuations of many Norwich folk about him. It was a

joke with the Murray circle that "big Borrow was second fiddle at his

home, and there is ample testimony that his wife was a capable manager

and looked after his affairs, literary as well as domestic." Though

Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, Mr. Elwin told

him that he had not cultivated it with his usual success. Mr. Elwin died

January 1st, 1900, aged eighty-three.

Quite naturally old Mrs. Borrow grew lonely, and weary of the dilapidated

house in Willow Lane, so she was removed to Oulton in September, 1849,

and there she died August 16th, 1858. Under imperative orders from Dr.

Hake, the Borrows left Oulton and got to Yarmouth, where they lived

1853-5 at John Sharman's, 169, King Street; 1856-7 at 37, Camperdown

Place; 1858-9 at 39, Camperdown Place; and finally, November, 1859, to

June 30th, 1860, at 24, Trafalgar Place. These tarryings were, however,

broken by many excursions--a most interesting one to his kinsfolk in

Cornwall in 1853, to Wales in 1854, and the Isle of Man in 1855.

In 1860 Borrow, his wife, and step-daughter, Henrietta Clarke, took up

their abode at 22, Hereford Square, Brompton, now distinguished by a

County Council tablet. There Borrow remained fourteen years. From

there, in 1865, his step-daughter, Henrietta, married Dr. MacOubrey, and

then came the most crushing blow of all--the death of his wife, January

30th, 1869.

One is reminded of the epitaph which I have seen on Mrs. Carlyle's

tombstone, in Haddington cemetery, in which Carlyle records that the

light of his life is gone out; so Borrow's life was shadowed after his

wife passed away--she who wrote his letters, staved off the "Horrors,"

and conducted his financial affairs. Borrow stayed on at Hereford Square

until towards the end of 1874. A meeting with C. G. Leland prompted him

to issue his last book worth notice--"The Romano-Y-Lavo-Lil"; or Word

Book of the English Gypsy Language. This, in the light of the advance

made in philology, and very notably in gypsy lore, proved conclusively

that Borrow could now no longer be reckoned a "deep 'Gyptian," though the

impulse of his work undoubtedly stirred up many scholars to pursue the

study of the Romany language. In his latter days in London he sometimes

had pleasant intercourse with such kindred spirits as Mr. Watts-Dunton,

Mr. Hindes Groome, and he was still robust enough at seventy to plunge

into an ice-covered pond on a bitterly cold March morning. When he

finally retired to his Oulton cottage, where a Mrs. Barbour was his

housekeeper until Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey joined him in 1878, he began to

spend much of his time in Norwich. A life-long friend of his was Miss

Lucy Brightwell, a prolific writer and most skilful etcher, who died at

her house, No. 3, Surrey Street, April 17th, 1875. Here we must perforce

quote Dr. Knapp: "Miss Brightwell was an intimate and constant visitor at

the Willow Lane house from her early years. Old Mrs. Borrow mentions her

in her letters as 'the child' and 'Lucy,' and the latter in her

correspondence calls Mrs. Borrow 'mother.' . . . It was in the garden of

Miss Brightwell's house in Surrey Street, Norwich, that the only

_photograph_ existing of Mr. Borrow was taken by her brother 'Tom' in

1848. This picture is now so faded that it has defied all attempts to

reproduce it in this book." The fact is that Dr. Knapp was refused the

use of the photograph, which was not taken by Tom Brightwell, but by Mr.

Pulley, a solicitor, of the firm of Field, Son, & Pulley. This picture

is now the property of Mrs. Simms Reeve, of Norwich and Brancaster Hall.

Her own portrait as a girl is one of several separate figures framed

together, Borrow occupying a place in the top row. Fortunately, by the

courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Simms Reeve, this interesting portrait of

Borrow, when he was forty-five years of age, has now been reproduced, and

it is, perhaps, the most valuable item in this souvenir, it also is lent

by Mrs. Simms Reeve for the temporary collection of Borrow relics in

Norwich Castle Museum. When he came to Norwich in these later days

Borrow used to lodge at Mrs. Church's, in Lady Lane, off Bethel Street,

known as Ivy House, and much frequented by theatrical people, now adapted

to be a Dispensary. A grand-daughter of Borrow's friend W. Bodham Donne

wrote me, in 1902, that "Borrow once lodged at Ivy Cottage, Lady's Lane,

where a dear old Miss Donne was living." From Lady Lane it is only a few

hundred yards to the well-loved little house in Willow Lane, at which his

father died, and where his mother lived till her removal to Oulton as

stated above.

Little remains to record. Some there are who remember Borrow's tall

figure in the streets of Norwich. The old city--"the Norwich I

love"--seemed to draw him irresistibly from his hermitage. Nor is this

to be wondered at; for all accounts I have seen, and heard also, of the

Oulton domestic arrangements during the last few years of his life, agree

that they were deplorable. Mr. Elwin told me that, after the death of

Borrow's wife, the home was not well looked after, and that Mr. Cooke

(Murray's cousin and partner) "told him with tears in his eyes how

neglected the home was, and how the noble old man was broken up." Miss

Jay also informed me that "after Mrs. Borrow's death Mrs. MacOubrey was

wanting in tact to manage him and the affairs of the family, hence the

gradual decline of household matters into the disorder and neglect

referred to by visitors to Oulton in Borrow's latter days." No wonder

the weary old Lav-engro was glad to revisit the scenes of his youth, and

found it restful to spend much of his time in the Norfolk Hotel (which

stood where the Hippodrome now is), talking with his friends, with a

glass before him--"of course to pay for the seat," remarks Dr. Knapp,

with an apparent attempt at sarcasm. I know a gentleman in Norwich now

who remembers Borrow's visits to the Subscription Library opposite the

Guildhall, and his adjournments to the "Norfolk" after asking my

informant to join him in a glass of brandy and water.

Borrow's death, July 26th, 1881, was very sudden. Left alone in the

house, he was found dead when Dr. and Mrs. MacOubrey returned from a

drive to Lowestoft. "It seems fitting," says Mr. Jenkins, "that he

should die alone"; but he justly adds, "whatever the facts, it was

strange to leave so old and so infirm a man quite unattended." Dr. Knapp

affirms that Borrow "had earnestly requested them not to go away, because

he felt that he was in a dying state." The corpse of the worn-out

veteran was detained in Oulton from July 26th to August 4th--"by reason

of the absence of a physician's certificate," says Dr. Knapp. Borrow was

buried in Brompton Cemetery beside his wife.

At the time of his death Borrow was practically forgotten, and even

first-rate handbooks omitted his name from their obituaries. The case is

altered now, and the Borrow Celebration, of which this souvenir will be

one memento, bears eloquent testimony to the fact.

Those who enter the Valley of Vision with George Borrow, those who come

into touch with the glamour and witchery of him, will ever find a new

light in life, and travel in new avenues of happiness. The present

Celebration will bring fresh fame to Norwich, and no doubt will give an

immense impulse to Borrovian sentiment in his beloved city. We are never

likely to have another Borrow!