Transcribed from the 1893 Ward, Lock, Bowden, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
LAVENGRO:
THE SCHOLAR--THE GYPSY--THE PRIEST.
BY
GEORGE BORROW,
AUTHOR OF
"THE BIBLE IN SPAIN," ETC.
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
BY
THEODORE WATTS.
WARD, LOCK, BOWDEN, AND CO.
LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: EAST 12TH STREET.
MELBOURNE: ST. JAMES'S STREET. SYDNEY: YORK STREET.
1893.
[Picture: Borrow's home at Oulton (now pulled down), showing the summer
house where much of his work was written. (From a Photograph kindly lent
by Mr. Welchman, of Lowestoft, and taken by Mr. F. G. Mayhew, of the same
place.)]
NOTES UPON GEORGE BORROW.
I. BORROW AS A SPLENDID LITERARY AMATEUR.
There are some writers who cannot be adequately criticised--who cannot,
indeed, be adequately written about at all--save by those to whom they
are personally known. I allude to those writers of genius who, having
only partially mastered the art of importing their own individual
characteristics into literary forms, end their life-work as they began
it, remaining to the last amateurs in literary art. Of this class of
writers George Borrow is generally taken to be the very type. Was he
really so?
There are passages in "Lavengro" which are unsurpassed in the prose
literature of England--unsurpassed, I mean, for mere perfection of
style--for blending of strength and graphic power with limpidity and
music of flow. Is "Lavengro" the work of a literary amateur who,
yielding at will to every kind of authorial self-indulgence, fails to
find artistic expression for the life moving within him--fails to project
an individuality that his friends knew to have been unique? Of other
writers of genius, admirable criticism may be made by those who have
never known them in the flesh. Is this because each of those others,
having passed from the stage of the literary amateur to that of the
literary artist, is able to pour the stream of his personality into the
literary mould and give to the world a true image of himself? It has
been my chance of life to be brought into personal relations with many
men of genius, but I feel that there are others who could write about
them more adequately than I. Does Borrow stand alone? The admirers of
his writings seem generally to think he does, for ever since I wrote my
brief and hasty obituary notice of him in 1881, I have been urged to
enlarge my reminiscences of him--urged not only by philologers and
gypsologists, but by many others in England, America, and Germany. But I
on my part have been for years urging upon the friend who introduced me
to him, and who knew him years ago,--knew him when he was the
comparatively young literary lion of East Anglia,--Dr. Gordon Hake, to do
what others are urging me to do. Not only has the author of "Parables
and Tales" more knowledge of the subject than any one else, but having a
greater reputation than I, he can speak with more authority, and having a
more brilliant pen than I, he can give a more vital picture than I can
hope to give of our common friend. If he is, as he seems to be, fully
determined not to depict Borrow in prose, let me urge him to continue in
verse that admirable description of him contained in one of the
well-known sonnets addressed to myself in "The New Day":--
"And he, the walking lord of gipsy lore!
How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race--
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory,
Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story!"
II. IS THERE A KEY TO "LAVENGRO"?
Dr. Hake, however, and those others among Borrow's friends who are apt to
smile at the way in which critics of the highest intelligence will stand
baffled and bewildered before the eccentricities of "Lavengro" and "The
Romany Rye"--some critics treating the work as autobiography spoilt, and
some as spoilt fiction--forget that while it is easy to open a locked
door with a key, to open a locked door without a key is a very different
undertaking. On the subject of autobiographies and the autobiographic
method, I had several interesting talks with Borrow. I remember an
especial one that took place on Wimbledon Common, on a certain autumn
morning when I was pointing out to him the spot called Gypsy Ring. He
was in a very communicative mood that day, and more amenable to criticism
than he generally was. I had been speaking of certain bold coincidences
in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye"--especially that of Lavengro's meeting
by accident in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Plain the son of the very
apple-woman of London Bridge with whom he had made friends, and also of
such apparently manufactured situations as that of Lavengro's coming upon
the man whom Wordsworth's poetry had sent into a deep slumber in a
meadow.
"What is an autobiography?" he asked. "Is it a mere record of the
incidents of a man's life? or is it a picture of the man himself--his
character, his soul?"
Now this I think a very suggestive question of Borrow's with regard to
himself and his own work. That he sat down to write his own life in
"Lavengro" I know. He had no idea then of departing from the strict line
of fact. Indeed, his letters to his friend Mr. John Murray would alone
be sufficient to establish this in spite of his calling "Lavengro" a
dream. In the first volume he did almost confine himself to matters of
fact. But as he went on he clearly found that the ordinary tapestry into
which Destiny had woven the incidents of his life were not tinged with
sufficient depth of colour to satisfy his sense of wonder; for, let it be
remembered, that of love as a strong passion he had almost none. Surely
no one but Lavengro could have lived in a dingle with a girl like Belle
Berners, and passed the time in trying to teach her Armenian. Without
strong passion no very deeply coloured life-tapestry can, in these
unadventurous days, be woven. The manufactured incidents of which there
are so many in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," are introduced to give
colour to a web of life that strong Passion had left untinged. But why?
In order to flash upon the personality of Lavengro, and upon Lavengro's
attitude towards the universe unseen as well as seen, a light more
searching, as Borrow considered, than any picture of actual experience
could have done. In other words, to build up the truth of the character
of Lavengro, Borrow does not shrink from manipulating certain incidents
and inventing others. And when he wishes to dive very boldly into the
"abysmal deeps of personality," he speaks and moves partly behind the
mask of some fictitious character, such as the man who touched for the
evil chance, and such as the hypochondriac who taught himself Chinese to
ward off despair, but could not tell the time of day by looking at the
clock. This is not the place for me to enter more fully into this
matter, but I am looking forward to a fitting occasion of showing whether
or not "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" form a spiritual autobiography;
and if they do, whether that autobiography does or does not surpass every
other for absolute truth of spiritual representation. Meantime, let it
be remembered by those who object to Borrow's method that, as I have just
hinted, at the basis of his character was a deep sense of wonder. Let it
be remembered that he was led to study the first of the many languages he
taught himself--Irish--because there was, as he said, "something
mysterious and uncommon in its use." Let it be remembered that it was
this instinct of wonder, not the impulse of the mere _poseur_, that
impelled him to make certain exaggerated statements about the characters
themselves who are introduced into his books.
III. ISOPEL BERNERS.
For instance, the tall girl, Isopel Berners--the most vigorous sketch he
has given us--is perfect as she is adorable. Among heroines she stands
quite alone; there is none other that is in the least like her. Yet she
is in many of her qualities typical of a class. Among the very bravest
of all human beings in the British Islands are, or were, the nomadic
girls of the high road and the dingle. Their bravery is not only an
inherited quality: it is in every way fostered by their mode of life. No
tenderness from the men with whom they travel, either as wives or as
mistresses, do they get--none of the chivalry which girls in most other
grades of life experience--and none do they expect. In all disputes
between themselves and the men, their associates, they know that the
final argument is the knock-down blow. With the Romany girl, too, this
is the case, to be sure; but then, while the Romany girl, as a rule,
owing to tribal customs, receives the blow in patience, the English girl
is apt to return it, and with vigour. This condition of things gives the
English road-girl a frank independence of bearing which distinguishes her
from girls of all other classes. There is something of the charm of the
savage about her, even to her odd passion for tattoo. No doubt Isopel is
an idealisation of the class; but the class, with all its drawbacks, has
a certain winsomeness for men of Borrow's temperament.
But, unfortunately, his love of the wonderful, his instinct for
exaggeration, asserts itself even here. I need give only one instance of
what I mean. He makes Isopel Berners speak of herself as being taller
than Lavengro. Now, as Borrow gives Lavengro his own character and
physique in every detail, even to the silvery hair and even to the
somewhat peculiar method of sparring, and as he himself stood six feet
two inches, Isopel must have been better adapted to shine as a giantess
in a show than as a fighting woman capable of cowing the "Flaming Tinman"
himself.
It is a very exceptional woman that can really stand up against a trained
boxer, and it is, I believe, or used to be, an axiom among the nomads
that no fighting woman ought to stand more than about five feet ten
inches at the outside. A handsome young woman never looks so superb as
when boxing; but it is under peculiar disadvantages that she spars with a
man, inasmuch as she has, even when properly padded (as assuredly every
woman ought to be) to guard her chest with even more care than she guards
her face. The truth is, as Borrow must have known, that women, in order
to stand a chance against men, must rely upon some special and surprising
method of attack--such, for instance, as that of the sudden "left-hand
body blow" of the magnificent gypsy girl of whose exploits I told him
that day at "Gypsy Ring"--who, when travelling in England, was attached
to Boswell's boxing-booth, and was always accompanied by a favourite
bantam cock, ornamented with a gold ring in each wattle, and trained to
clap his wings and crow whenever he saw his mistress putting on the
gloves--the most beautiful girl, gypsy or other, that ever went into East
Anglia. This "left-hand body blow" of hers she delivered so
unexpectedly, and with such an engine-like velocity, that but few boxers
could "stop it."
But, with regard to Isopel Berners, neither Lavengro, nor the man she
thrashed when he stole one of her flaxen hairs to conjure with, gives the
reader the faintest idea of Isopel's method of attack or defence, and we
have to take her prowess on trust.
In a word, Borrow was content to give us the Wonderful, without taking
that trouble to find for it a logical basis which a literary master would
have taken. And instances might easily be multiplied of this
exaggeration of Borrow's, which is apt to lend a sense of unreality to
some of the most picturesque pages of "Lavengro."
IV. BORROW'S USE OF PATOIS.
Nor does Borrow take much trouble to give organic life to a dramatic
picture by the aid of _patois_ in dialogue. In every conversation
between Borrow's gypsies, and between them and Lavengro, the illusion is
constantly being disturbed by the vocabulary of the speakers. It is hard
for the reader to believe that characters such as Jasper Petulengro, his
wife, and sister Ursula, between whom so much of the dialogue is
distributed, should make use of the complex sentences and book-words
which Borrow, on occasion, puts into their mouths.
I remember once remarking to him upon the value of _patois_ within
certain limits--not only in imaginative but in biographic art.
His answer came in substance to this, that if the matter of the dialogue
be true to nature, the entire verisimilitude of the form is a secondary
consideration.
"Walter Scott," said he, "has run to death the method of _patois_
dialogue."
He urged, moreover, that the gypsies really are extremely fond of
uncommon and fine words. And this, no doubt, is true, especially in
regard to the women. There is nothing in which the native superiority of
the illiterate Romany woman over the illiterate English woman of the road
is more clearly seen than in the love of long "book-words" (often
mispronounced) displayed by the former. Strong, however, as is the
Romany chi's passion for fine words, her sentences are rarely complex
like some of the sentences Borrow puts into her mouth.
With regard, however, to the charge of idealising gypsy life--a charge
which has often been brought against Borrow--it must be remembered that
the gypsies to whom he introduces us are the better kind of gryengroes
(horse-dealers), by far the most prosperous of all gypsies. Borrow's
"gryengroes" are not in any way more prosperous than those he knew.
These nomads have an instinctive knowledge of horseflesh--will tell the
amount of "blood" in any horse by a lightning glance at his quarters--and
will sometimes make large sums before the fair is over.
Yet, on the whole, I will not deny that Borrow was as successful in
giving us vital portraits of English and Irish characters as of Romany
characters, perhaps more so.
That hypochondriacal strain in Borrow's nature, which Dr. Hake alludes
to, perhaps prevented him from sympathising fully with the joyous Romany
temper. But over and above this, and charming as the Petulengro family
are, they do not live as do the characters of Mr. Groome in his
delightful book "In Gypsy Tents"--a writer whose treatises on the gypsies
in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and in "Chambers' Encyclopedia," are
as full of the fruits of actual personal contact with the gypsies as of
the learning to be derived from books.
V. THE SAVING GRACE OF PUGILISM.
Borrow's "Flaming Tinman" is, of course, a brilliant success, but then
he, though named Bosville, is not a pure gypsy. He is what is called on
the roads, I believe, a "half and half"; and in nothing is more clearly
seen that "prepotency of transmission," which I have elsewhere attributed
to the Anglo-Saxon in the racial struggle, than in hybrids of this kind.
A thorough-bred Romany chal can be brutal enough, but the "Flaming
Tinman's" peculiar shade of brutality is Anglo-Saxon, not Romany. The
Tinman's ironical muttering while unharnessing his horse, "Afraid. H'm!
Afraid; that was the word, I think," is worthy of Dickens at his very
best--worthy of Dickens when he created Rogue Riderhood--but it is hardly
Romany, I think.
The battle in the dingle is superb.
Borrow is always at his strongest when describing a pugilistic encounter:
for in the saving grace of pugilism as an English accomplishment, he
believed as devoutly almost as he believed in East Anglia and the Bible.
It was this more than anything else that aroused the ire of the critics
of "Lavengro" when it first appeared. One critical journal characterised
the book as the work of a "barbarian."
This was in 1851, when Clio seemed set upon substituting Harlequin's wand
for Britannia's trident, seemed set upon crowning her with the cap and
bells of Folly in her maudlin mood,--the marvellous and memorable year
when England--while every forge in Europe was glowing with expectance,
ready to beat every ploughshare into a sword--uttered her famous
prophecy, that from the day of the opening of the Prince Consort's glass
show in Hyde Park, bullets, bayonets, and fists were to be institutions
of a benighted past.
Very different was the prophecy of this "eccentric barbarian," Borrow,
especially as regards the abolition of the British fist. His prophecy
was that the decay of pugilism would be followed by a flourishing time in
England for the revolver and the assassin's knife,--a prophecy which I
can now recommend to those two converts to the virtues of Pugilism, Mr.
Justice Grantham and the present Editor of the _Daily News_, the former
of whom in passing sentence of death (at the Central Criminal Court, on
Wednesday, January 11th, 1893) upon a labourer named Hosler, for stabbing
one Dennis Finnessey to death in a quarrel about a pot of beer, borrowed
in the most impudent manner from the "eccentric barbarian," when he said,
"If men would only use their fists instead of knives when tempted to
violence, so many people would not be hanged"; while the latter remarked
that "the same thing has been said from the bench before, _and cannot be
said too often_." When the "eccentric barbarian" argued that pugnacity
is one of the primary instincts of man--when he argued that no
civilisation can ever eradicate this instinct without emasculating
itself--when he argued that to clench one's fist and "strike out" is the
irresistible impulse of every one who has been assaulted, and that to
make it illegal to "strike out," to make it illegal to learn the art to
"strike out" with the best effect, is not to quell the instinct, but
simply to force it to express itself in other and more dangerous and
dastardly ways--when he argued thus more than forty years ago, he saw
more clearly than did his critics into the future--a future which held
within its womb not only the American civil war and the gigantic
Continental struggles whose bloody reek still "smells to heaven," but
also the present carnival of dynamite, the revolver, and the assassin's
knife.
VI. BORROW'S GYPSIES.
To those who knew Borrow, the striking thing about "Lavengro" and "The
Romany Rye" is not that there is so much about the gypsies, but that
there is comparatively so little, and that he only introduces one family
group. Judged from these two books the reader would conclude that he
knew nothing whatever of the Lees, the Stanleys, and the most noticeable
of all, the Lovells, and yet those who knew him are aware that he was
thrown into contact with most of these. But here, as in everything else,
Borrow's eccentric methods can never be foreseen. The most interesting
of all the gypsies are the Welsh gypsies. The Welsh variety of the
Romany tongue is quite peculiar, and the Romanies of the Principality are
superior to all others in these islands in intelligence and in their
passion for gorgio respectability. Borrow in "Lavengro" takes the reader
to the Welsh border itself, and then turns back, leaving the Welsh Romany
undescribed. And in the only part of "Wild Wales" where gypsy life is
afterwards glanced at, the gypsies introduced are not Welsh, but English.
The two great successes amongst Borrow's Romany characters are
undoubtedly Mrs. Petulengro's mother (old Mrs. Herne) and her grandchild
Leonora, but these are the two wicked characters of the group. It is
impossible to imagine anything better told than the attempt of these two
to poison Lavengro: it is drama of the rarest kind. The terrible
ironical dialogue over the prostrate and semi-conscious Lavengro, between
the child-murderess and the hag-murderess who have poisoned him, is like
nothing else in literature. This scene alone should make "Lavengro"
immortal. In no other race than the Romany would a child of the elf-like
intelligence and unconscious wickedness of Leonora be possible; but also
it must be said that in no other race than the Romany would be possible a
child like her who is made the subject of my sonnet, "A Gypsy Child's
Christmas," printed in the "Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society"--a sonnet
which renders in verse a real incident recorded by my friend before
alluded to:--
Dear Sinfi rose and danced along "The Dells,"
Drawn by the Christmas chimes, and soon she sate
Where, 'neath the snow around the churchyard gate,
The ploughmen slept in bramble-banded cells:
The gorgios passed, half fearing gipsy spells,
While Sinfi, gazing, seemed to meditate;
She laughed for joy, then wept disconsolate:
"De poor dead gorgios cannot hear de bells."
Within the church the clouds of gorgio-breath
Arose, a steam of lazy praise and prayer,
To Him who weaves the loving Christmas-stair
O'er sorrow and sin and wintry deeps of Death;
But where stood He? Beside our Sinfi there,
Remembering childish tears in Nazareth.
Perhaps Borrow's pictures of the gypsies, by omitting to depict the
Romany woman on her loftier, her tragic side, fail to demonstrate what he
well knew to be the Romany's great racial mark of distinction all over
Europe, the enormous superiority of the gypsy women over the gypsy men,
not in intelligence merely, but in all the higher human qualities. While
it is next to impossible to imagine a gypsy hero, gypsy heroines--women
capable of the noblest things--are far from uncommon.
The "Amazonian Sinfi," alluded to in Dr. Hake's sonnet, was a heroine of
this noble strain, and yet perhaps she was but a type of a certain kind
of Romany chi.
It was she of the bantam cock and "the left-hand body blow" alluded to
above.
This same gypsy girl also illustrated another side of the variously
endowed character of the Romany women, ignored, or almost ignored by
Borrow--their passion for music. The daughter of an extremely well-to-do
"gryengro," or dealer in horses, this gypsy girl had travelled over
nearly all England, and was familiar with London, where, in the studio of
a certain romantic artist, she was in great request as a face-model. But
having been brought into close contact with a travelling band of
Hungarian gypsy musicians who visited England some years ago, she
developed a passion for music that showed her to be a musical genius.
The gypsy musicians of Hungary, who are darker than the tented gypsies,
are the most intelligent and most widely-travelled of even Hungarian
gypsies--indeed, of all the Romany race, and with them Sinfi soon
developed into the "Fiddling Sinfi," who was famous in Wales and also in
East Anglia, and the East Midlands. After a while she widened her
reputation in a curious way as the only performer on the old Welsh
stringed instrument called the "crwth," or cruth. I told Borrow her
story at Gypsy Ring. Having become, through the good nature of an
eminent Welsh antiquary, the possessor of a crwth, and having discovered
the unique capabilities of that rarely-seen instrument, she soon taught
herself to play upon it with extraordinary effect, fascinating her Welsh
patrons by the ravishing strains she could draw from it. This obsolete
instrument is six-stringed, with two of the strings reaching beyond the
key-board, and a bridge placed, not at right angles to the sides of the
instrument, but in an oblique direction. Though in some respects
inferior to the violin, it is in other respects superior to it. Sinfi's
performances on this remarkable instrument showed her to be a musical
genius of a high order.
VII. MY FIRST MEETING WITH BORROW.
But I am not leaving myself much room for personal reminiscences of
Borrow after all--though these are what I sat down to write.
Dr. Hake, in his memoirs of "Eighty Years," records thus the first
meeting between Borrow and myself at Roehampton, at the doctor's own
delightful house, whose windows at the back looked over Richmond Park,
and in front over the wildest part of Wimbledon Common.
"Later on, George Borrow turned up while Watts was there, and we went
through a pleasant trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took the
first fiddle. The reader must not here take metaphor for music.
Borrow made himself very agreeable to Watts, recited a fairy tale in
the best style to him, and liked him."
There is, however, no doubt that Borrow would have run away from me had I
been associated in his mind with the literary calling. But at that time
I had written nothing at all save poems, and a prose story or two of a
romantic kind, and even these, though some of the poems have since
appeared, were then known only through private circulation.
About me there was nothing of the literary flavour: no need to flee away
from me as he fled from the writing fraternity. He had not long before
this refused to allow Dr. Hake to introduce the late W. R. S. Ralston to
him, simply because the Russian scholar moved in the literary world.
With regard to newspaper critiques of books his axiom was that "whatever
is praised by the press is of necessity bad," and he refused to read
anything that was so praised.
After the "fairy tale" mentioned by Dr. Hake was over, we went, at
Borrow's suggestion, for a ramble through Richmond Park, calling on the
way at the "Bald-Faced Stag" in Kingston Vale, in order that Borrow
should introduce me to Jerry Abershaw's sword, which was one of the
special glories of that once famous hostelry. A divine summer day it was
I remember--a day whose heat would have been oppressive had it not been
tempered every now and then by a playful silvery shower falling from an
occasional wandering cloud, whose slate-coloured body thinned at the
edges to a fringe of lace brighter than any silver.
These showers, however, seemed, as Borrow remarked, merely to give a rich
colour to the sunshine, and to make the wild flowers in the meadows on
the left breathe more freely. In a word, it was one of those uncertain
summer days whose peculiarly English charm was Borrow's special delight.
He liked rain, but he liked it falling on the green umbrella (enormous,
shaggy, like a gypsy-tent after a summer storm) he generally carried. As
we entered the Robin Hood Gate we were confronted by a sudden weird
yellow radiance, magical and mysterious, which showed clearly enough that
in the sky behind us there was gleaming over the fields and over
Wimbledon Common a rainbow of exceptional brilliance, while the raindrops
sparkling on the ferns seemed answering every hue in the magic arch far
away. Borrow told us some interesting stories of Romany superstitions in
connection with the rainbow--how, by making a "trus'hul" (cross) of two
sticks, the Romany chi who "pens the dukkerin can wipe the rainbow out of
the sky," etc. Whereupon Hake, quite as original a man as Borrow, and a
humourist of a still rarer temper, launched out into a strain of wit and
whim, which it is not my business here to record, upon the subject of the
"Spirit of the Rainbow" which a certain child went out to find.
Borrow loved Richmond Park, and he seemed to know every tree. I found
also that he was extremely learned in deer, and seemed familiar with
every dappled coat which, washed and burnished by the showers, seemed to
shine in the sun like metal. Of course, I observed him closely, and I
began to wonder whether I had encountered, in the silvery-haired giant
striding by my side, with a vast umbrella under his arm, a true "Child of
the Open Air."
"Did a true Child of the Open Air ever carry a gigantic green umbrella
that would have satisfied Sarah Gamp herself?" I murmured to Hake, while
Borrow lingered under a tree and, looking round the Park, said, in a
dreamy way, "Old England! Old England!"
VIII. A CHILD OF THE OPEN AIR UNDER A GREEN UMBRELLA.
Perhaps, however, I had better define what Hake and I meant by this
phrase, and to do this I cannot do better than quote the definition of
Nature-worship, by H. A. the "Swimming Rye," which we had both been just
discussing, and which I quoted not long after this memorable walk in a
literary journal:--
"With all the recent cultivation of the picturesque by means of
water-colour landscape, descriptive novels, 'Cook's excursions,'
etc., the real passion for Nature is as rare as ever it was,--perhaps
rarer. It is quite an affair of individual temperament: it cannot be
learned; it cannot be lost. That no writer has ever tried to explain
it shows how little it is known. Often it has but little to do with
poetry, little with science. The poet, indeed, rarely has it at its
very highest; the man of science as rarely. I wish I could define
it:--in human souls--in one, perhaps, as much as in another--there is
always that instinct for contact which is a great factor of progress;
there is always an irresistible yearning to escape from isolation, to
get as close as may be to some other conscious thing. In most
individuals this yearning is simply for contact with other human
souls; in some few it is not. There are some in every country of
whom it is the blessing, not the bane, that, owing to some
exceptional power, or to some exceptional infirmity, they can get
closer to '_Natura Benigna_' herself, closer to her whom we now call
'Inanimate Nature,' than to the human mother who bore them--far
closer than to father, brother, sister, wife, or friend. Darwin
among English _savants_, and Emily Bronte among English poets, and
Sinfi Lovell among English gypsies, showed a good deal of the
characteristics of the 'Children of the Open Air.' But in the case
of the first of these, besides the strength of his family ties the
pedantic inquisitiveness, the methodising pedantry of the man of
science; in the second, the sensitivity to human contact; and in the
third, subjection to the love passion--disturbed, and indeed
partially stifled, the native instinct with which they were
undoubtedly endowed.
"Between the true 'Children of the Open Air' and their fellows there
are barriers of idiosyncrasy, barriers of convention, or other
barriers quite indefinable, which they find most difficult to
overpass, and, even when they succeed in overpassing them, the
attempt is not found to be worth the making. For, what the
Nature-worshipper finds in intercourse with his fellow-men is, not
the unegoistic frankness of Nature, his first love, inviting him to
touch her close, soul to soul--but another _ego_ enisled like his
own--sensitive, shrinking, like his own--a soul which, love him as it
may, is, nevertheless, and for all its love, the central _ego_ of the
universe to itself, the very Alcyone round whom all other
Nature-worshippers revolve like the rest of the human constellations.
But between these and Nature there is no such barrier, and upon
Nature they lavish their love--'a most equal love,' that varies no
more with her change of mood than does the love of a man for a
beautiful woman, whether she smiles, or weeps, or frowns. To them a
Highland glen is most beautiful; so is a green meadow; so is a
mountain gorge or a barren peak; so is a South American savannah. A
balmy summer is beautiful, but not more beautiful than a winter's
sleet beating about the face, and stinging every nerve into delicious
life.
"To the 'Child of the Open Air' life has but few ills; poverty cannot
touch him. Let the Stock Exchange rob him of his Turkish bonds, and
he will go and tend sheep in Sacramento Valley, perfectly content to
see a dozen faces in a year; so far from being lonely, he has got the
sky, the wind, the brown grass, and the sheep. And as life goes on,
love of Nature grows both as a cultus and a passion, and in time
Nature seems 'to know him and love him' in her turn."
It was the umbrella, green, manifold and bulging, under Borrow's arm,
that made me ask Dr. Hake, as Borrow walked along beneath the trees, "Is
he a genuine Child of the Open Air"? And then, calling to mind
"Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," I said, "He went into the Dingle, and
lived alone--went there not as an experiment in self-education, as
Thoreau went and lived by Walden Pond. He could enjoy living alone, for
the 'horrors' to which he was occasionally subject did not spring from
solitary living. He was never disturbed by passion as was the
nature-worshipper who once played such selfish tricks with Sinfi Lovell,
and as Emily Bronte would certainly have been had she been placed in such
circumstances as Charlotte Bronte placed Shirley."
"But the most damning thing of all," said Hake, "is that umbrella,
gigantic and green: a painful thought that has often occurred to me."
"Passion has certainly never disturbed his nature-worship," said I. "So
devoid of passion is he that to depict a tragic situation is quite beyond
his powers. Picturesque he always is, powerful never. No one reading an
account of the privations of Lavengro during the 'Joseph Sell' period
finds himself able to realise from Borrow's description the misery of a
young man tenderly reared, and with all the pride of an East Anglian
gentleman, living on bread and water in a garret, with starvation staring
him in the face. It is not passion," I said to Hake, "that prevents
Borrow from enjoying the peace of the nature-worshipper. It is Ambition!
His books show that he could never cleanse his stuffed bosom of the
perilous stuff of ambition. To become renowned, judging from many a
peroration in 'Lavengro,' was as great an incentive to Borrow to learn
languages as to Alexander Smith's poet-hero it was an incentive to write
poetry."
"Ambition and the green gamp," said Hake. "But, look, the rainbow is
fading from the sky without the intervention of gypsy sorceries, and see
how the ferns are changing colour with the change in the light."
But I soon found that if Borrow was not a perfect Child of the Open Air,
he was something better: a man of that deep sympathy with human kind,
which the "Child of the Open Air" must needs lack.
IX. THE GYPSIES OF NORMAN CROSS.
Knowing Borrow's extraordinary shyness and his great dislike of meeting
strangers, Dr. Hake, while Borrow was trying to get as close to the deer
as they would allow, expressed to me his surprise at the terms of cordial
friendship that sprang up between us during that walk. But I was not
surprised: there were several reasons why Borrow should at once take to
me--reasons that had nothing whatever to do with any inherent
attractiveness of my own.
By recalling what occurred I can throw a more brilliant light upon
Borrow's character than by any kind of analytical disquisition.
Two herons rose from the Ponds and flew away to where they probably had
their nests. By the expression on Borrow's face as he stood and gazed at
them, I knew that, like myself, he had a passion for herons.
"Were there many herons around Whittlesea Mere before it was drained?" I
said.
"I should think so," said he, dreamily, "and every kind of water bird."
Then, suddenly turning round upon me with a start, he said, "But how do
you know that I knew Whittlesea Mere?"
"You say in 'Lavengro' that you played among the reeds of Whittlesea Mere
when you were a child."
"I don't mention Whittlesea Mere in 'Lavengro,'" he said.
"No," said I, "but you speak of a lake near the old State prison at
Norman Cross, and that was Whittlesea Mere."
"Then you know Whittlesea Mere?" said Borrow, much interested.
"I know the place that _was_ Whittlesea Mere before it was drained," I
said, "and I know the vipers around Norman Cross, and I think I know the
lane where you first met Jasper Petulengro. He was a generation before
my time. Indeed, I never was thrown much across the Petulengroes in the
Eastern Counties, but I knew some of the Hernes and the Lees and the
Lovells."
I then told him what I knew about Romanies and vipers, and also gave him
Marcianus's story about the Moors being invulnerable to the viper's bite,
and about their putting the true breed of a suspected child to the test
by setting it to grasp a viper--as he, Borrow, when a child, grasped one
of the vipers of Norman Cross.
"The gypsies," said Borrow, "always believed me to be a Romany. But
surely you are not a Romany Rye?"
"No," I said, "but I am a student of folk-lore; and besides, as it has
been my fortune to see every kind of life in England, high and low, I
could not entirely neglect the Romanies, could I?"
"I should think not," said Borrow, indignantly. "But I hope you don't
know the literary class among the rest."
"Hake is my only link to _that_ dark world," I said; "and even you don't
object to Hake. I am purer than he, purer than you, from the taint of
printers' ink."
He laughed. "Who are you?"
"The very question I have been asking myself ever since I was a child in
short frocks," I said, "and have never yet found an answer. But Hake
agrees with me that no well-bred soul should embarrass itself with any
such troublesome query." This gave a chance to Hake, who in such local
reminiscences as these had been able to take no part. The humorous
mystery of Man's personality had often been a subject of joke between him
and me in many a ramble in the Park and elsewhere. At once he threw
himself into a strain of whimsical philosophy which partly amused and
partly vexed Borrow, who stood waiting to return to the subject of the
gypsies and East Anglia.
"You are an Englishman?" said Borrow.
"Not only an Englishman, but an East Englishman," I said, using a phrase
of his own in "Lavengro"--"if not a thorough East Anglian an East
Midlander; who, you will admit, is nearly as good."
"Nearly," said Borrow.
And when I went on to tell him that I once used to drive a genuine
"Shales mare," a descendant of that same famous Norfolk trotter who could
trot fabulous miles an hour, to whom he with the Norfolk farmers raised
his hat in reverence at the Norwich horse fair, and when I promised to
show him a portrait of this same East Anglian mare with myself behind her
in a dogcart--an East Anglian dogcart--when I praised the stinging
saltness of the sea water off Yarmouth, Lowestoft, and Cromer, the
quality which makes it the best, the most buoyant, the most delightful of
all sea water to swim in--when I told him that the only English river in
which you could see reflected the rainbow he loved was "the glassy Ouse"
of East Anglia, and the only place in England where you could see it
reflected in the wet sand was the Norfolk coast, and when I told him a
good many things showing that I was in very truth not only an Englishman,
but an East Englishman, my conquest of the "Walking Lord of Gypsy Lore"
was complete, and from that moment we became friends.
Hake meanwhile stood listening to the rooks in the distance. He turned
and asked Borrow whether he had never noticed a similarity between the
kind of muffled rattling roar made by the sea-waves upon a distant pebbly
beach and the sound of a large rookery in the distance.
"It is on _sand_ alone," said Borrow, "that the sea strikes its true
music--Norfolk sand: a rattle is not music."
"The best of the sea's lutes," I said, "is made by the sands of Cromer."
I have read over to my beloved old friend Dr. Hake, the above meagre
account of that my first delightful ramble with Borrow. He whose memory
lets nothing escape, has reminded me of a score of interesting things
said and done on that memorable occasion. But in putting into print any
record of one's intercourse with a famous man, there is always an
unpleasant sense of lapsing into egotism. And besides, the reader has
very likely had enough now of talk between Borrow and me.
X. THE FUTURE OF BORROW'S WORKS.
He whom London once tried hard, but in vain, to lionise, lived during
some of the last years of his life in Hereford Square, unknown to any
save about a dozen friends. At the head of them stood Mr. John Murray,
whose virtues, both as publisher and as English gentleman, he was never
tired of extolling.
Afterwards he went down to East Anglia--that East Anglia he loved so
well--went there, as he told me, to die.
But it was not till one day in 1881 that Borrow achieved, in the Cottage
by the Oulton Broads which his genius once made famous, and where so much
of his best work had been written, the soul's great conquest over its
fleshly trammels, the conquest we call death, but which he believed to be
life. His body was laid by the side of that of his wife at Brompton.
When I wrote his obituary notice in the _Athenaeum_ no little wonder was
expressed in various quarters that the "Walking Lord of Gypsy Lore" had
been walking so lately the earth.
And yet his "Bible in Spain" had still a regular sale. His "Lavengro"
and "Romany Rye" were still allowed by all competent critics to be among
the most delightful books in the language. Indeed, at his death, Borrow
was what he now is, and what he will continue to be long after Time has
played havoc with nine-tenths of the writers whose names are week by
week, and day by day, "paragraphed" in the papers as "literary
celebrities"--an English classic.
Apart from Borrow's undoubted genius as a writer the subject-matter of
his writings has an interest that will not wane but will go on growing.
The more the features of our "Beautiful England," to use his own phrase,
are changed by the multitudinous effects of the railway system, the more
attraction will readers find in books which depict her before her beauty
was marred--books which depict her in those antediluvian days when there
was such a thing as space in the island--when in England there was a
sense of distance, that sense without which there can be no romance--when
the stage-coach was in its glory--when the only magician who could convey
man and his belongings at any rate of speed beyond man's own walking rate
was the horse--the beloved horse whose praises Borrow loved to sing, and
whose ideal was reached in the mighty "Shales"--when the great high roads
were alive, not merely with the bustle of business, but with real
adventure for the traveller--days and scenes which Borrow better than any
one else could paint. A time will come, I say, when not only books full
of descriptive genius, like "Lavengro," but even such comparatively tame
descriptions of England as the "Gleanings in England and Wales" of the
now forgotten East Midlander, Samuel Jackson Pratt, will be read with a
new interest. But why was Borrow so entirely forgotten at the moment of
his death? Simply because, like many another man of genius and many a
scholar, he refused to figure in the literary arena--went on his way
quietly influencing the world, but mixing only with his private friends.
THEODORE WATTS.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe a dream, partly of
study, partly of adventure, in which will be found copious notices of
books, and many descriptions of life and manners, some in a very unusual
form.
The scenes of action lie in the British Islands;--pray be not displeased,
gentle reader, if perchance thou hast imagined that I was about to
conduct thee to distant lands, and didst promise thyself much instruction
and entertainment from what I might tell thee of them. I do assure thee
that thou hast no reason to be displeased, inasmuch as there are no
countries in the world less known by the British than these selfsame
British Islands, or where more strange things are every day occurring,
whether in road or street, house or dingle.
The time embraces nearly the first quarter of the present century: this
information again may, perhaps, be anything but agreeable to thee; it is
a long time to revert to, but fret not thyself, many matters which at
present much occupy the public mind originated in some degree towards the
latter end of that period, and some of them will be treated of.
The principal actors in this dream, or drama, are, as you will have
gathered from the title-page, a Scholar, a Gypsy, and a Priest. Should
you imagine that these three form one, permit me to assure you that you
are very much mistaken. Should there be something of the Gypsy manifest
in the Scholar, there is certainly nothing of the Priest. With respect
to the Gypsy--decidedly the most entertaining character of the
three--there is certainly nothing of the Scholar or the Priest in him;
and as for the Priest, though there may be something in him both of
scholarship and gypsyism, neither the Scholar nor the Gypsy would feel at
all flattered by being confounded with him.
Many characters which may be called subordinate will be found, and it is
probable that some of these characters will afford much more interest to
the reader than those styled the principal. The favourites with the
writer are a brave old soldier and his helpmate, an ancient gentlewoman
who sold apples, and a strange kind of wandering man and his wife.
Amongst the many things attempted in this book is the encouragement of
charity, and free and genial manners, and the exposure of humbug, of
which there are various kinds, but of which the most perfidious, the most
debasing, and the most cruel, is the humbug of the Priest.
Yet let no one think that irreligion is advocated in this book. With
respect to religious tenets, I wish to observe that I am a member of the
Church of England, into whose communion I was baptized, and to which my
forefathers belonged. Its being the religion in which I was baptized,
and of my forefathers, would be a strong inducement to me to cling to it;
for I do not happen to be one of those choice spirits "who turn from
their banner when the battle bears strongly against it, and go over to
the enemy," and who receive at first a hug and a "viva," and in the
sequel contempt and spittle in the face; but my chief reason for
belonging to it is, because, of all Churches calling themselves Christian
ones, I believe there is none so good, so well founded upon Scripture, or
whose ministers are, upon the whole, so exemplary in their lives and
conversation, so well read in the book from which they preach, or so
versed in general learning, so useful in their immediate neighbourhoods,
or so unwilling to persecute people of other denominations for matters of
doctrine.
In the communion of this Church, and with the religious consolation of
its ministers, I wish and hope to live and die, and in its and their
defence will at all times be ready, if required, to speak, though humbly,
and to fight, though feebly, against enemies, whether carnal or
spiritual.
And is there no priestcraft in the Church of England? There is
certainly, or rather there was, a modicum of priestcraft in the Church of
England, but I have generally found that those who are most vehement
against the Church of England are chiefly dissatisfied with her, because
there is only a modicum of that article in her--were she stuffed to the
very cupola with it, like a certain other Church, they would have much
less to say against the Church of England.
By the other Church, I mean Rome. Its system was once prevalent in
England, and, during the period that it prevailed there, was more
prolific of debasement and crime than all other causes united. The
people and the government at last becoming enlightened by means of the
Scripture, spurned it from the island with disgust and horror, the land
instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts,
sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a
pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful
hypocrites, like so many Wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about,
around, and above debased humanity.
But Popery still wished to play her old part, to regain her lost
dominion, to reconvert the smiling land into the pestilential morass,
where she could play again her old antics. From the period of the
Reformation in England up to the present time, she has kept her
emissaries here, individuals contemptible in intellect, it is true, but
cat-like and gliding, who, at her bidding, have endeavoured, as much as
in their power has lain, to damp and stifle every genial, honest, loyal,
and independent thought, and to reduce minds to such a state of dotage as
would enable their old Popish mother to do what she pleased with them.
And in every country, however enlightened, there are always minds
inclined to grovelling superstition--minds fond of eating dust, and
swallowing clay--minds never at rest, save when prostrate before some
fellow in a surplice; and these Popish emissaries found always some weak
enough to bow down before them, astounded by their dreadful denunciations
of eternal woe and damnation to any who should refuse to believe their
Romania; but they played a poor game--the law protected the servants of
Scripture, and the priest with his beads seldom ventured to approach any
but the remnant of those of the eikonolatry--representatives of
worm-eaten houses, their debased dependants, and a few poor crazy
creatures amongst the middle classes--he played a poor game, and the
labour was about to prove almost entirely in vain, when the English
legislature, in compassion or contempt, or, yet more probably, influenced
by that spirit of toleration and kindness which is so mixed up with
Protestantism, removed almost entirely the disabilities under which
Popery laboured, and enabled it to raise its head, and to speak out
almost without fear.
And it did raise its head, and, though it spoke with some little fear at
first, soon discarded every relic of it; went about the land uttering its
damnation cry, gathering around it--and for doing so many thanks to
it--the favourers of priestcraft who lurked within the walls of the
Church of England; frightening with the loudness of its voice the weak,
the timid, and the ailing; perpetrating, whenever it had an opportunity,
that species of crime to which it has ever been most partial--_Deathbed
robbery_; for as it is cruel, so is it dastardly. Yes, it went on
enlisting, plundering, and uttering its terrible threats till--till it
became, as it always does when left to itself, a fool, a very fool. Its
plunderings might have been overlooked, and so might its insolence, had
it been common insolence, but it--, and then the roar of indignation
which arose from outraged England against the viper, the frozen viper
which it had permitted to warm itself upon its bosom.
But thanks, Popery, you have done all that the friends of enlightenment
and religious liberty could wish; but if ever there were a set of foolish
ones to be found under Heaven, surely it is the priestly rabble who came
over from Rome to direct the grand movement--so long in its getting up.
But now again the damnation cry is withdrawn, there is a subdued meekness
in your demeanour, you are now once more harmless as a lamb. Well, we
shall see how the trick--"the old trick"--will serve you.
CHAPTER I.
Birth--My Father--Tamerlane--Ben Brain--French Protestants--East
Anglia--Sorrow and Troubles--True Peace--A Beautiful Child--Foreign
Grave--Mirrors--Alpine Country Emblems--Slow of Speech--The Jew--Strange
Gestures.
On an evening of July, in the year 18--, at East D---, a beautiful little
town in a certain district of East Anglia, I first saw the light.
My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of
seven brothers. He sprang from a family of gentlemen, or, as some people
would call them, gentillatres, for they were not very wealthy; they had a
coat of arms, however, and lived on their own property at a place called
Tredinnock, which being interpreted means _the house on the hill_, which
house and the neighbouring acres had been from time immemorial in their
possession. I mention these particulars that the reader may see at once
that I am not altogether of low and plebeian origin; the present age is
highly aristocratic, and I am convinced that the public will read my
pages with more zest from being told that I am a gentillatre by birth
with Cornish blood {1} in my veins, of a family who lived on their own
property at a place bearing a Celtic name signifying the house on the
hill, or more strictly the house on the _hillock_.
My father was what is generally termed a posthumous child--in other
words, the gentillatre who begot him never had the satisfaction of
invoking the blessing of the Father of All upon his head, having departed
this life some months before the birth of his youngest son. The boy,
therefore, never knew a father's care; he was, however, well tended by
his mother, whose favourite he was; so much so, indeed, that his
brethren, the youngest of whom was considerably older than himself, were
rather jealous of him. I never heard, however, that they treated him
with any marked unkindness; and it will be as well to observe here that I
am by no means well acquainted with his early history, of which, indeed,
as I am not writing his life, it is not necessary to say much. Shortly
after his mother's death, which occurred when he was eighteen, he adopted
the profession of arms, which he followed during the remainder of his
life, and in which, had circumstances permitted, he would probably have
shone amongst the best. By nature he was cool and collected, slow to
anger, though perfectly fearless, patient of control, of great strength;
and, to crown all, a proper man with his hands.
With far inferior qualifications many a man has become a field-marshal or
general; similar ones made Tamerlane, who was not a gentillatre, but the
son of a blacksmith, emperor of one-third of the world; but the race is
not always for the swift, nor the battle for the strong, indeed I ought
rather to say very seldom; certain it is, that my father, with all his
high military qualifications, never became emperor, field-marshal, or
even general; indeed, he had never an opportunity of distinguishing
himself save in one battle, and that took place neither in Flanders,
Egypt, nor on the banks of the Indus or Oxus, but in Hyde Park.
Smile not, gentle reader, many a battle has been fought in Hyde Park, in
which as much skill, science, and bravery have been displayed as ever
achieved a victory in Flanders or by the Indus. In such a combat as that
to which I allude I opine that even Wellington or Napoleon would have
been heartily glad to cry for quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and
even the Blacksmith Tartar would, perhaps, have shrunk from the opponent
with whom, after having had a dispute with him, my father engaged in
single combat for one hour, at the end of which time the champions shook
hands and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other's
prowess. The name of my father's antagonist was Brain.
What! still a smile? did you never hear that name before? I cannot help
it! Honour to Brain, who four months after the event which I have now
narrated was champion of England, having conquered the heroic Johnson.
Honour to Brain, who, at the end of other four months, worn out by the
dreadful blows which he had received in his manly combats, expired in the
arms of my father, who read the Bible to him in his latter moments--Big
Ben Brain.
You no longer smile, even _you_ have heard of Big Ben.
I have already hinted that my father never rose to any very exalted rank
in his profession, notwithstanding his prowess and other qualifications.
After serving for many years in the line, he at last entered as captain
in the militia regiment of the Earl of ---, at that period just raised,
and to which he was sent by the Duke of York to instruct the young levies
in military manoeuvres and discipline; and in this mission I believe he
perfectly succeeded, competent judges having assured me that the regiment
in question soon came by his means to be considered as one of the most
brilliant in the service, and inferior to no regiment of the line in
appearance or discipline.
As the head-quarters of this corps were at D---, the duties of my father
not unfrequently carried him to that place, and it was on one of these
occasions that he became acquainted with a young person of the
neighbourhood, for whom he formed an attachment, which was returned; and
this young person was my mother.
She was descended from a family of French Protestants, natives of Caen,
who were obliged to leave their native country when old Louis, at the
instigation of the Pope, thought fit to revoke the Edict of Nantes: their
name was Petrement, and I have reason for believing that they were people
of some consideration; that they were noble hearts and good Christians
they gave sufficient proof in scorning to bow the knee to the tyranny of
Rome. So they left beautiful Normandy for their faith's sake, and with a
few louis d'ors in their purse, a Bible in the vulgar tongue, and a
couple of old swords, which, if report be true, had done service in the
Huguenot wars, they crossed the sea to the isle of civil peace and
religious liberty, and established themselves in East Anglia.
And many other Huguenot families bent their steps thither, and devoted
themselves to agriculture or the mechanical arts; and in the venerable
old city, the capital of the province, in the northern shadow of the
Castle of De Burgh, the exiles built for themselves a church where they
praised God in the French tongue, and to which, at particular seasons of
the year, they were in the habit of flocking from country and from town
to sing--
"Thou hast provided for us a goodly earth; Thou waterest her furrows,
Thou sendest rain into the little valleys thereof, Thou makest it soft
with the drops of rain, and blessest the increase of it."
I have been told that in her younger days my mother was strikingly
handsome; this I can easily believe: I never knew her in her youth, for
though she was very young when she married my father (who was her senior
by many years), she had attained the middle age before I was born, no
children having been vouchsafed to my parents in the early stages of
their union. Yet even at the present day, now that years threescore and
ten have passed over her head, attended with sorrow and troubles
manifold, poorly chequered with scanty joys, can I look on that
countenance and doubt that at one time beauty decked it as with a
glorious garment? Hail to thee, my parent! as thou sittest there, in thy
widow's weeds, in the dusky parlour in the house overgrown with the
lustrous ivy of the sister isle, the solitary house at the end of the
retired court shaded by lofty poplars. Hail to thee, dame of the oval
face, olive complexion, and Grecian forehead; by thy table seated with
the mighty volume of the good Bishop Hopkins spread out before thee;
there is peace in thy countenance, my mother; it is not worldly peace,
however, not the deceitful peace which lulls to bewitching slumbers, and
from which, let us pray, humbly pray, that every sinner may be roused in
time to implore mercy not in vain! Thine is the peace of the righteous,
my mother, of those to whom no sin can be imputed, the score of whose
misdeeds has been long since washed away by the blood of atonement, which
imputeth righteousness to those who trust in it. It was not always thus,
my mother; a time was, when the cares, pomps, and vanities of this world
agitated thee too much; but that time is gone by, another and a better
has succeeded; there is peace now on thy countenance, the true peace;
peace around thee, too, in thy solitary dwelling, sounds of peace, the
cheerful hum of the kettle and the purring of the immense Angola, which
stares up at thee from its settle with its almost human eyes.
No more earthly cares and affections now, my mother! Yes, one. Why dost
thou suddenly raise thy dark and still brilliant eye from the volume with
a somewhat startled glance? What noise is that in the distant street?
Merely the noise of a hoof; a sound common enough; it draws nearer,
nearer, and now it stops before thy gate. Singular! And now there is a
pause, a long pause. Ha! thou hearest something--a footstep; a swift but
heavy footstep! thou risest, thou tremblest, there is a hand on the pin
of the outer door, there is some one in the vestibule, and now the door
of thy apartment opens, there is a reflection on the mirror behind thee,
a travelling hat, a gray head and sunburnt face. My dearest Son! My
darling Mother!
Yes, mother, thou didst recognize in the distant street the hoof-tramp of
the wanderer's horse.
I was not the only child of my parents; I had a brother some three years
older than myself. He was a beautiful child; one of those occasionally
seen in England, and in England alone; a rosy, angelic face, blue eyes,
and light chestnut hair; it was not exactly an Anglo-Saxon countenance,
in which, by the by, there is generally a cast of loutishness and
stupidity; it partook, to a certain extent, of the Celtic character,
particularly in the fire and vivacity which illumined it; his face was
the mirror of his mind; perhaps no disposition more amiable was ever
found amongst the children of Adam, united, however, with no
inconsiderable portion of high and dauntless spirit. So great was his
beauty in infancy that people, especially those of the poorer classes,
would follow the nurse who carried him about in order to look at and
bless his lovely face. At the age of three months an attempt was made to
snatch him from his mother's arms in the streets of London, at the moment
she was about to enter a coach; indeed, his appearance seemed to operate
so powerfully upon every person who beheld him that my parents were under
continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was perhaps
surpassed by the quickness of his parts. He mastered his letters in a
few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of people on the
doors of houses and over the shop-windows.
As he grew up his personal appearance became less prepossessing, his
quickness and cleverness, however, rather increased; and I may say of
him, that with respect to everything which he took in hand he did it
better and more speedily than any other person. Perhaps it will be asked
here, what became of him? Alas! alas! his was an early and a foreign
grave. As I have said before, the race is not always for the swift, nor
the battle for the strong.
And now, doubtless, after the above portrait of my brother, painted in
the very best style of Rubens, the reader will conceive himself justified
in expecting a full-length one of myself, as a child, for as to my
present appearance, I suppose he will be tolerably content with that
flitting glimpse in the mirror. But he must excuse me; I have no
intention of drawing a portrait of myself in childhood; indeed it would
be difficult, for at that time I never looked into mirrors. No attempts,
however, were ever made to steal me in my infancy, and I never heard that
my parents entertained the slightest apprehension of losing me by the
hands of kidnappers, though I remember perfectly well that people were in
the habit of standing still to look at me, ay, more than at my brother;
from which premises the reader may form any conclusion with respect to my
appearance which seemeth good unto him and reasonable. Should he, being
a good-natured person, and always inclined to adopt the charitable side
in any doubtful point, be willing to suppose that I, too, was eminently
endowed by nature with personal graces, I tell him frankly that I have no
objection whatever to his entertaining that idea; moreover, that I
heartily thank him, and shall at all times be disposed, under similar
circumstances, to exercise the same species of charity towards himself.
With respect to my mind and its qualities I shall be more explicit; for
were I to maintain much reserve on this point, many things which appear
in these memoirs would be highly mysterious to the reader, indeed
incomprehensible. Perhaps no two individuals were ever more unlike in
mind and disposition than my brother and myself: as light is opposed to
darkness, so was that happy, brilliant, cheerful child to the sad and
melancholy being who sprang from the same stock as himself, and was
nurtured by the same milk.
Once, when travelling in an Alpine country, I arrived at a considerable
elevation; I saw in the distance, far below, a beautiful stream hastening
to the ocean, its rapid waters here sparkling in the sunshine, and there
tumbling merrily in cascades. On its banks were vineyards and cheerful
villages; close to where I stood, in a granite basin, with steep and
precipitous sides, slumbered a deep, dark lagoon, shaded by black pines,
cypresses, and yews. It was a wild, savage spot, strange and singular;
ravens hovered above the pines, filling the air with their uncouth notes,
pies chattered, and I heard the cry of an eagle from a neighbouring peak;
there lay the lake, the dark, solitary, and almost inaccessible lake;
gloomy shadows were upon it, which, strangely modified as gusts of wind
agitated the surface, occasionally assumed the shape of monsters. So I
stood on the Alpine elevation, and looked now on the gay distant river,
and now at the dark granite-encircled lake close beside me in the lone
solitude, and I thought of my brother and myself. I am no moralizer; but
the gay and rapid river and the dark and silent lake were, of a verity,
no bad emblems of us two.
So far from being quick and clever like my brother, and able to rival the
literary feat which I have recorded of him, many years elapsed before I
was able to understand the nature of letters, or to connect them. A
lover of nooks and retired corners, I was as a child in the habit of
fleeing from society, and of sitting for hours together with my head on
my breast. What I was thinking about it would be difficult to say at
this distance of time; I remember perfectly well, however, being ever
conscious 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.
By nature slow of speech, I took no pleasure in conversation, nor in
hearing the voices of my fellow-creatures. When people addressed me I
not unfrequently, especially if they were strangers, turned away my head
from them, and if they persisted in their notice burst into tears, which
singularity of behaviour by no means tended to dispose people in my
favour. I was as much disliked as my brother was deservedly beloved and
admired. My parents, it is true, were always kind to me; and my brother,
who was good nature itself, was continually lavishing upon me every mark
of affection.
There was, however, one individual who, in the days of my childhood, was
disposed to form a favourable opinion of me. One day a Jew--I have quite
forgotten the circumstance, but I was long subsequently informed of
it--one day a travelling Jew knocked at the door of a farmhouse in which
we had taken apartments; I was near at hand, sitting in the bright
sunshine, drawing strange lines on the dust with my fingers, an ape and
dog were my companions; the Jew looked at me and asked me some questions,
to which, though I was quite able to speak, I returned no answer. On the
door being opened, the Jew, after a few words, probably relating to
pedlary, demanded who the child was, sitting in the sun; the maid replied
that I was her mistress's youngest son, a child weak _here_, pointing to
her forehead. The Jew looked at me again, and then said, "'Pon my
conscience, my dear, I believe that you must be troubled there yourself
to tell me any such thing. It is not my habit to speak to children,
inasmuch as I hate them, because they often follow me and fling stones
after me; but I no sooner looked at that child than I was forced to speak
to it--his not answering me shows his sense, for it has never been the
custom of the wise to fling away their words in indifferent talk and
conversation; the child is a sweet child, and has all the look of one of
our people's children. Fool, indeed! did I not see his eyes sparkle just
now when the monkey seized the dog by the ear? they shone like my own
diamonds--does your good lady want any, real and fine? Were it not for
what you tell me, I should say it was a prophet's child. Fool, indeed!
he can write already, or I'll forfeit the box which I carry on my back,
and for which I should be loth to take two hundred pounds!" He then
leaned forward to inspect the lines which I had traced. All of a sudden
he started back, and grew white as a sheet; then, taking off his hat, he
made some strange gestures to me, cringing, chattering, and showing his
teeth, and shortly departed, muttering something about "holy letters,"
and talking to himself in a strange tongue. The words of the Jew were in
due course of time reported to my mother, who treasured them in her
heart, and from that moment began to entertain brighter hopes of her
youngest-born than she had ever before ventured to foster.