in her _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, so keen-eyed for the dramatic note as
Sir George Trevelyan in his _Life of Macaulay_, he would have multiplied
readers for _Lavengro_. There are many people who have read the Bronte
novels from sheer sympathy with the writers that their biographer, Mrs.
Gaskell, had kindled. Let us not, however, be ungrateful to Dr. Knapp.
He has furnished those of us who are sufficiently interested in the
subject with a fine collection of documents. Here is all the material of
biography in its crude state, but presenting vividly enough the live
Borrow to those who have the perception to read it with care and
judgment. Still more grateful may we be to Dr. Knapp for his edition of
Borrow's works, particularly for those wonderful episodes in _Lavengro_
which he has reproduced from the original manuscript, episodes as
dramatic as any other portion of the text, and making Dr. Knapp's edition
of _Lavengro_ the only possible one to possess.
But to return to the main facts of Borrow's career, which every one here
at least is familiar with. You know of his birth at East Dereham, of his
life in Ireland and in Scotland, of his school days at Norwich, of his
departure from Norwich to London on his father's death, of his dire
struggles in the literary whirlpool, and of his wanderings in gipsy land.
You know, thanks to Dr. Knapp, more than you could otherwise have learned
of his life at St. Petersburg, whither he had been sent by the Bible
Society, on the recommendation of Mr. Joseph John Gurney and another
patron. Then he has himself told us in picturesque fashion of his life
in Portugal and Spain. After this we hear of his marriage to Mary
Clarke, his residence from 1840 to 1853 at Oulton, in Suffolk, from 1853
to 1860 at Yarmouth, from 1860 to 1874 in Hereford Square, London, and
finally from 1874 to 1881 at Oulton, where he died. That is the bare
skeleton of Borrow's life, and for half his life, I think, we should be
content with a skeleton. For the other half of it we have the best
autobiography in the English language. An autobiography that ranks with
Goethe's _Truth and Poetry from my Life_ and Rousseau's _Confessions_. In
four books--in _Lavengro_, _Romany Rye_, _The Bible in Spain_, and _Wild
Wales_ we have some delightful glimpses of an interesting personality,
and here we may leave the personal side of Borrow. Beyond this we know
that he was unquestionably a devoted son, a good husband, a kind father.
The literary life has its perils, so far as domesticity is concerned. Sir
Walter Scott in his life of Dryden speaks of:--
Her who had to endure the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits
incidental to one compelled to dwell for long periods of time in the
fitful realms of the imagination,
and it is certain that those who dwell in the realms of the imagination
are usually very irritable, very difficult to live with. Literary
history in its personal side is largely a dismal narrative of the
uncomfortable relations of men of genius with their wives and with their
families. Your man of genius thinks himself bound to hang up his fiddle
in his own house, however merry a fellow he may prove himself to a
hundred boon companions outside. George Borrow was perhaps the opposite
of all this. As a companion and a neighbour he did not always shine, if
the impression of many a witness is to be trusted. They tell anecdotes
of his lack of cordiality, of his unsociability, and so on. They have
told those anecdotes more industriously in Norwich than anywhere else. He
himself in an incomparable account of going to church with the gypsies in
_The Romany Rye_ has the following:
It appeared as if I had fallen asleep in the pew of the old church of
pretty Dereham. I had occasionally done so when a child, and had
suddenly woke up. Yes, surely, I had been asleep and had woke up; but
no! if I had been asleep I had been waking in my sleep, struggling,
striving, learning and unlearning in my sleep. Years had rolled away
whilst I had been asleep--ripe fruit had fallen, green fruit had come
on whilst I had been asleep--how circumstances had altered, and above
all myself whilst I had been asleep. No, I had not been asleep in the
old church! I was in a pew, it is true, but not the pew of black
leather, in which I sometimes fell asleep in days of yore, but in a
strange pew; and then my companions, they were no longer those of days
of yore. I was no longer with my respectable father and mother, and
my dear brother, but with the gypsy cral and his wife, and the
gigantic Tawno, the Antinous of the dusky people. And what was I
myself? No longer an innocent child but a moody man, bearing in my
face, as I knew well, the marks of my strivings and strugglings; of
what I had learnt and unlearnt.
But this "moody man," let it be always remembered, was a good husband and
father. His wife was devoted to him, his step-daughter carries now to an
old age a profound reverence and affection for his memory. Grieved
beyond all words was she--the Henrietta or "Hen" of all his books--at
what is maintained to be the utterly fictitious narrative of Borrow's
described deathbed that Professor Knapp presented from the ill-considered
gossip that he picked up while staying in the neighbourhood. {80} Borrow
has himself something to say concerning his family in _Wild Wales_:--
Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of
wives--can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the
best woman of business in East Anglia: of my step-daughter, for such
she is though I generally call her daughter, and with good reason
seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me, that she
has all kinds of good qualities and several accomplishments, knowing
something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the
Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar.
Yes, I am not quite sure but that Borrow was really a good fellow all
round, as well as being a good husband and father. He hated the literary
class, it is true. He considered that the "contemptible trade of
author," as he called it, was less creditable than that of a jockey. He
avoided as much as possible the writers of books, and particularly the
blue-stocking, and when they came in his way he was not always very
polite, sometimes much the reverse. Only the other day a letter was
published from the late Professor Cowell describing a visit to Borrow and
his not very friendly reception. Well, Borrow was here as elsewhere a
man of insight. The literary class is usually a very narrow class. It
can talk about no trade but its own. Things have grown worse since
Borrow's day, I am sure, but they were bad enough then. Borrow was a man
of very varied tastes. He took interest in gypsies and horses and prize
fighters and a hundred other entertaining matters, and so he despised the
literary class, which cared for none of these things. But unhappily for
his fame the literary class has had the final word; it has revealed all
the gossip of a gossiping peasantry, and it has done its best to present
the recluse of Oulton in a disagreeable light. Fortunately for Borrow,
who kept the bores at bay and contented himself with but few friends,
there were at least two who survived him to bear testimony to the effect
that he was "a singularly steadfast and loyal friend." One of these was
Mr. Watts-Dunton, who tells us in one of his essays that:
George Borrow was a good man, a most winsome and a most charming
companion, an English gentleman, straightforward, honest, and brave as
the very best examplars of that fine old type.
I have dwelt longer on this aspect of my subject than I should have done
had I been addressing any other audience than a Norwich one. But the
fact is that all the gossip and backbiting and censoriousness that has
gathered round Borrow for a hundred years has come out of this very city,
commencing with the "bursts of laughter" that, according to Miss
Martineau, greeted Borrow's travels in Spain for the Bible Society.
Borrow was twenty-one years of age when he left Norwich to make his way
in the world. During the next twenty years he may have undergone many
changes of intellectual view, as most of us do, as Miss Martineau notably
did, and Miss Martineau and her laughing friends were diabolically
uncharitable. That lack of charity followed Borrow throughout his life.
He was libelled by many, by Miss Frances Power Cobbe most of all.
However, the great city of Norwich will make up for it in the future, and
she will love Borrow as Borrow indisputably loved her. How he praised
her fine cathedral, her lordly castle, her Mousehold Heath, her meadows
in which he once saw a prize fight, her pleasant scenery--no city, not
even glorious Oxford, has been so well and adequately praised, and I
desire to show that that praise is not for an age but for all time.
If George Borrow has not been happy in his biographer, and if, as is
true, he has received but inadequate treatment on this account--such
series of little books as _The English Men of Letters_ and the _Great
Writers_ quite ignoring him--he has been equally unfortunate in his
critics. There are hardly any good and distinctive appreciations in
print of Borrow's works. While other great names in the great literature
of the Victorian Period have been praised by a hundred pens, there has
scarcely been any notable and worthy praise of Borrow, and if I were in
an audience that was at all sceptical as to Borrow's supreme merits,
which happily I am not; if I were among those who declared that they
could see but small merit in Borrow themselves, but were prepared to
accept him if only I could bring good authority that he was a very great
writer, I should be hardly put to to comply with the demand. I can only
name Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton and Mr. Augustine Birrell as critics of
considerable status who have praised Borrow well. "The delightful, the
bewitching, the never sufficiently-to-be-praised George Borrow," says Mr.
Birrell in one of the essays he has written on the subject; {84} while
Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, has written no less than four papers on one
whom he knew and admires personally, and of whom he insists that "his
idealizing powers, his romantic cast of mind, his force, his originality,
give him a title to a permanent place high in the ranks of English prose
writers."
All this is very interesting, but in literature as in life we have got to
work out our own destinies. We have not got to accept Borrow because
this or that critic tells us he is good. I have therefore no quarrel
with any one present who does not share my view that Borrow was one of
the greater glories of English literature. I only desire to state my
case for him.
To be a lover of Borrow, a Borrovian, in fact, it is not necessary to
know all his books. You may never have seen copies of the _Romantic
Ballads_ or of _Faustus_, of _Targum_ or of _The Turkish Jester_, of
Borrow's translation of _The Talisman_ of Pushkin. Your state may be
none the less gracious. To possess these books is largely a collector's
hobby. They are interesting, but they would not have made for the author
an undying reputation. Further, you may not care for _The Bible in
Spain_, you may be untouched by the _Gypsies in Spain_ and _Wild Wales_,
and even then I will not deny to you the title of a good Borrovian, if
only you pronounce _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ to be among the
greatest books you know. I can admire the _Gypsies in Spain_ and _Wild
Wales_. I can read _The Bible in Spain_ with something of the enthusiasm
with which our fathers read it. It is a stirring narrative of travel and
much more. Robert Louis Stevenson did, indeed, rank it among his "dear
acquaintances" in bookland, "the _Pilgrim's Progress_ in the first rank,
_The Bible in Spain_ not far behind," he says. All the same, it has not,
none of these three books has, the distinctive mark of first class genius
that belongs to the other two in the five-volumed edition of Borrow's
Collected Works that many of us have read through more than once. Not
all clever people have thought _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_ to be thus
great. A critic in the _Athenaeum_ declared _Lavengro_ when it was
published in 1851 to be "balderdash," while a critic writing just fifty
years afterwards and writing from Norfolk, alas! insisted that the author
of this book "was absolutely wanting in the power of invention" that he
(Borrow) could "only have drawn upon his memory," that he had "no sense
of humour." If all this were true, if half of it were true, Borrow was
not the great man, the great writer that I take him to be. But it is not
true. _Lavengro_ with its continuation _The Romany Rye_, is a great work
of imagination, of invention; it is in no sense a photograph, a memory
picture, and it abounds in humour as it abounds in many other great
characteristics. What makes an author supremely great? Surely a certain
quality which we call genius, as distinct from the mere intellectual
power of some less brilliant writer:--
True genius is the ray that flings
A novel light o'er common things
and here it is that Borrow shines supreme. He has invested with quite
novel light a hundred commonplace aspects of life. Not an inventor! not
imaginative! Why, one of the indictments against him is that
philologists decry his philology and gyptologists his gypsy learning. If,
then, his philology and his gypsy lore were imperfect, as I believe they
were, how much the greater an imaginative writer he was. To say that
_Lavengro_ merely indicates keen observation is absurd. Not the keenest
observation will crowd so many adventures, adventures as fresh and as
novel as those of Gil Blas or Robinson Crusoe, into a few months'
experience. "I felt some desire," says Lavengro, "to meet with one of
those adventures which upon the roads of England are generally as
plentiful as blackberries in autumn." I think that most of us will
wander along the roads of England for a very long time before we meet an
Isopel Berners, before we have such an adventure as that of the
blacksmith and his horse, or of the apple woman whose favourite reading
was _Moll Flanders_. These and a hundred other adventures, the fight
with the Flaming Tinman, the poisoning of Lavengro by the gypsy woman,
the discourse with Ursula under the hedge, when once read are fixed upon
the memory for ever. And yet you may turn to them again and again, and
with ever increasing zest. The story of Isopel Berners is a piece of
imaginative writing that certainly has no superior in the literature of
the last century. It was assuredly no photographic experience. Isopel
Berners is herself a creation ranking among the fine creations of
womanhood of the finest writers. I doubt not but that it was inspired by
some actual memory of Borrow--the memory of some early love affair in
which the distractions of his mania for word-learning--the Armenian and
other languages--led him to pass by some opportunity of his life, losing
the substance for the shadow. But whether there were ever a real Isopel
we shall never know. We do know that Borrow has presented his fictitious
one with infinite poetry and fine imaginative power. We do know,
moreover, that it is not right to describe Isopel Berners as a marvellous
episode in a narrative of other texture. _Lavengro_ is full of
marvellous episodes. Some one has ventured to comment upon Borrow's
style--to imply that it is not always on a high plane. What does that
matter? Style is not the quality that makes a book live, but the novelty
of the ideas. Stevenson was a splendid stylist, and his admirers have
deluded themselves into believing that he was, therefore, among the
immortals. But Stevenson had nothing new to tell the world, and he was
not, he is not, therefore of the immortals. Borrow is of the immortals,
not by virtue of a style, but by virtue of having something new to say.
He is with Dickens and with Carlyle as one of the three great British
prose writers of the age we call Victorian, who in quite different ways
have presented a new note for their own time and for long after. It is
the distinction of Borrow that he has invested the common life of the
road, of the highway, the path through the meadow, the gypsy encampment,
the country fair, the very apple stall and wayside inn with an air of
romance that can never leave those of us who have once come under the
magnificent spell of _Lavengro_ and the _Romany Rye_. Perhaps Borrow is
pre-eminently the writer for those who sit in armchairs and dream of
adventures they will never undertake. Perhaps he will never be the
favourite author of the really adventurous spirit, who wants the real
thing, the latest book of actual travel. But to be the favourite author
of those who sit in arm-chairs is no small thing, and, as I have said
already, Borrow stands with Carlyle and Dickens in _our_ century, by
which I mean the nineteenth century; with Defoe and Goldsmith in the
eighteenth century, as one of the really great and imperishable masters
of our tongue.
What then will Norwich do for George Borrow? I ask this question,
although it would, perhaps, be an impertinence to ask it were I not a
Norwich man. If you have read Dr. Knapp's _Life of Borrow_, you will
have seen more than one reference to Mrs. Borrow's landlord, "old King,"
"Tom King the carpenter," and so on, who owned the house in Willow Lane
in which Borrow spent his boyhood. That 'old King the carpenter'--I
believe he called himself a builder, but perhaps this was when he grew
more prosperous--was my great-great-uncle. One of his sons became
physician to Prince Talleyrand and married a sister of John Stuart Mill.
One of his great-nieces was my grandmother, and her mother's family, the
Parkers, had lived in Norwich for many generations. So on the strength
of this little piece of genealogy let me claim, not only to be a good
Borrovian, but also a good Norvicensian. Grant me then a right to plead
for a practical recognition of Borrow in the city that he loved most,
although he sometimes scolded it as it often scolded him. I should like
to see a statue, or some similar memorial. If you pass through the
cities of the Continent--French, German, or Belgian--you will find in
well-nigh every town a memorial to this or that worthy connected with its
literary or artistic fame. How many memorials has Norwich to the people
connected with its literary or artistic fame? Nay, I am not rash and
impetuous. I would beg any one of my hearers who thinks that Borrow
might well have a memorial in marble or bronze in your city to wait a
while. You are busy with a statue to Sir Thomas Browne--a most
commendable scheme. To attempt to raise one to Borrow at this moment
would probably be to court disaster. Nor do I advocate a memorial by
private subscription. Observation has shown me what that means: failure
or half failure in nearly every case. The memorial when it comes must be
initiated by the City Fathers in council assembled. That time is perhaps
far distant. But let us all do everything we can to make secure the high
and honourable achievement of George Borrow, to kindle an interest in him
and his writings, to extend a taste for the undoubted beauties of his
works among all classes of his fellow-citizens--that is to secure Borrow
the best of all monuments. More durable than brass will be the memorial
that is contained in the assurance that he possesses the reverence and
the homage of all true Norfolk hearts.
IV. TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF GEORGE CRABBE
An Address delivered at the Crabbe Celebration at Aldeburgh in Suffolk on
the 16th of September, 1905.
I have been asked to say something in praise of George Crabbe. The task
would be an easier one were it not for the presence of the distinguished
critic from the University of Nancy who is with us to-day. M. Huchon
{97} has devoted to the subject a singleminded zeal to which one whose
profession is primarily that of a journalist can make no claim. Moreover
it has been well said that _the judgment of foreigners is the judgment of
posterity_, and I fully believe that where a writer has secured the
suffrages of men of another nation than his own, he has done more for his
ultimate fame than the passing and fickle favour of his countrymen can
secure for him. In any case Crabbe has been praised more eloquently than
almost any other modern, and this in spite of the fact that he was not
read by the generation succeeding his death, nor is he read much in our
own time.
If you want to read Crabbe to-day in his entirety, you must become
possessed of a huge and clumsy volume of sombre appearance, small type
and repellant double columns. For fully seventy years it has not paid a
publisher to reprint Crabbe's poems properly. {98} When this was
achieved in 1834, the edition in eight volumes was comparatively a
failure, and the promised two volumes of essays and sermons were not
forthcoming in consequence. Selections from Crabbe have been many, but
when all is said he has been the least read for the past sixty or seventy
years of all the authors who have claims to be considered classics. The
least read but perhaps the best praised--that is one point of certainty.
The praise began with the politicians--with the two greatest political
leaders of their age. The eloquent and noble Edmund Burke, the great-
hearted Charles James Fox. Burke "made" George Crabbe as no poet was
ever made before or since. To me there is no picture in all literature
more unflaggingly interesting than that of the great man, whose life was
so full of affairs, taking the poor young stranger by the hand, reading
through his abundant manuscripts, and therefrom selecting--as the poet
was quite unable to select--_The Library_ and _The Village_ as the most
suitable for publication, helping him to a publisher, introducing him to
friends, and proving himself quite untiring on his behalf. There is a
letter of Burke's printed in a little known book--_The Correspondence of
Sir Thomas Hanmer_, Speaker of the House of Commons--in which Burke takes
the trouble to defend Crabbe's moral character and to press his claims
for being admitted to holy orders. "Dudley North tells me," he
continues, "that he has the best character possible among those with whom
he has always lived, that he is now working hard to qualify, and has not
only Latin, but some smattering of Greek." It had its gracious
amenities, that eighteenth century, for I do not believe that there is a
man in the ranks of the present Government, or of the present Opposition,
who would take all this trouble for a poor unknown who had appealed to
him merely by two or three long letters recounting his career. Nay,
Cabinet Ministers are less punctilious than formerly, and the newest
type, I understand, leaves letters unanswered. I can imagine the
attitude of one of our modern statesmen in the face of two quite bulky
packages of many sheets from a young author. He would request his
secretary to see what they were all about, and then would follow the curt
answer--"I am directed by Dash to say that he cannot comply with your
request." Burke not only wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons,
but enclosed Crabbe's letter to him, a quite wonderful piece of
autobiography. {100} All Crabbe's admirers should read that letter.
Crabbe apologizes for writing again, and refers to "these repeated
attacks on your patience." "My father," he said, "had a place in the
Custom House at Aldeburgh. He had a large family, a little income and no
economy," and then the story of his life up to that time is told to Burke
in fullest detail.
Again, there is that other statesman-admirer of Crabbe, Charles James
Fox. Fox gave to Crabbe's work an admiration which never faltered, and
on his death-bed requested that the pathetic story of Phoebe Dawson in
_The Parish Register_ should be read to him--it was, we are told, "the
last piece of poetry that soothed his dying ear."
In Lord Holland's _Memoirs of the Whig Party_ there is a statement by his
nephew which no biographer so far has quoted:--
I read over to him the whole of Crabbe's _Parish Register_ in
manuscript. Some parts he made me read twice; he remarked several
passages as exquisitely beautiful, and objected to some few which I
mentioned to the author and which he, in almost every instance,
altered before publication. Mr. Fox repeated once or twice that it
was a very pretty poem, that Crabbe's condition in the world had
improved since he wrote _The Village_, and his view of life, likewise
_The Parish Register_, bore marks of considerably more indulgence to
our species; though not so many as he could have wished, especially as
the few touches of that nature were beautiful in the extreme. He was
particularly struck with the description of the substantial happiness
of a farmer's wife.