Transcribed from the 1901 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
LAVENGRO
The Scholar--The Gypsy--The Priest
_By_
GEORGE BORROW
_WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION_
BY F. HINDES GROOME
VOLUME I
_WITH A PORTRAIT FROM A PAINTING_
BY H. W. PHILLIPS
LONDON
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
MDCCCCI
{Portrait of George Borrow, painted by H. W. Phillips, engraved by W.
Hall: p0.jpg}
INTRODUCTION
There have been many Romany Ryes, or "Gypsy Gentlemen," as Gypsies
designate those who, though not of their race, yet have loved that race,
and have mastered the Romany tongue. The first is one of the
oddest--Andrew Boorde (_c._ 1490-1549). Carthusian, traveller,
physician, and, perhaps, the original Merry Andrew, he got into trouble
over certain delinquencies, and died a prisoner in the Fleet gaol. In
1542 he was writing his _Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge_,
and had come to "the xxxviii. chapiter," which "treateth of Egypt, and of
theyr money and of theyr speche." He started bravely:--
"Egipt is a countrey ioyned to Jury,
The countrey is plentyfull of wine, corne and hony.
"There be many great wyldernes, in the which be many great wylde
beastes. In ye which wildernis liuid many holy fathers, as it
apperith in vitas patrum. The people--"
But here, I fancy, he suddenly broke off; what did he know of the
Egyptian people? Greece was the nearest he had ever been to Egypt.
Going, however, for a stroll through his native county of Sussex, he
presently lights on a band of "right Egyptians," belike in front of an
alehouse. Egyptians! the very thing! Like any newspaper correspondent
of to-day, he must straightway have whipped out his notebook, and jotted
down the rest of his chapter:--
"The people of the country be swarte, and doth go disgisid in theyr
apparel, contrary to other nacions. They be lyght fyngerd and vse
pyking, they have litle maner and euyl loggyng, and yet they be
pleasant daunsers. Ther be few or none of the Egypcions yt doth dwel
in Egipt, for Egipt is repleted now with infydel alyons. Ther mony is
brasse and golde. Yf there be any man yt wyl learne parte of theyr
speche, Englyshe and Egipt speche foloweth."
And there duly follows a neat little Ollendorfian dialogue about meat and
bread, wine and beer, and such-like, in which Dr. Furnivall, Boorde's
editor, left it for Professor Zupitza to recognise excellent Romany. "Sit
you downe and dryncke," "Drinke, drynke for God's sake," are two of the
phrases. The interview was probably prolonged, perhaps renewed; Andrew
Boorde would find good fellowship with Gypsies.
No. 2 is _the_ Scholar-Gypsy, of whom, alas! we know all too little,
neither name nor dates, but only just what Joseph Glanvill tells in his
_Vanity of Dogmatizing_ (1661):--
"There was very lately a Lad in the _University_ of _Oxford_, who
being of very pregnant and ready parts, and yet wanting the
encouragement of preferment, was by his poverty forc'd to leave his
studies there, and to cast himself upon the wide world for a
livelyhood. Now, his necessities growing dayly on him and wanting the
help of friends to relieve him, he was at last forced to joyn himself
to a company of _Vagabond Gypsies_, whom occasionly he met with, and
to follow their Trade for a maintenance. Among these extravagant
people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so
much of their love and esteem, as that they discover'd to him their
_Mystery_: in the practice of which, by the pregnancy of his wit and
parts, he soon grew so good and proficient as to be able to out-do his
Instructours. After he had been a pretty while well exercis'd in the
Trade, there chanc'd to ride by a couple of _Scholars_ who had
formerly bin of his acquaintance. The _Scholars_ had quickly spyed
out their old friend among the _Gypsies_, and their amazement to see
him among such society had well-nigh discover'd him: but by a sign he
prevented their owning him before that Crew: and taking one of them
aside privately, desired him with his friend to go to an _Inn_, not
far distant thence, promising there to come to them. They accordingly
went thither, and he follows: after their first salutations, his
friends enquire how he came to lead so odd a life as that was, and to
joyn himself with such a _cheating beggerly_ company. The _Scholar-
Gypsy_ having given them an account of the necessity which drove him
to that kind of life, told them that the people he went with were not
such _Impostouirs_ as they were taken for, but that they had a
_traditional_ kind of _learning_ among them, and could do wonders by
the power of _Imagination_, and that himself had learnt much of their
Art, and improved it further then themselves could. And to evince the
truth of what he told them, he said, he'd remove into another room,
leaving them to discourse together, and upon his return tell them the
sum of what they had talked of: which accordingly he perform'd, giving
them a full account of what had passed between them in his absence.
The _Scholars_ being amaz'd at so unexpected a discovery, earnestly
desir'd him to unriddle the _mystery_. In which he gave them
satisfaction, by telling them, that what he did was by the power of
_Imagination_, his Phancy _binding_ theirs, and that himself had
dictated to them the discourse they held together, while he was from
them: That there were warrantable wayes of heightening the
_Imagination_ to that pitch as to bind anothers, and that when he had
compass'd the whole _secret_, some parts of which he said he was yet
ignorant of, he intended to leave their company, and give the world an
account of what he had learned."
The third of our Romany Ryes is a Scottish peer and a Jacobite, George
Seton, fifth Earl of Wintoun (1679-1749). He as a young man quarrelled
with his father, and, taking up with a band of Gypsies who frequented the
Seton property, set off with them on their wanderings over Scotland,
England, and the Continent. He seems to have been away from June 1700
until November 1707: and when, by his father's death in 1704, he
succeeded to the earldom, "no man knew where to find him, till accident
led to the discovery." The Rev. Robert Patten, the Judas and the
historian of the '15, records how, on the rebels' march from Kelso to
Preston, Lord Wintoun would tell "many pleasant Stories of his Travels
and his living unknown and obscurely with a Blacksmith in France, whom he
served some years as a Bellows-blower and Under-Servant. He was," Patten
adds, "very curious in working in several Handicraft Matters, and had
made good Proficiency in them, witness the nice way he had found to cut
asunder one of the Iron Bars in his Window in the Tower, by some small
Instrument, scarce perceivable." It was on 4th August 1716 that Lord
Wintoun made his escape, but, like everything else in his life, it is
wrapped in obscurity. For, according to the Diary of Mary Countess
Cowper for 19th March 1716, the last day of his trial, "My Lord _Winton_
had sawed an iron Bar with the Spring of his Watch very near in two, in
order to make his Escape; but it was found out." So, possibly, there is
something in the story told by the author of _Rab and his Friends_, that
he was carried out of the Tower in a hamper, supposed to be full of
family charters, by John Gunn, "the head of a band of roving gipsies."
Anyhow, ever afterwards he lived at Rome, where in 1737 he was great
master of the Lodge of Freemasonry. He died unmarried, though Lady
Cowper alleges "he has eight Wives."
Charles Bosvile, the scion of a good old Yorkshire house, is another who
must have known much about the Gypsies. He was buried at Rossington,
near Doncaster, on 30th January 1709; and more than a hundred years later
the Gypsies would visit the churchyard, and pour out a flagon of ale on
his grave by the chancel door. Joseph Hunter, the historian of South
Yorkshire, tells how he had
"established a species of sovereignty among that singular people, the
Gypsies, who before the enclosures frequented the moors round
Rossington. His word with them was law, and his authority so great
that he perfectly restrained the pilfering propensities for which the
tribe is censured, and gained the entire good-will for himself and his
subjects of the farmers and people around. He was a gentleman with an
estate of about 200_l._ a year; and his contemporary, Abraham de la
Pryme of Hatfield, describes him as 'a mad spark, mighty fine and
brisk, keeping company with a great many gentlemen, knights, and
esquires, yet running about the country.'"
Bamfylde Moore Carew (1693-? 1770), the son of the rector of Bickleigh,
near Tiverton, is semi-mythical, though we know that a man of that name
did really marry at Stoke Damerel, near Plymouth, one Mary Gray on 29th
December 1733. Gray is an old Gypsy surname, but the Gypsies of his
_Life and Adventures_ are just as unreal as those of any melodrama or
penny dreadful.
The poet-physician, John Armstrong (_c._ 1709-78), was at college at
Edinburgh with Mr. Lawrie, who in 1767 was minister of Hawick; and "one
year, during the vacation, they joined a band of gipsies, who in those
days much infested the Borders." So says "Jupiter" Carlyle in his
Autobiography; and he adds that "this expedition, which really took
place, as Armstrong informed me in London, furnished Lawrie with a fine
field for fiction and rhodomontade, so closely united to the groundwork,
which might be true, that it was impossible to discompound them."
The fourth Lord Coleraine, better known as Colonel George Hanger (_c._
1751-1824), was a wild, harum-scarum Irishman. According to the Hon.
Grantley Berkeley's _My Life and Recollections_, "in one of his early
rambles he joined a gang of gipsies, fell in love with one of their dark-
eyed beauties, and married her according to the rites of the tribe. He
had entered the footguards in 1771, and used to introduce his brother-
officers to his dusky bride, boasting his confidence in her fidelity. His
married life went on pleasantly for about a fortnight, at the end of
which his confidence and his bliss were destroyed together, on
ascertaining to his intense disgust that his gipsy inamorata had eloped
with a bandy-legged tinker."
Very unlike the Colonel was the mythologist, Jacob Bryant (1715-1804). We
know the little man, with his thirteen spaniels, through Madame
D'Arblay's Diaries; she often visited Cypenham, his house near Windsor.
It must have been in his garden here that he collected his materials for
the paper "On the Zingara or Gypsey Language," which he read to the Royal
Society in 1785. For "_covascorook_, laurel," is intelligible only by
supposing him to have pointed to a laurel, and asked, "What is this?" and
by the Gypsy's answering in words that mean "This is a tree." There are
a number of similar slips in the vocabulary, as _sauvee_, an eagle
(rightly, a needle), _porcherie_, brass (a halfpenny, a copper),
_plastomingree_, couch (coach), and _baurobevalacochenos_, storm. This
last word posed the etymological skill of even Prof. Pott in his great
work on _Die Zigeuner_, but he hazards the conjecture that _cochenos_ may
be akin to the Greek [Greek text]; really the whole may be dismembered
into _bauro_, great, _baval_, wind, and the English "a-catching us."
Still, Bryant's is not at all a bad vocabulary.
Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1803-73), tells in a fragment of
autobiography how at twenty-one he met a pretty Gypsy girl at sunset, was
guided by her to the tents, and "spent with these swarthy wanderers five
or six very happy days." He committed his money, fourteen pounds in all,
to the care of the Gypsy grandmother, the queen of the camp, who "was
faithful to the customs of the primitive gipsies, and would eat nothing
in the shape of animal food that had not died a natural death"! Mimy,
the Gypsy girl, and he make passionate love, till at last she proposes
"marriage for five years by breaking a piece of burnt earth." But the
stars and the Gypsy brethren forbid the banns, so they part eternally. It
is all the silliest moonshine, the most impossible Gypsies: no, Bulwer
Lytton deserves no place among the real Romany Ryes.
Of these a whole host remain. Francis Irvine, a lieutenant in the Bengal
Native Infantry, on the outward-bound voyage (1805) to India on board the
_Preston_ East Indiaman, took down a vocabulary of one hundred and thirty
Romany words from John Lee, a Gypsy recruit for the Company's European
force. No other case is known to me of a Gypsy revisiting the land of
his forefathers. John Hoyland (1750-1831), a Yorkshire Quaker, in 1814
began to study "the very destitute and abject condition" of the Midland
Gypsies, and wrote _A Historical Survey of the Customs_, _Habits_, _and
Present State of the Gypsies_ (York, 1816). He is said to "have fallen
in love with a black-eyed gipsy girl," but it does not appear that he
married her. Which is a pity; a Gypsy Quakeress would be a charming
fancy. That poor thing, John Clare, the Peasant-Poet (1793-1864), is
said to have "joined some gipsies for a time" before 1817; and Richard
Bright, M.D. (1789-1858), famous as the investigator of "Bright's
disease," must have known much of Gypsies both abroad and at home, to be
able to write his _Travels through Lower Hungary_ (1818). James Crabb
(1774-1851), Wesleyan minister at Southampton, and Samuel Roberts (1763-
1848), Sheffield manufacturer, both wrote books on the Gypsies, but were
Gypsy philanthropists rather than Romany Ryes. Still, Roberts had a very
fair knowledge of the language, and at seventy-seven "longed to be a
gypsy, and enter a house no more." Colonel John Staples Harriot during
his "residence in North Hampshire in the years 1819-20 was led to pay
considerable attention to a race of vagrant men, roaming about the high-
roads and lanes in the vicinity of Whitchurch, Waltham, and Overton"; in
December 1829 he read before the Royal Asiatic Society an excellent
Romany vocabulary of over four hundred words.
These were Borrow's chief predecessors, but the list could be largely
extended by making it include such names as those of Sir John Popham
(1531-1607), Lord Chief-Justice of England; Sir William Sinclair, Lord
Justice-General of Scotland from 1559; Mr. William Sympsoune, a great
Scottish doctor of medicine towards the close of the sixteenth century;
the Countess of Cassillis (1643), who did _not_ elope with Johnnie Faa;
Richard Head (_c._ 1637-86), the author of _The English Rogue_; William
Marsden (1754-1836), the Orientalist; John Wilson ("Christopher North,"
1785-1854); the Rev. John Baird, minister of Yetholm 1829-61; G. P. R.
James (1801-60), the novelist; and Sam Bough (1822-78), the landscape-
painter. And after Borrow come many; the following are but a few of
them:--John Phillip, R.A., Tom Taylor, the Rev. T. W. Norwood, George S.
Phillips ("January Searle"), Charles Kingsley, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu,
Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), Prof. Edward Henry Palmer,
Sir Richard Burton, Bath C. Smart, M.D., of Manchester, Mr. H. T.
Crofton, Major Whyte-Melville, Mr. Joseph Lucas, the Rev. R. N.
Sanderson, Dr. D. Fearon Ranking, Mr. David MacRitchie, Mr. G. R. Sims,
Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, "F. W. Carew, M.D," and
Mr. John Sampson.
Thus, leaving aside all the foreign Romany Ryes, from the great engraver
Jacques Callot to the present Polish novelist Sienkiewicz, we see that
Borrow was not quite so _sui generis_ as he claimed for himself, and as
others have often claimed for him. The meagreness of his knowledge of
the Anglo-Gypsy dialect came out in his _Word-Book of the Romany_ (1874);
there must have been over a dozen Englishmen who have known it far better
than he. For his Spanish-Gypsy vocabulary in _The Zincali_ he certainly
drew largely either on Richard Bright's _Travels through Lower Hungary_
or on Bright's Spanish authority, whatever that may have been. His
knowledge of the strange history of the Gypsies was very elementary, of
their manners almost more so, and of their folk-lore practically _nil_.
And yet I would put George Borrow above every other writer on the
Gypsies. In _Lavengro_ and, to a less degree, in its sequel, _The Romany
Rye_, he communicates a subtle insight into Gypsydom that is totally
wanting in the works--mainly philological--of Pott, Liebich, Paspati,
Miklosich, and their confreres. Take his first meeting with Gypsies in
the green lane near Norman Cross. There are flaws in it: he never would
have spoken of the Gypsy beldame as "my mother there," nor could he
possibly have guessed that the Romany _sap_ means "snake." Yet compare
it with Maggie Tulliver's Gypsy adventure in _The Mill on the Floss_: how
vivid and vigorous the one, how tame and commonplace the other. I am not
going to dilate on the beauties of _Lavengro_; they seem to me
sufficiently self-evident. But there is one point about the book that
deserves some considering, its credibility as autobiography. Professor
Knapp, Borrow's biographer, seems to place implicit confidence in
_Lavengro_; I find myself unable to agree with him. Borrow may really
have written the story of _Joseph Sell_ for a collection of Christmas
tales; he may really have camped for some weeks as a tinker near
Willenhall; "Belle Berners" may really have had some prototype; and he
may really have bought the splendid horse of the Willenhall
tavern-keeper, and sold it afterwards at Horncastle. But is the "Man in
Black," then, also a reality, and the "Reverend Mr. Platitude," who
thanks God that he has left all his Church of England prejudices in
Italy? in other words, did Tractarianism exist in 1825, eight years
before it was engendered by Keble's sermon? David Haggart, again, the
Scottish Jack Sheppard,--Borrow describes him as "a lad of some fifteen
years," with "prodigious breadth of chest," and as defeating in single
combat a full-grown baker's apprentice. Borrow well may have seen him,
for in July 1813 he really enlisted as a drummer in Borrow's father's
regiment, newly quartered in Edinburgh Castle; but he was not fifteen
then, only twelve years old. And the Jew pedlar scene in the first
chapter, and the old apple-woman's son in the sixty-second!
One might take equal exception to Borrow's pretended visits to Iceland,
Moultan, and Kiachta (he was never within three thousand miles of
Kiachta); to his translation of St. Luke's Gospel into Basque, of which
he had only the merest smattering; and to his statement to a Cornish
clergyman in 1854 that his "horrors" were due to the effects of Mrs.
Herne's poison--he had suffered from them seven years before his Gypsy
wanderings. But the strongest proof of his lax adherence to fact is
adduced by Professor Knapp himself. In chapter xvi. of _Lavengro_,
Borrow relates how in 1818, at Tombland Fair, Norwich, he doffed his hat
to the great trotting stallion, Marshland Shales, "drew a deep _ah_! and
repeated the words of the old fellows around, 'Such a horse as this we
shall never see again; a pity that he is so old.'" Yes, but as Professor
Knapp has found out, with his infinite painstaking, Marshland Shales
(1802-35) was not thus paraded until 12th April 1827.
_Lavengro_ {0a} was written in 1843-50, years after the events recorded
there. Several of its petty slips are probably due to sheer
forgetfulness; _e.g._, as to the four "airts" of Edinburgh Castle, and
the "lofty" town-walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed. And the rest, I imagine,
were due partly to love of posing, but much more to an honest desire to
produce an amusing and interesting book. Borrow was not writing a set
autobiography, and it seems rather hard to imagine that he was, and then
to come down on this or that inaccuracy. He did pose, though, all his
life long, and in every one of his writings. He posed to poor old Esther
Faa Blythe, the "queen" of the Yetholm Tinklers, when, on entering her
little cottage, he "flung his arms up three times into the air, and in an
exceedingly disagreeable voice exclaimed, '_Sossi your nav_?' etc."
(_Word-Book_, p. 314). He posed shamefully to Lieut.-Col. Elers Napier
(Knapp, i. 308-312); and he posed even to me, a mere lad, when I saw him
thrice in 1872-73, at Ascot, at his house in Hereford Square, and at the
Notting-hill Potteries (_Bookman_, Feb. 1893, pp. 147-48). Yet, what
books he has given us, the very best of them _Lavengro_; its fight with
the Flaming Tinman is the finest fight in all the world's literature.
_Lavengro_, nevertheless, met with a very sorry reception. It was not
genteel enough for the readers of Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton; and it is
only since Borrow's death, on 26th July 1881, that it has won its due
place of pre-eminence. "No man's writing," says Mr. Watts-Dunton, "can
take you into the country as Borrow's can; it makes you feel the
sunshine, smell the flowers, hear the lark sing and the grasshopper
chirp." They who would know Borrow thoroughly should pass from his own
works to Mr. Watts-Dunton's "Reminiscences of George Borrow" (_Athenaeum_,
Sept. 3, 10, 1881), to his "Notes upon George Borrow" (_Lavengro_, Ward,
Lock, Bowden, & Co., 1893), to Mr. William A. Dutt's _George Borrow in
East Anglia_ (1896), to Unpublished Letters of George Borrow, first
printed in the _Bible Society Reporter_ from July 1899 onwards, and above
all, to Professor William I. Knapp's _Life_, _Writings_, _and
Correspondence of George Borrow_ (2 vols. 1899).
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. {1a}
My father was a Cornish man, the youngest, as I have heard him say, of
seven brothers. {1b} 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, {1c} 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 {2} 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 ---, {4a} 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 headquarters of this corps were at D---, {4b} 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. {4c}
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 grey head and sunburnt face. My dearest Son! My
darling Mother!
Yes, mother, thou didst recognise 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. {7} 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 bye, 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 moraliser; 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.