Transcribed from the 1900 Macmillian and Co. Edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
LAVENGRO
THE SCHOLAR, THE GYPSY, THE PRIEST
BY
GEORGE BORROW
ILLUSTRATED BY E. J. SULLIVAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AUGUSTINE
BIRRELL, Q.C., M.P.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1900
_All rights reserved_
_First published in_ "_Macmillan's Illustrated Standard Novel_," 1896
_Reprinted_ 1900
{picture:George Borrow: page0.jpg}
INTRODUCTION
The author of _Lavengro_, _the Scholar_, _the Gypsy_, _and the Priest_
has after his fitful hour come into his own, and there abides securely.
Borrow's books,--carelessly written, impatient, petulant, in parts
repellant,--have been found so full of the elixir of life, of the charm
of existence, of the glory of motion, so instinct with character, and
mood, and wayward fancy, that their very names are sounds of enchantment,
whilst the fleeting scenes they depict and the deeds they describe have
become the properties and the pastimes for all the years that are still
to be of a considerable fraction of the English-speaking race.
And yet I suppose it would be considered ridiculous in these fine days to
call Borrow a great artist. His fascination, his hold upon his reader,
is not the fascination or the hold of the lords of human smiles and
tears. They enthrall us; Borrow only bewitches. Isopel Berners, hastily
limned though she be, need fear comparison with no damsel that ever lent
sweetness to the stage, relish to rhyme, or life to novel. She can hold
up her head and take her own part amidst all the Rosalinds, Beatrices,
and Lucys that genius has created and memory can muster. But how she
came into existence puzzles us not a little. Was she summoned out of
nothingness by the creative fancy of Lavengro, or did he really first set
eyes upon her in the dingle whither she came with the Flaming Tinman,
whose look Lavengro did not like at all? Reality and romance, though
Borrow made them wear double harness, are not meant to be driven
together. It is hard to weep aright over Isopel Berners. The reader is
tortured by a sense of duty towards her. This distraction prevents our
giving ourselves away to Borrow. Perhaps after all he did meet the tall
girl in the dingle, in which case he was a fool for all his pains, losing
a gift the gods could not restore.
Quite apart from this particular doubt, the reader of Borrow feels that
good luck, happy chance, plays a larger part in the charm of the
composition than is quite befitting were Borrow to be reckoned an artist.
But nobody surely will quarrel with this ingredient. It can turn no
stomach. Happy are the lucky writers! Write as they will, they are
almost certain to please. There is such a thing as 'sweet
unreasonableness.'
But no sooner is this said than the necessity for instant and substantial
qualification becomes urgent, for though Borrow's personal vanity would
have been wounded had he been ranked with the literary gentlemen who do
business in words, his anger would have been justly aroused had he been
told he did not know how to write. He did know how to write, and he
acquired the art in the usual way, by taking pains. He might with
advantage have taken more pains, and then he would have done better; but
take pains he did. In all his books he aims at producing a certain
impression on the minds of his readers, and in order to produce that
impression he was content to make sacrifices; hence his whimsicality, his
out-of-the-wayness, at once his charm and his snare, never grows into
wantonness and seldom into gross improbability. He studied effects, as
his frequent and impressive liturgical repetitions pleasingly
demonstrate. He had theories about most things, and may, for all I know,
have had a theory of cadences. For words he had no great feeling except
as a philologist, and is capable of strange abominations. 'Individual'
pursues one through all his pages, where too are 'equine species,' 'finny
tribe'; but finding them where we do even these vile phrases, and others
nearly as bad, have a certain humour.
This chance remark brings me to the real point. Borrow's charm is that
he has behind his books a character of his own, which belongs to his
books as much as to himself; something which bears you up and along as
does the mystery of the salt sea the swimmer. And this something lives
and stirs in almost every page of Borrow, whose restless, puzzling,
teasing personality pervades and animates the whole.
He is the true adventurer who leads his life, not on the Stock Exchange
amidst the bulls and bears, or in the House of Commons waiting to clutch
the golden keys, or in South Africa with the pioneers and promoters, but
with himself and his own vagrant moods and fancies. There was no need
for Borrow to travel far afield in search of adventures. Mumpers' Dell
was for him as good an environment as Mexico; a village in Spain or
Portugal served his turn as well as both the Indies; he was as likely to
meet adventures in Pall Mall as in the far Soudan. Strange things happen
to him wherever he goes; odd figures step from out the hedgerow and
engage him in wild converse; beggar-women read _Moll Flanders_ on London
Bridge; Armenian merchants cuff deaf and dumb clerks in London counting-
houses; prize-fighters, dog-fanciers, Methodist preachers, Romany ryes
and their rawnees move on and off. Why should not strange things happen
to Lavengro? Why should not strange folk suddenly make their appearance
before him and as suddenly take their departure? Is he not strange
himself? Did he not puzzle Mr. Petulengro, excite the admiration of Mrs.
Petulengro, the murderous hate of Mrs. Herne, and drive Isopel Berners
half distracted?
Nobody has, so far, attempted to write the life of George Borrow. Nor
can we wonder. How could any one dare to follow in the phosphorescent
track of _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_, or add a line or a hue to the
portraits there contained of Borrow's father and mother--the gallant
soldier who had no chance, and whose most famous engagement took place,
not in Flanders, or in Egypt, or on the banks of the Indus or Oxus, but
in Hyde Park, his foe being Big Ben Brain; and the dame of the oval face,
olive complexion, and Grecian forehead, sitting in the dusky parlour in
the solitary house at the end of the retired court shaded by lofty
poplars? I pity 'the individual' whose task it should be to travel along
the enchanted wake either of Lavengro in England or Don Jorge in Spain.
Poor would be his part; no better than that of Arthur in 'The Bothie':--
And it was told, the Piper narrating and Arthur correcting,
Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture,
He to a matter-of-fact still softening, paring, abating,
He to the great might-have-been upsoaring, sublime and ideal,
He to the merest it-was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing,
River to streamlet reducing, and fall to slope subduing:
So it was told, the Piper narrating, corrected of Arthur.
George Borrow, like many another great man, was born in Norfolk, at East
Dereham, in 1803, and at an early age began those rambles he has made
famous, being carried about by his father, Captain Borrow, who was
chiefly employed as a recruiting officer. The reader of _Lavengro_ may
safely be left to make out his own itinerary. Whilst in Edinburgh Borrow
attended the High School, and acquired the Scottish accent. It is not
too much to say that he has managed to make even Edinburgh more romantic
simply by abiding there for a season. From Scotland he went to Ireland,
and learnt to ride, as well as to talk the Irish tongue, and to seek
etymologies wherever they were or were not to be found. But for a famous
Irish cob, whose hoofs still sound in our ears, Borrow, so he says, might
have become a mere philologist. From Ireland he returned with his
parents to Norwich, and resumed studies, which must have been, from a
schoolmaster's point of view, grievously interrupted, under the Rev.
Edward Valpy at King Edward's School. Here he seems to have been for two
or three years. Dr. Jessopp has told us the story of Borrow's dyeing his
face with walnut juice, and Valpy gravely inquiring of him, 'Borrow, are
you suffering from jaundice, or is it only dirt?' The Rajah of Sarawak,
Sir Archdale Wilson, and the Rev. James Martineau were at school with
'Lavengro.' Dr. Jessopp, who in 1859 became headmaster of King Edward's
School, and who has been a Borrovian from the beginning, found the school
tradition to be that Borrow, who never reached the sixth form, was
indolent and even stupid. In 1819,--the reader will be glad of a
date,--Borrow left school, and was articled to a solicitor in Norwich,
and sat for some eight hours every day behind a lofty deal desk copying
deeds and, it may be presumed, making abstracts of title,--a harmless
pursuit which a year or two later entirely failed to engage the attention
of young Mr. Benjamin Disraeli in Montague Place. Neither of these
distinguished men can honestly be said ever to have acquired what is
called the legal mind, a mental equipment which the younger of them had
once the effrontery to define as a talent for explaining the
self-evident, illustrating the obvious and expatiating on the
commonplace. 'By adopting the law,' says Borrow, 'I had not ceased to be
Lavengro.' He learnt Welsh when he should have been reading Blackstone.
He studied German under the direction of the once famous William Taylor
of Norwich, who in 1821 wrote to Southey: 'A Norwich young man is
construing with me Schiller's _William Tell_, with a view of translating
it for the press. His name is George Henry Borrow, and he has learnt
German with extraordinary rapidity. Indeed, he has the gift of tongues,
and though not yet eighteen, understands twelve languages--English,
Welsh, Erse, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese. He would like to get into the office for
Foreign Affairs, but does not know how.'
It only takes five years to make an attorney, and Borrow ought therefore,
had he served out his time, to have become a gentleman by Act of
Parliament in 1824 or 1825. He did not do so, though he appears to have
remained in Norwich until after 1826. In that year appeared his
_Romantic Ballads from the Danish_, printed by Simon Wilkins of Norwich
by subscription. Dr. Jessopp opines that the _Romantic Ballads_ must
have brought their translator 'a very respectable sum after paying all
the expenses of publication.' I hope it was so, but, as Dr. Johnson once
said about the immortality of the soul, I should like more evidence of
it. When Borrow left Norwich for London, it is hard to say. It was
after the death of his father, and was not likely to have been later than
1828. His only introduction appears to have been one from William Taylor
to Sir Richard Phillips, 'the publisher' known to all readers of
_Lavengro_. Sir Richard was one of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex,
and in addition to sundry treatises on the duties of juries, was the
author of two lucubrations, respectively entitled _The Phaenomena called
by the name of Gravitation proved to be Proximate Effects of the
Orbicular and Rotary Motions of the Earth and On the New Theory of the
System of the Universe_. In Watt's _Bibliotheca Britannica_, 1824, Sir
Richard is thus contemptuously referred to: 'This personage is the editor
of _The Monthly Magazine_, in which many of his effusions may be found
with the signature of "Common Sense."' It is not too much to say that
but for Borrow this nefarious man would be utterly forgotten; as it is,
he lives for ever in the pages of _Lavengro_, a hissing and a reproach.
Authors have an ugly trick of getting the better of their publishers in
the long run. After leaving London Borrow began the wanderings described
in _Lavengro_ and _The Romany Rye_. Those concluded, probably in 1829 or
1830, he crossed the British Channel, and like another Goldsmith,
wandered on foot over the Continent of Europe, visiting France, Italy,
Austria, and Russia. Of his adventures in these countries there is
unhappily no record. In St. Petersburg he must have made a long stay,
for there he superintended the translation of the Bible into Mandschu-
Tartar, and published in 1835 his _Targum_; _or Metrical Translations
from Thirty Languages and Dialects_. In 1835 Borrow returned to London,
and being already known to the Bible Society for his biblical labours in
Russia, was offered, and accepted, the task of circulating the Scriptures
in the Spanish Peninsula. As for his labours in this field, which
occupied him so agreeably for four or five years, are they not narrated
in _The Bible in Spain_, a book first published by 'Glorious John Murray'
in three volumes in 1843? This is the book which made Borrow famous,
though his earlier work, _The Zincali_; _or an Account of the Gypsies of
Spain_ (two vols. 1841), had attracted a good deal of notice. But _The
Bible in Spain_ took readers by storm, and no wonder! Sir Robert Peel
named it in the House of Commons; its perusal imparted a new sensation,
the sensation of literature, to many a pious subscriber to the Bible
Society. The book, wherever it went,--and it went where such like books
do not often go,--carried joy and rapture with it. Young people hailed
it tumultuously and cherished it tenderly. There were four editions in
three volumes in the year of publication. What was thought of the book
by the Bible Society I do not know. Perhaps 'he of the countenance of a
lion,' of whom we read in the forty-fifth chapter of _Lavengro_, scarcely
knew what to say about it; but the precise-looking man with the
ill-natured countenance, no doubt, forbade his family to read _The Bible
in Spain_.
In 1840 Borrow married the widow of a naval officer and settled in
Norfolk, where his aged mother was still living. His house was in Oulton
Broad; and here he became a notable, the hero of many stories, and the
friend of man, provided he was neither literary nor genteel. Here also
he finished _Lavengro_ (1851), and wrote _The Romany Rye_ (1857), _Wild
Wales_ (1862), and _Romano Lavo-Lil_: _the Word-Book of the Romany_
(1874). For a time Borrow had a house in London in Hereford Square,
where his wife died in 1869. He died himself at Oulton in August 1881,
leaving behind him, so it is frequently asserted, many manuscript
volumes, including treatises on Celtic poetry, on Welsh and Cornish and
Manx literature, as well as translations from the Norse and Russ and the
jest-books of Turkey. Some, at all events, of these works were
advertised as 'ready for the press' in 1858.
_The Bible in Spain_ was a popular book, and in 1843, the year of its
publication, its author, a man of striking appearance, was much feted and
regarded by the lion-hunters of the period. Borrow did not take kindly
to the den. He was full of inbred suspicions and, perhaps, of
unreasonable demands. He resented the confinement of the dinner-table,
the impalement of the ball-room, the imprisonment of the pew. Like the
lion in Browning's poem, 'The Glove'--
You saw by the flash on his forehead,
By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,
He was leagues in the desert already,
Driving the flocks up the mountain.
He began to write _Lavengro_ in London in 1843. His thoughts went back
to his old friend Petulengro, who pronounced life to be sweet: 'There's
night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother,
all sweet things. There's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very
sweet, brother; who would wish to die?' Yes, or to live cribbed,
cabined, and confined in a London square! No wonder 'Lavengro' felt
cross and uncomfortable. Nor did he take much pleasure in the society of
the other lions of the hour, least of all of such a lion as Sir John
Bowring, M.P. Was not Bowring 'Lavengro' as much as Borrow himself? Had
he not--for there was no end to his impudence--travelled in Spain, and
actually published a pamphlet in the vernacular? Was he not meditating
translations from a score of languages he said he knew? Was he not,
furthermore, an old Radical and Republican turned genteel? Were not his
wife and daughters more than half suspected of being Jacobites, followers
of the Reverend Mr. Platitude, and addicted to 'Charley o'er the
Waterism'? Borrow did not get on with Bowring.
When Borrow shook the dust of London off his feet, and returned into
Norfolk with _Lavengro_ barely begun on his hands, he carried away with
him into his retreat the antipathies and prejudices, the whimsical
dislikes and the half-real, half-sham disappointments and chagrins which
London, that fertile mother of megrims, had bred in him, and dropped them
all into the ink with which he wrote his famous book. Gentility he
forswore. Whatever else Lavengro might turn out, genteel he was not to
be; and sure enough, when Lavengro made his appearance in 1851 genteel he
most certainly was not.
There was not the same public to welcome the Gypsy as had hailed the
Colporteur. The pious phrases which had garnished so plentifully the
earlier book had now almost wholly disappeared. There is no evidence
that Lavengro ever offered Petulengro a Bible. Even the denunciations of
Popery have a dubious sound. What is sometimes called 'the religious
world' were no longer buyers of Borrow. Nor was 'the polite world' much
better pleased. The polite reader was both puzzled and annoyed. First
of all: Was the book true--autobiography or romance? A polite reader
objects to be made a fool of. One De Foe in a couple of centuries is
enough for a polite reader. Then the glorification of ale and of gypsies
and prize-fighters--would it not be better at once to dub the book
vulgar, and so have done with it for ever? An ill-regulated book, a
strange book, a mad book, a book which condemns the world's way. If I
may judge from the reviews, this is how _Lavengro_ struck many, but by no
means all. The book had its passionate admirers, its lovers from the
first. Men, women, and boys took it to their hearts. Happy day when
_Lavengro_ first fell into boyish hands. It brought adventure and the
spirit of adventure to your doorstep. No need painfully to walk to Hull,
and there take shipping with Robinson Crusoe; no need to sail round the
world with Captain Cook, or even to shoot lions in Bechuanaland with that
prince of missionaries, Mr. Robert Moffat; for were there not gypsies on
the common half a mile from one's homestead, and a dingle at the end of
the lane? But the general verdict was, '"Lavengro" has gone too far.'
Borrow was not the man to whistle and let the world go by. His advice to
his country men and women was: 'To be courteous to everybody as Lavengro
was, but always independent like him, and if people meddle with them, to
give them as good as they bring, even as he and Isopel Berners were in
the habit of doing; and it will be as well for him to observe that he by
no means advises women to be too womanly, but, bearing the conduct of
Isopel Berners in mind, to take their own parts, and if anybody strikes
them to strike again.'
This is not the spirit which is patient under reproof. Borrow was not
going to be sentenced by the gentility party. He would fulfil his
dukkeripen. _Lavengro_ having ended abruptly enough, Borrow took .up the
tale where he had left it off; and though he kept his admirers on the
tenter-hooks for six years, did at last in 1857 give to the world _The
Romany Rye_, to which he added an Appendix. Ah! that Appendix! It is
Borrow's Apologia, and therefore must be read. It is interesting and
amusing, and is therefore easily read. But it is a cruel and outrageous
bit of writing all the same, proving, were proof needed, that it is every
whit as easy to be spiteful and envious in dells as in drawing-rooms, and
as vain and egotistical on a Norfolk Broad as in Grosvenor Square. In
this Appendix Borrow defends 'Lavengro,' both the book and the man, at
some length, and with enormous spirit. At gentility in all its
manifestations he runs amuck. The Stuarts have a chapter to themselves.
Jacobites, old and new; Papists, old and new; and, alas! Sir Walter Scott
as the father of 'Charley o'er the Waterism,' all fall by turn under the
lash of Lavengro. The attack on the memory of Sir Walter is brutal. Not
so, we may be sure, did Pearce, and Cribb, and Spring, and Big Ben Brain,
and Broughton, heroes of renown, win name and fame in the brave days of
old. They never struck a man when he was down, or gloated over a rival's
fall. However, it will not do to get angry with George Borrow. One
could never keep it up. Still, the Appendix is a pity.
Next to Borrow's vagabondage, which, though I tremble to say it, has a
decidedly literary flavour, and his delightful _camaraderie_ or
willingness to hob-a-nob with everybody, I rank his eloquence. Great is
plot, though Borrow has but little, and that little mechanical;
delightful is incident, and Borrow is full of incident--e.g. the
poisoning scene in Chapter LXXI., where will you match it, unless it be
the very differently-treated scene of the robbers' cave in _The Heart of
Midlothian_? and glorious, too, is motion, and Borrow never stagnates,
never gathers moss or mould. But great also is eloquence. 'If a book be
eloquent,' says Mr. Stevenson, that most distinguished writer, 'its words
run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers.' Eloquence is
a little unfashionable just now. We are not allowed very much of it in
our romances and travels. What are called 'situations' grow stronger
every day, and language is strong too, but outbursts, apostrophes,
rhapsodies no longer abound. Perhaps they are forbidden by Art. Nobody
is ever eloquent in real life. A man's friends would not put up with it.
But a really eloquent book is a great possession. Plots explode, and
incidents, however varied and delightful, unless lit up by the occasional
lightning-flash of true eloquence, must after a while lose their
freshness. Borrow was not afraid to be eloquent, nor were other writers
of his time. The first Lord Lytton is now a somewhat disparaged author,
nor had Borrow any affection for him, considering him to belong to the
kid-glove school; but Lytton's eloquence, though often playing him shabby
tricks, now dashing his head against the rocks of bathos, now casting him
to sprawl unbecomingly amongst the oozy weeds of sentiment, will keep him
alive for many a long day. As I write, a passage in _The Caxtons_ comes
to my mind, and as it illustrates my meaning, I will take down _The
Caxtons_ and transcribe the passage, and let those laugh who may. I will
likewise christen it 'By the Fireside':--
O young reader, whoever thou art, or reader at least who has been
young, canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles
and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that
hard, stern world, which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out
of the threshold of home, come back to the four quiet walls, wherein
thine elders sit in peace, and seen with a sort of sad amaze how calm
and undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before
thee in the path of passion, the generation of thy parents (not so
many years, perchance, remote from thine own), how immovably far off,
in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth. It has in it
a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks,
that tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded
thee have merged, the occupations that they have found sufficing for
their happiness by the fireside--in the arm-chair and corner
appropriated to each--how strangely they contrast thy own feverish
excitement! And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and
then resettle to their hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened!
Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world
seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And
you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no
more, and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one,
you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your
candle, and creep miserably to your lonely room.
This is not the eloquence of Borrow, though the thought might have been
his; it may not be in that grand style of which we hear so much and read
so little, but--and this is the substance of the matter--it is
interesting, it is moving, and worth pages of choppy dialogue. You read
it, first of all, it may be in your youth, when your heart burnt within
you as you wondered what was going to happen, but you can return to it in
sober age and read it over again with a smile it has taken a lifetime to
manufacture. And then Miss Bronte's books! what rhetoric is there! And
_Eothen_! Why has not _Eothen_ gone the way of all other traces of
Eastern travel? It has humour--delightful humour, no doubt, but it is
its eloquence, that picture of the burning, beating sun following the
traveller by day, which keeps _Eothen_ alive.
Borrow's eloquence is splendid, manly, and desperately courageous. What
an apostrophe is that to old Crome at the end of the twenty-first
chapter! _Lavengro_ is full of riches. As for his courage, who else
could begin a passage 'O England,' and emerge triumphantly a page and a
half lower down as Borrow does in _The Bible in Spain_?
O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath
the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now
gathering rapidly round thee, still, still may it please the Almighty
to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and
still brighter in renown than thy past! Or if thy doom be at hand,
may that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled
the Old Queen of the water! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst
blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to
participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to
preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming ere
extinct a scorn and a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though
they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their
will, honour and respect thee!
Arouse thee, whilst yet there is time, and prepare thee for the combat
of life and death! Cast from thee the foul scurf which now encrusts
thy robust limbs, which deadens their force, and makes them heavy and
powerless! Cast from thee thy false philosophers, who would fain
decry what, next to the love of God, has hitherto been deemed most
sacred, the love of the mother land! Cast from thee thy false
patriots, who, under the pretext of redressing the wrongs of the poor
and weak, seek to promote internal discord, so that thou mayest become
only terrible to thyself! And remove from thee the false prophets who
have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with
untempered mortar, that it may fall; who have strengthened the hands
of the wicked, and made the hearts of the righteous sad. O, do this,
and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an
enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou
old Queen!
George Borrow,--and this is the last of his virtues with which I shall
weary you,--had a true English heart. He could make friends with anybody
and be at home anywhere, but though he had a mighty thirst he had never,
in the words of the elder Pitt, 'drunk of the potion described in poetic
fictions which makes men forget their country.'
I have the permission of the Rev. A. W. Upcher to reprint the following
letter addressed by him some time ago to the Athenaeum .--
One summer day during the Crimean War we had a call from George
Borrow, who had not enjoyed a visit to Anna Gurney so much as he had
expected. In a walking tour round Norfolk he had given her a short
notice of his intended call, and she was ready to receive him. When,
according to his account, he had been but a very short time in her
presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her hand to one of
her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his
hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point, which he tried
to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him continuously; when, said
he, 'I could not study the Arabic grammar and listen to her at the
same time, so I threw down the book and ran out of the room.' He
seems not to have stopped running till he reached Old Tucker's Inn at
Cromer, where he renewed his strength, or calmed his temper, with five
excellent sausages, and then came on to Sheringham. He told us there
were three personages in the world whom he always had a desire to see;
two of these had slipped through his fingers, so he was determined to
see the third. 'Pray, Mr. Borrow, who were they?' He held up three
fingers of his left hand and pointed them off with the forefinger of
the right: the first, Daniel O'Connell; the second, Lamplighter (the
sire of Phosphorus, Lord Berners's winner of the Derby); the third,
Anna Gurney. The first two were dead and he had not seen them; now he
had come to see Anna Gurney, and this was the end of his visit. I
took him up to the Hall, he talking of many persons and occasionally
doubling his fist, and giving a sort of warning like that of his
Isopel Berners (in _Lavengro_) to give the Flaming Tinman 'Long
Melford' with his right hand. As soon as we reached the Hall a battle-
piece by Wouvermans was the first thing that caught his eye and
greatly interested him. He told me of a descendant of Wouvermans--an
officer in the Austrian army--whom he knew. Then entering the drawing-
room and looking out of the bay-window through the oak wood on the
deep blue sea beyond, he seemed for some time quite entranced by the
lovely, peaceful view, till at last I felt I must arouse him, and
said, 'A charming view, Mr. Borrow!' With a deep sigh he slowly
answered, 'Yes!--please God the Russians don't come here.'
PREFACE
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 {5} 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 headquarters 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 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. 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 premisses 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
pedlery, 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.
{picture:All of a sudden he started back, and grew white as a sheet:
page13.jpg}