MAY 1840–MARCH 1841
EARLY in May, Borrow, his wife and step-daughter left London to take up
their residence at Oulton, in Suffolk. After years of wandering and
vagabondage he was to settle down as a landed proprietor. His income, or
rather his wife’s, amounted to £450 per annum, and he must have saved a
considerable sum out of the £2300 he had drawn from the Bible Society, as
his mother appears to have regarded the amounts he had sent to her as
held in trust. He was therefore able to instal himself, Sidi Habismilk
and the Jew of Fez upon his wife’s small estate, with every prospect of
enjoying a period of comfort and rest after his many years of wandering
and adventure.
[Picture: Oulton Cottage. Photo. C. Wilson, Lowestroft]
Oulton Cottage was ideally situated on the margin of the Broad. It was a
one-storied building, with a dormer-attic above, hanging “over a lonely
lake covered with wild fowl, and girt with dark firs, through which the
wind sighs sadly. {330a} A regular Patmos, an _ultima Thule_; placed in
an angle of the most unvisited, out-of-the-way portion of England.”
{330b} A few yards from the water’s edge stood the famous octagonal
Summer-house that Borrow made his study. Here he kept his books, a
veritable “polyglot gentleman’s” library, consisting of such literary
“tools” as a Lav-engro might be expected to possess. There were also
books of travel and adventure, some chairs, a lounge and a table; whilst
behind the door hung the sword and regimental coat of the sleeping
warrior to whom his younger son had been an affliction of the spirit,
because his mind pursued paths that appeared so strangely perilous.
Here in this Summer-house Borrow wrote his books. Here when “sickness
was in the land, and the face of nature was overcast—heavy rain-clouds
swam in the heavens—the blast howled amid the pines which nearly surround
the lonely dwelling, and the waters of the lake which lies before it, so
quiet in general and tranquil, were fearfully agitated,” Borrow shouted,
“‘Bring lights hither, O Hayim Ben Attar, son of the miracle!’ And the
Jew of Fez brought in the lights,” {331a} and his master commenced
writing a book that was to make him famous. When tired of writing, he
would sometimes sing “strange words in a stentorian voice, while
passers-by on the lake would stop to listen with astonishment and
curiosity to the singular sounds.” {331b}
Life at Oulton Cottage was delightfully simple. Borrow was a good host.
“I am rather hospitable than otherwise,” {331c} he wrote, and thoroughly
disliked anything in the nature of meanness. There was always a bottle
of wine of a rare vintage for the honoured guest. Sometimes the host
himself would hasten away to the little Summer-house by the side of the
Broad to muse, his eyes fixed upon the military coat and sword, or to
scribble upon scraps of paper that, later, were to be transcribed by Mrs
Borrow. Borrow would spend his evenings with his wife and Henrietta,
generally in reading until bedtime.
In the Norwich days Borrow had formed an acquaintance with another
articled-clerk named Harvey (probably one of his colleagues at Tuck’s
Court). They had kindred tastes, in particular a love of the open air
and vigorous exercise. After settling at Oulton, the Borrows and the
Harveys (then living at Bury St Edmunds) became very intimate, and
frequently visited each other. Elizabeth Harvey, the daughter of
Borrow’s contemporary, has given an extremely interesting account of the
home life of the Borrows. She has described how sometimes Borrow would
sing one of his Romany songs, “shake his fist at me and look quite wild.
Then he would ask: ‘Aren’t you afraid of me?’ ‘No, not at all,’ I would
say. Then he would look just as gentle and kind, and say, ‘God bless
you, I would not hurt a hair of your head.’” {332a}
Miss Harvey has also given us many glimpses into Borrow’s character. “He
was very fond of ghost stories,” she writes, “and believed in the
supernatural.” {332b} He enjoyed music of a lively description, one of
his favourite compositions being the well-known “Redowa” polka, which he
would frequently ask to have played to him again.
As an eater Borrow was very moderate, he “took very little breakfast but
ate a very great quantity of dinner, and then had only a draught of cold
water before going to bed . . . He was very temperate and would eat what
was set before him, often not thinking of what he was doing, and he never
refused what was offered him.” {332c} On one occasion when he was dining
with the Harveys, young Harvey, seeing Borrow engrossed in telling of his
travels, handed him dish after dish in rapid succession, from all of
which he helped himself, entirely unconscious of what he was doing.
Finally his plate was full to overflowing, perceiving which he became
very angry, and it was some time before he could be appeased. A
practical joke made no appeal to him. {332d}
Elizabeth Harvey also tells how, when a cousin of hers was staying at
Cromer, the landlady went to her one day and said, “O, Miss, there’s such
a curious gentleman been. I don’t know what to think of him, I asked him
what he would like for dinner, and he said, ‘Give me a piece of flesh.’”
“What sort of gentleman was it?” enquired the cousin, and on hearing the
description recognised George Borrow, and explained that the strange
visitor merely wanted a rump-steak, a favourite dish with him.
As he did not shoot or hunt, he obtained exercise either by riding or
walking. At times “he suffered from sleeplessness, when he would get up
and walk to Norwich (25 miles) and return the next night recovered”
{333a} yet Borrow has said that “he always had the health of an
elephant.”
He was proud of the Church and took great pleasure in showing to his
friends the brasses it contained, including one bearing an effigy of Sir
John Fastolf, whom he considered to be the original of Falstaff. He was
also “very fond of his trees. He quite fretted if by some mischance he
lost one.” {333b}
His methods with the country people round Oulton were calculated to earn
for him a reputation for queerness. “Curiosity is the leading feature of
my character” {333c} he confessed, and the East Anglian looks upon
curiosity in others with marked suspicion. It was impossible for Borrow
to walk far without getting into conversation with someone or other. He
delighted in getting people to tell their histories and experiences;
“when they used some word peculiar to Norfolk (or Suffolk) country men,
he would say ‘Why, that’s a Danish word.’ By and bye the man would use
another peculiar expression, ‘Why, that’s Saxon’; a little further on
another, ‘Why, that’s French.’ And he would add, ‘Why, what a wonderful
man you are to speak so many languages.’ One man got very angry, but Mr
Borrow was quite unconscious that he had given any offence.” {334a}
He took pleasure in puzzling people about languages. Elizabeth Harvey
tells {334b} how he once put a book before her telling her to read it,
and on her saying she could not, he replied, “You ought; it’s your own
language.” The volume was written in Saxon. Yet for all this he hated
to hear foreign words introduced into conversation. When he heard such
adulterations of the English language he would exclaim jocosely, “What’s
that, trying to come over me with strange languages?” {334c}
Borrow’s first thoughts on settling down were of literature. He had
material for several books, as he had informed Mr Brandram. Putting
aside, at least for the present, the translations of the ballads and
songs, he devoted himself to preparing for the press a book upon the
Spanish Gypsies. During the five years spent in Spain he had gathered
together much material. He had made notes in queer places under strange
and curious conditions, “in moments snatched from more important
pursuits—chiefly in _ventas_ and _posadás_” {334d}—whilst engaged in
distributing the Gospel. It was a book of facts that he meant to write,
not theories, and if he sometimes fostered error, it was because at the
moment it was his conception of truth. Very little remained to do to the
manuscript. Mrs. Borrow had performed her share of the work in making a
fair copy for the printer. Borrow’s subsequent remark that the
manuscript “was written by a country amanuensis and probably contains
many ridiculous errata,” was scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to
have comprehended so well the first principle of wifely duty to an
illustrious and, it must be admitted, autocratic genius—viz.,
self-extinction.
“No man could endure a clever wife,” Borrow once confided to the
unsympathetic ear of Frances Power Cobbe; but he had married one
nevertheless. No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of
inspiration could have lived in intimate association with so capricious
and masterful a man as George Borrow. John Hasfeldt, in sending his
congratulations, had seemed to suggest that Borrow was one of those
abstruse works of nature that require close and constant study. “When
your wife thoroughly knows you,” he wrote, “she will smooth the wrinkles
on your brow and you will be so cheerful and happy that your grey hair
will turn black again.”
“In November 1840 a tall athletic gentleman in black called upon Mr
Murray, offering a manuscript for perusal and publication.” {335a}
Fifteen years before, the same “tall athletic gentleman” had called a
dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of Northern and
Welsh ballads, but “never could see Glorious John.” Borrow had
determined to make another attempt to see John Murray, and this time he
was successful. He submitted the manuscript of _The Zincali_, which
Murray sent to Richard Ford {335b} that he might pronounce upon it and
its possibilities. “I have made acquaintance,” Ford wrote to H. U.
Addington, 14th Jan. 1841, “with an extraordinary fellow, _George
Borrow_, who went out to Spain to convert the _gypsies_. He is about to
publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. It was submitted to
my perusal by the hesitating Murray.” {335c} On Ford’s advice the book
was accepted for publication, it being arranged that author and publisher
should share the profits equally between them.
On 17th April 1841 there appeared in two volumes _The Zincali_; {336a}
_or_, _An Account of the Gypsies in Spain_. _With an original Collection
of their Songs and Poetry_, _and a copious Dictionary of their Language_.
By George Borrow, late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in
Spain. It was dedicated to the Earl of Clarendon, G.C.B. (Sir George
Villiers), in “remembrance of the many obligations under which your
Lordship has placed me, by your energetic and effectual interference in
time of need.” The first edition of 750 copies sufficed to meet the
demand of two years. Ford, however, wrote to Murray: “The book has
created a great sensation far and wide. I was sure it would, and I hope
you think that when I read the MS. my opinion and advice were sound.”
{336b}
[Picture: Richard Ford. From the painting by Antonio Chatelain]
_The Zincali_ had been begun at Badajos with the Romany songs or rhymes
copied down as recited by his gypsy friends. To these he had
subsequently added, being assisted by a French courier, Juan Antonio
Bailly, who translated the songs into Spanish. These translations were
originally intended to be published in a separate work, as was the
Vocabulary, which forms part of _The Zincali_. Had Borrow sought to make
two separate works of the “Songs” and “Vocabulary,” there is very
considerable doubt if they would have fared any better than the
everlasting Ab Gwilym; but either with inspiration, or acting on some
one’s wise counsel, he determined to subordinate them to an account of
the Spanish Gypsies.
As a piece of bookmaking _The Zincali_ is by no means notable. Borrow
himself refers to it (page 354) as “this strange wandering book of mine.”
In construction it savours rather of the method by which it was
originally inspired; but for all that it is fascinating reading,
saturated with the atmosphere of vagabondage and the gypsy encampment.
It was not necessarily a book for the scholar and the philologist, many
of whom scorned it on account of its rather obvious carelessnesses and
inaccuracies. Borrow was not a writer of academic books. He lacked the
instinct for research which alone insures accuracy.
It was particularly appropriate that Borrow’s first book should be about
the Gypsies, who had always exercised so strange an attraction for him
that he could not remember the time “when the very name of Gypsy did not
awaken within me feelings hard to be described.” {337a} His was not
merely an interest in their strange language, their traditions, their
folk-lore; it was something nearer and closer to the people themselves.
They excited his curiosity, he envied their mode of life, admired their
clannishness, delighted in their primitive customs. Their persistence in
warring against the gentile appealed strongly to his instinctive hatred
of “gentility nonsense”; and perhaps more than anything else, he envied
them the stars and the sun and the wind on the heath.
“Romany matters have always had a peculiar interest for me,” {337b} he
affirms over and over again in different words, and he never lost an
opportunity of joining a party of gypsies round their camp-fire. His
knowledge of the Romany people was not acquired from books. Apparently
he had read very few of the many works dealing with the mysterious race
he had singled out for his particular attention. With characteristic
assurance he makes the sweeping assertion that “all the books which have
been published concerning them [the Gypsies] have been written by those
who have introduced themselves into their society for a few hours, and
from what they have seen or heard consider themselves competent to give
the world an idea of the manners and customs of the mysterious Romany.”
{338a}
His attitude towards the race is curious. He recognised the Gypsies as
liars, rogues, cheats, vagabonds, in short as the incarnation of all the
vices; yet their fascination for him in no way diminished. He could mix
with them, as with other vagabonds, and not become harmed by their broad
views upon personal property, or their hundred and one tricks and
dishonesties. He was a changed man when in their company, losing all
that constraint that marked his intercourse with people of his own class.
He had laboured hard to bring the light of the Gospel into their lives.
He made them translate for him the Scriptures into their tongue; but it
was the novelty of the situation, aided by the glass of Malaga wine he
gave them, not the beauty of the Gospel of St Luke, that aroused their
interest and enthusiasm. To this, Borrow’s own eyes were open. “They
listened with admiration,” he says; “but, alas! not of the truths, the
eternal truths, I was telling them, but to find that their broken jargon
could be written and read.” {338b}
On one occasion, having refused to one of his congregation the loan of
two _barias_ (ounces of gold), he proceeded to read to the whole assembly
instead the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed in Romany. Happening
to glance up, he found not a gypsy in the room, but squinted, “the Gypsy
fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted worst of all. Such are
Gypsies.” {338c}
[Picture: John Murray the Second. The “Glorious John” of Lavengro. From
a portrait by H. W. Pickersgill, R.A., in the possession of Mr. Murray]
It was indeed the novelty that appealed to them. They greeted with a
shout of exultation the reading aloud a translation that they themselves
had dictated; but they remained unmoved by the Christian teaching it
contained. For all these discouragements Borrow persisted, and perhaps
none of his efforts in Spain produced less result than this “attempt to
enlighten the minds of the Gitanos on the subject of religion.” {339}
If the Gypsies were all that is evil, judged by conventional standards,
they at least loyally stood by each other in the face of a common foe.
Borrow knew Ambrose Petulengro to be a liar, a thief, in fact most things
that it is desirable a man should not be; yet he was equally sure that
under no circumstances would he forsake a friend to whom he stood
pledged. There seems to be little doubt that Borrow’s fame with the
Gypsies spread throughout England and the Continent. “Everybody as ever
see’d the white-headed Romany Rye never forgot him.”
Borrow was by no means the first Romany Rye. From Andrew Boorde
(15th-16th Century) down the centuries they are to be found, even to our
day, in the persons of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton and Mr John Sampson; but
Borrow was the first to bring the cult of Gypsyism into popularity.
Before he wrote, the general view of Gypsies was that they were
uncomfortable people who robbed the clothes-lines and hen-roosts, told
fortunes and incidentally intimidated the housewife if unprotected by man
or dog. Borrow changed all this. The suspicion remained, so strongly in
fact that he himself was looked at askance for consorting with such
vagabonds; but with the suspicion was more than a spice of interest, and
the Gypsies became epitomised and immortalised in the person of Jasper
Petulengro. Borrow’s Gypsyism was as unscientific as his “philology.”
Their language, their origin he commented on without first acquainting
himself with the literature that had gathered round their name. Francis
Hindes Groome, “that perfect scholar-gypsy and gypsy-scholar,” wrote:—
“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 confrères.” {340a}
Groome was by no means partial to Borrow, as a matter of fact he openly
taxed him {340b} with drawing upon Bright’s _Travels in Hungary_
(Edinburgh 1819) for the Spanish-Romany Vocabulary, and was strong in his
denunciation of him as a _poseur_.
Borrow scorned book-learning. Writing to John Murray, Junr. (21st Jan.
1843), about _The Bible in Spain_, he says, “I was conscious that there
was vitality in the book and knew that it must sell. I read nothing and
drew entirely from my own well. I have long been tired of books; I have
had enough of them,” {340c} he wrote later, and this, taken in
conjunction with another sentence, viz., “My favourite, I might say my
only study, is man,” {340d} explains not only Borrow’s Gypsyism, but also
his casual philology. Languages he mostly learned that he might know
men. In youth he read—he had to do something during the long office
hours, and he read Danish and Welsh literature; but he did not trouble
himself much with the literary wealth of other countries, beyond dipping
into it. He had a brain of his own, and preferred to form theories from
the knowledge he had acquired first hand, a most excellent thing for a
man of the nature of George Borrow, but scarcely calculated to advance
learning. He hated anything academic.
“I cannot help thinking,” he wrote, “that it was fortunate for
myself, who am, to a certain extent, a philologist, that with me the
pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of horses .
. . I might, otherwise, have become a mere philologist; one of those
beings who toil night and day in culling useless words for some _opus
magnum_ which Murray will never publish and nobody ever read—beings
without enthusiasm, who, having never mounted a generous steed,
cannot detect a good point in Pegasus himself.” {341}
This quotation clearly explains Borrow’s attitude towards philology. As
he told the _émigré_ priest, he hoped to become something more than a
philologist.
There was nothing in the sale of _The Zincali_ to encourage Borrow to
proceed with the other books he had partially prepared. Nearly seven
weeks after publication, scarcely three hundred copies had been sold. In
the spring of the following year (18th March) John Murray wrote: “The
sale of the book has not amounted to much since the first publication;
but in recompense for this the Yankees have printed two editions, one for
twenty pence _complete_.” As Borrow did not benefit from the sale of
American editions, the news was not quite so comforting as it would have
been had it referred to the English issue.